Florida Primaries 2018 Midterms: Get Ready to Vote

As noted, this 2018 is a Midterms cycle, where Congressional seats are always up for A) vote if you're a Democrat or B) bid if you're Republican or C) patience if you're No Party Affiliate because here in Florida the primaries are closed. There's also key state elections like Governor and legislative offices, although most of those aren't competitive until the General election in November. Here's a handy guide to Florida's elections if you need it.

However, with the Primary vote coming up this August 28 - with Early Voting the week or so before, please use when/if you can - it's necessary to get the word out that HEY YOU MUTHAS GET THE GODDAMN VOTE OUT THIS YEAR.

Ahem. Yeah. Primary voter turnout is terrible in this nation and very much so here in Florida. WE NEED BETTER INVOLVEMENT, AMERICANS.

As a Polk resident, I shall present links to you for our county's Primary ballots. To the other counties in Florida, this page has a navigation tool to get to your Elections' office website for your ballot info. CHECK IT OUT, PEEPS.

Anyway, here's the Polk County Ballot if you're Democrat.

Here's the Polk Ballot if you're Republican.

Here's the Polk Ballot if you're Independent/Third Party. Yes, there are local issues to vote for. PLEASE SHOW UP FOR THESE VOTES.

For any recommendations I can make for you here, as a NPA I have no vote for either Democrat or Republican. My personal preferences over the past decade or more of me blogging here, however, has made it clear I AM NOT IN THE MOOD TO SEE REPUBLICANS WIN, GODDAMMIT. They have been terrible for the state of Florida and they are a disaster for the United States. It's been pretty much one-party rule in the Sunshine State since 1998 and the Republicans have repeatedly failed to respond to residents' needs on Education, Environment, Development, Healthcare, Medical Marijuana, and Infrastructure matters. If you're a registered Republican and you're voting in this year's Primary, do us all a favor and add a NONE OF THE ABOVE option to your ballot. Since you probably can't, whatever you do PLEASE DO NOT VOTE FOR RICK "NO ETHICS" SCOTT for the Senate race (this means balloting for "Rocky" De La Fuente? sure let's go with that) and PLEASE DO NOT VOTE FOR ANYBODY BACKED BY trump... which means please do NOT vote for Ron DeSantis (P.S. I am not a huge fan of Adam Putnam either, since that SOB is owned by the NRA, so if you can vote for whichever of the other GOP candidates for Governor is not a raging misogynistic racist).

For those voting Democratic, you have options for Federal and State offices. The big one is the choice for Governor, where there's a lot of potential names to choose from. I've been leaning toward Gwen Graham from what I've read about her policy stances, plus I am earnestly voting for every woman candidate possible because FUCK our current culture of toxic masculinity needs a goddamn kick in the literal and metaphorical balls.

As for the local elections, I need to read more on the School Board and County Commission candidates to find out which ones will actually SERVE the public trust and make our communities better.

That said, Early Voting starts August 18 and runs until August 25. USE THAT if you know you will be busy on Tuesday August 28.

GET THE GODDAMN VOTE OUT, DEMOCRATS. Especially now, and ESPECIALLY IN NOVEMBER.

Personal Note: Royal Palm Literary Awards

As a member of the Florida Writers Association, I submitted an unpublished short story "A Face In the Light" to this year's Royal Palm awards to see how it would do.

I am one step away from being a Finalist/winner for the Short Fiction category this year!

The finalists will be announced this October.

Wish me luck!

I Survived Tampa Bay Comic Con 2018: Surprising Amount of Walking Within Such a Small Space

I dunno if I ever mention in my previous discussions of attending comic cons, but there is a massive difference in floorspace between the Orlando (Orange County) Convention Center and Tampa Convention Center. I mean, Orlando's West Hall alone is arguably double the length and equal the height of Tampa's. On the bright side, it's a vast improvement over previous Tampa Bay comic cons when they were held in standalone hotels' meeting rooms out near the airport. With the convention center, you at least get enough places to host discussions and guest star speakers.

Still, it's an adventure just to even get inside Tampa's center for the annual Tampa Bay Comic Con, which I shall document here for the amused and amazed to enjoy.

Parking was a nightmare this year because the nearest parking garage - next to Amelie Arena - was blocked off for some reason (there is ongoing construction next to it which may be an expansion). After that, they had rearranged the entry point from the south side (facing the Channel) to the north side (facing the River). This *did* create a nicer pathway in as this video attests:

Yes, I filmed this portrait instead of landscape. Sue me.

Meanwhile, here's further documentation of the long long day I spent hanging out with fellow gamers, readers, writers, geeks, nerds, spazzes, goofballs, motorheads, sportos, waistoids, dweebies, dickheads, and other religious denominations.

A selfie for the day. And yes, I went solo again to a comic-con.
Things just kinda are that way.

It's around 11 AM and there's already a healthy lineup for fans seeking autographs.

This was a packed con this year. Last year's had a smaller turnout due to Miami's Supercon
conflicting with celebrity schedules drawing away the fandom.

 

I had attended a writer's panel on writing Villains, and this is their Bard's Tower pavilion.

One of the things that's happened the past few years is that the cons
have been widening the walkways. There's still a few alleys that are narrow
but now there's a few wide areas to help with foot traffic.

NOW ALL THEY NEED ARE PLACES TO SIT (ow my feets)

Hey, I found writer/fellow Gainesville survivor William Hatfield's booth... but he's vanished!
Prolly at another writer's panel...

Well I *did* find comic book author/guy-who-brought-a-llama-to-my-nephew's-birthday-party-ages-ago person John Crowther, who's busy promoting his latest series of biographies of famous wrestlers such as Lenny "The Genius" Poffo (who was off to the side discussing quantum mechanics with a n00b, I believe).

Oh, there's Hatfield, ready to discuss writing about strong female characters in fantasy/science fiction!

There were a couple of interesting panels this year, and a couple of writing ones that had newer topics than earlier, so the day was fun for the writer-wannabe that I am.

And back again to the Guest Star area. The vendor hall is on the top floor, while the meeting rooms
are on the bottom floor. It gets hectic going up and down, but where else you gonna go...?

Now this was something I had just noticed at the MegaCon convention earlier this year, but had little idea was the deal was. There's a thing about "Mystery Boxes" where you buy this themed box that's filled with collectibles of some kind, and people were circling the pavilion waiting in line to buy a box. Thing is, you have no idea what you're getting until you get it. If anything, you're getting a fancy carry box. The TARDIS box was tempting but Gods Old and New it was expensive. At the price they were offering, it needed to contain an actual Doctor in it to make it worthwhile.

The Mystery Box pavilion was at the north end, with the Guest Stars at the south end, and between it all were the walkways.

At this end of the vendors' universe sat the Signing Booths for our celebrities who dared survive the trip to Tampa. Save for one:

Camren "Selina Kyle" Bicondova wasn't able to get a flight out in time for Saturday.

Bummer. I was going to try to ask her "just what the hell kind of drugs are the Gotham writers on? That is some crazy-ass storytelling going on with that show."

Anyway. There were other celebrities to see. Although I was really only keen on two others for the day.

One was this guy who's become a cult favorite for his performance in Game of Thrones uh Hot Fuzz: YARP.

