The Racist War Ratchets Up a Notch

I posted just last month how the more violently unhinged of trump's truest believers are ready to pull the trigger in his honor.

Just this weekend, the white supremacist violence went global when an angry White Man from Australia went on a mass shooting rampage across two Muslim mosques in Christchurch New Zealand, killing 50 (so far) and leaving tens more wounded some in critical condition.

I will not name the SOB here because the murdering bastard livestreamed his shooting to social media, submitted his racist manifesto to news outlets before he opened fire, and wants recognition as a goddamned hero to 'his people' hoping to become the spark to start the wingnut riots against The Dreaded Other.

Still, we know what he did. We know about the lives he took. Because he bought into the rhetoric that Muslims and non-Whites are conspiring to "replace" us all. Because he followed in the footsteps of the Norway mass shooter (I am not naming him either).

Because the bastard took his cues from donald trump (link to Yahoo News UK):

The suspected gunman who killed dozens of people in New Zealand is an Australian ‘racist eco-fascist’ who posted a 74-page manifesto online before the shootings and described Donald Trump as a “symbol of white supremacy.”

The man, who identified himself in a livestream of the massacre as (redacted), said he was motivated by far-right extremism he saw in the United States to carry out the attack at Al Noor Mosque...

He also goes on to rail against mass immigration and said he views Donald Trump as a “symbol of renewed white identity...”

The manifesto said he carried out the attack “to show the invaders that our lands will never be their lands, our homeland are our own and that, as long as a white man still lives, they will NEVER conquer our lands and they will never replace our people...”

There is no other word for this but terrorism.

And there are no words for how trump responded to the reports... where he dismissed the rise of racist violence and then echoed the exact messages that the goddamned shooter believed in (via The Week):

Hours later, a shockingly similar phrase came from the president. Trump, after vetoing a bill that would've blocked his national emergency declaration to access border wall funding, briefly condemned the shooting before pivoting back to border talk. There are "crimes of all kinds coming through our southern border," Trump said, adding that "people hate the word 'invasion,' but that's what it is..."

trump knows. the hate-filled bastard knows his words are triggering the fearful among his fanbase.

And he knows his fanbase is ready to go on a warpath on his command (via Chait at New York):

...The specifics of the riff don’t vary much. Trump laments that his opponents are treating him unfairly, praises the toughness and strength of his supporters — a category that combines the police, military, and Bikers for Trump, which he apparently views as a Brownshirt-like militia — and a prediction that his supporters will at some point end their restraint.

He does it again in a new interview with Breitbart:

I actually think that the people on the right are tougher, but they don’t play it tougher. Okay? I can tell you I have the support of the police, the support of the military, the support of the Bikers for Trump – I have the tough people, but they don’t play it tough — until they go to a certain point, and then it would be very bad, very bad...

You can argue just how far into our legal systems trump's corruption has gotten, and you can look at the demographics to see just how many trumpshirts will rise up should he face indictment or impeachment (despite Pelosi's comments, that's still on the table). trump may have gotten 62 million voters, but how many of them are actively armed and ready to go on any warpath?

Most Americans, despite our passions or politics, are not easily stirred into protest or violence. Most Americans just want to do their thing, raise their kids, find a good vacation spot, and not get bothered.

trump may be a sitting President Loser of the Popular Vote, but he still doesn't carry the direct power to control/order State, County or City law enforcement to his whims. He may think he has support of the police (at least their politically biased unions) and the military (at least some bomb-em-all generals) but current reporting suggests the hater White Nationalists types are one out of four among the troops. Yes, that still sounds scary - one-in-four - but there's three-in-four in our military who aren't assholes. If the armed forces split, the non-racists will outnumber (and swarm quickly over) the racists.

The wingnuts always assume their numbers are greater than they really are: When those jerks took over the national park in Oregon they sent out a call for support likely hoping for mass uprisings... and got joke supplies mailed to them instead (about three or four other militias in small numbers ever showed). We're talking about the same White Pride people who keep turning on each other out of greed and stupidity.

If trump does call for an uprising among the White Supremacists, the likely turnout will be mostly the neo-Nazi pro-Confederate militias dotted across the landscape... of about 20-30 wingnuts apiece who'll run into actual police and National Guard deployed by Governors of even Red States who'll realize this Second Civil War will end badly for themselves.

That's the good news if trump ever tries to go this far.

Here's the bad news: Far Right violence has still increased over the last three years, showing the willingness of how destructive the racists can get.

And we've seen how much violence just even one person can commit when dedicated to their cause. One wingnut carrying an AR-15 and enough ammo can wipe out entire city blocks before the cops can respond and stop him.

All it takes is just one gunman to throw a city - a nation - into chaos and pain.

And we're already seeing it here in the U.S. The mass shooter at Squirrel Hill just last year. The would-be mass shooter working at the Coast Guard HQ. The mad bomber of Broward County. There are more. Gods help us, too many more.

And all it takes is one. All it takes is one wingnut hanging on trump's every tweet.

And trump knows it.

I doubt trump will win this fight: he and his have proven they can't win on their own (he needed help from Russia to cheat his way to victory in 2016 damn them). The wingnuts following his every lead can easily turn on each other as much as they'll turn on regular Americans.

But this is going to get bloody. It's too late to say otherwise. The wingnuts have been chomping at the bit for decades waiting for their goddamned race war. And trump's the last one in high enough political office to let them unleash their hell on the rest of us.

Stay safe. Stay alert.

The calls for violence are coming from within the White House.

Ides of March 2019: Tired Of This

You know there's so much crazy shit happening in the world right now, who gives a rat's ass about the Romans right now. Take your Fasces and shove em up your... what's the Latin word for 'buttocks' again? Clunes? Okay, we're going with Clunes.

Everything That's Wrong With Justice In America (w/Updates)

Update: once again, glad to see everyone visiting from Mike's Blog Round Up at Crooks & Liars, thanks again Batocchio! By the by, in terms of updating we should be getting Manafort's second sentence hearing in front of Judge Jackson today, so keep an eye on this site for further updates that are below!

So, still reeling a bit from the ruling last week by one of the judges overseeing Paul Manafort's fate. The immediate reaction I and others following the trial(s) of Manafort's crimes had when we heard Judge Ellis' sentencing the convicted felon to 47 months (with 9 months accrued meaning an even shorter sentence) fell between "stunned" and "outraged."

It's taken a day or two to recover from the anger of what seems an unjust ruling - that Manafort, found guilty of bank fraud and other frauds to the tune of millions of dollars was getting a shorter sentence than people getting 20 years for possessing a $20 bag of pot - to try and gain a better perspective.

At best, I can point to Ken White's take at the Atlantic. He's broken down the reactions to Manafort's light punishment from Ellis into six coherent arguments. I am going to add my own thoughts to each:

First, there can’t be a sentence without an investigation. After 9/11, the United States Department of Justice and the U.S. Attorney’s Offices that it controls shifted resources and focus from white-collar crime to drugs, guns, and immigration. In Los Angeles, the U.S. Attorney’s Office shuttered the Public Corruption and Government Fraud Section, where I served. Investigations of people like Manafort—people who have committed complex financial crimes—are time-consuming and resource-intensive. You can jail 20 drug traffickers for life with the resources it took to prosecute Manafort. America picks who goes to jail when it picks whom to investigate—which is one of the reasons so few people involved in the 2008 Wall Street debacle went to jail.

This is key. Our legal system has a finite amount of resources. It would be pretty to think every crook and questionable act can be investigated, but there's only so much our law enforcement can do at one time. I would note that we could well have chosen to investigate white collar crimes - acts of fraud that ruin thousands and cost billions (not even millions anymore) - but the lack of manpower (and lack of willpower) restricts such investigations. It's in that kind of environment the high-level crooks can raid and pillage with impunity (and kinda explains why a con artist like trump kept avoiding criminal investigations into fraud until now)...

