The Greatest Threat to Rugged Libertarianism? Bears

Every time I see an article on Libertarianism failing on a grand scale, my Pragmatism radar goes off and I go arunnin' to see what the fuss is.

Shared through Lawyers Guns and Money, there is this report in The New Republic (behind a firewall for some of you, I need to start noting which sites are fee-based) by Patrick Blanchfield reviewing a book by Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling about how Libertarians took over a small town in New Hampshire to build their Utopia:

...This is the so-called Free Town Project, a venture wherein a group of libertarian activists attempted to take over a tiny New Hampshire town, Grafton, and transform it into a haven for libertarian ideals—part social experiment, part beacon to the faithful, Galt’s Gulch meets the New Jerusalem. These people had found one another largely over the internet, posting manifestos and engaging in utopian daydreaming on online message boards. While their various platforms and bugbears were inevitably idiosyncratic, certain beliefs united them: that the radical freedom of markets and the marketplace of ideas was an unalloyed good; that “statism” in the form of government interference (above all, taxes) was irredeemably bad. Left alone, they believed, free individuals would thrive and self-regulate, thanks to the sheer force of “logic,” “reason,” and efficiency. For inspirations, they drew upon precedents from fiction (Ayn Rand loomed large) as well as from real life, most notably a series of micro-nation projects ventured in the Pacific and Caribbean during the 1970s and 1980s...

Particularly important for the story is one John Babiarz, a software designer with a Krusty the Klown laugh, who decamped from Big-Government-Friendly Connecticut in the 1990s to homestead in New Hampshire with his equally freedom-loving wife, Rosalie. Entering a sylvan world that was, Hongoltz-Hetling writes, “almost as if they had driven through a time warp and into New England’s revolutionary days, when freedom outweighed fealty and trees outnumbered taxes,” the two built a new life for themselves, with John eventually coming to head Grafton’s volunteer fire department (which he describes as a “mutual aid” venture) and running for governor on the Libertarian ticket.

Although John’s bids for high office failed, his ambitions remained undimmed, and in 2004 he and Rosalie connected with a small group of libertarian activists. Might not Grafton, with its lack of zoning laws and low levels of civic participation, be the perfect place to create an intentional community based on Logic and Free Market Principles? After all, in a town with fewer than 800 registered voters, and plenty of property for sale, it would not take much for a committed group of transplants to establish a foothold, and then win dominance of municipal governance. And so the Free Town Project began. The libertarians expected to be greeted as liberators, but from the first town meeting, they faced the inconvenient reality that many of Grafton’s presumably freedom-loving citizens saw them as outsiders first, and compatriots second—if at all. Tensions flared further when a little Googling revealed what “freedom” entailed for some of the new colonists. One of the original masterminds of the plan, a certain Larry Pendarvis, had written of his intention to create a space honoring the freedom to “traffic organs, the right to hold duels, and the God-given, underappreciated right to organize so-called bum fights.” He had also bemoaned the persecution of the “victimless crime” that is “consensual cannibalism...”

That Libertarianism has room to accept cannibalism is a problem shared with Far Right Conservatives, but we'll save that discussion for another time. Meanwhile, back in Socialist Hellhole San Francisco Libertarian Heaven Grafton:

While Pendarvis eventually had to take his mail-order Filipina bride business and dreams of municipal takeovers elsewhere (read: Texas), his comrades in the Free Town Project remained undeterred. Soon, they convinced themselves that, evidence and reactions to Pendarvis notwithstanding, the Project must actually enjoy the support of a silent majority of freedom-loving Graftonites. How could it not? This was Freedom, after all. And so the libertarians keep coming, even as Babiarz himself soon came to rue the fact that “the libertarians were operating under vampire rules—the invitation to enter, once offered, could not be rescinded.” The precise numbers are hard to pin down, but ultimately the town’s population of a little more than 1,100 swelled with 200 new residents, overwhelmingly men, with very strong opinions and plenty of guns...

If the Libertarian vision of Freedom can take many shapes and sizes, one thing is bedrock: “Busybodies” and “statists” need to stay out of the way. And so the Free Towners spent years pursuing an aggressive program of governmental takeover and delegitimation, their appetite for litigation matched only by their enthusiasm for cutting public services. They slashed the town’s already tiny yearly budget of $1 million by 30 percent, obliged the town to fight legal test case after test case, and staged absurd, standoffish encounters with the sheriff to rack up YouTube hits. Grafton was a poor town to begin with, but with tax revenue dropping even as its population expanded, things got steadily worse. Potholes multiplied, domestic disputes proliferated, violent crime spiked, and town workers started going without heat. “Despite several promising efforts,” Hongoltz-Hetling dryly notes, “a robust Randian private sector failed to emerge to replace public services.” Instead, Grafton, “a haven for miserable people,” became a town gone “feral.” Enter the bears, stage right...

You hear that, Ed? Bears. Now you're putting the whole station in jeopardy.

Back to Blanchfield:

What was the deal with Grafton’s bears? Hongoltz-Hetling investigates the question at length, probing numerous hypotheses for why the creatures have become so uncharacteristically aggressive, indifferent, intelligent, and unafraid. Is it the lack of zoning, the resulting incursion into bear habitats, and the reluctance of Graftonites to pay for, let alone mandate, bear-proof garbage bins? Might the bears be deranged somehow, perhaps even disinhibited and emboldened by toxoplasmosis infections, picked up from eating trash and pet waste from said unsecured bins? There can be no definitive answer to these questions, but one thing is clear: The libertarian social experiment underway in Grafton was uniquely incapable of dealing with the problem. “Free Towners were finding that the situations that had been so easy to problem-solve in the abstract medium of message boards were difficult to resolve in person.”

Grappling with what to do about the bears, the Graftonites also wrestled with the arguments of certain Libertarians who questioned whether they should do anything at all—especially since several of the town residents had taken to feeding the bears, more or less just because they could. One woman, who prudently chose to remain anonymous save for the sobriquet “Doughnut Lady,” revealed to Hongoltz-Hetling that she had taken to welcoming bears on her property for regular feasts of grain topped with sugared doughnuts. If those same bears showed up on someone else’s lawn expecting similar treatment, that wasn’t her problem. The bears, for their part, were left to navigate the mixed messages sent by humans who alternately threw firecrackers and pastries at them. Such are the paradoxes of Freedom. Some people just “don’t get the responsibility side of being libertarians,” Rosalie Babiarz tells Hongoltz-Hetling, which is certainly one way of framing the problem...

