Imposing Silence Against Racism And Our Nation's White Boy Sins (w/ Update)

(Update: Thanks again to Batocchio for sharing this article on Crooks&Liars' Mike's Blog Round-Up! Please leave a comment - I know the security is a hassle but I need to filter out the Chinese spammers...)

Saying this up front: The Republicans are doing this out of fear.

It's been an issue simmering for some time but ever since the George Floyd verdict and the ongoing struggle of the Far Right to rail against anything that paints them in a bad light, the Republicans have declared WAR on Critical Race Theory and are banning its teachings in public schools. Especially here in goddamned Florida under the faint-hearted eye of Gov. DeSantis (via Julia Craven at Slate (paywall warning)):

On Thursday, Florida’s State Board of Education voted unanimously, at the behest of Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, to ban lessons that employ critical race theory (CRT) or the New York Times’ 1619 Project from schools. The vote aligns with initiatives in several other states such as Idaho, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Iowa. 

Florida’s amendment takes an existing rule saying instruction “may not suppress or distort significant historical events, such as the Holcaust” and adds “slavery, the Civil War and Reconstruction, the civil rights movement and the contributions of women, African American and Hispanic people to our country...”

While that reads as though the Board is protecting teachers to teach on those matters, the ruling actually bans them from using any materials from the award-winning 1619 Project, which had studied the impact of racial slavery since the British colonial era.

Even as it bans specific themes and texts, though, Florida’s amendment doesn’t define exactly which historical or factual claims are off-limits.

CRT is a decades-old set of ideas from the legal academy, which began to be a low-grade source of right-wing panic about racism during the Obama administration. Since the anti-racism protests of 2020 and the end of the Trump administration, though, it has rapidly become an all-purpose term to attack any sort of discussion of the history or current conditions of racial inequity in America.

Nothing academically recognizable as critical race theory is currently being taught anywhere in Florida, according to officials who spoke with the Miami Herald. Yet DeSantis has continued his campaign against it anyway, telling reporters last month: “You teach the facts. You teach everything that has happened. But critical race theory is basically race essentialism. It teaches people to view that as the most important characteristic and obviously, if you are of certain races—Caucasian or whatnot—they view that in a negative light.”

It's not even being taught at the public school level - it's primarily discussed in law schools - but DeSantis and other Republicans are still acting terrified that something like it will trickle down into the regular history classes as more studies on racism's impact on our history become commonplace.

As the Florida law demonstrates, the goal of the anti-CRT effort is put the analysis of ongoing racism out of bounds—to treat any inquiry into the material inequities that define the color line in America as something equivalent to Holocaust denial, and to reframe discussion of ongoing injustice as an insult to “white persons.” Other campaigners go as far to equate CRT with Marxism, as if a true accounting of racism in America were somehow going to upend capitalism. Such intentional misreadings allow conservatives to create a dichotomy where considering how racism shaped the country is unpatriotic and anti-American...

What is REALLY happening here is that DeSantis - by forcing the state to impose these restrictions on our schools - is setting the foundation for ANY parent aggrieved and upset about Whites being labeled "racist" can sue to stop ANY class discussion about racism in our nation's (and Florida's) history. The matter may not directly be Critical Race Theory, but if the parent gets one whiff of "oh my God this makes my White ancestors look bad" they will go ballistic and use this ruling to shut it down.

What DeSantis is doing is literally whitewashing our history to make it look clean and happy and "oh, don't you mind about the decades of lynchings and centuries of abuse" and every other thing Proud White Boys don't want to worry about. The excuse that "making Whites look racist is a Marxist attack on THE GOOD OLE USA" just also happens to be the same damn excuse throughout the 20th Century for racists - from the Dixiecrats of yesteryear to the trumpian GOP of today - to ignore the damage they've done and are still doing. 

If you follow my blog, you got to have read Ta-Nehisi Coates at some point. His tenure at The Atlantic covered a lot of ground in researching the impact racism had to our history well into the modern era. His articles on redlining - the push by banks and realtors to undervalue Black housing and overvalue White neighborhoods - and his argument in favor of reparations to redress that damage are must-reads of the last twenty years. This is the kind of thing DeSantis and other Republicans would be terrified of seeing taught or discussed in our schools, because GOD FORBID Coates' work highlighted how racism was actual policy pushed by Whites in political and financial power.

If you grew up in Florida, you may have heard about Rosewood. Most likely you hadn't, because it's not often taught in our schools here. I didn't learn about it in the state history book I read back in third grade: I read about it in the 1982 St. Pete Times articles instead. It was through the newspapers I learned about the white riot that burned an entire Black town down, killed dozens and drove the survivors to flee halfway across the state... all because a White woman lied about getting assaulted by a Black man.

Do you think if a teacher started teaching Rosewood in a Clearwater high school classroom that DeSantis is going to allow that to even be discussed? It could all bring up stuff about RACISM that will offend the overly sensitive Whites...

Note: Yes, I am White myself. I'm just not a goddamn whiny bitch about it. I know racism exists and I've seen the damage being done right now and we ought to be FIXING THESE DAMN PROBLEMS instead of sweeping it all under the goddamn rug like we've done the last 150 years.

If you watch the history of how history is taught in the United States, you will notice a pattern: the Far Right - the ultra-religious, the ultra-patriotic, the ultra-assholes - will insist that history ALWAYS preach to the greatness of our nation and the proud heritage of what being an American should be. You'll notice those same people will quickly ignore, denounce, decry, or embellish any of the dirtier parts of our nation's start and growth - the chattel slavery of Blacks, the Trail of Tears and other forced relocations of Native tribes into harsh reservations, the anti-Chinese riots, the anti-Mexican animosity - because they don't want to be reminded that their cozy wonderful lives were all built on the pain and suffering of others who just happened to be Black/Latino/Asian/Other.