It's kind of hard to see Rory McCann under that hat, but he was a hoot and a half talking about how
he went from lumberjack to the Anti-Hero of millions. However, he *did* lose his harmonica some point
during this Q&A, and he threatened to eat every f00king chicken in the room.

McCann did mention that for him the Game of Thrones series had ended - filming the live-action parts already done - and so he knows how it all ends... which is more than can be said for a certain author who won't freaking finish the novels!!! I don't care what Neil says, GRRM is our bitch. GET TO WORK.

And then, it was time, to say hello to...

AND IT'S NEGASONIC TEENAGE WARHEAD. To whomever is buying up the Fox movie studio in order to get all Marvel movies under one umbrella: STANDALONE MOVIE! With fewer dick jokes and more biting sarcasm.

I have no idea who the person walking in late to take a seat is. I didn't think to ask for an autograph or anything...

Seeing Brianna Hildebrand was kinda the last thing on the day I wanted to do, so after that it was straight home to feed the cats and regain my strength for the battles ahead.

How fares the comic cons in your corners of the world?

P.S. I plan on being at Clermont Comic Con in November. JOIN ME AND DIE. Um, Cake Or Death! There that's better.

P.S.S. I only realize just now writing this that I did NOT SEE any of the organized cosplayers like the 501st this comic con. Unless they were in a part of the vendor floor I didn't walk by... and I did not see any R2 units like always. I didn't find the droids I was looking for! /cries

The Fredo-In-Chief Wants You To Know He's Smaht Not Dumb Like Everybody Says

I know a guy...walks into a bank with a bottle, tells everybody it's nitroglycerin. He scores some cash off of the teller. On his way out, he drops the bottle. It cracks on the floor. He slips in it. He smacks up his head. They get him. The nitroglycerin was canola oil. I know more fucked-up bank robbers than ones that know what they're doing. I doubt one in ten could tell you where the dye pack is. Most bank robbers are fucking morons. 

-- Jack Foley, from Out of Sight

(And yes, that's not a typo in the headline: it's common practice to spell out the accent used when quoting a movie, and that's how the late great John Cazale said it)

We never accused donald j. trump of being intelligent, or smart. Clever, probably, you don't get to figure out how to con people out millions of dollars if you didn't have some skill set. Devious always, and bullying and short-sighted that's pretty fucking obvious.

But as you look more and more at this criminal organization known as the trump Empire, the more you see a mafia-esque group of wannabes who all play at being Michael Corleone but all turn out to be an army of Fredos. It becomes less "How did these morans trick so many people into voting for them?" and more "No wonder they got help from Russia to cheat their way into the White House."

Because that's where the Fredo-in-Chief trump is going with his ongoing ragefest on Twitter to cover up his crimes. Just this morning, in fact, link provided to Digby's Hullabaloo site:

Fake News reporting, a complete fabrication, that I am concerned about the meeting my wonderful son, Donald, had in Trump Tower. This was a meeting to get information on an opponent, totally legal and done all the time in politics - and it went nowhere. I did not know about it!
8:35 AM - Aug 5, 2018

Where trump gets a few things wrong:

1) he'd already tried to cover for that June 2016 meeting between donald junior and Russians, meaning that he's either lied then or lying now. Given this is trump, it's likely both.
2) trump's claim that the meeting was "totally legal" and "done all the time in politics" conflict with what's already been revealed about that meeting.
3) The "totally legal" argument goes against the US Code 52 s.30121: It shall be unlawful for—
(1) a foreign national, directly or indirectly, to make—
(A) a contribution or donation of money or other thing of value, or to make an express or implied promise to make a contribution or donation, in connection with a Federal, State, or local election;
(B) a contribution or donation to a committee of a political party; or
(C) an expenditure, independent expenditure, or disbursement for an electioneering communication (within the meaning of section 30104(f)(3) of this title); or
(2) a person to solicit, accept, or receive a contribution or donation described in subparagraph (A) or (B) of paragraph (1) from a foreign national...

4) Where the "Other thing of value" applies to Russia claiming they have "dirt" on Hillary Clinton that trump and the Republicans could use to disrupt the 2016 elections in their favor. The "Solicit, Accept, or Receive" comes into play from the fact that donald trump junior was so very eager to get that dirt and arranged that meeting.

This should be a very simple rule: DO NOT WORK WITH FOREIGN NATIONS OR TAKE ANY FOREIGN MONEY WHEN RUNNING AN ELECTION CAMPAIGN. Yet there trump is, arguing that it's all legal and that his ignorance of the law is a defense.

One of the first things they taught me in High School Latin was this phrase: Ignorantia juris non excusat. Ignorance of the Law is No Excuse. But then again I doubt trump studied Latin, or even remembered what he failed to learn in High School.

This is trump, trying to get ahead of the scandal where Mueller is getting ever closer to tying trump's campaign - especially his own son - to the Russians already charged by Mueller of interfering/hacking the elections. But this is also trump, throwing his own son under the bus by making it so very clear that what junior did violated the US Code I quoted above.

It takes a certain level of stupidity to think that confessing to shit you've done can somehow be accepted or ignored, that your own argument of "it wasn't illegal!" would somehow sway the prosecutors about to put the hammer down on you. The smart move is to separate yourself from the evidence as much as possible and keep your own damn mouth shut.

Here's proof number 9718 that trump got help from Russia to steal the election. He doesn't have enough brain cells to even realize the smart play is to shut up.

Break out the Popcorn GIFs, this coming week is gonna be a doozy. 

What If: The Timeline Where Hillary Won

I admit, I wake up nearly every morning wondering about this.

Would we - America, the world, Humanity as a whole -  be in such a dire place we are right now where trump causes chaos and criminality on an hourly basis?

What would it be like in a 2018 where voters in key states - Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and especially Florida - decided in 2016 not to be a dick and avoided voting for Jill Stein or trump himself?

What would it look like to wake up in a world where Hillary was President?

Okay, for the Hillary haters out there who'd be screaming OH SHE'D BE TAKING R GUNZ AND GAY MARRYING OUR KIDZ AND SHOVING US INTO CAMPS will you KNOCK THAT SHIT OFF. In the eight years of Bill Clinton and eight years of Barack Obama, your worst fears NEVER HAPPENED and the odds are it wouldn't have happened under Hillary either. Christ. You PARANOID FUCKWITS.

But that's the world we'd wake up to. Every morning, Fox Not-News and Drudge and Rush Limbaugh and the whole fearmonger wingnut army would be up and angry, yelling about whatever slight they think Hillary dropped on them the day before, screaming for her impeachment and letting the worst of them drop the "Lock Her Up" chant for shits and giggles. Just think of all the anger and outrage that happened under 8 years of Obama, only this time with the special vitriol that Republicans have for Hillary.