This is where I point out the thing I learned from studying 19th Century Literary Utopias back in college: One of the obvious flaws in any Utopian attempt is how conflict inevitably arises between people arguing over what that Utopia should actually be. The paradox of Libertarianism - the obsession that the Individual is all that matters - becomes self-defeating when those Individuals try to impose their singular world-view upon other Individuals who might not see it the same way, and are following their own agendas. Who is going to stop Doughnut Lady, who is expressing her Libertarian ideal of co-existing with pastry-loving ursines? Someone else's problem after all, isn't it?

Back to Blanchfield:

Pressed by bears from without and internecine conflicts from within, the Free Town Project began to come apart. Caught up in “pitched battles over who was living free, but free in the right way,” the libertarians descended into accusing one another of statism, leaving individuals and groups to do the best (or worst) they could. Some kept feeding the bears, some built traps, others holed up in their homes, and still others went everywhere toting increasingly larger-caliber handguns. After one particularly vicious attack, a shadowy posse formed and shot more than a dozen bears in their dens. This effort, which was thoroughly illegal, merely put a dent in the population; soon enough, the bears were back in force.

Meanwhile, the dreams of numerous libertarians came to ends variously dramatic and quiet. A real estate development venture known as Grafton Gulch, in homage to the dissident enclave in Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, went belly-up. After losing a last-ditch effort to secure tax exemption, a financially ruined Connell found himself unable to keep the heat on at the Meetinghouse; in the midst of a brutal winter, he waxed apocalyptic and then died in a fire. Franz quit his survivalist commune, which soon walled itself off into a prisonlike compound, the better to enjoy freedom. And John Babiarz, the erstwhile inaugurator of the Project, became the target of relentless vilification by his former ideological cohorts, who did not appreciate his refusal to let them enjoy unsecured blazes on high-wildfire–risk afternoons. When another, higher-profile libertarian social engineering enterprise, the Free State Project, received national attention by promoting a mass influx to New Hampshire in general (as opposed to just Grafton), the Free Town Project’s fate was sealed. Grafton became “just another town in a state with many options,” options that did not have the same problem with bears...

Blanchfield does step back to review the state of the state of New Hampshire itself, where the political conflicts between ideologies have collapsed into a clogged unresponsive mess. Decades of mismanaging and underfunding the agencies that do exist that should handle the bear threat (but can't) has contributed to the current crisis.

A lot of that mismanagement stems from the human urge to follow, the need to live up to, whatever philosophy (our own -Ism) drives us. A lot of the problem with bears isn't the bears, it's us.

The bear just wants to fucking eat donuts. That's the only -Ism the bear knows.

Florida 2020 General Election Ballot: Summon the Blue Wave, Please

Time again, another Presidential election cycle here in Florida with EARLY VOTING STARTING MONDAY OCTOBER 19, so I want to take a moment to post how the ballot looks - at least where I am in Polk County, here's a sample ballot - and offer suggestions on what to consider when you cast your vote.

(dramatic beat)

Okay, for anybody who's been following this blog for the last eight twelve years, you probably know that my overall suggestion is FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DO NOT VOTE REPUBLICAN.

It's not just me. There are several prominent conservative figures who have recoiled from the monstrosity their own party has become and they're pretty much saying the same thing. This Republican Party will not reform itself or move away from its madness until they are utterly humiliated and driven out of power. (another beat) For the next fifty years.

The only way this happens is if enough Americans not only fully Progressive but also Center-Left and Independent show up to vote in unity against the corruption that the modern Republicans - not just trump but everyone from Mitch McConnell all down - are openly planning to commit.

So here's my bit, trying to educate my fellow Floridians on what to look for.

President

What part of "trump IS A VULGAR SUBHUMAN BULLYING SH-TGIBBON" have you missed on my blog?

I could go into 500 different reasons why you should NOT vote for trump/Pence in any way, shape or form. I can go into at least 5 reasons to vote FOR Biden/Harris. 1) Biden is a Passive-Positive Character in the Taft vein, 2) Biden will work towards a Big Tent party for Democrats of all stripes to join in for effective ideological gains, 3) Biden will restore the social safety net that the Republicans have been hacking at with fireaxes the last 20 years, 4) Biden will put on his Cabinet people who are dedicated to effective governance and will repair the damage done by trump's corrupt regime, 5) Biden will not turn every fcking day into an anxiety-riddled, Twitter-driven, Hellish STRESS TEST.

So in short: FOR THE LOVE OF GOD VOTE BIDEN/HARRIS

Congress

Florida does not have any Senate races this cycle, so it's all down to the House seats - all 27 of them - and with any luck the Democratic voter turnout will flip at least 14 of them Blue so that in case there's a Delegation vote in the House to resolve a compromised Electoral College result the vote will go for Biden.

In my case, I'm in the 17th District, covering south Polk County and much of the south inland counties, which are lightly populated and heavily conservative. Port Charlotte (Charlotte County) is kind of the only other major population center in the district, and I'm not familiar with the area but given how much of its population buildup was in the late 1990s with a lot of conservative shifting, I don't have my hopes up.

Yeah. I live in the middle of trump Country. Every other oversized Coal Roller truck has the worst taste in bumper stickers. And yet, I WILL DEFY YOU, STARS. I am calling for everyone in District 17 to vote for Allen Ellison. 

I am calling on everybody I know from Pinellas County to Pasco to Alachua to Broward to Duval even: BLUE WAVE, peeps. 

State Legislature

There's 120 State House seats up for vote, so that's about 120 seats we NEED to flip BLUE, Florida. It's only 61 seats to control the House (okay Republicans have a 71-to-46 advantage (3 vacancies), but all we need is to gain 12 seats on the 46 held along with filling those three vacancies...). 

Okay, in Polk County, that's Districts 39 (Dem Chris Cause), 40 (Dem Jan Barrow), 41 (Dem Jared West), and 42 (Dem Barbara Ann Cady) up for consideration. I'm in District 56, so I'm putting a vote in for James Davis.

The State Senate goes in groups, they are doing odd-number Senate districts this cycle and somehow Polk County does not carry any part of them (I am in District 26, so...). I may not have a direct vote for any of the 40 Senators, but I do call on the voters who ARE voting in the odd-numbered districts to VOTE BLUE WAVE. It's a 23-to-17 Republican control of the Senate, so if the Democrats can hold their 17 seats and flip 4, that would make it 21-to-19 in favor of Democrats... Just gotta flip ONE of the legislative houses, and then we'll see DeSantis held accountable for his mishandling of the pandemic...  

County Commissioner

The county seats go in rotations, so this year it's just District 3 up for a vote and that's Democrat Bob Doyel we need to support.