These are the same people who tried to shut down AP History exams in 2014 because they feared those classes would teach kids to be "Un-American" due to all the racism being discussed. 

The Far Right - the ignorant and ill-informed Republican Party from the lowest member to the fearful Governors right up to trump and Mitch and the Fox Not-News propagandists - don't want anyone to really see the warts and bruises of our American History: Because that might compel our nation to seek repairs, resolve old issues, heal old wounds... the same issues and wounds the Far Right twists into self-victimization of themselves in order to fearmonger to their audiences.

The goddamned Far Right would rather preach mythology than cope with the facts. They would impose silence where they cannot convince, and they will enforce their character by the sword of liars instead of the facts of history.

And that plays into that goddamned adage: Those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it. But the Republicans WANT that, they want us to repeat the same mistakes because it keeps them in power. They want us to stay racist and broken, because it profits them to leave our nation that way.

We need to learn from our mistakes, we need to learn how racism hurt our nation, we need to comprehend how that racism keeps us weak not proud. We need to rebuild and become the stronger just nation our history bends toward.

We need to tell DeSantis and his fearmongering kind to go away. They're not protecting America, they're defending the soft weak worries of racists. Go away, you hypocrites and ignorant. We got better work to do.

Good God. Surrounded By Idiots

Today was not a good day for smart people to read/watch the media.

Louie Gohmert - Texas' main competitor for the title of "World's Dumbest Congresscritter" - publicly questioned a Forest Service deputy chief if shifting the moon's or Earth's orbits could help solve climate change (via David Knowles at Yahoo News):

“I understand, from what’s been testified to the Forest Service and the BLM [Bureau of Land Management], you want very much to work on the issue of climate change,” Gohmert told Eberlien. “I was informed by the immediate past director of NASA that they’ve found that the moon’s orbit is changing slightly, and so is the Earth’s orbit around the sun. We know there’s been significant solar flare activities, and so, is there anything that the National Forest Service or BLM can do to change the course of the moon’s orbit or the Earth’s orbit around the sun? Obviously that would have profound effects on our climate.”

Taken a bit off guard, (Deputy Chief) Eberlien responded, “I would have to follow up with you on that one, Mr. Gohmert.” 

As video clips of the exchange began circulating, Gohmert lashed out at critics who mocked the idea that altering our planet’s orbit was a viable or wise solution to climate change. Specifically, he took issue with those he said had conflated the Bureau of Land Management and Black Lives Matter, which share the same initials...

I think Gohmert must have watched that episode of The Next Generation where Q was forced to be human and tried to help the Enterprise crew fix a rogue moon by suggesting they change the gravitational constant of the universe. Considering that the United States hasn't even developed a functioning WARP DRIVE yet, this is kind of impossible. And ANYBODY who stayed awake in middle school astronomy or physics should be able to tell you that.

AND WHAT THE HELL DOES THE BLACK LIVES MATTER PROTESTS HAVE TO DO WITH THE GRAVITATIONAL CONSTANT OF THE UNIVERSE??????

You can actually feel your own brain cells dying exposed to this level of stupid.

Hey, Gohmert! I got this awesome deal for a Weather Dominator made by this guy Destro!

That was all followed up today by clips of a pair of woman - one apparently a licensed physician and the other a licensed nurse - claiming that the vaccinations are injecting us all with 5G-powered microchips that make our bodies magnetized.

Yeah, let's go to Betty Cracker at Balloon Juice for the clips:

The woman above is a licensed physician, according to people on Twitter, who are never wrong. Anyhoo, she’s at a government hearing in Ohio, and it looks like she’s testifying in favor of stupid proposed legislation to exempt fellow idiots from vaccine “discrimination,” probably something modeled on the stupid law Florida recently enacted for that same idiotic purpose.

Dr. Tenpenny (confirmed!) does this by explaining that the coronavirus vaccines magnetize people because there’s metal in one of the proteins that are in the vaccine, and she wants to know what’s being transmitted from 5G towers.

At the same hearing, this nurse tries (and fails!) to demonstrate how her cleavage has been magnetized... So, here’s what I see: a woman pressing a key against her chest, where it briefly sticks without her hand holding it up due to the naturally occurring oil we all have on our skins, and then she whips it away and tries and fails to get the key and then a bobby pin to stick to her neck. I see her pretending that the demonstration went off without a hitch and triumphantly demanding an explanation for her magnetic qualities rather than slinking off in shame.

In short, I see a raving kook.

But I am 100% certain that millions of Americans could look at the same goddamned video clips and conclude that OMFG, the 5G towers are triangulating on us and yes, that poor nurse can’t walk through the hospital without scalpels and stethoscope heads and crash carts and other metal objects slamming into her, irresistibly drawn by her magnetic boobs...

Look, people, when I told you all that I developed a metallic taste on my tongue after the first vaccination shot, I also told you I DID NOT DEVELOP ANY SUPERPOWERS. That includes a shocking lack of electromagnetic capability akin to Magneto or Static.

Here's the thing: There is nothing metallic or robotic in the vaccines. The "nanoparticles" described in the contents relate to LIPID nanoparticles, and Lipids are fatty organic oils. Anyone with a medical dictionary - like a librarian, hi there! - could tell you that. You'd think medical experts who studied for this shit would remember that too.

You would think - in a world of general access to knowledge, basic education, and some element of goddamn common sense - that we wouldn't see such levels of ill-informed behavior out of our fellow citizens, some of whom HAD to have gone through such education to get where they are today.