We'd wake up to a world where the Congress likely remained in Republican control. There's little evidence that a shift in Hillary's favor would have meant the same shift for House and Senate Democratic candidates. So that would mean several things:

• House Republicans would be blocking every attempt by the Clinton White House to firm up Obamacare and other health care reforms Hillary argued for. The sputtering self-inflicted damage Republicans did trying to destroy Obamacare would still be at full throttle, as they'd know Hillary would block their attempts meaning they could repeat themselves and never fear the chance of getting blamed for wrecking it. We may even have gone into another Republican-forced Shutdown by now, because Gods help us every time the Republicans pulled that shit they still won the damn midterms afterwards.
• Senate Republicans would be blocking Hillary's attempts to fill the Supreme Court and other Judiciary seats. Knowing McConnell's desire to screw Obama out of a SCOTUS legacy, he'd carry that hatred over against Hillary. And the excuse this time would be "Well, we dare not appoint any judges while the President is under criminal investigation." (Yes, that IS the argument Democrats are trying right now to block trump's attempt to fill Anthony Kennedy's vacating seat, but it's a hard one to make legally: Dems are better off arguing that Kavanaugh will offer unethical Quid Pro Quos with trump should trump ever find himself under arrest and making Supreme Court appeals to avoid trials) As a result we'd like be seeing an 8-seat Supreme Court with Kennedy holding off his retirement, and Merrick Garland sitting there on the sidelines wondering if he should sue McConnell for emotional damages.
• Speaking of "criminal investigation," we'd likely be in the 18th month of MORE congressional hearings into BEHGHAZI, and HER EMAILS, and the fervent hope that the DNC were hiding things in their servers rather than the fact that Russians were illegally hacking us. Where trump whines about legitimate criminal investigations into Russia's interference - and trump's acts of obstruction / possible conspiracy - Hillary will most likely be weathering each faux accusation by Fox & Friends every morning and wondering when her breakfast toast arrives.

So that's some of the bad stuff we'd be seeing.

In terms of international woes, there's every likelihood the mess in the Middle East would remain a mess. Syria's Civil War would still be a pit of bloodshed and heartache. Half our allies in the region - Turkey and Egypt in particular - would be nightmarish dictatorial hell-holes. The situation with Russia invading Ukraine would still be a pressing matter for NATO. North Korea would still be an annoyance in Asia.

It's just in those situations, we wouldn't be overwhelmed by the internal chaos of a trump regime. We wouldn't worry about a State Department ravaged by incompetent leadership - Bye, Rex! - that gutted needed foreign policy experts and sabotaged our nation's abilities to retain strong connections to our allies. There'd at least be some sense of stability.

The United States would not be an isolated, hated nation the way we are now under trump. NATO would not feel bullied. Our Asian allies would not feel abandoned. Canada, for God's sake, wouldn't be in a trade war with us.

That's the other thing: No tariff war. Hillary would never have pulled the stunts trump has raising tariffs on steel and other products. We wouldn't be caught in the crosshairs between an angry China, angrier EU, royally miffed Mexico, and a super-pissed Canada.

We would not have the scandals of Cabinet Secretaries like Scott Pruitt ripping off taxpayers and breaking environmental standards that keep Americans healthy. That depends of course if McConnell's Senate decided to let Hillary HAVE a hand-picked Cabinet in the first place.

The nuclear arrangement with Iran - backed by NATO - that trump is trying to derail would instead be in full force, and nobody except the warmongers would be angry about that.

Putin would still be scheming and getting his Russian hackers to try and wreck the 2018 midterms in ways to get the U.S. to drop the sanctions against himself and his cronies, but our intel agencies would be operating with the belief that their President has their back.

Our immigration policy would not be the nightmare it is now. While the Far Right Republicans in Congress would never approve any Hillary-backed reforms, we won't at least be coping with trump's hideous travel bans and we won't be arguing over the deluded "need" for a border wall with Mexico. The current trump practice of separating children from their families as they seek asylum? THAT particular nightmare shouldn't even be dreamt of in Hillary's timeline.

We wouldn't have a madman causing ulcers every morning when he tweets his insanity. Half of social media wouldn't be yelling and screaming at the other half. Well, not as much as it would normally be yelling.

In this world, trump would be busy wasting other people's money on his failing TrumpTV channel, struggling to find enough advertisers to keep it floating while most wingnuts remain watching Fox Not-News for their anger fix. His rage-filled tweets wouldn't cause stock market drops. Hillary's tweets won't do a damn thing, because she rarely showed the habit during her campaign and most likely as President would stick to messaging through her Communications Office like every other President before her.

In a HillaryWorld, it'd have been a world much like Obama's after 2011: Republicans yelling and fantasizing over their latest conspiracy theories and blocking any Democratic agenda, while the Democrats chug along trying to make sure government works and the planet doesn't blow up.

Would it have really been as horrifying a reality as the one we have now???

Damage Control For the Next Ten Generations... If We Survive This

(Update: Thanks again as always to Batocchio at Crooks And Liars for the link to Mike's Blog Round-Up! Please stay and peruse the other articles...)

We're facing once again the Republican Party obsession with massive tax cuts for the super-rich - trump is proposing an Executive Order to recalculate Capital Gains to the tune of $100 BILLION - and we are reminded once again that these greedy sons of bitches are not listening to the American people.

There's a beautiful article on Slate.com by Osita Nwanevu that needs to be read in its entirety:

Recent polling tells us too that support for increasing taxes on the wealthy is high, as it has been for many years now. Sixty-two percent of Americans believe that the rich pay less than their fair share in taxes, according to Gallup. Last year, the Public Religion Research Institute found that 72 percent of Americans—including 74 percent of white working-class Americans and 58 percent of Republicans—support hiking taxes on those making $250,000 or more a year.

Yet, according to the New York Times, the Trump administration is not only considering cutting capital gains taxes by $100 billion over the next 10 years. It’s openly floating doing so via an administrative mechanism that the George H.W. Bush administration deemed illegal. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said the administration was mulling a change that would allow taxpayers to account for inflation in calculating capital gains, reducing the amount of tax that would be paid when the asset is sold. It is estimated that around two-thirds of the benefit from this change would go to the top 0.1 percent of income earners.

In a well-functioning democracy, doing such a thing, given the state of public opinion on taxes and the wealthy, would likely be politically fatal. Fortunately for the Republican Party, we live not in a well-functioning democracy but in the United States, and the Trump administration and conservatives backing this have surmised, correctly, that they can probably afford to publicly consider (this tax plan of evil) on the basis of a few assumptions.

The first is that most Americans aren’t paying terribly close attention to policy reporting at the New York Times or anywhere else. This is a safe bet at all times. The second is that the Republican base is willing to swallow just about any policy this administration pursues out of sheer antagonism toward the Democratic Party and the people it represents, who they believe might unravel the fabric of our country or upend the nation’s demographic balance, which is about the same as America’s fabric to them anyhow. The third is that the structural advantages the Republican Party currently enjoys—namely the composition of the Senate, gerrymandered House districts, the Electoral College—will help insulate them from the political consequences of proposing and implementing unpopular policy, as will their efforts to augment those advantages with policies that disenfranchise black voters...

Nwanevu is mostly pointing out the arguments I made earlier about the sins of Minority Party Rule: the Republicans do not really represent the will of the Majority but they've successfully figured out how to rig the electoral game. For awhile there they pretended to be a Majority Party, but lately they've been so reckless they don't even care that they're passing laws that benefit the elite few at the expense of everyone else.

Worse, these moves are destined to blow up on the country a few years down the road, likely at the moment the Democratic Party is able to work their way back into some part of federal government control, at which point the needs of fixing the damage - increasing taxes on upper incomes, cutting back on certain spending, borrowing more money to fill the deficit gap - will give Republicans the excuse of railing against Tax-And-Spend Democrats and fake their outrage back into power. We've seen this movie before, and enough voters and Beltway idiots buy into that lie.