State Supreme Court / District Court Retention

We have a system in place where judges are appointed but then subject to voter approval to retain. In 2020, there is currently one person up for the State Supreme Court, Carlos Muniz. To sum him up: He was on trump's short list to replace Ginsburg's seat this month. Yeah. That's all you need to know. If you want more, he worked under Pam Bondi. Uh-uh. I don't trust his credentials one bit. VOTE NO and remove him.

The Appellate Court votes to retain are spread out, so here in Polk County (2nd Court District) we've got Drew Atkinson, Morris Silberman, Daniel Sleet, and Andrea Teves Smith to consider. At the moment I can't find anything on their biographies so I can't say who brought them to the table. For now, I'll trust to the better natures of our angels and VOTE YES to retain.

School Board

There doesn't look to be any listed this cycle. Hmm.

Lake Region Lakes Management

There's a race between John Lewis and Steve Enzor, but not much information on them. Going by Facebook pages, Enzor seems to have the background working with the city of Winter Haven and previous water management commission work, while Lewis shows more engagement with the community but I'm not sure what his full bio is. I leave it to you, Lake Region, if you know which is the better candidate.  

State Amendments

I've made my views on the State Amendments earlier, and while I'm set on certain ones I am willing to admit I may be wrong on my earlier opinions. I've been getting more pushback against the Open (Jungle) Primaries and the peeps chatting me on it are making valid points. Thing is, as a NPA voter, I still feel the need to support making the Primaries open to all and to encourage more voter turnout. If you want to vote NO against that, you're free to (I will vote YES because I think the Jungle Primaries are manageable and I want the NPA voters like myself to have more say in these votes). 

To repeat, I am NO on 1 (Citizenship requirement to vote, which is ALREADY a requirement), YES on 2 (Minimum Wage), YES on 3 (Open Primary), NO on 4 (Forced Second Ballot Referenda), NO on 5 (More tax exemption) and YES on 6 (Tax exemption carryover to widows of military veterans, I know this could be a NO vote but it's family-related).

Polk County Referendums and Charter Amendments

There's also County matters to vote on, and what we got are:

Referendum One: Extension of Limited Property Tax Exemptions for Businesses Creating New Jobs

Shall the board of county commissioners of this county be reauthorized to grant, pursuant to s. 3, Art. VII of the State Constitution, limited property tax exemptions, for a limited time, to new businesses and expansions of existing businesses that create new full‐time jobs in the county? The time period for such reauthorization would commence November 6, 2022 and expire on November 5, 2032.

This sounds like a good idea, don't it? Supporting our Jobs Creators in the county. Thing is, how well is this exemption enforced? How are we guaranteed that our major employers in-county are fulfilling these obligations? In the short term, there's no guarantee of job creating while a pandemic is underway, and in the long term, businesses that need to hire full-time are going to hire full-time anyway. There doesn't need to be a tax credit to encourage them. I'd vote NO.

Charter Amendment One: Increasing Time Period Between Charter Review Commissions from 8 Years to 12 Years

Kind of what it says on the label. The argument in favor of this goes "We need to reduce expenses, and the Charter Review Commission doesn't need to meet THAT often." That may sound reasonable, but it runs the risk of the County facing administrative or committee crises that may flare up regarding the county charter during that longer time period. This doesn't feel like a smart thing to do. I'd vote NO.

Charter Amendment Two: Expense Reduction of the Efficiency Commission

The plot here is about cutting expenses for Polk County by deleting Articles 8.6 through 8.6.4 in their entirety of the County Charter, referring to the Polk County Efficiency Commission. You don't know what that would entail unless you actually READ Articles 8.6 through 8.6.4, so here goes (link goes to Charter PDF):

8.6 Polk County Efficiency Commission

Not later than January 31, 2005 and of every eighth year thereafter, there shall be appointed a Polk County Efficiency Commission...

Okay, what Charter Amendment 2 is doing is PURGING the Efficiency Commission altogether. They're cutting off an arm of the county government here. I am not entirely sure what the commission does, but since the title involves "Efficiency" I'd expect them to be going through the code of county ordinances weeding out overlapping rules, any outdated rules, and other stuff. Which may actually make things more affordable for the businesses and residents restricted by guidelines based in say 1897 but useless in 2020.

Thing is, it does not look like the county will replace this Efficiency Commission with anything more cost-friendly that would still do the same job. Without that, I'm worried the lack of an efficiency oversight committee would let the county commissioners reinstate unwieldly stuff. I'd vote NO. 

And just for those of you still following me for the Pasco County Mosquito Control Board election (Yeah, Mom reminded me by email this Monday), there's two seats (One and Three) up for vote for 2020:

Mosquito Control, Seat 1

Randy Evans (incumbent)
Seth Weightman 

Mosquito Control, Seat 3

James E. Bailey
Shanon R. Holm
Gary W. (Buck) Joiner (incumbent)

In previous years, I had little information to go by as the seats are too minor for the local papers to even name the candidates, but I think I found a site (Vote411 Voter Guide) that tries to cover the local stuff, so I've got the links above set to that site. Weightman didn't provide any info, so he's a blank and I can't recommend. The Seat 3 candidates at least provided responses, but Holm is the only one to check YES on the question about supporting sustainable energy and recognizing the Climate Change issues. So I'd suggest going with Holm if he's on your ballot. These are supposed to be non-partisan seats, so I won't consider a partisan stance on (OH FCK IT, VOTE BLUE IF YOU KNOW IT).

Okay. That's all I got for the Florida balloting. The Early Voting is Monday. Get to it.

#VoteBlue2020 #VoteBidenHarris 

Wanna Know How Bad The Coronavirus Spread Is Getting?

It's Wednesday October 14 2020 and this is where we are at as the COVID-19 pandemic enters the autumn season:

The United States is seeing a spike (upwards!) in positive infection reports across much of the nation in the past week, with the likelihood of deaths spiking in the next week.

The National Football League is seeing an uptick in positive cases from team to team, especially a Tennessee Titans team that had members refusing to abide by social distancing guidelines. Celebrity players like Cam Newton were infected. The sport is finding out that when they cannot play in a neutral setting - within a Bubble that enforces testing and reporting - they cannot control the exposure to this highly contagious virus. It's disrupted scheduling to where games might get cancelled, negating the whole point of the NFL playing these games in the first place.

College Football is in worse shape. Combining the recklessness of being on-campus with other students who fail to abide by masking and distancing rules to the reality of traveling to new locations that were and still are COVID hotspots, more teams are reporting cases and cancelling games. This one hits me in the alma mater: up to 18 scholarship players and 3 walk-ons with the Florida Gators tested positive with the odds that more players are infected by them.