Second, prosecutors have enormous power over who goes to jail and for how long. That power doesn’t just involve deciding who gets indicted. It involves deciding how he gets indicted. Manafort faced a recommended sentencing range of 19 to 24 years under U.S. sentencing guidelines. But that range was driven only in part by what he actually did. It was driven just as much by how the special counsel’s office chose to pursue the case—what charges it brought, what evidence it presented to Ellis, and what part of Manafort’s history it cited as “relevant conduct” at sentencing...

Manafort had committed a lot of questionable acts, but prosecutors only charged him on things they could prove in a courtroom. And even then, a jury has to accept the prosecutors' arguments (Manafort's jury in his first trial found him guilty on 8 charges out of 18, and one juror held out on the remaining 10). This is, as a side note, one of the reasons why prosecutors overcharge suspects in order to force plea deals...

Third, Congress has given Ellis the power to give people like Manafort a break, but has denied him that power when the defendant is accused of many blue-collar crimes. Last year, Ellis sentenced a 37-year-old man named Frederick Turner to 40 years in federal prison for methamphetamine distribution. He had no choice: Congress passed laws making 40 years the mandatory minimum sentence...

This is one of the points where the system itself is insane and broken: The mandatory minimums set by legislators - often pursuing their "tough on crime" and "war on drugs" election campaigns - make it difficult for judges to apply sentences that would be truthfully just. Even Ellis complained about the severity of jail time he was inflicting on Turner, and in Manafort's case where no mandatory time was required Ellis could well have wanted a more lenient punishment (the problem is Ellis is offering mercy to someone who hadn't earned it).

As White notes, there is a genuine legal distinction between what we call "Blue-Collar Crimes" - crimes committed by the poor such as robbery, burglary, drug dealing, acts of violence - and "White-Collar Crimes" - crimes committed by the wealthy or connected such as bribery, tax evasion, money laundering for drug dealers, and acts of fraud - to where we have essentially two legal systems. One for the poor and one for the rich. Guess which one profits Manafort?

Fourth, the U.S. sentencing guidelines treat some crimes more harshly than others, and though, unlike mandatory minimums, they are only recommendations, not strictures, they strongly influence judges. USA Today reported that fraud cases in Ellis’s district yielded an average sentence of 36 months, versus 66 months for firearms charges and 84 months for drug charges, all higher than the national average. Ellis announced that he was sentencing Manafort below the recommended guideline range because that range was far above what defendants received in similar cases. That is, in fact, a factor that he’s required by law to consider. Manafort’s case was arguably much more serious than others, but there’s no question that his sentencing range was atypically high for a white-collar defendant... 

This is the point where Ellis' ruling gets to be a joke. Ellis went and compared Manafort's fate to other white-collar criminals and deemed the prosecutors' recommended sentencing "too harsh". Nevermind the unique circumstances that Manafort is in, or the scale of severity Manafort's crimes are at. All Ellis is seeing is a first-time offender in his court and has decided that Manafort's "blameless life" didn't deserve any worse than the 19 1/2 years being recommended.

To quote another commentator from the Atlantic - Franklin Foer - about Judge Ellis' tone-deaf understanding, about how he looked at a decades-long criminal and still saw "a blameless life":

In an otherwise blameless life, Paul Manafort lobbied on behalf of the tobacco industry and wangled millions in tax breaks for corporations...

In an otherwise blameless life, he worked to keep arms flowing to the Angolan generalissimo Jonas Savimbi, a monstrous leader bankrolled by the apartheid government in South Africa. While Manafort helped portray his client as an anti-communist “freedom fighter,” Savimbi’s army planted millions of land mines in peasant fields, resulting in 15,000 amputees...

In an otherwise blameless life, Manafort was kicked out of the lobbying firm he co-founded, accused of inflating his expenses and cutting his partners out of deals...

In an otherwise blameless life, he spent a decade as the chief political adviser to a clique of former gangsters in Ukraine. This clique hoped to capture control of the state so that it could enrich itself with government contracts and privatization agreements. This was a group closely allied with the Kremlin, and Manafort masterminded its rise to power—thereby enabling Ukraine’s slide into Vladimir Putin’s orbit...

In an otherwise blameless life, he produced a public-relations campaign to convince Washington that Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych was acting within his democratic rights and duties when he imprisoned his most compelling rival for power...

In an otherwise blameless life, he stood mute as Yanukovych’s police killed 130 protesters in the Maidan...

In an otherwise blameless life, he tried to use his perch atop the Trump campaign to help salvage his sorry financial situation. He installed one of his protégés as the head of the pro-Trump super PAC Rebuilding America. His friend allegedly funneled $125,000 from the super PAC to pay off one of Manafort’s nagging debts...

In an otherwise blameless life, Manafort was found guilty of tax evasion on an industrial scale. Rather than paying his fair share to help fund national defense and public health, he kept his cash in Cyprus and wired it home to buy more than $1 million in bespoke clothing...

In an otherwise blameless life, he acted with impunity, as if the laws never applied to him. When presented with a chance to show remorse to the court, he couldn’t find that sentiment within his being...

All of those acts - and more - were not sudden, or an impulse, or based on the vagaries of foolish youthful intent. It's all a track record of bad behavior that profited from other people's sufferings without care to fact or rules or human decency.

Ellis is choosing to think of Manafort as a first-time offender rather than someone who had willfully broken and ignored laws, and only got away with it for years all because Manafort lived at a level of society where accountability to the law was merely optional.

Anyway, back to White:

Fifth, money drives cases. Manafort’s criminal defense cost more than most defendants make in a lifetime. Money can’t buy freedom—Manafort’s money couldn’t save him from multiple convictions, because the federal government’s power is overwhelming even to a multimillionaire. But money buys a capable defense with the resources it needs. An extremely experienced, qualified defense team with plenty of time makes a profound difference at every stage of a case. Even when rich people get convicted, money helps get them the best plea deals, the most persuasive sentencing presentations, and often the most lenient sentences.

This is another point where the rich have it easier over the poor in our legal system. People like Manafort can afford lawyers with better resources and better experience while people who can't afford a lawyer have to rely on Public Defenders handling 65-plus cases a month and unable to even get their clients out on bail (meaning a lot of poor people are stewing in the local lockup awaiting trials that are seven months to a year down the road, if ever). Manafort by the by was out on bail before/during the trial, but then got it revoked - by the judge in his other trial, more on that later - when it turned out he was trying to witness-tamper in such a crass manner the judge had no choice but to revoke. Meanwhile, poor defendants can't even that level of mercy. Our cash bond prison system is severely broken...

Sixth, and finally, judges are human. Racism and bias of every sort play a role in the system, but it’s too simplistic to say the problem is that particular judges are racist. The problem is that judges give breaks to people with whom they can identify—people whose humanity they recognize. We’re wired to identify with people like us. Judges—particularly federal judges—tend to come from backgrounds closer to Manafort’s than to the average drug dealer’s. Even when judges are born and raised in poverty, the process of becoming a lawyer, having a career, and becoming a judge makes them inexorably more like Manafort. The system has a homogenizing effect...

Ellis didn't see a globe-spanning criminal ruining thousands of lives, he saw someone who might have been a next-door neighbor at his gated community. This is where the bias of the judge him/herself distorts the need for justice.

Each of White's points are problems we've had with our legal system for some time, decades in fact. And sadly over those decades our legislators who write the laws and the administrators who enforce the laws have done little to balance the scales between rich and poor, against the racism and sexism, towards a truly honest courtroom where there can be "justice for all".

Sending Manafort to prison for barely under 40 months - remember, he's getting reduced for time served - doesn't seem just at all.

The only thing that prevents this from being a total mockery of the law is that Manafort is facing a second courtroom sentencing involving the other crimes he's committed in THAT jurisdiction. He'd already plead out to two conspiracy charges (related to Mueller's Russian investigations) in Judge Jackson's court... but he's also pulled off a lot of dumb stunts in her courtroom to where she's not going to show him any favor at all (she is also the presiding judge of Roger "Can't Keep My Mouth Shut" Stone, and she's already had enough of his BS as is).