I would argue what we are seeing here - the unthinking ignorance of elected officials, the disturbing lack of knowledge from our professionals - is a kind of American anti-intellectualism. Disdain and mistrust of verifiable knowledge because it offends a person's world-view (religious or political or racial or social). From where I sit, it's people being Contrarian in thought and deed just for the sake of being that way: To be in opposition to the generally accepted beliefs, for the sake of being self-serving and self-aggrandizing.

In short, we have people going out of their way not only to be idiots but also to be assholes.

And just our luck, there's goddamned too many of them among us in America. Like Betty says, we're doomed. May God have mercy on our souls.

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

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

Via Allan Smith at NBC news:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Anniversary: In Remembrance of Protests We Honor In Spite of the Dictators

(Update: Many thanks to Infidel753 for including this article on Crooks&Liars' Mike's Blog Round-Up! Please take the time to look through this long-running blog which I admit is a far better effort than trump ever made bwhahahahaha... sorry, had to rub it in)

This is June 4 again, a reminder that in 1989 the calls for democracy in China were silenced by the gun and tank:

A combination of college-age, labor groups, and retired Chinese had gathered in key spots - eventually joining up in the major center of Beijing called Tiananmen Square - demanding political reforms to coincide with the economic reforms the post-Maoist government was trying to implement during the 1980s.

It went along with a growing protest movement in Eastern Europe, where Soviet Russian control was slipping away as Gorbachev's government could no longer afford the massive military and political buildup of the Soviet Bloc.

For a month, the Chinese leadership tried their best to keep a lid on it all, but international media coverage made that impossible, and the Communist regime itself had fissures between reformists and statists vying for control of the whole government.

By June 4, someone along the official chain of command decided "Fuck it," and unleashed the Army into Tiananmen Square.

The official accounts minimized the casualties. The unofficial accounts put the death toll in the thousands...

There is a terrible conflict at play here. China's international role is growing - unavoidable due to being the largest populated nation on the planet, its military strength, its economic engines - but its accountability to the world hampered by its own paranoia and sadism...

And the sad truth is, the rest of the world powers let it go, because they dare not press China - a military and economic behemoth - about their darkest sins. The Western powers especially Great Britain - which had insisted on Hong Kong remaining independent from Mainland China's sway - have let the bosses shut down protests there (via James Griffiths at CNN):

For an event that happened almost 2,000 kilometers (1,200 miles) away, the Tiananmen Square massacre has become deeply embedded in Hong Kong's psyche. That's because for the past three decades, Hong Kong was the only place where major commemorations were held, including marches, church services, and huge candlelit vigils in the city's Victoria Park.

After Hong Kong became part of China in 1997, the continuation of these events was always seen as a major litmus test for the city's ongoing autonomy and democratic freedoms, supposedly guaranteed until 2047 by its de facto constitution, the Basic Law, under the principle of "one country, two systems."

The 30th anniversary in 2019 saw one of the biggest turnouts at the Victoria Park vigil, with organizers claiming some 180,000 people joined the commemoration (though police said it was closer to 40,000). That anniversary came amid escalating tensions over a proposed extradition bill between Hong Kong and China: just five days later, over a million people marched against it, and in the months that followed, the city was consumed by increasingly violent protests and police crackdowns.

In the wake of those protests, Beijing introduced a national security law for Hong Kong, bypassing the city's semi-democratic legislature to criminalize secession, subversion and collusion with foreign powers. That law has been used to crack down on a host of political activity, and almost every prominent pro-democracy politician and activist is either in prison -- or headed there.

As talk of the law rumbled ahead of its abrupt passing on June 30 last year, many saw June 4, 2020, as potentially the final opportunity for a major commemoration. Despite authorities banning the Victoria Park vigil on pandemic grounds, tens of thousands still turned out to mark the event peacefully, and police took a hands-off approach -- though subsequently arrested and charged a number of activists deemed to have "organized" the protest.

This year, the gloves are off. The city's Security Bureau said Saturday that any rally on June 4 would be deemed an unauthorized assembly, and "no one should take part in it, or advertise or publicize it, or else he or she may violate the law."

Offenders could face up to five years in prison, while those promoting the event could be jailed for up to 12 months, the bureau added.

China isn't getting better about its responsibilities as a global power, the ruling elite are getting more violent. And it's not just in Hong Kong. What the Chinese government is doing to the Uyghurs is literally genocide... and nobody else is doing a damn thing to stop that.

I lament the possibility of Tank Man, a sole protestor who stood against the tanks back in 1989, ever survived China's bloody crackdown, I lament the possibility I will ever meet the man and greet him like a lost brother.

Freedom should matter, everybody. Tiananmen should remind us of that.

Irrational (w/ Updates)

The question with Lucy and the football was always whether, on some level, she believed the things she said.

-- xkcd caption to "Finish Line", Randall Munroe

trump's electoral loss in 2020 did not end the madness.

In some ways - looking back at the last 40 years when the madness began under Reagan - the madness has been getting worse, with the Republicans reacting caustically to Bill Clinton's administration in the 1990s and then going full-on obstructionist during Barack Obama's tenure between 2009 to 2016. It's been a downward spiral from Southern Strategy to Newt's Contract On America to the Tea Party to "Stolen Ballots," and it's been getting worse as trump trolls the nation with his Big Lie that ongoing recount "audits" will lead to his "reinstatement" to the Presidency by August. As noted by Maggie Haberman, quoted in this Brendan Morrow article in The Week:

Haberman tweeted on Tuesday, in response to reporting about Flynn's comments about a coup in the United States, that Trump "has been telling a number of people he's in contact with that he expects he will get reinstated by August" — confirming in a subsequent tweet she means reinstated as president.  

"No that isn't how it works," Haberman added, "but simply sharing the information."