Still, the only sane response to this is voter turnout: Turnout on such a massive scale, and favoring Democrats at such a scale, that the Republicans lose control of both parts of Congress with veto-proof majorities. Granted, that's impossible this election cycle because the Senate is only voting on a third of its seats and the best Democrats can do is 57 (three short of 60 to avoid Cloture and well short of 67 for two-thirds override) seats. But they gain enough seats this 2018 they can build on that towards 2020 and gain even more seats (and hopefully vote trump out of office and into a jail cell at the Colorado Supermax).

It's got to be turnout that can overpower Republican gerrymanders. It's got to be turnout in Red States that can rattle the hold the Republicans have on those places since the Reagan Era. It's got to be overwhelming enough for the US House that if the Republicans can rebound in 2020 they still won't earn enough seats to retake that part of the legislature.

And if the Democrats DO regain control of Congress, for God's Sake DO SOMETHING to break Republican rigging of the elections. Pass any and all laws to stop gerrymandering (even if Dems benefit from it in Blue States: IT IS NOT WORTH PROTECTING). You need to increase the number of House districts, something that hasn't been done since 1929 and is something that makes gerrymandering too easy to pull off. You need to give the Elections Commission more teeth in enforcing rules against foreign money and illegal (often negative) campaign ads. You need to pass laws creating universal voter registration, increased spending on balloting systems and protection from hackers. TAKE VOTING MORE SERIOUSLY, DEMS.

In the meanwhile, the Democrats need every bit of support to regain control for the American majority. They need your votes, they need your love. America, we can be better than the greed and viciousness of the Republican Party. We can put into office those who WILL respond to the wishes of the people.

Your voice isn't just for polls, or Twitter posts, or Facebook rants. Your vote is your voice and your power, and you need to use that more than social media now and always.

For the LOVE OF GOD, STOP VOTING REPUBLICAN. And get the damn vote out!

The Greatest Trick the Devil Ever Pulled Was Convincing Enough Americans To Avoid Voting

This is a thing that annoys me to no end.

To refer to a Pew Research article on the problem, by Drew DeSilver:

The Census Bureau estimated that there were 245.5 million Americans ages 18 and older in November 2016, about 157.6 million of whom reported being registered to vote. (While political scientists typically define turnout as votes cast divided by the number of eligible voters, in practice turnout calculations usually are based on the estimated voting-age population, or VAP.) Just over 137.5 million people told the census they voted in 2016, somewhat higher than the actual number of votes tallied – nearly 136.8 million, according to figures compiled by the Office of the Clerk of the U.S. House of Representatives, though that figure includes more than 170,000 blank, spoiled or otherwise null ballots. That sort of overstatement has long been noted by researchers; the comparisons and charts in this analysis use the House Clerk’s figure, along with data from the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA) and individual nations’ statistical and elections authorities.

The 55.7% VAP turnout in 2016 puts the U.S. behind most of its peers in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), most of whose members are highly developed, democratic states. Looking at the most recent nationwide election in each OECD nation, the U.S. placed 26th out of 32...

Goddammit America. When there's 245 million or so Americans able to vote, and only 157 million or so register, that's 88 million or so who just aren't taking the time to do their civic duty. Worse, we get about 137 million actually voting out of that 157 million, so add that 20 million missing and we've got 108 million Americans refusing/failing to use their power and voice in our nation's interests.

The Democratic (people vote for leaders)-Republic (institutions are regulated and balanced to ensure no one part is dominant) form of government we have survives on the involvement of its citizenry. When this many people make themselves unavailable, when this many refuse to use their voice and participate, it only allows the more extreme citizens - the ones obsessed with things everybody else do not think are problems, the ones more interested in abusing the system to their profit - to overtake the reins of power and fuck the country over due to their inflexible, oft-times corrupt ways.

Think about this: if that 108 million who didn't show counted as a None of the Above/Vote of No Confidence, neither Hillary (65 million) nor trump (62 million) would have won, hell they would have been embarrassed.

Back to DeSilver:

One factor behind Belgium’s high turnout rates – between 83% and 95% of VAP in every election for the past four decades – may be that it is one of the 24 nations around the world (and six in the OECD) with some form of compulsory voting, according to IDEA...

There's been an argument for Automatic (universal) Voter Registration - that every American citizen when they turn 18 or become naturalized gets their voter ID confirmed without the hassles of filing paperwork - as a means of countering the voter suppression efforts the Republicans are constantly attempting (and sometimes succeeding at). Some states already deploy a form of AVR, it's just a question of getting EVERY state to do it...

Back to DeSilver:

In the U.S., by contrast, registration is mainly an individual responsibility. And registered voters represent a much smaller share of potential voters in the U.S. than just about any other OECD country. Only about 64% of the U.S. voting-age population (and 70% of voting-age citizens) was registered in 2016, according to the Census Bureau report, compared with 91% in Canada (2015) and the UK (2017), 96% in Sweden (2014), and 99% in Slovakia (2016).

As a consequence, turnout comparisons based only on registered voters may not be very meaningful...

No matter how they’re measured, U.S. turnout rates have been fairly consistent over the past several decades, despite some election-to-election variation. Since 1976, voting-age turnout has remained within an 8.5-percentage-point range – from just under 50% in 1996, when Bill Clinton was re-elected, to just over 58% in 2008, when Barack Obama won the White House. However, turnout varies considerably among different racial, ethnic and age groups...

Argh. For a nation that's supposed to represent to the whole world how elective governments should work, we're doing a shitty job when it comes time to walk the walk.

One thing I see online is this ongoing call by (oddly enough) Progressive/Far Left Democrats to get the Dems to entice the "(White) Working Class" voting bloc as a means of flipping control of government from Republicans. As though that voting bloc can be enticed away from their Far Right fear-driven world-view.

But there's an even better solution, Democrats. There's between 88 to 108 million Americans who aren't bothering to register, at least 20 million who are registered but still won't show up. If you can just find out what it will take to get that 20 million to check in and show their support for the Democratic side of the issues, that could create a more reliable, less racist voting bloc to get your Party over the gerrymandering and geographic hurdles the GOP has been using the last 10-30 years to stifle the Real Majority voice.

There's got to be a better effort at getting the vote out. And the next time you get control of the Congress like you did in 2006, will you do yourselves a huge fucking favor and get that Automatic Voter Registration system in place nation-wide. Christ. You gotta fix this Dems, the Republicans sure as hell won't.

July 27 2016 A Date Which Will Live In Infamy...

trump publicly called on Russia to "find Hillary's missing emails," which in Far Right Wingnut Conspiracy-Speak meant "Hey, hack her server to find embarrassing shit."

A Daily Beast article from that day:

During a Wednesday press conference in Florida, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump encouraged Russia to hack Hillary Clinton’s “missing” emails from her tenure as secretary of state. “Russia, if you're listening, I hope you're able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” he said. “I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press. Let's see if that happens. That will be next. Yes, sir.”

Betty Cracker commentary from Balloon Juice:

As Adam noted yesterday, the DNC hack isn’t just standard intel gathering that virtually all governments do. The decision to use WikiLeaks as an outlet to publicly release the information to interfere with an election “meets the definition of an act of cyberwar,” according to Dave Aitel, whose Ars Technica editorial was quoted in Adam’s post...