And today, the top coach in the Division I programs - Alabama's Nick Saban - tested positive as well (from a university campus that had been having COVID exposure issues already)

What the hell were universities thinking about forcing their students to attend on-campus in tight environs, indoor classrooms, and rule-breaking parties? Oh, right. The universities were thinking about making revenues.

And try this one on for size, trump supporters: trump's teen son Barron may have tested positive (they're now saying he's tested negative). This underscores how rickety and unreliable the testing at trump's White House has been, and it's tragic for anyone to get exposed to a coronavirus that can affect a youth's health further down the road.

It does not help that trump - desperate for the adulation and eager to show off his "strength surviving COVID" - keeps going to cramped, unsafe rallies that are pretty much traveling super-spreader events.

This is where we are at, America.

COVID-19 has not gone away. COVID-19 will not go away until a reliable vaccine is out there for people to take.

trump and his Republican lackeys have fucked up the pandemic response, and he keeps refusing to treat reality with the seriousness that a GOOD President would act.

God help us, vote this moran out of office this November. It's the only way to make sure we can survive past 2021.

Early Voting This 2020

With all the storm and fury about trump trying to sabotage the mail-in balloting, and also threatening to send armed "observers" to the polling precincts on Election Day, it would make sense for Americans to consider the Third Option of voting: The Early Voting period.

As you can see on the Ballotpedia listing of Early Voting - by state, by starting date and closing date - not every state or territory hosts one. But many do, and to the seven or eight readers I have on this site, you might want to check to see if your state allows it, when you can go do it, and spread the word to everyone you know to make sure the voting gets done.

For meself, Florida begins Early Voting next Monday October 19 and I hope to do it then, well before the ending period of Sunday November 1 (before Election Day itself). BE AWARE that not every state doing this ends on that day: some are closing it up October 30, some are taking it right up to Monday November 2 just before the Big Day itself.

I don't always do Early Voting, as a traditionalist I've tried voting on Election Day itself. I had done it once or thrice when I knew ahead of time I was going to be too busy that Tuesday (one time I did so because I had volunteered to work a Broward precinct in 2002, when county employees were asked to help out with a new electronic balloting system to replace The Chads).

But this year for several reasons Early Voting seems to be the smarter move to make. Depending on where you are at and how the pandemic is going, you might find it safer to go to the Early Voting location. Given the risks of catching the coronavirus, I would prefer making sure I got my vote in before it was too late.

There are other reasons I would - and often do - encourage Early Voting to my fellow Floridians. One of the biggest hassles on Election Day is going to the specific precinct you're assigned: A lot of people have trouble finding those sites even WITH the address information sent to them on their Voter ID cards. Meanwhile, the Early Voting sites are usually in common public locations - libraries especially, but also the county government centers, courthouses, civic centers - that are easier to find. 

Also, while precincts are designed to be close to your homes, some people are too busy traveling to and from work to ever find the time to get in line to vote (and even though workplaces are required to let you go for an hour to vote on request, the driving distances back to your neighborhood and the wait times at the precincts make that hard). Most Early Voting places tend to be closer to your workplaces, thus easier to get to before/after you put in your time at the office.

However, this year Early Voting is a great idea because of what trump and the Republicans are threatening to do to disrupt and suppress the balloting. Not just the actions trump has already done to hurt the Postal Service to hamper mail-in balloting (and despite the promises that he and DeJoy have fixed their earlier damage, I don't believe them), but the threats being made to send "Observers" who just happen to be off-duty law enforcement and/or private security (aka Mercs) into heavily minority precincts as pure intimidation tactics.

Thing about Early Voting: most locations are not in heavy minority areas but usually in central public areas that draw in voters from every ethnic, age, and economic demographic. Where you can send "observers carrying sidearms as their Second Amendment right to" into local precincts on Election Day where few media outlets will cover the day's balloting - and get away with intimidating minorities into walking away without casting their votes - if Republicans try that at the Early Voting locations - fewer in number thus easier to cover for news reports, as well as more packed with White voters that Republicans wouldn't want to alienate with their bullying - they won't be as successful. It's also worth noting that trump's campaign people didn't get their "observers" lined up in time to cover the Early Voting places: They seem too focused on the Election Day itself.

I would argue to Blacks, Latinos, College-age/Youth voters most likely facing intimidation at the precincts on Election Day: Early Voting would be a smart alternative with fewer risks of having your ballots challenged.

I would also point out that more often than not the Early Voting places will have working ballot machines, as opposed to the oft-reported broken equipment that crops up in the poorer, more crowded precincts we've ALL been witness to since the 2000 Election debacle. How many news reports, every Election Eve, do we see of long lines across South Florida where precincts were reduced to a single electronic touchscreen for 10,000 voters to use? You would think after 20 years of this, the Elections supervisors would have bought enough working equipment and hired enough staff to repair them, but no.

I'm not the only one to notice. Betty Cracker at Balloon-Juice - a fellow Floridian - is paying attention to Georgia, a state that started Early Voting today and has a worse record with their voting machines than Florida. She's noticing how even with Early Voting, in certain counties with large Black populations, the Republican-controlled Elections offices are screwing up to force long lines even now:

I get that fuckups can happen and polling places can be unexpectedly overwhelmed. But we see this in the same neighborhoods in the same states every year. It’s obviously a voter suppression tactic, and the perpetrators need to be held accountable for violating people’s most fundamental right as citizens. Enough of this bullshit.

If this seems like bad news, it kind of is, except that the good news is everyone is paying attention and there's bound to be greater pressure to get the machines working properly while there's weeks to go with the Early Voting efforts.

There's one other reason to encourage Early Voting: While they don't release the tallies until Election Day night, the Early Voting numbers are often ready to go the second the precincts officially close in most parts of the state. 

(HINT: In case you DO vote on Election Day, do not get discouraged if you're still in line by the time of the "official" cutoff. The election officials are REQUIRED to let everyone who is in line to vote stay in line and get their chance to cast their ballot even if it means staying open past midnight... which is why some states with those long lines don't complete counting votes until days later).

If the early results gleaned from the Early Voting lean towards Biden, trump can't scream - or cough, all things considered at the moment - that he's winning. Oh, he'll try but he won't have the numbers to prove it. he'd have to wait just like the rest of us, and maybe in a few states he'd have to change his tune and demand the mail-in ballots be counted if he's losing without them.

So if a shit-ton of Democrats and Indy voters supporting Biden do Early Voting in large enough turnouts, hopefully that will give the regular (traditional) Election Day voters something to add to.