"That isn't how it works" refers to the reality that our Constitution spells out via various Articles and Amendments that the person who wins the Electoral College (in 2020 that's Biden) and gets certified by Congress (which happened on January 6 in spite of trump's insurrection) and takes the Oath of Office on January 20 (which Biden did) becomes President at that moment. Anyone previously President loses the office, the powers, the job title, a number of perks, and gets flown out of town while the new President parties on down with everyone he brought with him. If by some chance trump and his people were able to prove there was voter fraud or stolen ballots - which they haven't been able to prove for more than seven months now - there's no do-over vote or recount: The 25th Amendment kicks in and it goes to the next in line (since the voter fraud likely included the Veep count, Harris would be out) and it would go to the Speaker of the House currently Pelosi.

I guarantee you trump won't accept that either.

It seems like madness to those of us outside of trump's epistemic bubble, but that madness stems from one core trumpian belief: The world is made up of "Winners" and "Suckers" and HE, donald trump, must never be a "Sucker". So he always presents himself a "Winner," in spite of the business failings, in spite of the clear evidence he is unpopular to a majority of the world. In trump's mind, there is no way he could have lost, and so he lies to others - and apparently to himself - that the election was stolen and he deserves being the Winner despite the rules, despite the reality.

This wouldn't normally be a problem if it was just trump ranting about this back at one of his mansions (I think he's hiding out in New Jersey at the moment, Mar-A-Lago closed for the summer apparently). He'd be flailing at friends and family up until the point they tire of it and have him Baker Acted for delusions and onset dementia.

The horrifying thing is, trump's madness is infectious. It spread to a group of people already suffering their own delusions among Republicans who have been told for decades to hate and fear minorities, women, college students, and Democrats. trump became the mad king of a political party whose Grand Far Right Narrative was open to the lies trump spewed, and his lies became their madness as well.

And it's a madness with no cure. Once those acidic ideas got into the voter base of the GOP, once the corruption seeped upward into a leadership hungry to stay in power in spite of the real majority, there's no talking them down from that fantasy. How can we convince them otherwise, to accept a real world where they're not the heroes of their Far Right Narrative?

To quote the Rude Pundit:

As I've said before, you can't argue with someone who refuses to accept that reality is real. They are, for lack of a more articulate term, sick. Perhaps even actually mentally ill. I don't say that lightly. What else can you say about people who believe a fantasy to the point that they are willing to commit violence over it? The thing is that one day the most fervent are going to want their belief to be put into action. And I think that the full danger is that Democrats are not just underestimating how much Republicanism is about rigging democracy, but they are not getting just how many legitimately sick people there are.

In other words, we are dealing with a Trump-induced hysteria, one that plays into every fear that conservatives, both the craven opportunists and the true believers, have warned their followers about for years, one that takes all their fears of non-whites and socialists (whatever the fuck they think that means) and abortions and non-Christians (because that fucking sky wizard is always in the mix) and LGBTQ people and wraps it in a big package with QAnon bow that says, "Of course they had to destroy the one man who was going to save us all." And, of course, in the face of that, a coup is horribly logical to keep that fantasy of white Christian supremacy alive...

For all the hope in the media that trump is just spewing nonsense, we have to look at how eager trump's fanbase rose up to trump's commands to storm Congress and stop the Electoral count. We have to consider the eagerness of trump's handlers and advocates who openly call for further coup attempts the way Mike Flynn did when he praised the Myanmar takeover as "something that should happen here".

The United States is still facing a sizable faction of our fellow citizenry consumed with the fantasies of a militia uprising against "the communists and subversives" that they read about in the Turner Diaries and listen to on the Far Right rage shows. It doesn't help us that a number of Republican-controlled states are passing pro-gun laws that are going to make it impossible to hold the gun-nuts responsible for their actions.

We're looking at a hot summer, America, and I'm not talking about climate change (although that's another problem).

Stay safe, and for the Love of GOD turn off the Fox Not-News and every other Far Right ragefest. That hate is making everyone around us insane.

Update 12/26/21: Thanks as always to Batocchio at his Vagabond Scholar website for accepting this article for the annual Jon Swift Blog Roundup for 2021!

Update 7/20/22: As one of the five articles I submitted this year to the Florida Writers Association's Royal Palm Literary Awards, this has passed the Semifinalist stage and is now under consideration for Finalist! Yes! And I am liking the new Semifinalist logo shield:

Update 8/12/22: I am a bit surprised given the partisan nature of it, but this article survived the Finalist round! Now, from what I learned the first time I reached this spot, this does not guarantee a top three finish. There can be 5 other blog articles that reached this level, there could be 10 or 20. But there is still a good chance this could win first, second, or third prize in the Nonfiction - Blog category. So now I have to show up at the banquet... Also I get this FWA Finalist logo.

Update 10/29/22: In a personal stunner, this article won the Silver award for Nonfiction - Blogging or Article category at this year's Florida Writers' Association's Royal Palm Literary Awards! And here's the badge to promote the honor!

Blogging Is Hard. I'm Better At It Than trump

I admit, it's hard to blog. When you have a full day of librarying, and then you gotta take care of stuff at home, and feed two cats, and play City Of Heroes on an underground server, THAT'S A FULL DAY'S WORK LAD AND DON'T YOU FORGET IT.

It's also hard to find topics or issues to blog about, especially during a wave of multitude issues - the abortion bans hitting every Red state, the Republican voter repression efforts, the Far Right threat of another insurrection riot, the ongoing immigrant fiasco, the pandemic, and finding a decent pair of pants at a Big & Tall store uh arguing over the merits of taxing the rich - that makes it hard to whittle it down to just one important enough to blog about.

So suffice to say it's a bit of an enjoyment to watch the likes of donald "bankrupt businessman" trump attempt to start a blog only to have it close down less than a month later.

BWHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

Let's get a little more detail out of David Edwards at Raw Story (there may be a paywall):

Former President Donald Trump's blog was shut down on Wednesday and the internet's response was brutal...

"Trump's blog has been shut down permanently," Thomas Yantorno wrote. "Another failure in a endless list [of] failures, bankruptcies and financial losses. History will judge as the biggest loser in American history."

"No one cared about the Trump blog and its traffic was dismal at best," political commentator Ameshia Cross noted.

"Gosh, you'd think trump would've wanted his blog up and running for when he's *reinstated* in Aug. #Sad," another commenter joked.

"I've had kidney stones that lasted longer than Trumps blog...and they were more bearable," one Twitter user said...

When trump got banned from places like Twitter post-presidency, he promised to start his own online media outlet, one that would rival Twitter but dedicated to all things trump as he campaigned to lie his way back into the White House.

Instead, he paid some joker a ton of (other people's) money to start up a standard, run-of-the-mill website that offered blogging features and not much else.

As noted, the traffic to that site was meager... probably around the same level *I* get on a weekly basis (which is about 120-180 views per week that I know of). Thing is, I'm doing this shit for free, on my own time, I honestly don't care about the views - seriously, if it gets too high I worry I'm getting hit by spammers - and I ain't bragging about anything.

(beat)

Except for the 2020 SILVER PRIZE from the ROYAL PALM LITERARY AWARDS WHICH YOU CAN SEE TO THE RIGHT COLUMN OF THIS BLOG.

(grin)

There are a couple of observations to make here:

1) trump has no true tech savvy nor does anyone else around him. Nor did he have the means or funding to pull off a real tech startup to challenge existing Internet media formats. The people who sold him on this project were trying to get him to repackage a 2004 format for a 2021 audience, much like repackaging expired meat as fresh cuts.

2) trump's only skill was self-promotion through other media formats - Twitter, NBC faux-reality shows, Fox Not-News - where he didn't have to rely on his own platform. Twitter in many respects was perfect for him: all trump had to do was rage-tweet something in 280 characters that would be easy to digest for his followers and not involve a shit-ton of intellectual evaluation of the issue at hand. You can't do that on a blog.

3) trump as always over-promised and under-delivered. Trying to sell something on the cheap as something worth millions. Yet another business-based endeavor - that trump website was going to be his ground-floor to keep the money flowing in - that crashed and burned on trump for all to see. trump's broken casinos... his near-empty hotels (that DC hotel he used to violate the Emoluments Clause is up for sale (again))... his unwanted merch... that fraudulent university... everything started by him or taken over by him (YOU KILLED THE USFL, YOU FOOL) turned to shit and went bankrupt. And THIS is the model of "successful businessman" that the Republicans want to keep as their party leader?

trump has no true innovative idea to start anything good. trump has no real skill to adapt and improve when the moment calls for it.

trump's blog was a disaster from the get-go.

Just like everything trump tries to run himself.

Anybody still thinking trump is a successful person - the only success he ever had was getting too many people to believe his lies - is a goddamned fool.

Which is still a goddamned problem. More on that later.

Just Released: Strangely Funny Vol. VIII and The Murder Hornets Story!

 Ahhh yeah, volume VIII is officially released! My story "War of the Murder Hornets" is dedicated to every soul who survived 2020 and those who did not. 

You can purchase a print copy or you can purchase the eBook Kindle version!

MANY THANKS to the editors Sarah and Gwen for choosing a line from "War of the Murder Hornets" story as the quote blurb to help sell the anthology! 

"Just want to let you know, so far we’ve got two of the drafted volunteers reporting sick to the base doctor with severe cases of Aw Hell Naw."

-- Paul Wartenberg, "War of the Murder Hornets"

Squeeeee!!!

PLEASE do get a copy, the stories from this series are worth the read, and PLEASE leave a good review for us, I do hope you enjoy our twisted tales.

Just Kill The Filibuster

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

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

Today, Senate Republicans did the same thing...

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

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

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

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

/headdesk

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

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

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

Ezra Klein wrote this at Vox back in 2015: 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The SNL Cast of the trump Years Did It Their Way

Update May 20, 2022: I was off by a year. Major cast members - especially Kate McKinnon and Aidy Bryant - are exiting THIS season finale. My bad.

I've written before about Saturday Night Live, a long-running weekly skit / music show and its' impact on our nation's cultural norms and political views.

It's a show that has the occasional bad night, due to a weak guest host - usually a hot marquee name coming off a blockbuster hit movie or TV show that turns out to be too one-note or bad at comedic timing - or just a bad time of current events where there's not much to make mockery of. It's been running for a loooooong time, which has brought up accusations that the show is outdated, out-of-touch, unnecessary... usually by people who wonder why Adam Sandler or Bill Murray still aren't on the show.

And yet, the show can catch a moment - a pitch-perfect skit, or jumping atop a political moment deserving of a sledgehammer blow - and put out amazing nights of comedy AND political commentary. The 2017 show with Kristen Stewart - with Melissa McCarthy cameoing as an enraged Sean Spicer - for example is arguably one of the greatest nights SNL ever had, and I will fight you over that if I have to.

Why I am bringing this up now is that last night with Anya Taylor-Joy was the finale for the 2020-21 season, where a lot of emphasis was placed on the main cast in various stages of saying their farewells... not just for the year but maybe for good as SNL Players:

If you hadn't noticed, SNL goes through a rotation of core cast members - due to most acting contracts set between three to five years - which adds to the uneven nature of the show's history (some cast groups like the original Not-Ready guys from 1975-1979 or the late 80s-early 90s were epic crews that loom large over all the ones who follow them). You might remember them through the actors/actresses who were/are clearly the "glue" character-types keeping up with the A-list caliber types holding everyone's attention (Eddie Murphy in the early 80s, although his fellow castmates of that era weren't slouches and still occasionally annoyed how Eddie sucked up all the attention and glory). 