So to recap, GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump openly “adhered” to a hostile foreign government and encouraged it to commit an act of war on the United States...

A more detailed review from Aaron Blake from the Washington Post:

There are many, many potential problems with this scenario — and not just for Clinton's campaign, but also for U.S. national security. Indeed, the logical extension of his comments is that a foreign power would be deciding how to handle possibly sensitive information about a potential U.S. president...

But Wednesday's comments ratchet things up even more. Even as he contended that he's not the preferred candidate of Russia — as Democrats have alleged and Russian President Vladimir Putin has suggested — he's now hoping Russia has potentially damaging information about a possible U.S. president.

That's stunning. And while Trump did not say he wants Russia to use those emails for blackmail or espionage purposes, his previous comments make clear it's a possibility he's very well aware of...

My take back in the day:

It doesn't matter that Clinton's email server has already undergone a complete federal investigation, where the worst the FBI found was that it was improper that Clinton was doing this (following how previous Sec of States did their private servers!).

Trump is taking the Far Right Narrative that Evil Clinton is still hiding something, anything, and they want to get at it by hook or by crook. Preferably by crook.

This is insane. This would be like having Richard Nixon asking Red China to wiretap Muskie (didn't have to, he hired his own). This would be like having Teddy Roosevelt asking Canada to intercept telegrams sent by Alton B. Parker back in 1904. This would be like John Adams asking the kingdom of Norway to raid Thomas Jefferson's home for his personal papers...

And for all those takes, what really did happen because of what trump said to the world that day? Refer to David A. Graham at the Atlantic just this July 13 2018...

The broad outlines of Friday’s indictment by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, charging 12 Russians with conspiracy, identity theft, and money laundering in connection with hacking during the 2016 presidential election, are not surprising. The hacking of the Democratic National Committee has been public knowledge since July 2016, and even then, the authorities publicly stated that the perpetrators were Russian government officials. Other details, such as the apparent involvement of WikiLeaks and Trump adviser Roger Stone, were also known. Some of the details, however, are striking...

On July 27, 2016, at a Trump press conference in Florida, the candidate referred to 33,000 emails that an aide to Hillary Clinton had deleted from the former secretary of state’s personal email server. The DNC had recently announced the Russian intrusion, and Trump speculated that if Russia broke into the DNC, it would have accessed Clinton’s emails, too...

(trump) was encouraging a foreign adversary to illegally hack into messages by a former secretary of state that might contain sensitive information, then release them publicly.

Trump had good reason to believe that Russia was listening. The previous month, his son, Donald Jr.; son-in-law, Jared Kushner; and campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, had a meeting at Trump Tower with Russians who they believed were offering damaging information about Clinton. (The meeting wasn’t revealed to the public until 2017, and both the Russians and the Trump campaign officials say no dirt was exchanged.) Prior to the meeting, Trump Jr. had received an email stating that the meeting was “ part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.”

Mueller’s indictment offers new evidence that Russia was listening—and acting on Trump’s request. The indictment charges 12 officers of the GRU, Russia’s military-intelligence agency, with hacking intended to interfere with the election...

This is asking a foreign power to spy on an American citizen, to spy on an American who worked as a Senator and Secretary of State, to spy on an American running for the Presidency.

How can that NOT fit the definition of treason spelled out in the US Code? "Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States..."

On this day in 2016, donald trump went on live television and committed an act of treason asking Russia to interfere with the elections, putting into play another part of what is turning out to be the Crime of the Century: Theft of the electoral process of the United States.

Everyone saw the crime taking place, and for now the thieves are getting away with it.

Do not forget this day.

Darkest Timeline Discussion: Choose The Form Of the Destructor

Right now, considering all of the scandals competing for attention in the blighted landscape that is trumpWorld:

• the ongoing investigation into Russia's hacking of our 2016 elections;
• the lawsuit(s) against trump's business dealings violating the Emoluments Clause being allowed to proceed;
• the growing revelations about trump's payoffs to various mistresses before the election - that can well violate campaign finance laws among other state-level criminal malfeasance - now bringing up trump's personal financial handler Allen Weisselberg, meaning trump's hidden business dealings with Russian mobsters may well get exposed any day now;
• trump's idiotic tariff wars threatening to trigger an economic implosion, even with the vain attempts to buy off the Agribusiness industry;
• the likelihood trump will pull off a rubber mask to expose his identity as a secret Richard Nixon clone all along

It's not a question "if" trump's administration ends in 2020 it's a question "how bad is the destruction going to be when the damn corrupt edifice collapses into the ocean".

Just what are the outcomes of all these crazy situations?

1) Republicans in control of Congress/the Cabinet just say "fuck it" and remove trump either through Impeachment or the 25th Amendment.

They'd have good reason to. While trump *is* popular still with the Republican base, that base has shrunk and there's evidence that a lot of Independent voters who went GOP in 2016 are avoiding the party now like the plague. Meanwhile, trump's unjustified tariff wars are causing economic chaos and his bailout offer to Agribusiness to offset the damage done to that industry goes against the conservative mindset of the more traditional-minded Republicans. The general chaos that revolves around trump makes it hard to get anything done (even for a lazy Congress, Republicans do want to get a few things on their agenda done): The scandals surrounding trump make it hard to focus on doing anything other than damage control. For all the issues that can affect an election, people still vote by emotion and there's a LOT of unhappy people angry at trump (and by extension the Congresscritters enabling him). In short, trump may not be helpful in the November midterm elections.

Sad thing is, the sanest response to trump's insanity is one that will not happen. For all the damage trump is doing to their own brand, these Republican leaders are cowards and self-serving fools yearning to hold onto power of controlling the three branches of Federal government (and a lot of state governments as well). They're terrified of losing their base AND their deep-pocket SuperPACs (some of which are corrupted by Russian affiliation anyway) to where they'll just ignore the warning signs and just hope this storm blows over. Even after the Primaries are done, don't expect the surviving GOP incumbents to do ANYTHING in Congress to make trump answer for the things he's doing wrong.

2) Democrats win the Midterms either by winning control of the House (likely) and/or winning control of the Senate (less likely) along with winning enough Governorships and State Legislatures (toss-up) to reduce the influence of Red State politics.

In this situation driven by 65 million angry American voters (or more), one of the Congressional houses switches to a political opposition willing and able to investigate/hound trump for every sin he's doing. Especially on matters involving Emoluments, and on trump's horrific anti-immigrant policies.

Even if it's a divided Congress (Dem House, GOP Senate) there is enough likelihood that they would pass legislation compelling trump and his White House to play by the rules. For example: Taking away the President's authority to create tariffs; allowing asylum seekers easier entry along with their families; cutting funds for ICE as punishment for mistreatment of immigrant kids; public investigations into trump's use of hotels to encourage foreign agents to give him money; public revelations of trump's federal income tax returns; creating legal protections for the FBI and Justice Department to prevent trump's meddling/threats to fire anyone investigating him.

There's a lot of things a Democratic branch of government could do to make life harder for trump to run his con games. In the right circumstance, trump may come to believe he won't be able to continue his con games and quit (he does have a tendency to cut and run).