Just remember, peeps, GET THE DAMN VOTE OUT FOR BIDEN/HARRIS and EVERY Democrat on the ballots. Mail-in, Early, or E-Day itself.

Keep that Blue Wave rolling upward.

What If: Think Of the Future Heading Into Bidenworld

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

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

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

From FiveThirtyEight.com on October 9 2020

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Incoming Wingnut Storm

(Update 10/12: Thanks again to Batocchio, who linked this to Crooks&Liars' Mike's Blog Round Up! Please stay, I baked a cake somewhere...)

I was hoping to blog today about a fly that garnered more political support than Mike Pence, but instead halfway through the day a HOLY SHIT bomb dropped in Michigan. Some very enthusiastic Angry White Guys With Guns decided to kick 2020 up a notch, via Bill Chappell at NPR:

The FBI says it has thwarted a plot by militia members to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, and six people are facing federal charges. In a coordinated move, Michigan is pursuing state felony charges against seven people with ties to a militia called the Wolverine Watchmen.

In a statement early Thursday, Whitmer said two militia groups "were preparing to kidnap and possibly kill me."

But in a later interview on NPR's All Things Considered, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel said that "multiple white supremacy groups and militia groups have been acting in accordance with one another."

Whitmer thanked law enforcement officer on Thursday afternoon for foiling the alleged conspiracy. "I'll be honest, I never could have imagined anything like this," she said.

Michigan has been a hot spot for disagreements over shutdowns and other restrictions Whitmer ordered to try to slow the spread of the coronavirus — actions that allegedly sparked the plot against her. The governor noted those disagreements on Thursday and called for unity.

You might recall back in April there were a number of anti-mask protestors who stormed state buildings to scream their outrage and intimidate the politicians who were, you know, working to stop a deadly pandemic from spreading. Michigan was where some of the loudest protests were, and where the Far Right had a target in Whitmer - Democratic figure, librul, woman, all the things they hate - that upped their rage even more.

The FBI said the Michigan militia group had already been on its radar because its members had attempted in March to acquire the home addresses of local law enforcement officers with the goal of attacking or killing them...

Psst: To all the cops who play nice with the Far Right wingnuts as though you're on the same side, you might want to wake up to the reality that these wingnuts will shoot you too.

The agency said it collected information about the kidnapping plot from informants and undercover agents. Over the summer, the conspirators allegedly began training for a potential attack on Whitmer's vacation home or the governor's official summer residence, according to a criminal complaint released Thursday.

A federal charge of conspiracy to commit kidnapping has been filed against six people: Adam Fox, Barry Croft, Ty Garbin, Kaleb Franks, Daniel Harris and Brandon Caserta. All are Michigan residents except for Croft, who is a resident of Delaware.

Fox discussed the kidnapping in a recording from late July, the complaint says: "Snatch and grab, man. Grab the f*****' Governor. Just grab the b****. Because at that point, we do that, dude — it's over."

After abducting Whitmer, Fox allegedly said, the governor would be taken to a secure location in Wisconsin for "trial," according to the complaint...

Some of the things you need to understand about these wingnuts: They view themselves as outside our laws and compliant only to their own (SEE: Sovereign Citizen Movement). To them, everyone else is guilty - of either being the dreaded Other or else being Race Traitors - and that all it will take is a show trial in front of a kangaroo court to force the actual constitutionally-empowered forces of law and order to bow to their will.

It's not an idle fantasy though. They've got historical precedence like breaking Reconstruction after 1877, and the Wilmington Insurrection in 1898. There's been a build-up of these acts of violence in our streets during the Black Lives Matter protests. These Turner Diaries fanboys believe they can raise up an army, blow up some shit, kidnap elected officials, and fulfill their White Supremacist destinies.

But if these jokers thought kidnapping Whitmer would bring them victory, all it would really do is highlight their viciousness and stupidity... because the next thing that would have happened after their attack would have been the Lt. Governor of Michigan - Garland Gilchrist, by the by - getting promoted to Governor, and then ordering every real cop and National Guard soldier in the state with hunting you down before you numbnuts decide to repeat your stunt on him. Wingnuts don't really think this shit through, do they. All that happens with these attacks is: Innocent people get killed in the crossfire of their schemes.

Not that these wingnuts care about innocent lives.

This is just one more day of escalation of violence in the United States, as the division stirred up by trump - "LIBERATE MICHIGAN" anyone? - and his Republican allies - hi, Fox Not-News - is working to get the Far Right angry enough to cause chaos in the face of a looming Biden popular vote blowout. 

Let's go to an expert on international - and domestic - terrorism, Mister Adam L Silverman at Balloon Juice:

This is thwarted domestic stochastic terrorism. You have a group of people who are illegally conspiring under several Michigan state statutes and the Michigan constitution to undertake what would clearly be illegal violent actions against persons and property. They had tested improvised explosive devices (IEDs). They had planned several types of actions that would have resulted in mass casualties.

DHS finally released their October 2020 domestic threat assessment, that they tried to bury until a whistleblower made that impossible. The assessment makes it very, very, very clear that the predominant terrorism threat to Americans in the US are white supremacists and other right wing domestic extremists and that one of Russia’s major influence operations to disrupt the 2020 elections is to incite terroristic violence by these groups against visible racial, ethnic, and religious minorities.

We've been in the middle of a Second Civil War for a good while now, a culture war between the Center-Left and Progressive tendencies of the nation against the more extreme Far Right who would rather rule or ruin. It's been escalating since 9/11 when the anti-Muslim ire fueled the rage still aimed towards Blacks, Jews, Feminists, Latinos, and Immigrants, and it's been getting crazier since the self-ordained militias began standoffs with federal agencies.

It's going to escalate even more, as a sick and addled and desperate trump tries to bully and intimidate his way out of an electoral bloodbath. He's relying on these armed angry guys to show up at the polls on November 3, he's expecting these trumpshirts to be his Brownshirts when the time comes to bloody the streets and drive Democratic voters away from the ballot boxes.

He's already given them the order to "Stand Back and Stand By," a call to get them ready for the violence he expects to keep him in office to save his own ass from a future in a jail cell.

This is not going to end well for the nation. trump has made sure there is enough anger out there to erupt in violence that would harm too many innocent lives.

Not that trump ever cared about innocent lives.

DAMN YOU 2020 (RIP Eddie Van Halen)

GODDAMN YOU 2020 WITH ALL THIS CELEBRITY DEATH, MAKING 2016 LOOK LIKE A PARTY RIGHT NOW.

No. No no no. I saw the news while wrapping up things at work this afternoon. Eddie Van Halen died of cancer today (via Stephen Thompson at NPR). NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.