There is hope that Manafort will still face stronger justice for his sins.

But in the meantime, Manafort's current leniency - to where it felt like he's getting a "Get Out of Jail Free" deal - exposes a broken American legal system in worse shape than our own bridges and highways.

Everything needs fixing, America. What the hell.

Revisions to the Update (3/13/19): Welp. Judge Jackson read him the riot act... and still only added 73 months on the two counts Manafort plead to... and made 30 of those months concurrent (same time) as his existing sentence... so he's looking at a total of 7.5 years for all the crap he's pulled for two decades. Gangbangers, seriously. Stop dealing drugs and getting life sentences on that. Get into the white-collar shit that Manafort does and get out of jail in less than a decade!!!

Followup to the Revisions to the Update (ten minutes later): The New York DA - think Jack McCoy from Law & Order, except 80 percent more real and 90 percent more pissed off - dropped grand jury charges (16 of them) on Manafort for state-level crimes. Separate from the crap Manafort was charged with at the federal level - avoiding double jeopardy issues - these are still tied into a lot of the financial crimes that Manafort committed. Meaning if trump pardons him NOW for the federal prison time, Manafort can't claim Fifth Amendment protection from self-incrimination. Essentially, trump can't save his buddy from these charges.

This had to have been a land-speed record by the legal system. The DA probably wanted to make sure he could do this before trump had time to break out his pen.

Additional Followup to the Followup to the Revisions (June 2021): Well dammit, this missed my notice but back in February 2021 the New York Supreme Court said the New York DA couldn't file those charges. Apparently, they did incur double jeopardy. Since trump pardoned Manafort towards the end of his term, this means Manafort walks away from answering for his years of fraud.

/headdesk

A Betrayal We Knew Was Coming

This is what you wanted Republicans. For a party that obsessed over owning the political gravitas of foreign policy experience, you all put some of the greatest national security risks in our nation's history in the Oval Office itself (link to the New York Times on the full report by Maggie Haberman, Michael S. Schmidt, Adam Goldman and Annie Karni):

President Trump ordered his chief of staff to grant his son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, a top-secret security clearance last year, overruling concerns flagged by intelligence officials and the White House’s top lawyer, four people briefed on the matter said.

Mr. Trump’s decision in May so troubled senior administration officials that at least one, the White House chief of staff at the time, John F. Kelly, wrote a contemporaneous internal memo about how he had been “ordered” to give Mr. Kushner the top-secret clearance.

The White House counsel at the time, Donald F. McGahn II, also wrote an internal memo outlining the concerns that had been raised about Mr. Kushner — including by the C.I.A. — and how Mr. McGahn had recommended that he not be given a top-secret clearance.

You may chuckle at the idea of "memo writing" as a hard-line response to interoffice shenanigans, but it's a time-honored practice in politics (as known as Cover Your Ass). Because of laws governing the archiving and storage of official memos (and unofficial communications like emails and whatnot), if you get it in writing you objected to a serious problem like say a national security risk to our nation's highest military and diplomatic secrets, then when the whole thing falls apart in the inevitable blowback you can claim you gave fair warning and avoid getting nailed to the wall as a scapegoat. You may even sometimes help prove a criminal act took place that may lead to said crooks getting handcuffed and sentenced (as long as the rest of the government does its damn job).

Back to the Times reporting:

The full scope of intelligence officials’ concerns about Mr. Kushner is not known. But the clearance had been held up in part over questions from the F.B.I. and the C.I.A. about his foreign and business contacts, including those related to Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Russia, according to multiple people familiar with the events.

During the 2016 presidential campaign, Mr. Kushner was part of a group that met with a Russian lawyer who went to Trump Tower claiming to have political “dirt” on Hillary Clinton. And during the presidential transition, Mr. Kushner had a meeting with the Russian ambassador at the time, Sergey I. Kislyak, and the head of a Russian state-owned bank. When he applied for a security clearance, he did not reveal those meetings.

This was something that was out there for a long time. Since the earliest days of trump's misrule, news kept getting out that Kushner was failing to be truthful lying on his security clearance requests needed to be anywhere near his father-in-law as an adviser. He kept "omitting" (or more likely refusing to admit) various times he met with potential security risks like Russians, Chinese, more Russians, questionable businesspersons, Russians, and more.

If we can go to Nancy LeTourneau at Washington Monthly:

In a report from a year ago, the Washington Post identified some of the concerns the intelligence community had in granting a security clearance to Kushner.

Officials in at least four countries have privately discussed ways they can manipulate Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, by taking advantage of his complex business arrangements, financial difficulties and lack of foreign policy experience, according to current and former U.S. officials familiar with intelligence reports on the matter.

Among those nations discussing ways to influence Kushner to their advantage were the United Arab Emirates, China, Israel and Mexico, the current and former officials said.
It is unclear if any of those countries acted on the discussions, but Kushner’s contacts with certain foreign government officials have raised concerns inside the White House and are a reason he has been unable to obtain a permanent security clearance, the officials said.

It is very likely that intelligence officials were also concerned about several exchanges Kushner had with Russians. For example:

* In June 2016, Kushner was involved in the meeting Don, Jr. arranged with Russians at Trump Tower.
* In December 2016, Kushner met with Sergey Gorkov, the top executive of a Russian bank, who reported that they talked about “promising business lines and sectors.”
* In December 2016, Kushner met with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak, who reported that they discussed setting up a secret communications channel with Moscow, using Russian diplomatic facilities in the U.S.

That only covers what we know about possible concerns the intelligence community had when it came to granting a security clearance to Kushner. But it gives you some idea why both Kelly and McGahn put their objections in writing. Nevertheless, Trump overruled them...

trump overruled them because like any crime boss, he can't operate without his closest people. And like most crime organizations, his closest people are his own family (and those married into his mob).

Outside of his own kids (and Kushner), trump truly cannot trust anybody. Without Kushner managing things for him, trump would have to rely on people with disparate agendas and differing loyalties like he had to during the early years of this shadow theater. Look at how trump's gone through half his starting Cabinet, he's on his third Chief of Staff (and Mulvaney is reportedly eyeing the exits), he's burned through Communications officials and Security Advisors, and he's overdue on firing half the Department of Justice just for shits and giggles.

trump can't trust any of them. Instead, he trusts a son-in-law who in debt to foreign powers (much like trump himself) and he trusts those foreign powers over his own NSA/FBI/CIA intel.

This is what faces our entire national security system today. They are compromised not by some angry or turned agent working in a cubicle somewhere copying files and selling them to foreigners, but by a criminal (trump) managed by those foreign powers (Russia and now we suspect others) elected by a corrupt party (Republicans) to oversee the whole damn show.

We are so very very very royally fucked.

All We Need to Know From the Immolation of the Republican Party During The Cohen Hearings

After all the sound and fury from today's testimony from trump's personal bagman lawyer, this is the only true thing you can garner from the noise.

Today's hearing turned out to be less about Michael Cohen working as a corrupt underling for a corrupt mob-boss-styled bankrupt con artist, and more about the Republican Party's willingness to defend that corrupt mob-boss-styled bankrupt con artist because GOD FORBID any accountability for trump ever be applied.

If you watch and rewatch the performances of Republican congresscritters, you will see time and again their willingness to attack Cohen as a liar without acknowledging that Cohen lied on trump's orders. You will see Republicans trying to discredit Cohen without questioning the evidence he brought to the committee.

You will see Republicans making fools of themselves.

This is how far the GOP has sunk. They have tied their fate to that of trump's, a known liar and failed businessman who is now openly accused - through Cohen's testimony detailing fraud and election law violations - of being a crook. They are defending the indefensible... all because they are afraid of what they might lose when (no longer a question of IF) he falls.