For the current tenure, the main Players were inarguably Kate McKinnon, Cecily Strong, Aidy Bryant, and Kenan Thompson (who had honestly been there so long he's a core player to three different eras). That the four of them stood together for the Cold Open as seen above on that YouTube clip signals big time that those four are ready to move on.

Granted, this comes up EVERY season finale - the OMG online chatter of who's gonna stay and who's gonna move on to their own TV show or three-movie contract with Paramount - but this year it seems like it might finally happen with the core crew... because in the Real World, things have finally changed.

In that I mean, trump is out of office.

If we go back to the craziness of the 2015-2016 SNL Season (Number 42, oh ye Gods Douglas Adams knew!) the show's mandate to skewer current events went into hyperdrive (no, worse, LUDICROUS SPEED) as the trump campaign hurtled our nation (no, the entire world) down the Darkest Timeline ("Stop me before I subreference again!" - Dennis Miller before he went mad). The SNL cast was game enough to try and document all of the atrocities that the 2016 election year was throwing at us, save for the moment when the show's producers decided to let trump himself host an episode - a moment the show has been apologizing for ever since - but when the Electoral College results meant goddamned donald trump was going to the White House everything suddenly imploded.

McKinnon's Cold Open tribute to Leonard Cohen - who had died earlier that week - wasn't just a memorial to a passing musician, it was a funeral dirge for half of a nation - and for most of the planet - sideswiped by an unwanted and fear-driven "victory" for one of the worst human beings in modern history. McKinnon was doing it dressed as Hillary Clinton - whom she had effectively parodied on the show - but this time was all serious and reflective, realizing that we were all going into at least four years' worth of madness, corruption, and anger. "I'm not giving up, and neither should you," McKinnon said - as herself as much as faux-Hillary - and that's pretty much what she did.

And so for four years, SNL has skewered, mocked, belittled the trump regime with a darker, more strident tone than any previous Presidential era that preceded this. Saturday Night - notoriously Liberal most often, at best Center-Left - had been hard on Presidents - even Liberal-leaning ones like Carter, Clinton, and Obama - from time to time, but often displayed a side of empathy that allowed for pathos to underline their criticisms of the Commander-in-Chiefs. Dana Carvey's turn as Bush the Elder is a perfect example of that empathic display. Not so with trump, Loser of the Popular Vote, whose ignorant, greedy, bullying habits were on full display every time guest-star Alec Baldwin had to put on the wig and fake nose (Baldwin himself was begging by 2017 (!) to stop playing him because even pretending to be trump was soul-draining).

For four years, roughly the same SNL crew had to carry the psyche of a battered United States through this Darkest Timeline, dreading every possibility that somehow trump and the Republicans could make it worse (see the following YouTube clip):

There have been notable departures - Leslie Jones in particular left in 2019 - but it felt as though most of the cast who came in at the turn of the decade were sticking around longer than expected because in some respects the job - Surviving trump - hadn't been finished.

And then the COVID-19 Pandemic hit. All of sudden, everything was put on hold. Oh, the show kept running - using home recordings, Zoom chats, long-distance connections - but as the world went into lockdown so too did SNL, reflecting the anxiety, sorrow, and yearning we all carried with us through 2020 to now.

There were a lot of tears watching this one because it felt like this was a farewell episode for too many of the cast at the end of Season 45:

It was actually a surprise that the entire 2019-2020 cast returned for this season. Again, probably due to the sense of "unfinished business." But now it's Biden in the White House, the vaccination of America has half the nation safe to unwind again, and there's this tiny sliver of relief letting us all know we can go back into the world now. So now, we're finally going to say farewell.

I'm mentioning how emotional a farewell can be to watch SNL cast members go, especially for the eras you can just tell are going to end, mostly because these actors - and often the characters they portray - become beloved during their tenures.

But this one - if this is indeed the farewell for many of the Players who kept us laughing and crying since 2016 - is going to hit harder than before.

These Players were the comedians and performers who did their best to keep most everyone else sane during the craziest years of our lives. The combination of trumpian madness and pandemic anxiety has hit a lot of us hard emotionally. Watching SNL was like trauma therapy, helping us through crisis after crisis as we crawled into 2020-21 and onto the shores of a calmer, happier future... 

(Michael Gaetz does something ridiculous and criminal off-stage)

OH GODDAMMIT, COLIN JOST GET BACK OVER HERE YOU'RE GONNA NEED TO MAKE MORE JOKES ABOUT HOW YOU LOOK LIKE GAETZ.

Alas, he may be gone next year (unless they have him do a cameo Cold Open standing in a jail cell whining "Attica! Attica!" with Kate McKinnon as a jailed Rudy asking "You talking about the prison?" with Jost/Gaetz replying back "Nah, it's this high schooler I was gonna hook up with for the Halloween dance!")

To this crew, I salute you: You did it your way.

The Point of Investigating The Insurrection of January 6

It's been a fight for the past few months, but the House finally voted on setting up a "bipartisan" investigative committee into the planning and events of the trump-pushed insurrection back on January 6, 2021 when trump inciting his crowd of followers to storm the Capitol and stop Congress from confirming the Electoral Vote in favor of Joe Biden.

The vote was mostly partisan (35 Republicans including the co-signer of the deal John Katko (R NY) did vote for it) for obvious reasons: It looks bad for trump and will look bad for the Congressional Republicans caught between defending the guy who nearly got them killed. In particular it could cause problems for Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (via Cameron Peters at Vox): 

On Sunday, a second House Republican suggested that, if a congressional commission examining the January 6 attack on the US Capitol materializes, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) could soon receive a subpoena to testify.

Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI) joined former Republican House conference chair Liz Cheney (R-WY), who was ousted from that job Wednesday, in suggesting that a subpoena could be on the table for McCarthy, telling CNN’s Dana Bash on State of the Union that “I would suspect Kevin would be subpoenaed...”

As of Friday, when the leaders of the House Homeland Security Committee announced a bipartisan agreement on its formation, that commission looks closer than ever — much to McCarthy’s potential discomfort, should he be called to testify.

If McCarthy testifies either voluntarily or under subpoena as part of the commission’s investigation, he could face the prospect of bridging the rather large gap between Trump — who has shown no inclination to relinquish his grasp on the Republican Party — and the truth of what happened on January 6.

As CNN and other outlets have reported previously — and pro-impeachment Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler (R-WA) confirmed in a statement in February — McCarthy spoke with Trump while the riots were still ongoing and pleaded with Trump to call his supporters off.

According to Herrera Beutler, Trump “initially repeated the falsehood that it was antifa (Note: shorthand for "Anti-Fascist / Black Lives Matter" protesters) that had breached the Capitol” on the call with McCarthy.

Subsequently, Herrera Beutler said in her February statement, “McCarthy refuted that and told the president that these were Trump supporters. That’s when, according to McCarthy, the president said: ‘Well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are...’”

It's that kind of evidence that if confirmed by committee would establish trump's refusal at the very least to take the riot seriously, which could lead to charges of negligence on the then-President Loser of the Popular Vote (especially from Capitol Police who survived that day and the family members of those who died). Any additional evidence confirming how trump egged that mob into action against Congress could lead to charges of insurrection (the Impeachment on that matter should not count as Double Jeopardy as impeaching is a political process not a criminal one).

These are things the Republican leadership do not want happening, because trump still has his mob at his beck and call and if becomes clear he's getting handcuffed over this he will incite that mob again, and again against fellow Republicans who won't bow to him. (For God's sake, that January 6 mob was stoked to kill trump's own Veep!)

As of now, with the vote done in the House it moves to the Senate where the damned Cloture/Filibuster rules are in effect, meaning either 10 Republicans have to agree to the committee (Mitch is opposing it so it's unlikely those ten will be found) or the Democrats have to make a motion to kill the Filibuster rule altogether (which is unlikely because Senators Manchin and Sinema still think the Filibuster is a cool thing). There's a good chance this committee won't get the green light anyway.

As others would note, and I would agree, if the committee does get confirmed it would be mostly for show. The Democrats will take it seriously but the Republicans will block and obstruct any meaningful attempts to present the facts of what happened that January 6. Anything the committee finds will get ignored by the Far Right media and any results - outside of actual arrests of trump and his inner circle -  would be laughed off. Even having Republicans on it to make it seem bipartisan won't help that illusion with anybody on the Far Right: It may even not be enough to convince the so-called arbiters of the Beltway Media of its legitimacy because their grand Narrative may conflict with the finds.

The committee only would have the merit of documenting the atrocities for the public who still need to know what happened... and for future history, as long as it aids rather than blocks the ongoing criminal investigations that have already arrested a sizable number of rioters - a great place to keep track is with Emptywheel - and the committee can add to the already-overwhelming proof that insurrection happened. It all becomes a question of if (sadly not when) the people truly responsible for the violence that day (trump trump and more trump) gets held accountable. 

Either way: Here's hoping the New York criminal investigations in trump - oh, that's another story this week - get the handcuffs on trump and his corrupt kin even faster than this committee.

Revive the Mueller Findings. Charge Barr AND trump with Obstruction

It's been awhile since I wrote about the Mueller Report. It's been enough time for me to look back and kick myself for putting too much hope into what the investigations into trump's ties to Russia during the 2016 campaign would lead to. 

I had hoped by now we'd see harder sanctions against Putin for his meddling, more laws making it harder for foreign powers to intervene in elections, stuff like that. I don't think I've seen much activity from either the Biden administration or from Congress on those fronts.

I had hoped that Congress would have acted on Mueller's recommendations, on the evidence he found that trump obstructed the investigation at least five times, to impeach trump and have that on record. Granted, the Republican-led Senate back then would have given trump a pass like they did on the two Impeachment trials trump DID face, but for some reason Pelosi's Democratic House refused to go there. Instead, they impeached trump on other acts of misconduct he did in office, such as extorting Ukraine to interfere with the 2020 elections using a faked "investigation" into Joe Biden's son Hunter; and impeached trump for inciting insurrection when Congress tried to confirm the Electoral College votes on January 6th.

I understood back in 2019 when the Mueller Report was released that then-Attorney General Barr would redact and underplay the findings as much as possible: That Barr would weaken the impact of Mueller's work to spare his Overlord trump as much as the twisted Justice Department could allow. As a result, whatever value that Report had for America and for our legal system got diminished and buried.

Until earlier this May, when one of the judges still overseeing the legal handlings of Mueller's prosecutions tore Bill Barr a few holes and demanded an accounting (via Michael S Schmidt for the New York Times):

Judge Amy Berman Jackson of the United States District Court in Washington said in a ruling late Monday that the Justice Department's obfuscation appeared to be part of a pattern in which top officials like Mr. Barr were untruthful to Congress and the public about the investigation.

The department had argued that the memo was exempt from public records laws because it consisted of private advice from lawyers whom Mr. Barr had relied on to make the call on prosecuting Mr. Trump. But Judge Jackson, who was appointed by President Barack Obama in 2011, ruled that the memo contained strategic advice, and that Mr. Barr and his aides already understood what his decision would be...

She also singled out Mr. Barr for how he had spun the investigation's findings in a letter summarizing the 448-page report before it was released, which allowed Mr. Trump to claim he had been exonerated.