In a band known for its instability — due in part to a rotating cast of lead singers that most notably includes David Lee Roth and Sammy Hagar — Eddie Van Halen and his brother, Alex, remained constants, appearing on 12 studio albums that reached across five decades and sold tens of millions of copies.

No matter the singer, Eddie Van Halen's high-flying guitar sound — heavy on tapping, with both hands on the neck of the instrument — was deeply influential, but also hard to imitate. He grew up obsessed with Eric Clapton, only to himself become a lodestar for generations of guitarists.

To explain how hard this hits: Dudes, I am a wild white boy who grew up in the mean streets of suburbia, off the shores of the Gulf Coast in North Pinellas County, where 98 Rock was our oracle and hard blistering guitar noises our tonic.

I am not exaggerating to say in my day, in that place, the bands you listened to were Led Zeppelin and Van Halen. The Tampa Bay area was/still is a heavy metal Mecca. Half the garages between Palm Harbor to Gulfport had 15-year-olds teaching themselves "Eruption."

My teen years was spent listening to that music, between Halen and Hendrix and Zeppelin and AC/DC (and also Bruce Springsteen, the Beatles, U2, the Police, the Hooters (yes, they were a band)... I have diverse taste). Driving back and forth on Gulf-to-Bay, windows down, blasting "Panama" or "Everybody Wants Some!" Well, okay, I didn't cruise all that often, but I knew guys and gals who did.

Christ. CHRIST GOD NO. This has been a shitty year for celebrity deaths just like 2016 and now I'm getting sick just thinking of the similarities...

In the meantime, I need to regroup. I was planning on a Bruce Springsteen album ranking this month but now, forget it, I gotta give my respects to Van Halen... (breaks out the CD collection) Huge heads up: I may be one of the few people who ranks Women and Children First as the band's best album.

I leave you with this legacy of the Van Halen juggernaut:

Whose side did you take, Halen or Roth? A shibboleth for a generation. I took the diplomatic approach: I bought and listened to Van Hagar (5150 and OU812) and Roth (Eat Em and Smile and Skyscraper). I have no idea what Van Halen was doing from Balance onward, but I ended up siding with the band. 

Oh crap, just watching that Airheads clip... Lemmy died a while back. Oh GOD HAROLD RAMIS DIED TOO. DAMMIT I'M CRYING HERE.

Someone Else's Problems

How did we get to this, a weekend of COVID panic among the Republican elite?

Some of this was tied into their overall philosophy of cruelty, as Adam Serwer pointed out in his must-read article "The Cruelty Is the Point" a few years ago.

It's tied into the stuff I wrote chastising the Republicans for their lack of empathy, long before trump ever showed up on the playing field:

We're getting reports now of Republican congresscritters are getting "coached" into how they should show empathy to the unemployed.  Like compassion and sympathy and empathy are things to fake before a camera crew, rather than a genuine expression from the heart.  Do the Republicans even have genuine expressions from the heart for those struggling to find good jobs at good wages?...

We're coming off a 2012 election where the winning Republican candidate out of the primaries was a rich guy who had no sympathy for what he viewed was 47 percent of the American population, and dismissed them as "takers" and moochers.  And in the primaries, dear God, the other candidates were worse.

The Republican voters - some of whom are genuinely nice in the real world, and hug puppies and feed unicorns whenever possible - have a problem: the Republican Party they're stuck with has the habit of talking and acting like assholes.  There's no other way to describe this behavior...

Well, actually there is a way to describe this behavior.

It's a world-view called "Someone Else's Problem."

You see, as long as the problem in question - the severe climate, the burning forests, the failing schools, the millions on food stamps, a pandemic of great lethality compared to the regular flu, stuff like that - does not directly affect the person whose philosophy is "Someone Else's Problem," it doesn't matter to that person. They aren't bothered by the problem, so they can't BE bothered by the problem at all. And they'll let someone else fix that problem, because it IS someone else's problem after all.

It's also known as Bystander Effect, Buck Passing, and a form of Cognitive Bias.

And the Republican Party - especially with trump at the helm - suffer Cognitive Bias to an unhealthy extreme.

But as my 2014 blogging against Republican failures at empathy prove, this isn't just a trump problem, it's a Republican problem, and it's something we've seen for decades now. This list of arguments, for example, how many times have we heard Republicans and conservatives throw out these lines over the years?

"It's the poor people's fault they're poor. They don't save money or work hard enough. And they're all immoral, getting high on drugs while squeezing out babies they can't feed. If they can't pull themselves up by their bootstraps working those three part-time jobs, they should go work a fourth. And in the next issue of Forbes, we'll be reading a glowing biography of a twenty-something who got to be a billionaire straight out of high school rehab when his parents took care of the startup fees for his successful IPO."

"Don't talk to me about student debt, it's their fault they chose to go with $75,000 worth of loans for a worthless Humanities degree. If young people can't afford college they should go straight into the workforce. Oh by the way all the good-paying jobs will require college degrees."

"Colleges shouldn't enroll minorities who didn't earn their way in. It's their problem if they can't pass the SATs or afford the prestigious Ivy Leagues. Pay no attention to that billion-dollar new College of Ethical Studies building that was just donated to Yale/Harvard by that new student's rich parents."

"Housing is not a problem for me. I can get a great four-car garage McMansion in a gated community with a great rate from my bank. So why should I care about all these Black families who get evicted from homes because their overextended mortgages? What's this 'Redlining' you keep screaming at me?"

"It's your fault if you're unemployed, should have worked harder even if the business closed, forced mass layoffs, or went bankrupt. Work harder to find the next job, and there's all these jobs listed all the time so just get one. So what if Target or Wal-Mart won't hire you if you're overqualified? So what if the job description requires skills you don't have? Just lie on the application and bluff your way in. And don't expect more than $200 a week to pay for expenses while you rush around job-hunting and all. I don't want to pay MY taxes to let you loaf about using unemployment benefits to pay your bills."

That's just the ones I can recall off the top of my head, especially the ones I had to fight against in real life.

Now imagine that same kind of contrarian bullshit out of trump and the Republicans when it came to this pandemic.

"Oh, well, I spoke to the Chinese leader and he said it was all under control, so I don't have to worry." - this is a rough summary of what trump actually said. The implication here is that trump believed it was under control and so didn't care to get the U.S. pandemic response up and running in any way. It also explains how quickly trump and other Republicans resorted to accusing China of screwing up and labeling COVID as "the Chinese Flu."