Even Cohen tried to warn them, during today's appearance (quote via The Daily Beast):

Just as Cohen lied to Congress and the public on Trump’s behalf, out of what he called “intoxication” out of being around the “icon” Trump, now they were doing the same sort of “always stay on message, always defend” Trump that Cohen performed for over a decade. Trump gave Cohen financial power; Trump gives the Republican Party political power.

“I’m responsible for your silliness,” Cohen said of what he called GOP questioning that was “really unbecoming of Congress.” He was responsible, he said, “because I did the same thing that you are doing now, for ten years.”

But it's too late. Always has been. The second they let that racist con artist get a foothold in their party, they were dead. Dead to reason. Dead to faith. Dead to history.

Not a single Republican on that committee did anything responsible today. They never will. If they did, they would have to admit how they were wrong in the first place. And that can never happen in their own eyes. Not until they're facing criminal charges and their plea deals require truthful testimony the same way Cohen's does.

It's called Pride. trump played to that as much as their Fear. And the thing about Pride, it goes before a fall. And the Republicans won't care until it's ten years later facing the same hell Cohen is in now.

And by then it'll be too late for the rest of us.

There's a Better Way to Celebrate 2019's 4TH of July: Stay Home

What the hell is the Shitgibbon planning now? (hat-tip to Bonnie Kristian at The Week)

President Trump on Twitter early Sunday announced his plans for a big Independence Day party in Washington this year, pledging a personal appearance and preemptively declaring the event one of the city's largest gatherings ever...

This is the point where I break out a bad John Cleese impersonation and shout all: Ah, you see, we've already got one! Oh, yes, it's verra nicea...

I've been there, done that! It's a little thing that our nation's capital's been hosting for some time, usually once every year. I've got pictures to prove it!

Wait this is me at Ft. McHenry the day before back in 2015. (frantically searches backup files)
Well. Crap. I *had* taken pictures, I know I did...

And trump is already declaring the event will be one of DC's largest gatherings ever, just like he promised his Inauguration would break attendance records...

This is posted via New York magazine, I would like the photographer info
to provide proper citation.

Jesus.

Twitter has mostly been humiliating trump all day since this dropped - hey, boss, WE ALREADY HAVE SOMETHING PLANNED et al. - but this is trump flailing about to find some grandiose public celebration he can hijack for his own twisted ego.

Don't forget, trump tried to force the military to throw him a Veterans Day parade, similar to all of the grand reviews they like to throw in Europe (and various dictatorships). Aside from the horror of having honest volunteers forced to march in front of a notorious draft dodger, the DoD was able to talk trump out of it due to the high costs - and damage to the roads - such a parade would have created.

This is one of trump's darkest habits: Inserting himself into public events so he can hog the spotlight. He infamously showed up at a charity event for HIV kids, something he never gave money, posed for photos, acted like it was all about him, and drove off. And there's other horror stories similar to that. trump is all about showing up and pretending the event in question is all about him. That's his ego-boost. 

So now trump wants to claim the 4th of July. Granted as President Loser of the Popular Vote, trump could attach himself to the events that are hosted along the National Mall, but it's something few Presidents actually do this day and age to avoid complaints of turning a national holiday into a partisan affair. I can't recall Obama partaking of the events other than doing stuff at the White House and watching fireworks from the rooftop.

But here's trump, wanting to claim the stage, less likely to speak about America the Beautiful and more likely to speak about America's Building My Wall To Keep Furriners Out. On possibly the one day he shouldn't give that kind of speech. /headdesk

And considering how so many musicians and performers are horrified to even be within trump's range of photobombing - his Inauguration was notoriously short on celebrities and acts, even a Springsteen cover band had to drop out due to backlash - if trump actually does take over this year's 4th planning I guarantee a sudden drop in musicians who suddenly find out they're busy that day getting their hair done.

trump is not exactly popular in town, so I doubt the locals will show up if he does. The number of people traveling to Washington DC to partake of the holiday week may well drop: When you consider the pro-trump turnouts tend to the thousands where the anti-trump turnouts tend to the hundreds of thousands, I doubt the MAGA Hat Brigade will save tourism in Washington this July.

If trump tries to make himself the star of our Capital's 4th, we're likely to see the smallest turnout for our nation's birthday since 1814 (you know, the year the Brits showed up and burned the place down as part of the whole War of 1812 thing). It'll be trump, ruining one more thing for peeps.

If you're still patriotic enough to love the United States and stand against trump's destructive ways, do yourself a favor: Celebrate the 4th at home. Celebrate with family and friends. Celebrate with neighbors. Play safe with the fireworks you bought at that tent set-up outside of the nearby Wal-Mart. Don't do anything to watch the 4th from DC. There's a perfectly good broadcast out of Boston or New York, after all.

Just remember: trump is not celebrating America with this stunt. trump wants us to worship him on that stage. The most UNAMERICAN thing you can do...

The Wingnuts Ready to Pull The Trigger

They found another trumpster wingnut ready to go off (via Spencer Ackerman at The Daily Beast):

A white supremacist Coast Guard lieutenant is accused of stockpiling weapons, compiling a hit list of Democratic senators and left-leaning journalists, and preparing for a massacre.

Prosecutors in Maryland called Christopher Paul Hasson a “domestic terrorist” in a Tuesday court filing, first reported by George Washington University’s Seamus Hughes, that argued for Hasson’s detention ahead of trial on firearms and controlled substance charges.

What law enforcement discovered during a Feb. 15 arrest and search led prosecutors to tell a federal court that Hasson “intends to murder innocent civilians on a scale rarely seen in this country...”

Quick jump in here: "On a scale rarely seen"??? We see mass shootings on a DAILY BASIS NOW. /grrrrrrrr Okay back to the report:

Specific journalists and others appear in Hasson’s search history, the filing claims, including: MSNBC hosts Chris Hayes, Joe Scarborough, and Ari Melber; Sens. Richard Blumenthal—or “blumen jew,” in Hasson’s writing—Tim Kaine, Chuck Schumer, Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, Kirsten Gillibrand and Cory Booker; Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Maxine Waters, Sheila Jackson Lee, and Ilhan Omar; CNN’s Don Lemon, Chris Cuomo, and Van Jones; as well as prominent Democrats Beto O’Rourke and John Podesta, and the Democratic Socialists of America.

Hasson’s searches also included “what if trump illegally impeached,” “civil war if trump impeached” and “best place in dc to see congress people.”

He was basically compiling a Hit List and figuring out the easiest places to go trigger-happy. All in defense of trump and the Glorious Cause Of Making America Gross Again. The photos of Hasson's gun stash should have included every red hat I guarantee the asshole owns.

The scary part of this: Hasson is a US Coast Guard officer, working in acquisitions at the branch's headquarters, with sufficient military background to be a legitimate lethal threat to hundreds of people:

Hasson’s arrest is likely to spark additional questions to the military about the rigor with which it screens out people with white supremacist affiliations. While statistically infinitesimal, Hasson is the latest high-profile case to involve a Marine Corps veteran with white supremacist connections, such as Patriot Front’s Erik Sailors; American Vanguard’s Dillon Ulysses Hopper; neo-confederates Michael Chesny and Joseph Manning; and Atomwaffen’s Vasillios Pistolis. ProPublica and Frontline, which reported on Atomwaffen last year, identified three “members or associates” of the violent white supremacist group “who are currently employed by the Army or Navy,” as well as another three affiliated military veterans.

The White supremacist, neo-nazi, Klan-happy crowds are itching for their war. They're inspired by previous Far Right attacks against Leftists and hated minorities both here and abroad, successful or otherwise. They're terrified by the reality of how few they really are - there may be over 1,000 groups but the overall membership is in the tens of thousands compared to the MILLIONS of Americans who oppose them - and desperate to terrify everyone else of their violent capabilities.