Problem with this scenario: there is every likelihood the remaining Republicans in a Democratic-controlled Congress will run interference for trump just to spite the Democrats. They may get hammered in the 2018 Midterms but the GOP is obsessed with winning at all costs... and they've got the 2020 Presidential cycle to think about. In every previous time in the post-Reagan Era they got embarrassed for their extremist positions - 1992, 1998, 2006 and 2008, 2012 - instead of moderating themselves they doubled down on the crazy, and were rewarded every time - 1994, 2000, 2010, 2016 - with more political control. Outside of major loss of seats - say, losing 50-100 seats in the House and losing every Senate race in 2018 - the Republicans will likely remain defensive of trump and the Far Right factions, meaning trump can survive into 2020 and we risk the likelihood he'll campaign for re-election (with no guarantees he'll get the curb-stomping he deserves).

Another problem: if the Democrats win even one part of Congress, there is every likelihood the fear-mongers of the Far Right will scream "illegal" or "conspiracy" or "stolen votes". trump is already trying to set up the insane narrative that Russia will hack the Midterms in favor of the Democrats. The mood of the Far Right - even with them in control of the government - is still paranoid and on edge. The possibility of a violent response to a Democratic victory this November isn't a fantastic improbability.

3) For any old crazy reason, trump orders a halt to the Midterm elections.

One of the major steps in an Autocrat-Wannabe's efforts to achieve Full Dictator status is to suspend scheduled elections. trump could come up with any crazy and unproven excuse - such as his claim of Russians hacking into the 2018 elections to favor the Dems - and just before the November vote issue an Executive Order to the states to stop the vote because of "illegality."

This would have the effect of preserving - at the moment - Republican control of everything. It would also go against every democratic norm our nation's lived by since the American Revolution. We've NEVER suspended federal elections before, especially on this scale. Even in the middle of the Civil War - when 11 states were fighting to not even BE in the United States - the Union states still held Midterm elections in 1862 - which saw pro-Southern Democrats win gains in the House - and a Presidential election in 1864. Major wars like World War II, Korea, and Vietnam saw elections happening during them as well (with major party changes happening between Korea and Nam).

If trump tries to shut down the vote, there'd be a flurry of legal action, and then a possibility that only the Blue (Dem) States will hold them while the Red (GOP) States (especially the ones threatening to flip Blue) refuse to hold theirs. And then things would get messier from there. If trump succeeds in an effort to suspend elections, that may well be the trigger to start mass protests on a scale we haven't seen since the 1960s... with all the accompanying violence and tears we had those years coming back with a terrible vengeance.

None of these situations are appealing, all of these situations have a possibility of happening.

There is no calm, sane solution awaiting us here.

I would love to get a citation on the person who made this, I pulled it off Google Images

I'm starting to think the Mayans were off on their Apocalypse calendar by 4-5 years...

The Return On Investment With Public Libraries (AKA Professor Mourdoukoutas Does Not Care To Invest In Us)

Usually I write about my librarian profession at my other blog, but right now I gotta slap the taste out of some entitled upper-class libertarian's mouth who went and wrote a shitty op-ed in Forbes about turning public libraries into Amazon stores. I won't link directly to the SOB (actually, as I was writing this article I find out Forbes removed the op-ed for reasons I can't yet confirm, but I'm willing to guess has something to do with the op-ed being a pile of dingo droppings), so here's a link to Gizmodo reflecting my mood:

This weekend in ratios we have a jaw-droppingly bad op-ed in Forbes explaining that the age of the crusty old library is dead, and instead of them, we should all get Amazon. Not some kind of Amazon-like digital public library, or even Amazon Prime itself, mind you, but physical Amazon Books retail locations. Titled “Amazon Should Replace Local Libraries to Save Taxpayers Money,” it is written by Long Island University Post economics professor and seemingly prolific Forbes contributor section writer Panos Mourdoukoutas.

Mourdoukoutas writes that the government should stop funding libraries in part to save taxpayers a vague (and within the article, never quantified) amount of money and also to jack up Amazon’s stock price for some reason...

Lemme guess, Mordorsukoulot owns stock in Amazon, why else fcking care about a company already worth billions on the market.

The professor also argued that because Amazon had online ebooks that it could be a lending library already (and in reality it is, using services like Overdrive to provide ebooks for Kindle readers), so all the brick-and-mortar places can just double as coffee shops.

Essentially, the article reads like it was written by an asswipe who hasn't stepped inside a public library in ten-twenty years, completely overlooking the growing trends towards Makerspaces - crafts, 3D printing, quilting projects for the homeless, art classes for teenagers, what have you - and ignoring the reality that a lot of children, adults, and retirees still read print books in this day and age.

The article doesn't consider the library as a community information resource hub, not just with public computers for access, research, and emailing but also a place where local groups can use rooms and equipment to work on projects, classrooms and presentations. I doubt an Amazon bookstore would create such resources for sharing (and from personal experience almost no bookstore does because it takes floorspace away from SELLING SHIT).

This article WAS written by someone complaining that he was paying 400 bucks or so in yearly property taxes, which points to the libertarian/Far Right ideology of "why do I have to pay for the poor to use community resources and places to do things like read, use computers, write resumes, and job hunt?"

Dear Professor Mourdoukoutas: You wanna know what your Return On Investment is with libraries? It's very simple to find - you can even GOOGLE SEARCH IT using "Return On Investment" and the words "public libraries" and not bother a reference librarian like myself - and you'll get a 2011 report from the state of Minnesota's Department of Education. In that report, on the front page so you won't miss it, you'll find you get a ROI of $4.62 per tax dollar spent. That's a pretty good return on investment, seeing your community get the kind of financial support that EVERYONE can benefit from.

There's a reason why, in nearly every tax hike or bond issue that comes up in local elections regarding library spending, a vast majority of residents heartily APPROVE of tax hikes to pay for their public libraries. I still feel enormous civic pride from the days I worked in Broward County and the county residents voted FOR a bond issue to build and upgrade library buildings back in 1995 (or 1996, I'm trying to find the citations now, sorry)

I guess the problem is, professor, you don't want any of that investment in our communities. You just want it in your goddamn stock portfolio.

It's a good thing Forbes dropped your op-ed, considering how poorly researched and lacking in citations it had. I seriously argue your university should investigate your failure to do the one thing I'm sure you tell your college students to do, which is to use peer-reviewed citations in your work.

In the meantime, to every American citizen out there: Library cards are FREE to apply for in most public libraries, we've got the latest popular hot titles in books and DVDs you can check out, and when you stop by take a look at the Activities Calendar to see what you can do with your families at your local library. We've got Paws To Read, we've got Story Times for Three-Year-Olds, we've got Lego Builders, we've got Gaming clubs, we've got Drone Flyers, we've got things to do that Amazon can never plan for you.

Public Libraries serve the public trust. Libraries are one of the few service points in a city/county government where people WANT to be there, and are happy using it.

That should be something certain professors need to study up on.

A Spy In the House of Guns

At first she beckoned and lured one into her world; then, she blurred the passageways, confused all the images, as if to elude detection. 
- Anaïs Nin, A Spy in the House of Love

While everyone's been focused on the obvious Russian conspiratorial effort to subvert our nation, the Russians have been busy elsewhere, going after other avenues of attack to corrupt the Republican Party through the various SuperPACs that technically own the GOP.