"Let the state governors fight the pandemic." - trump and his handlers saw the pandemic be more of a problem at the state and local levels and decided rather than fighting the pandemic as a national problem, left it all to the state governors... that they could then blame later for mishandling the crisis.

"Why should we wear masks when the problem is everybody else being sick?" - And yeah, we've seen where this Far Right talking point goes...

"We don't have to worry about large gatherings, or social distancing, or any of that stuff when we host our political events. We're safe. COVID is not our fault and not our problem." - trump and his fellow Republicans kept behaving and talking as though they were above it all, never had to worry about the spread of the coronavirus, because their circle of friends were all healthy and tested every day. So they held trump's rallies in Oklahoma and Arizona and Michigan and other places and they're turning into COVID hotspots as we speak. It's why trump and the Republican Senate leadership held their coming-out party - in violation of local emergency orders against large gatherings - for Amy Coney Barett's SCOTUS nomination not just in the Rose Garden but also indoors for long hours about two weeks ago (right about the time span it takes for the virus' symptoms to crop up).

It's why the Republican leadership is suddenly testing Positive for COVID, and it's why trump has spent the weekend at Walter Reed Hospital undergoing a hyper-level treatment for his illness.

Because, guess what, COVID isn't Someone Else's Problem after all.

Waking Up To News About trump Testing Positive

What was it trump kept saying about the Coronavirus back in March and April?

“It’s going to disappear. One day, it’s like a miracle, it will disappear...”

"And, again, when you have 15 people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero, that's a pretty good job we've done."

"It will go away. Just stay calm. It will go away... [B]e calm. It's really working out. And a lot of good things are going to happen. The consumer is ready, and the consumer is so powerful in our country with what we've done with tax cuts and regulation cuts and all of those things. The consumer has never been in a better position than they are right now. So a lot of good things are going to happen."

What was it trump said to Woodward back in February?

"...It goes through air, Bob. That’s always tougher than the touch. You know, the touch, you don’t have to touch things. Right? But the air, you just breathe the air and that’s how it’s passed. … And so, that’s a very tricky one. That’s a very delicate one. It’s also more deadly than your—you know, your, even your strenuous flus. You know, people don’t realize, we lose 25,000, 30,000 people a year here. Who would ever think that, right? Pretty amazing. And then I say, well, is that the same thing? This is more deadly. This is 5 per—you know, this is 5 percent versus 1 percent and less than 1 percent. You know? So, this is deadly stuff..."

"I wanted to always play it down. I still like playing it down, because I don't want to cause a panic."

What was it trump said Thursday night when one of his closest handlers Hope Hicks tested positive for COVID-19, requiring a test for himself (and Melania and likely everyone else within breathing distance of trump)?

"Oh ffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff---"

Schadenfreude doesn't cover this. Schadenfreude is less sociopathic and less hateful than what's required here. The pain and suffering associated with Schadenfreude is malicious yes, but the thing getting damaged is usually the person's pride, a much deserved rebuke by the universe, a joke played on the fool who didn't know better but doesn't deserve any greater pain than that.

This, this falls more under Karma. A serious rebuke instead of a humorous one. trump wanted to play politics with COVID? trump wanted to ignore the suffering of millions of infected, and thousands of our loved ones dead? trump wanted to mock our protections, deny us our medical aid, take away the masks that can help slow the spread of the virus? trump wanted to host massive gatherings at his rallies, bringing together so many people into super-spreader events?

You get what you fcking deserve, donnie.

What If: The Darkest Fate of 2020

Here we are on October 1 and it's the time of the year to start talking scary stories.

So here's the scariest story I can think of: What do you think is going to happen in a trump Second Term?

Yeah, we have to consider the implications. trump's threats to suppress voter turnout, ditch ballots, order states to end ballot-counting too early, and open refusal to respect any election result in favor of Biden means we are running the risk that trump can pull off a blatant theft of the whole shindig. Even if Biden secures 330-something Electoral Votes and 52 percent of the Popular Vote over trump's likely 44 percent, trump is going to pull every stunt (even the scary legal ones) he can to prevent a loss.

So in this timeline, gone darker by trump's own hand, what would the United States and the world look like by 2021?

We're already facing the madness of having a overly-skewed 6-to-3 ultra-conservative Supreme Court with Barrett added to it. What will likely occur anyway would be the end of any left-center identity of our legal system ranging from the end of abortion choice (also birth control and reproduction rights) for women as we know it, the destruction of Obamacare with no sign of a Republican replacement plan to fill the sudden health care void, and intent to deregulate every aspect of federal guidelines and policies. 

Added onto that would be four more years of trump (and McConnell, if trump's electoral theft aids his Senate Republican allies) filling every open judicial seat with those most loyal to him and most likely to give him safe passage in case of criminal and civil cases filed against him. Extending outward into the 21st Century a cronyist legal system choking reform and sanity for at least 30 more years.

Also happening to us right now is the coronavirus pandemic, and the public panic trump has felt since April about cures and vaccines will lessen as the private disdain trump really has about the pandemic victims no longer has to be hidden. Oh, the medical system will struggle to create a vaccine and try to establish a protective model to keep the risks of COVID to a minimum, but trump and his power circle won't give a rat's ass except to squeeze money out of it for themselves. trump's promises about vaccinating everyone can't be taken at face value, and he shows no sign of ever taking it serious. Lacking federal leadership, the current pandemic woes could well stretch onward as each state falters and adapts to trump's plague-filled "new normal."

The economic situation is harder to predict because the major aspects of it - the financial sector of banking and stock investing, the employment factor, the potential loss of small and local businesses unable to keep open as the pandemic continues into 2021 - are not as interconnected as they ought to be. The Stock Markets fluctuate without regard to how the unemployment numbers are or how other economic indicators trend (A bad day with unemployment numbers could actually make the stock values go up). Unemployment is likely to persist near double-digits as local businesses and other social-based industries struggle to stay open (Disney just announced major layoffs at their parks). The flow of income is likely to persist in high-tech and any other industries that can survive in stay-at-home work environments, while low-tech and service economy jobs will be hardest hit. The pandemic could also affect the future of physical workplaces especially in large metros where now-vacant buildings become useless. There are a lot of factors at play here, not all of it good.

The sins of trump's first term of punishing, jailing, separating, and torturing immigrant families will go unpunished, and will lead into deeper degradations of ICE's victims. Human rights abuses of immigrants and refugees will worsen. Our entire immigration system - broken and clogged - may actually collapse on itself.

In terms of foreign policy...