They're motivated by the Bully-in-Chief, the rabblerouser con artist who used racist bile - and foreign aid from a Russia that traffics in racist populist movements - to trick his way into the White House. When trump faces the likely criminal charges stemming from his Russian ties that violate federal laws from Emoluments to elections, that will be a troubling moment for this entire nation.

These guys, these MAGA-hat wearing unholy descendants of the Bundists and the Klan, they're just waiting to be triggered.

And they got a lot of AR-15s with them.

What to Expect When Mueller Reports (w/ Update)

There's been noise today from reputable sources that Mueller is about ready to end his grand jury investigations into Russian interference in the 2016 elections and trump's possible involvement. There's been a lot of speculation - is trump in jail yet? - but let's get Emptywheel to provide some rational input to this:

When Mueller is done, he has to submit a confidential report to the Attorney General (who is now Mueller’s friend William Barr) telling him what he did and didn’t do. Given everything Barr said as part of his confirmation process, we’re unlikely to see this report.

To assess whether this report is what Pete Williams thinks is coming, we should assess whether public evidence is consistent with Mueller being done.

The answer to that is clearly no. He’s still chasing testimony from Roger Stone flunkie Andrew Miller and from some foreign owned corporation (and has been chasing that, in the case of Miller, since last May).

Given that Miller already interviewed with the FBI for two hours and the foreign company is, by dint of being foreign, a no-brainer target for NSA, it’s quite likely Mueller knows what he’s getting from both of these entities. He just needs Miller on the record, so he can’t change his story to protect Stone, and needs to parallel construct the information from the foreign company. So it’s possible that as soon as Mueller gets both of these things, he’ll finish up quickly (meaning The Report could be soon). But there is no way that’ll happen by next week, in part because whatever the DC Appeals Court says in the Andrew Miller case, the loser will appeal that decision...

As I noted back in November when Mueller’s prosecutors declared Manafort to have breached his plea agreement, this sentencing memo presents an opportunity for Mueller to “report” what they’ve found — at least with respect to all the criminal actions they know Manafort committed, including those he lied about while he was supposed to be cooperating — without anyone at DOJ or the White House suppressing the most damning bits. DOJ won’t be able to weigh in because a sentencing memo is not a major action requiring an urgent memo to the Attorney General. And the White House will get no advance warning because Big Dick Toilet Salesman Matt Whitaker is no longer in the reporting chain...

Emptywheel provides a solid list of all of Manafort's sins, in several instances linking Manafort to Russian contacts which Mueller can prove are tied to the Russian efforts to hack our 2016 elections (and which Mueller already proved in indictment filings earlier on). Back to Emptywheel's arguments:

It’s possible Mueller is close to charging an overarching conspiracy indictment, laying out how Trump and his spawn entered into a quid quo pro with various representatives of the Russian government, getting dirt on Hillary and either a Trump Tower or maybe a bailout for the very same building in which Manafort met with Konstantin Kilimnik on August 2, 2016. In exchange for all that, Trump agreed to — and took steps to deliver on, with some success in the case of election plot participant Deripaska — reversing the sanctions that were such a headache to Russia’s oligarchs.

Such an indictment, if Mueller ever charges it, will look like what Trump opponents would like The Report to look like. In addition to naming Don Jr and Jared Kushner and Trump Organization and a bunch of other sleazeballs, it would also describe the actions of Individual-1 in adequate detail to launch an impeachment proceeding...

Just a reminder, Individual-1 has already been described as trump: They just can't name him directly yet because that would involve presenting charges in full, something that kinda has to wait for last. Anyway, back to the car chase:

There’s one other possibility that would make Williams’ prediction true: if Mueller deliberately triggered the one other way to deliver a report, by asking to take an action William Barr is unlikely to approve, and if Mueller was willing to close up shop as a result, then a report would go to Congress and — if Barr thought it in the public interest — to the public...

The only thing that Mueller might try to do that Barr would not approve (though who knows? maybe what Mueller has is so egregious Barr will surprise us?) is to indict the President...

(give me a few minutes while I whisper OH PLEASE GOD YES to myself, thanks.)

The standing rule with the Justice Department - more of a guideline really - is that you can't indict/charge sitting Presidents. There's no actual LAW, mind, it's just going that route causes all kinds of legal headaches and violent backlash (and I am not joking about this last bit, they just nabbed a SECOND MAGA GUY ready to go on a pro-trump rampage).

Still, it’s hypothetically possible that Mueller believes Trump is such an egregious criminal and national security risk he needs to try to accelerate the process of holding him accountable by stopping his investigation early (perhaps having the DC AUSAs named on the Miller and Mystery Appellant challenges take over those pursuits) and asking to indict the President.

But if that’s what Williams is reporting, he sure as hell better get more clarity about that fact, because, boy would it be news...

Yes, it would.

We've had a bunch of pundits spending the last two years arguing Mueller was never going to find anything, and yet Mueller did (and got a number of guilty pleas and serious indictments as a result). We've had pundits claiming Mueller is never going to find collusion even though he's uncovered constant interaction between Russians and trump's power circles. They've been able to get away with saying all that because Mueller - handling an investigation that has a ton of high-security intel behind it - has run a tight ship that rarely leaks hints about what he's got (and by all reports, Muller knows everything.) There's supposed to be more sealed indictments including at least one for donnie junior himself.

When Mueller does report, it's going to be a bombshell. I can't guarantee it but given everything we've seen there is at least violations of election laws by trump's campaign and a lot of lying to federal investigators involving that. There has to be more indictments involving every major player at that June 2016 trump tower meeting. This can't be wishful thinking on my part.

What will make it terrifying is how trump's fanbase is going to respond. The Far Right punditry is already calling this a coup attempt, stirring up the wingnuts who'll believe them instead of our intelligence agencies sworn to defend our nation.

Stay alert, America. This has been messy and it's going to get worse.

Update 2/24: Again, it seemed like a premature report because here's the weekend and the only big news is tonight's Oscars ceremony (oh and we're about to invade Venezuela re-invoking a lot of the bad blood the U.S. has generated within our hemisphere...).

America's Chances in 2020

Okay, so. Seriously.

What ARE trump's chances at winning a second term?

(waits for 65 million Hillary voters and 98 percent of the global population to calm down)

Well, okay, settle down, let's go over what 538 Nate Silver's got on his plate:

In a predictive sense, what it means is less clear. Sometimes — as was the case in 2006, 1974 and 1930 — midterm waves are followed by turnover in the presidency two years later. But most presidents win re-election, including those who endured rough midterms (such as Obama in 2010, Bill Clinton in 1994 and Ronald Reagan in 1982). Nor is there any obvious relationship between how high turnout was at the midterm and how the incumbent president performed two years later. Democrats’ high turnout in 1970 presaged a landslide loss in 1972, when they nominated George McGovern.

(waits for a fresh bout of panic to calm down) Okay, back to Silver:

This year’s results do serve as a warning to Trump in one important sense, however: His base alone will not be enough to win a second term. Throughout the stretch run of the 2018 midterm campaign, Trump and Republicans highlighted highly charged partisan issues, from the Central American migrant caravan to Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the Supreme Court. And Republican voters did indeed turn out in very high numbers: GOP candidates for the House received more than 50 million votes, more than the roughly 45 million they got in 2010.

But it wasn’t enough, or even close to enough. Problem No. 1 is that Republicans lost among swing voters: Independent voters went for Democrats by a 12-point margin, and voters who voted for a third-party candidate in 2016 went to Democrats by 13 points.

This is a key thing I am pinning a lot of hope on. In 2016, trump eked out non-Party voters 46-42 over Hillary. The way trump has been performing - alienating vast swaths of non-MAGA people on his suicidal course of high tariffs, wall-building, and diminishing tax refunds for Middle America - should guarantee trump and the Republicans have lost enough Indy voters to outperform Democrats in 2020. There looks to be a 12-point shift right now in Indy voters from 46-42 to what should be 40-48 favoring Democrats, which should add onto what Silver offers as second point:

Trump and Republicans also have Problem No. 2, however: Their base is smaller than the Democratic one. This isn’t quite as much of a disadvantage as it might seem; the Democratic base is less cohesive and therefore harder to govern. Democratic voters are sometimes less likely to turn out, although that wasn’t a problem this year...