The biggest spy scandal in years broke out almost a week ago when the FBI arrested one Maria Butina, an unusually well-known "lobbyist" around the Beltway power circles, for failing to register as a foreign agent while operating as a "lobbyist" and other acts of espionage.

It's gotten out there already that Russia had been laundering money through the National Rifle Association in order to pay off trump and other Republican candidates in an effort to get the 2014 sanctions lifted (as well as gaining undue influence over the U.S.). What Butina's arrest did was place a face and name on that corruption, and physically tying the NRA to our nation's biggest foreign threat.

To quote Jay Willis at GQ: The NRA Got Played.

Given how accustomed we've become to linking the Kremlin's election meddling with Donald Trump's presidential campaign, one of the most startling details about the odyssey of Maria Butina, the 29-year-old Russian "gun-rights activist" arrested on espionage charges this week, is that she was working to infiltrate conservative circles well before Trump announced his presidential bid. The fascinating tick-tocks of her work at BuzzFeed News, among others, are peppered with some of the most recognizable names in the GOP: Scott Walker, Rick Santorum, John Bolton, Bobby Jindal, Donald Trumps Sr. and Jr., and multiple presidents of the NRA, who saw Butina as a kindred spirit—and, thus, as someone whose motives they had no reason to question...

Butina ingratiated herself into every tier of Far Right social activity: She sucked up to Evangelicals, libertarians and tax-cutters, media conspiracy nuts, and above all the "Let's Shoot Everybody" enthusiasts eager to sell their wares to a promising Russian market.

She flirted publicly with a lot of men in conservative leadership roles, and allegedly forced herself - just read the disdain she expressed about her live-in "boyfriend" Paul Erickson (himself a questionable figure in GOP circles) - into relationships using sex as a weapon.

Okay, back to Willis:

Again, in retrospect, the warning signs were there for anyone who cared to look. As BuzzFeed News notes, in an autocracy with strict gun laws, the very idea of a strong grassroots analogue to the NRA is kind of absurd. But what Butina and her colleagues deduced is that the American right's blind, dogmatic devotion to protecting the Second Amendment would allow them to set aside any nagging misgivings about joining forces with her, if such misgivings even occurred to them in the first place. Put differently: A hostile foreign government scrutinized every aspect of American life and concluded that guns were the perfect access point for them to slip in undetected...

When you look at the National Rifle Association, about what motivates that organization - the profiteering via increased gun sales - you'll notice that the NRA relies on fearmongering of the worst kind to ensure a solid base of customers. That in order to do all that, ever since the 1970s that group turned away from Gun Safety and more towards a White Nationalist organization. When viewed from that angle, a merger between a blatantly jingoistic / faux-patriotic NRA and a corrupt foreign regime like Russia makes more sense.

One of the most disturbing trends of the last five years has been the growth of Far Right Nationalist/Populist (actually Fascist) groups across every Western democracy (and in democracies across the globe). Where Russia was once home to Soviet Communism, in the collapse of communism by the 1990s that nation - weakened by the humiliating collapse of the USSR - has redesigned itself into the exact - yet equally immoral - opposite of Nationalist Fascism. And having turned themselves into a Far Right nation, Russia is back to manipulating other nations... only this time using Fascism as the link.

In order to retain power as a permanently placed dictator, Putin allied himself to one of the few powerful organizations in post-Soviet Russia: the Russian Eastern Orthodox Church, a harshly Far Right sect of Christianity. Doing so made Russia a cornerstone of the Far Right factions of Christianity, which itself feeds into the racist Nationalism of Far Right political groups like the UKIP in England, France's National Front, and nowadays the NRA here in the USA. There is growing evidence of financial ties and Russian interference in Western European elections, all geared towards one thing: putting Nationalist/Isolationist-minded and Putin-friendly governments in control of enough nations to break NATO and send the world back to 19th Century geopolitics (and all the horrors THAT entailed)

Owning the NRA gets Putin ownership of the GOP. Having trump in the White House is one thing, and arguably a temporary disaster waiting to fall apart. Ownership of the Republican Party is more long-term, and more devastating to our nation's well-being.

So now here's ANOTHER reason why Congressional Republicans won't lift a damn finger to stop trump. At first it was due to fear of their rabid Far Right voting base. And now it's ALSO due to fear of their deep-pocket paymasters.

How does it feel, Comrade Mitch, how does it feel to sell out your nation? And how does it feel, you sons-of-bitches, to sell yourselves out so cheaply?

No Other Word But Treason Describes This

Just to refer to a few other people first.

John Cole at Balloon Juice:

...If Barack Obama had stood next to Putin and trashed the Republicans and John McCain after beating him in the previous election the Right-Wing would be calling for firing squads. He didn’t do that, but they called for firing squads anyway.

These people are fucking monsters. Trump, Pence, the whole god damned party have got to go.

James Fallows at The Atlantic:

I am old enough to remember Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon telling lies on TV, about Vietnam in both cases, and Watergate for Nixon. I remember the travails and deceptions of Bill Clinton, and of George W. Bush in the buildup to the disastrous Iraq War.

But never before have I seen an American president consistently, repeatedly, publicly, and shockingly advance the interests of another country over those of his own government and people...

For 18 months, members of this party have averted their eyes from Trump, rather than disturb the Trump elements among their constituency or disrupt the party’s agenda on tax cuts and the Supreme Court. They already bear responsibility for what Trump has done to his office.

But with every hour that elapses after this shocking performance in Helsinki without Republicans doing anything, the more deeply they are stained by this dark moment in American leadership...

David Frum at The Atlantic:

Russia helped Donald Trump into the presidency, as Robert Mueller’s indictment vividly details. Putin, in his own voice, has confirmed that he wanted Trump elected. Standing alongside his benefactor, Trump denounced the special counsel investigating the Russian intervention in the U.S. election—and even repudiated his own intelligence appointees...

The reasons for Trump’s striking behavior—whether he was bribed or blackmailed or something else—remain to be ascertained. That he has publicly refused to defend his country’s independent electoral process—and did so jointly with the foreign dictator who perverted that process—is video-recorded fact.

And it’s a fact that has to be seen in the larger context of his actions in office: denouncing the EU as a “foe,” threatening to break up nato, wrecking the U.S.-led world trading system, intervening in both U.K. and German politics in support of extremist and pro-Russian forces, and his continued refusal to act to protect the integrity of U.S. voting systems—it adds up to a political indictment whether or not it quite qualifies as a criminal one...

Rude Pundit:

...So I can say without equivocation that, today, at his press conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump offered more aid and comfort to Russia than any victim of Joe McCarthy and HUAC ever did. When Trump blamed the United States for, in essence, not doing more to prevent Russia from hacking the DNC and electoral interference, when Trump declared the investigation into Russia's election fuckery a "disaster for our country" because "I think it's kept us apart, it's kept us separated," when Trump said of his own Director of National Intelligence, "My people came to me, Dan Coates, came to me and some others they said they think it's Russia. I have President Putin. He just said it's not Russia," he did more to undermine the United States than all the poor saps that McCarthy, Roy Cohn, and Dick Nixon accused of being spies and traitors combined...