One thing to consider is how trump "wins" his second term: trump will likely steal it, either through cowed state legislatures, biased courts, or by force (trump will not win it honestly through Popular vote, and is likely not winning the Electoral). An act of authoritarian brazenness so public that foreign nations would have reason to condemn it they way they would any dubious election. Public relations with what were once our strongest allies - NATO, Japan, a Southeast Asia trying to stand against Chinese influence - can fall apart. How can Europe pretend they support democracy if they have to congratulate trump after trump pulls any kind of police-state or even militia-backed coup?

trump has already tainted our foreign relations to its lowest point since perhaps the Vietnam War era, if not the 19th Century when the U.S. was not as dominant on the global stage. trump does not inspire confidence in our allies. Another four years of trump abusing our State Department and twisting foreign policy objectives to line his own pocket will take its toll and reduce the ability of future administrations to repair the damage done.

If there's anything to scare trump in a second term, it's the fact he'll be facing civil lawsuits and state-level fraud investigations that he can't avoid any further. trump will try to evade any accountability like he's done his first term to evade Emoluments cases and Mueller's investigations into the 2016 election. But in a second term trump - and the family members he relies most on to do his dirty work - will be facing likely criminal charges in New York state over his questionable accounting practices (cough fraud cough), and due to the separation between federal and state there is little trump can do to stop it (outside of breaking up the entire state government and legal system of New York itself). If trump takes that route (he might if it meant keeping donnie junior, Eric, Ivanka, and SIL Jared out of handcuffs), the covenant of the Constitution could get shattered and we're looking at an open-scale Second Civil War. 

At the worst of a trump second term, the damage to our federal institutions and to the Constitution will be carved into the very foundations. trump will have more time and effort to corrupt the various Executive agencies to serve his whims, not the rule of law nor the requirements of civil service. Agencies in opposition to trump - the IRS, FBI, CIA, EPA, even HHS and CDC, the freaking POST OFFICE, anything deemed "Deep State" - will be defunded, destaffed, destroyed. Any hope we have now of a Biden administration restaffing and repowering as much as possible still won't see any improvement until 2023.

Even if the Democrats maintain control of the House (likely, there are few scenarios trump and the Republicans can do this election cycle to win that branch), there is no guarantee they can keep trump under investigatory control. Even if the Democrats win control of the Senate, there is no likelihood they can win enough seats to uphold any Impeachment attempt: 68 votes are needed, and only a clean sweep in 2020 could get them to 70 (the Democrats are looking at a 5-seat flip at best for 2020 to win Senate control 53 to 47, at worst Republicans can hold on 51 to 49 (boooooo). A Democratic supermajority in the Senate is near impossible). The best the nation can hope for from Congress is a slim Democratic majority in the Senate stopping trump from filling more judiciary openings with Far Right judges. A fully Democratic Congress could likely pass all the legislation that Mitch McConnell has held up since 2019, but then we'll be facing a trump vetoing every one unless he gets whatever he wants (his goddamn Wall, a repeal of Obamacare, keeping immigrants in baby cages, and more money to his pockets).

What a second term of trump will do to the national psyche is horrifying. The haters and ragers that trump currently empowers will sink deeper into their sadism and anger towards fellow Americans. Whatever is left of our public discourse will get drowned out by QAnon conspiracy theories and Fox Not-News fearmongering. A lot of Americans who will vote in the majority against trump (remember: he's NOT winning the Popular Vote. Any national result with trump getting over 44 percent will be goddamned lie) will continue suffering severe bouts of anxiety and depression: I am not exaggerating, trump's existence in the White House has generated unheard-of levels of anxiety among Americans.

Any trump "victory" this November will not be viewed as legitimate by a significant portion of the nation's population. While this is true of his first "win" in 2016, a lot of that was blunted by the reality of a broken Electoral College gifting trump the Presidency while losing the Popular vote by the largest margin since 1876 (when Tilden beat Hayes in the Popular but the fight over the Electoral votes went dubiously to the Republican Hayes). 

This time, trump will not have that excuse: trump has been so open in his voter suppression efforts that any Popular vote changes to his favor will be attributed to his cheating. Any planned challenges by trump and his corrupted DoJ lawyers in the battleground states over the ballot counts and Electoral Votes will be viewed as intentional acts of sabotaging the results.

The public outrage to any subversion of the election results can well be on the scale of the massive protests like the Women's March in 2017, and the ongoing Black Lives Matter marches right now. The sad thing is, we've seen these protests happen... and then, without any political power where it matters most, nothing happens. We haven't had protests on the scale of Belarus or Hong Kong or any other places facing ongoing suppressive rule. A response to trump's sabotaging of the election would - even compared to the chaos of 1968 in the American streets - require a response from Americans on a scale from city to city in full revolt our nation's ever known. I personally can't guarantee a massive uprising like that could happen, but the anger towards trump may be the final kick to the head that will wake the majority up.

At that point, we would likely see a response from trump's well-known, well-armed fanbase of White Supremacists and haters. Having been told to "Stand By," any mass protest against trump post-election will trigger the wingnuts into attacking like they've done at the BLM protests this year. 

On the other hand in the timeline where Biden does secure the Popular Vote - polling above 50 percent, that's likely - and ekes out the Electoral College win despite trump's efforts to stop it we would still see a violent response out of the gun-toting wingnuts, because they'll be convinced from trump's gaslighting that Biden cheated.

Blood in the streets - even in a Biden win - will be unavoidable.

Another reality that's unavoidable is the fact trump is going to get older. trump is already 74 and will be nearing the average life expectancy of healthy American males (78). And trump is not a healthy American male. For all of his shenanigans over his annual checkups, there is no way that flabby orange lifeform is under the weight limit (239 lbs) of being morbidly obese. Rumors of drug abuse abound. And trump's unscheduled visit to Walter Reed in 2019 still raises cause for concern. Just look at trump (before looking away in disgust). Does he LOOK like he's healthy enough to live another four years?

Even if trump stays alive to 2024, our Darkest Timeline threatens to get darker still because the bastard keeps talking about wanting a THIRD term. Whining that he wasn't treated fairly since 2016, trump claims he's entitled to a "do-over" and so he deserves four more years after no matter what. Never mind that the 22nd Amendment clearly spells out there is no goddamned way that would happen. If trump gets his second term, he's scheming to break whatever's left of the law to force his third. 

A second trump term does not look appealing in any way shape or form, America.

For the LOVE OF GOD, don't let him even try to steal it. Even in the possibility of violence from trump's fascist militias, we dare not fall back against trump's onslaught of our rights as voters to choose better leadership than him.

Deranged and Raging

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

To quote James Fallows at the Atlantic:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

As David Frum at the Atlantic put it:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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