I don’t want to go too far out on a limb in terms of any sort of prediction for 2020. In fact, lest you think that the midterms were the first step toward an inevitable one-term Trump presidency, several facts bear repeating: Most incumbent presidents win re-election...

(waits for third round of massive panic to subside) Sigh:

...and although Democrats had a strong midterm this year, midterm election results aren’t strongly correlated with what happens in the presidential election two years later. Moreover, presidential approval numbers can shift significantly over two years, so while Trump would probably lose an election today on the basis of his approval ratings, his ratings today aren’t strongly predictive of what they’ll be in November 2020.

But presidents such as Reagan, Clinton and Obama, who recovered to win re-election after difficult midterms, didn’t do it without making some adjustments. Both Reagan and Clinton took a more explicitly bipartisan approach after their midterm losses. Obama at least acknowledged the scope of his defeat, owning up to his “shellacking” after 2010, although an initially bipartisan tone in 2011 had given way to a more combative approach by 2012...

Okay, here's what I have.

As Silver points out, there's still a lot of days on the calendar for trump to shift his positions and work towards a more bipartisan agenda, which would go a long way towards mollifying Indy voters (and maybe creating rifts among Democrats that would otherwise be more united against a partisan trump).

But that will honestly be a day when pigs fly. trump can no more change his nature - insulting, divisive, greedy, destructive - than a tiger can change his stripes. There is NOTHING trump can do right now to change his approval ratings: People who love him will keep his polling numbers from sinking below 32 percent, but the People who HATE him will keep his polling numbers from rising above 42 percent...

One thing I noted in 2012 - discussing Obama's chances at re-election - is that incumbents tend to win as long as they are popular. I said this:

when you look back on the history of one-term Presidents, the consistent pattern between most of them is that they were unpopular, at least unpopular enough within their own party to be snubbed by the power-brokers in the backrooms when the next election rolled around...

Part of this doesn't directly apply to trump: the power-brokers in the backrooms arguably hate trump and the damage he's done to their internal organization, but they're unable to position a challenger due to trump's insanely high intra-party popularity with the rabid base.

So the other part is the unpopularity with the overall voting base, and the thing that makes me hopeful there is the established polling of the past two years where trump never got higher than 45 percent overall approval. trump is consistently unpopular, and has done little to counter it because he's too eager to pander to a Far Right extreme rather than to a moderate stance that could bring ambivalent voters back to his fold.

This is where it all matters who the Democratic Party finally picks to challenge in 2020. As long as the Dems select someone with better than 50 percent approval, trump is toast.

I have to admit my earlier assumptions about 2016 being wrong. Back then, I thought Hillary had a chance to win enough votes to secure a clean victory.

I knew Hillary was hated, especially by the Republican Party who hated her more than her husband. But I was caught off balance by the Beltway media's hatred of her: Their willingness to kick her and her campaign was at ten times the focus they ever gave trump, while granting THAT Shitgibbon - even at trump's worst - almost a free pass. All that bad coverage - including the last-minute bomb of "her emails" that may have scared away wavering voters - resulted in Hillary losing just enough voters in the Midwest to let trump eke out an Electoral College win. I was right that Hillary was less hated (she got 45 percent over trump's 42 percent of the popular vote), but I was wrong that Hillary would do better than that 45 percent...

The good news for Democrats is that the fresh batch of challengers - from Kamala Harris to Elizabeth Warren to Cory Booker and to even the unannounced like Bernie and Biden and Beto - all beat trump in the popularity contests. As long as the Democratic voters and agitators all agree to back the winner - as long as there are no splits among the ranks like there was between Hillary and Bernie - the Democrats can beat an unpopular incumbent with a popular winner.

I won't be at all surprised that the Republicans will try - again - to dirty up every Democratic challenger because it's basically the ONLY attack they have left. But if the next Democratic candidate is closer to Obama's style and personality and charisma, those attacks aren't going to work.

Just remember to get the damn vote out, America. Turnout beats every dirty trick the GOP has.

Another trumpian Step Towards Dictatorship (w/ Update)

(Update: Thanks this time to Tengrain for linking this to Mike's Blog Round Up at Crooks & Liars. Do try to have a nice weekend during this Constitutional Crisis...)

So this is shamefully happening (via Richard Cowan and David Morgan at Reuters.com):

President Donald Trump was poised on Friday to declare a national emergency at the U.S.-Mexico border, a move that Democrats vowed to challenge as an unconstitutional attempt to fund his proposed border wall without approval from Congress.

Previous Presidents had issued national emergencies before, but usually within the confines of existing laws and regulations set by Congress to prevent overreach. Obama for example issued 12 emergencies, almost all of them involving foreign interventions and not exactly cutting into Congressional "power of the purse".  President Loser of the Popular Vote trump is explicitly pulling this maneuver to sidestep Congressional power over the budget and destroying the Constitutional concept of Checks and Balances in the process.

All because he doesn't want to be seen as a loser:

Trump was also expected to sign a bipartisan government spending bill approved by Congress on Thursday that would prevent another federal shutdown by funding several agencies that otherwise would have closed on Saturday morning.

The bill, lacking any money for his wall, is a defeat for Trump in Congress, where his demand for $5.7 billion in wall funding yielded no result, other than a record-long 35-day December-January partial government shutdown that damaged the U.S. economy and his poll numbers.

trump's excuses this afternoon did little to convince anyone that there is a crisis at the border: the flow of drugs won't be stopped by a border wall, there's no evidence of "chain migration" abusing our immigration system, and the needed reforms to the Lottery system aren't going to get answered by this move.

The horrifying truth is that trump has ached to grant himself direct powers that the Constitution doesn't grant Presidents (his dream of being a dictator like those he admires), and is seizing on the nature of the Emergency Powers set up by Congress back in 1976 to achieve that desire. trump does not care of the precedents he's creating with this move, where most critics - even Republicans - are worried if this move succeeds trump is giving license to future DEMOCRATIC Presidents to enact socialist/progressive reforms in spite of conservative obstruction in Congress. trump is likely convinced there will never be a Democratic successor, that he will somehow become Dictator-For-Life in spite of the 22nd Amendment (he can always issue an Emergency Order cancelling all future elections, after all why not) or even his own mortality (Gods help us if trump thinks he can pass on executive powers to his children).

trump is also ignoring the reality of his actions going to the Courts - already California has filed a lawsuit against it - but not the lawsuit part because he already admits he knew those would happen, trump only cares to create the illusion that his actions are giving him a major win. In spite of the polling that should tell him the Wall is a bad sell to the public, that it will give a rallying point for Democratic candidates against him in 2020, and that even his Far Right allies are attacking him for betraying their agenda of a harsher immigration policy (trump signed that budget which actually gave Democrats small victories on that front). All that matters to trump right now are the optics of "victory" and his personal ambition to become America's Biggest Dictator Ever (eat your heart out, Andrew Jackson!).

And while our nation's leader fiddle over fake "emergencies," we're coping this afternoon with a real National Emergency with YET ANOTHER MASS SHOOTING with at least five dead in Aurora IL (which is different from the MASS SHOOTING in Aurora CO back in 2012, CAN WE KEEP TRACK OF THESE MASS SHOOTINGS ANYMORE, AMERICA).

We're in the Darkest Timeline, folks. Every day gets worse until trump and his Republican enablers are driven out of power forever.

When Churches Betray Faith, Churches Become Conspiracies

God. (via the Houston Chronicle and reporters Robert Downen, Lise Olsen, and John Tedesco):

In the decade since Vasquez's appeal for help, more than 250 people who worked or volunteered in Southern Baptist churches have been charged with sex crimes, an investigation by the Houston Chronicle and the San Antonio Express-News reveals.