As of right now, FIVE of the top things trending on Twitter in the Tampa region are these hashtags: #Treason, #TraitorTrump, #ImpeachTrump, Rand Paul (who recently defended trump's press conference performance), and Marina Butina (a Russian national just arrested today for illegally working as a criminal agent funneling Russian funds to the NRA's 2016 political fundraising, essentially further proof of Russian interference in our elections). Granted, Tampa is a relatively Blue region in a Red-tilting State, but this is covering a lot of Red suburban communities from Pasco, Polk, and surrounding counties. I've never seen the Tampa trends so virulently railing against a political figure/party like this.

Myself:

If we are hoping for the modern Republican Party to wake up to this crisis and fix the damage done, forget it. Every solution to having trump subvert our foreign policy requires Republicans in Congress growing a collective spine they've never had before. Every solution to stopping Russian hacking into our electoral systems requires legislation and proactive efforts that undermine the Republicans' own efforts at suppressing voters they don't want (i.e. the ones who'll vote for Democrats).

Everything that Russia wants to do to break American democratic norms coincides nicely with Republican efforts to do the same thing. As a result, the Republican leadership may recoil at the optics of having trump sell this nation out to Putin, but they will not raise a goddamn finger to stop him.

The only solution right now is a mass voter uprising, where every Democrat and every Independent voter gathers together as one and vote the Republicans out of power. Granted, the GOP is trying every voter suppression trick in the books - removing registered voters from the rolls, forcing requirements to register that deny the right to vote from the poor the minorities and the youth, cutting back on precincts and early voting polls - but if voters overwhelm with a large turnout they can't stop that.

In the meantime, we are stuck with a traitor - there is NO OTHER WORD TO DESCRIBE trump RIGHT NOW - sitting in the White House, defaming our nation's intelligence agencies, selling us out to a foreign power in Putin's Russia that wants to turn us (and the rest of Europe) into their puppets, and desecrating every minute of every day the very Oath of Office - to DEFEND the United States - he is failing to uphold.

GODS HELP US WE ARE SO VERY ROYALLY FUCKED.

Quick Note: Are We Effed Yet? Are We Effed Yet? Are We Effed Yet?

Follow the hashtag #TreasonSummit online via the Intertubes to find out if trump has surrendered the United States without a shot in person to Putin.

We may not know until later just how bad the damage is. Maybe when trump decides on issuing an Article 13 against NATO. Right now everything is just guesswork and dread.

Update 3:29 PM: OHHHHHHHHH WE ARE FUCKING EFFED NOW.

The Layers of trump-Russia Treachery

Treachery, though at first very cautious, in the end betrays itself.
-- Livy, Annales XLIV

The latest regarding our long descent down the Darkest Timeline: Mueller's Washington DC grand jury issued 12 indictments against Russian agents - at least one confirmed GRU (post-KGB) officer - involved in hacking various individuals and organizations tied into the Democratic Party.

We're talking actual criminal charges here, in which illegal acts were committed against Americans by a foreign power.

We're talking establishing evidence that the Russians managed a committed campaign to subvert our nation's electoral process.

Let's have Adam L Silverman from Balloon Juice talk a bit about this now:

Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein just announced indictments of twelve Russian intelligence officers for hacking the DNC, the DCCC, and others on the Clinton campaign, stealing data, and then weaponizing it on behalf of Putin’s active measures and cyberwarfare campaign to harm Secretary Clinton’s campaign in order to promote the President’s campaign. Rosenstein also made it clear that he briefed the President on this earlier in the week, which explains why he was at the White House before the President left for the NATO summit. DAG Rosenstein, in his announcement today, took a swipe at the GOP members of Congress, as well as conservative commentators, who have been trying to downplay Putin’s activities or outright trying to get the Special Counsel’s investigation stopped through a variety of means, by emphasizing that this was an attack on the US and the response transcends partisanship...

Unfortunately, as this week's Republican House attack on FBI agent Strzok proved, the Republicans are so sunk into their partisan Narrative that they will not rise to the challenge of fixing this catastrophe, they will in fact dive into the mire and revel in it. Back to Silverman:

First, if you’ve been watching what the Special Counsel has been doing, this makes sense. Simply put he has method, not madness. His first indictment of nineteen Russian nationals set up this indictment about who actually stole the information. This indictment, like the one that preceded it, is setting up the next one. Special Counsel Mueller is working methodically to build not just a set of related cases, but to have the indictments and the cases tell his narrative of what happened...

What Mueller is trying to do is create a Narrative as well, but one based on evidence where the foundations of the case are solid enough to handle the many layers getting piled onto it. No matter how trump and his Republican lackeys will try to shill their alternate fact-free version of events in the court of partisan media, Mueller has a reality-based version that will stand where it matters: the court of law.

As Silverman notes, having established the Russians had the means (operatives on social media performing psych-ops campaigns to mess with the public mindset) Mueller is now establishing opportunity (all the hacking attacks) and shades of motive (wanting trump to win). While these indictments haven't named any Americans actively engaged in the criminal acts - even with all the stories the news media have uncovered suggested there were a good number of Republicans who did - these indictments ARE creating links to them for the next round of indictments (depending on when trump/GOP tries one more time to shut the grand juries down).

In particular, there's a part of the grand jury evidence involving a still-unnamed person highly ranked in the trump campaign interacting with Russian hackers who operated under pseudonym Guccifer 2.0: Based on earlier reporting, that evidence strongly points at Roger Stone. The odds of being a target of the next layer of indictments is going up on Stone, because that's how these investigations work from the outside in. So far, trump has been able to bluff "no collusion" because Mueller hasn't come out with direct links between trump and Russian hackers. With Stone - a key trump ally for years, as well as a major dark figure in Republican politics - Mueller can create that direct link.

Another part of Mueller's indictments involves one of the key moments in the trump-Russia scandal: The day - July 27, 2016 - trump went public at a press conference openly asking Russian hackers to do him a solid and get Hillary's "missing" emails. While a good lawyer could argue coincidence, the fact that within that day Russian hackers intentionally broke into her email account looks very much like a smoking gun of collusion (or even conspiracy). trump's outburst could well have been a flag to his Russian buddies to do his dirty work for him.

One last thing to note about Mueller's indictments against the Russians: It wasn't just the trump campaign profiting from the illegal hacks. Investigators uncovered at least one Republican political operative - still unnamed, but there's strong hints about who it is - working with the hackers, and also one Congressional candidate (or his campaign) actively reaching out to the hackers to get stolen documents to use in dirty tricks campaigning.

When you add in the reports of a key GOP funding group - the goddamn NRA - funneling Russian money into Republican campaign coffers, you start seeing the shape of an entire party eagerly working with a foreign power to cheat and subvert our elections.

Mueller is adding the layers to this scandal. We're starting to see the shape of it.

And Gods help us, it's looking more and more like a lot of Republicans were in on this scandal than they would care to confess to... even as the Republicans double-down on their denials and evasions.

Quick Update, By Jove: trump Is Currently in London Embarrassing The Ever Loving Hell Out of the U.S.

Yeah, no surprise there.

So far, he's insulted the Prime Minister May, insulted CNN as "Fake News" and gave Fox Not-News a handjob, lied about his own interview with The Sun, and is probably en route to meet the Royal Family at which point he'll probably insult the Queen in some horrifying fashion.

I hope she puts on her World War II military boots and kicks him square in the groin.