It's not just a recent problem: In all, since 1998, roughly 380 Southern Baptist church leaders and volunteers have faced allegations of sexual misconduct, the newspapers found. That includes those who were convicted, credibly accused and successfully sued, and those who confessed or resigned. More of them worked in Texas than in any other state.

They left behind more than 700 victims, many of them shunned by their churches, left to themselves to rebuild their lives. Some were urged to forgive their abusers or to get abortions.

About 220 offenders have been convicted or took plea deals, and dozens of cases are pending. They were pastors. Ministers. Youth pastors. Sunday school teachers. Deacons. Church volunteers.

Nearly 100 are still held in prisons stretching from Sacramento County, Calif., to Hillsborough County, Fla., state and federal records show. Scores of others cut deals and served no time. More than 100 are registered sex offenders. Some still work in Southern Baptist churches today...

And these are just the ones we know about, from 20 years or so. This is rape and sexual assault that likely had been going on for decades earlier.

For all the goddamn Christian wingnuts yelling and screaming about Muslims, the greatest threat to our families in the United States are the goddamn Christian wingnuts.

Did you catch that last bit? Some still work in Southern Baptist churches today.

Did you catch that earlier bit, where some of the victims were forced to get abortions? The Southern Baptists are one of the biggest religious groups to rail against abortion, but by God if their own should rape a woman or young girl then hey let's just make sure that medical procedure we don't talk about that it gets done in another state where nobody will find out.

Goddamned hypocrites. (Edit: I used an offensive word here earlier, I removed it for the sake of good friends)

How is this any better than what the Catholic Church has been doing for decades (if not centuries) covering up their own pedophiles and rapists? The Pope just had to come out recently and confess his church has been covering up the rape and sex slavery of nuns, on top of the recent revelations of what priests have been doing to children.

This isn't about God (other than perverting the Lord's work) this isn't about Faith (other than destroying it for thousands of victims) this is about Power, the power of institutional control that a church can grant to those in charge. This is about a blinded, lustful Patriarchy that views their flock not as followers but as the next meal.

There is no God in these churches the second their own politics demanded they protect the rapists and abusers instead of their children and victims.

To hell with these scandal-plagued institutions. For all that the laws of man have brought against them - charges and convictions and jail time - the churches themselves remain relatively unpunished, still standing, still seeking more converts and members (and victims for their abuses). Utterly convinced God has forgiven their sins as though THEY can judge their own corrupt selves.

To hell with them. We need our government to step up here. We need accountability.

These churches need to lose their tax-exempt status.

It is an argument cropping up across the world wherever these Church scandals have struck. A lot of nations grant tax-exempt status to churches out of respect to the idea that churches are charitable institutions, looking out for the well-being of their parishioners and their communities. They also do it as a sign of separation of Church and State, to avoid the political abuse of faith that history has shown doesn't end well for a lot of innocent people.

But these sex abuse revelations are exposing that concept as a lie. These churches are so horrified by exposure they've covered up, lied, betrayed victims, all because the threat of liability - of paying restitution to victims - drove them to cover up.

These churches love Money and Power more than they love God and People.

So if money is what they love(worship), that's where the punishment should be.

End their tax-exempt status.

Oh, they'll yell, they'll scream, they'll claim we're violating their First Amendment rights to free worship. Which won't be true. If they want to keep gathering and praying, they can do that. It's just they can't keep all the goddamned cash that rolls in when they do.

We have to recognize this truth: These churches that protected sexual predators and abused their own members are no longer churches. These organizations are now criminal conspiracies.

Goddamn them.

Brief Thought on How to Label Rich Jerks

Idiot Billionaire Hoping To Save His Tax Cuts From Impending Progressive Passage of High Marginal Rates Doesn't Like Being Called a Billionaire (via Arwa Mahdawi of the Guardian).

When asked by New York Times columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin whether he thought billionaires had become too powerful in American life, the coffee magnate complained that “the moniker billionaire now has become the catchphrase”. Rather than using a word like billionaire to describe a person with billions of dollars, Schultz suggested it may be better to use expressions like “people of means” or “people of wealth”.

Poor Schultz. He was just trying to help us all out; generously digging into his rich vocabulary and spreading the semantic wealth. However, after footage of the interview went viral this week, the businessman has been mercilessly mocked. People of mean spirit have been suggesting their own alternatives to billionaire such as “robber barons”, “cash vampires”, and various other phrases that are probably too rude to repeat...

Yeah, I've probably repeated about twenty rude ones on Twitter just this weekend alone.

But let's play nice, shall we? Let's not go after the super-rich who are failing at noblesse oblige with the vindictive venom of French Revolutionaries.

If we're gonna label Billionaires for what they are, let's keep this professional yet accurate.

Let's call them:

Avarice Americans.

What, Schultz. You don't like that? You don't like getting called out for your greedy tax-dodging stealing-from-the-public ways?

Whadda ya gonna do, pay us to NOT insult you? You should. All of you Billionaires should tread lightly. There's 300 million of us and only 585 of you. I think we can take 'em in a fair fight.

Deeply A Problem

As a followup to my previous blogging, the situation in Virginia is getting crazier by the hour.

Northam has NOT resigned as expected and is trying to refuse accountability for the photo he originally apologized for (his argument afterward was that "Oops I got that confused with ANOTHER time I wore blackface" and that "Oops I was Halloweening as Michael Jackson")

Thing is, Northam is now politically isolated with his own party as most Democrats in-state and nationwide are denouncing him/asking him to resign. He may think he can endure the rest of his administration but it's likely his own state assembly will block him on any objectives he hopes to achieve.

Problem is, the next in line Lt. Governor Fairfax is now facing sexual assault charges dating back to 2004. It apparently had been cursory investigated and dismissed then - by both law enforcement and the media - but because of the current situation now has regained public notice.

This all went into Florida-Man level madness today when the state's Attorney General - by state constitution the second-in-line to the Governor's seat - admitted he too donned blackface in his youth, and unlike Northam is openly apologizing for it. There's a likelihood calls for his resignation are bound to start as he's politically wounded as well. This gets into crazy mode because if all three resign at once, the next in line is the State Assembly Speaker... who is a Republican, and who is only the Speaker because a goddamn tiebreaker had to be settled by drawing lots out of a goddamn jar.

So let's recap: One of our major states - 11th overall in population, 10th in the economy, a key part of one of our largest metropolises (the North Virginia-DC-Baltimore area), home to many Presidents and key historical figures and places - is about to go sideways.

Granted, a lot of this could be easily resolved if 1) Northam resigns NOW for the good of his state and his party, 2) Fairfax uses his time as Governor to immediately find a Lt. Governor replacement, 3) Fairfax steps aside if the sexual assault allegations prove true, allowing the new Lt. Governor to replace him, 4) the new new Governor replaces the Attorney General with someone WITHOUT a racist or sexist background.

Also granted: A lot of this bullshit wouldn't be happening if enough of our political leaders avoided being (alleged) racist idiots or (alleged) sexual harassers. If only, God help them, they ever took the time to examine their life choices and noticed particular moments in their pasts that should have warned them "Oh SHIT this will come back to bite me on the ass at the worst possible moment."

But that's the world we live in, isn't it. If we just focus on the racist part of today's problem, we'd see that particular blindness of White Privilege as a major concern.

I am completely with John Cole on this:

Again, this shit was right there in the open. That doesn’t make it acceptable, but the over the top “wtf” from people is a little crazy- THIS HAPPENED IN YOUR LIFETIME. Kids are still doing their High Senior senior pictures in Confederate garb. The entire god damned tea party was a racist ass reaction to a black President.

This is a deeply racist nation- it’s part of who we are. So yes, there was black face going on, but let’s not lose sight of the other really racist shit that is happening. Let’s not all pretend that this shit is news to us, but remember to work on all the other stuff that is still ongoing and problematic. Like disfranchising millions of black people. Like the racial disparities in the criminal justice system that range from being more likely to be charged, more likely to be convicted, more likely to receive longer sentences, more likely to be sentenced to death. The racial disparities in the medical system that range from being less likely to receive preventative care, receiving lower quality and less effective care, to higher infant mortality rates to lower likelihood of being insured to worse pain management and quality of life. Or racial disparities in education which range from lower reading and achievement levels to lower graduation rates to less exposure and access to advanced classes to lower quality schools to on and on. Or racial disparities in the banking system, to christ do I need to go on?

Again, I’m 48, white, and from West Virginia and not particularly woke, but fer fuck’s sake, if you’re surprised that a bunch of college kids in Virginia were in blackface in the 70’s and 80’s there are a lot of things about this world that are going to shock the shit out of you. You should start by listening to some people of color. And voting for them.

The United States need to stop paying lip service to honoring Martin Luther King Jr. and start paying attention to the goddamn warnings the good Reverend was trying to tell us about the destructive nature of racism. King kept mentioning his biggest obstacle wasn't the Racists - he could see them coming and knew how to fight them - but the indifferent Whites who lived within their privileged world and had no idea the damage they were doing.

The first thing White America has GOT TO DO IS ADMIT THEY LIVE WITH A PRIVILEGE that many non-Whites do not have, and that this privilege is blinding them to the harm they commit.

This doesn't mean all of a sudden falling to our knees and begging forgiveness. It doesn't mean inviting every Black or Latino person you know over to pot luck where you'll be serving potato salad with raisins in it. Or suddenly turning around and offering billions in reparations (although if we are being honest for the love of God we SHOULD do that because a lot of minority poverty stems from our racist history of Ghetto-As-Policy).

But it does mean first and foremost we need to stop going out of our way to be assholes towards other ethnics. Christ. This should be the easiest thing to do. JUST STOP BEING ASSHOLES.

/headdesk

The Stink of Racism It Gets Into Everything

So this kind of blew up last night (via the Virginian Pilot):

A photo from Gov. Ralph Northam’s medical school yearbook shows him and another person in racist costumes — one wearing blackface and one a Ku Klux Klan robe and hood, though it was not clear which person was the future governor.

Hours after the 35-year-old photo came to light Friday, Northam apologized for his decision to appear in it. Elected officials and activist groups from across the political spectrum called for him to resign.

By this morning, major Democratic figures at the state and national level - including Julian Castro, Kamala Harris and Joe Biden - have made calls for Northam to step down.

Virginia's state constitution has it the Lt. Governor - currently Justin Fairfax, who is Black - will step into the Governor's office and appoint his own temporary replacement (a permanent Lt. Governor to serve out the rest of the 2 years of term will be voted on in November).

There are a few shocking things about this story. Mostly to do with the fact Northam's yearbook has been out there for ages and it's only now coming to light. In this day and age of aggressive Oppo Research in elections, you'd have thought some Republican snoop would have caught this and presented it to Northam's political rivals BEFORE Northam won the governorship. (I am hearing stories however that researchers DID find this, but thought it was a fake created by other GOP operatives...)

The one thing that isn't shocking - at least to me - was that there was something this racist in the personal history of a White boy who grew up in the traditional South.

Northam's own background has him growing up in the 1970s and 80s, post-Civil Rights Era of the 60s, where racism was still entrenched in a lot of social, educational, and professional institutions across the South. He attended Virginia Military Institute (which has a history of racism and sexism - not allowing girls to enroll until 1996) and had a school nickname of "Coonman" in 1981. He went to a Virginia medical college surrounded by drunken white frat boys (and yeah, I've noted THAT problem before) who, anecdotally speaking, tend to be arrogant with a good amount of stupidity aimed at pulling cruel pranks, bullying disguised as hazing, and mockery of others.

Northam may have grown out of it, when the time came and he went to work as a doctor and then got into politics and then worked his way to the Governor's seat. Much of his public record has been consistent with the stance of a centrist Democrat in the modern South, supporting pro-choice positions (he's currently under fire from the Far Right for statements made about late-trimester abortions), education reforms, and protecting voter rights. However, something like this in his past - something that seems a consistent pattern of his youth - makes it harder not only for Blacks to trust him but for the state (and national) Democratic leadership to argue in good faith on social and economic reforms fighting racism.

It's troubling, but it's out there now. That trust is gone.

Look, we just had a scandal here in Florida where the appointed Secretary of State Ertel turned out to have worn a racist costume in 2005 that mocked Hurricane Katrina victims. He did this stunt at the age of 35, well aware of the cruelty he was promoting and doing it anyway, As soon as the photos got out, he had to resign because nobody could trust him being fair overseeing elections in a contentious battleground state like ours (even though Ertel's work history as an Elections Supervisor - fighting against Rick Scott's voter purges - seemed scandal-free).

Ertel's background is about the same as Northam's. Born in Jacksonville, FL and having lived here for much of his life - except for his time studying at University of Maryland before joining the Army and serving during the 1990s - Ertel has been immersed in the same cultural mess that other Southern Whites grew up in. As much as Northam probably thought it was funny or cool to dress up racist, Ertel thought the same thing. A lot of Southern Whites (and gods help us, more and more Whites nationwide) probably have thought the same thing.

This is where having hundreds of years of the same social messaging, the same mental conditioning, just gets into everything like the rotting stench of death. Southern Culture is a thing, after all, it's NASCAR and College Football and Daisy Dukes and Grandma's Moonshine Whiskey and Redneck Jokes and Pecan/Peach Pie and Dirt Roads under Spanish Moss trees down by the creeks where kids in coveralls fish for dinner. It's also a rabid history of lynching and vagrancy laws and entire Black towns getting wiped off the maps and Jim Crow and ongoing voter suppression and Confederate Battle Flags shoved into everyone's faces.

It gets to where White folk don't ever see it as a problem, because after all being White in the South has its privileges. White kids grow up in a culture that allows for mocking of minorities - especially Blacks - and embracing the mindset of "rebellion" AND "status quo" that the Confederacy/Lost Cause has come to represent. And then they have kids and pass the privilege onward.

This is where every White person who grew up south of the Mason Dixon line needs to re-examine every childish, seemingly harmless prank or joke they ever pulled while as children and teens because I guarantee - myself included - there is at least one moment of racist stupidity and cruelty stuck on your soul's track record. I fear that I have one, and the troubling thing is I cannot remember because for me - and likely for a lot of other Whites - it's been so easy to forget the slight or damage done. The weapon of racism never got aimed at me, after all...

Meanwhile, I may have noted how Ertel's behavior fit a mostly Republican attitude towards race, Northam's standing as a Democrat doesn't change my argument. For every modern Democrat caught pulling racist shit - and yeah, I know Robert Byrd was KKK and a Democrat, but he's DEAD now and he recanted -  there's still a ratio of 5 or 6 modern Republicans pulling equally racist shit or in Rep. Steve King's case, racist shit that's worse.

There were a number of Far Right pundits crowing earlier about how the Democrats were hypocrites in having Northam exposed as a racist, but when the Democratic response properly called on his resignation those same pundits are trying to flip the narrative to hide their own hypocrisy on the matter. Like this is all still a game to them... It still doesn't excuse the Far Right of their hatreds, as much as it doesn't excuse Northam's cluelessness or Ertel's cruelty or anyone else's blithe ignorance regardless of party affiliation.

The hypocrisy of racism, the pain of racism, this is all on full display right now. It's been out there before Reverend King exposed it to the world shaming our nation onto a better moral arc, and it's still been there all this time of the rest of us trying to build a better loving world.

The damage of racism - even the tiniest bit that was meant to be funny, which turns out never really funny after all - is piling up. This is something a lot of White folk - myself included - need to acknowledge and step away from.

The first step in getting better is admitting you have a problem. And the addiction of White Privilege can be a hell of a drug.