''The attorney general's characterization of what he'd hardly had time to skim, much less study closely, prompted an immediate reaction, as politicians and pundits took to their microphones and Twitter feeds to decry what they feared was an attempt to hide the ball,'' Judge Jackson wrote...

Essentially, Jackson's ruling - obstensibly to force the Justice Department to release the internal memos that covered Barr's actions - makes the case that Barr was covering for trump, had already made the legal decision to find in favor of trump, and was going out of his way to ensure justice would not prevail in this matter.

I'm not a lawyer, but to me that sounds a lot like Barr obstructed justice to protect trump from HIS obstruction charges.

We have a new President in Joe Biden. We have a new Attorney General in Merrick Garland.

We should have time on the clock for any and all Obstruction of Justice charges to get issued against William Barr and against donald trump.

This is an Accountability Moment that MUST be answered. Otherwise we risk another round of criminal acts by a corrupt Republican President without any means to stop him.

DAMMIT. Justice demands it. HISTORY requires it.

Let The Rock Cry Out to Gaetz, No Hiding Place

Keeping up with the other Republican scandal that broke open back in March, involving Matt Gaetz and his criminal buddies here in the Sunshine State, today the Orlando Sentinel is reporting that Joel Greenberg will plead out to six charges in federal court this Monday, setting up the case against Gaetz (and possibly others in his circle of local powerbros) covering drugs, payoffs to women, and sex with at least one underaged teen (story by Monivette Corderio, Jeff Weiner, Jason Garcia, Martin E Comas, and Annie Martin):

Days before he was first arrested for stalking a political rival (wait what), Joel Greenberg was in the midst of preparing a fraudulent application for a COVID-19 relief loan (wait what), with the help of a government employee he’d later bribe (you gotta be kidding me). If there was any doubt of his untoward intentions for the aid funds, Greenberg erased it with a text message.

“How quickly can I blow it all on p-ssy?” he asked...

This was the opening lede, people!

Greenberg, Seminole County’s disgraced former tax collector, will plead guilty to six federal crimes — including sex trafficking of a child — in a deal that calls for him to cooperate with federal investigators in the “investigation and prosecution of other persons,” according to an agreement released Friday.

The 86-page document laid bare the remarkable brazenness of Greenberg’s behavior. On his first day in elected office, he sought to cover up a federal crime he’d committed years earlier. He spent hundreds of thousands of tax office dollars on Bitcoin — then borrowed from family to pay it back. He spent thousands on more drugs and sex — including with a 17-year-old girl...

This guy was so bent I doubt he was ever straight.

In addition to trafficking, Greenberg will plead to charges of identity theft, stalking, wire fraud and conspiracy to bribe a public official. Prior to striking a deal, he was facing 33 federal charges. Prosecutors will drop the other 27 counts filed against him...

Just try to remember this, peeps: Greenberg is pleading to the bare minimum the prosecutors wanted to stick to his resume. In most cases to get a plea deal to testify, they'll break it down to one half-decent felony to show the subject will still face some level of accountability, while making sure they show enough mercy to encourage clean testimony. They had so much shit on Greenberg that they HAD to keep these six charges on him and he still had no room to beg for more leniency. The sex offender charge is something that is going to wrap about Greenberg like an albatross for the rest of his days, and this is the lightest they're going to go on him.

All because Greenberg can give the feds even bigger fish to fry. Matt Gaetz as U.S. Representative is a high-profile person, and if even a tenth of the stories coming out about him are provable he's a high-profile hypocritical scuzbucket due to succumb to his karmic fate. And Gaetz is not alone: Greenberg has ties to a lot of other Florida officials involving a number of financial criminal favors on top of the sex trafficking that likely went on within that political clique.

Fellow Floridian Betty Cracker at Balloon Juice is enjoying the schadenfreude ("Let there be perp walks!"):

Greenberg is pleading guilty to some mighty serious charges, and one hopes he does hard time for those crimes regardless of his level of cooperation. He sounds like a psychopath who should be off the streets for public safety reasons. But here’s hoping he’s got tons of evidence that can help the feds nail Gaetz — and who knows, maybe take down some other prominent Republican sleazebags at the same time.

There are two reasons to believe Greenberg does have a ton of dirt on Gaetz and possibly others. Number one, Greenberg seems pretty fucking stupid. Case in point: he left electronic trails and physical evidence all over the place when he was paying “escorts,” attempting to frame political rivals for crimes he himself committed, abusing power, committing fraud, etc.

The dumb motherfucker actually managed to set a county building on fire by overheating servers purchased with public funds to launder bitcoin money from his side hustle. Einstein he is not!

The second reason to believe Greenberg may have the goods is that, like many criminals, Greenberg was apparently super-paranoid about being crossed. The stories about him trying to get a pardon from Trump via Roger Stone included the detail that Greenberg took screenshots of conversations with Stone on an encrypted messaging app Stone used expressly to avoid electronic trails...

We should notice this particular trend of the same scuzbags - Hello again, Roger! - who keep popping up in these Republican scandals. They're all so interlinked with each other they might as well wear matching sports jackets.

If we look at how this will affect Gaetz, it all depends on what Greenberg can bring to the table. As Betty notes, Greenberg left a lot of evidence in his wake, so much so that the federal investigators probably have enough of a case to arrest Gaetz right after his cohort pleads out on Monday. The only reason to have Greenberg testify is due to how legal cases are presented in our system: It helps to have actual eyewitnesses corroborate the documentation and blow down whatever legal defense that Gaetz's lawyers are bound to argue.

How much of this affects the state-level Republicans depends on how much destruction Gaetz will attempt to save his own hide when it's his turn before a judge and jury. It depends on how much he's on the hook for and how willing he'll be to turn state's evidence against his fratbro buddies who were enjoying the same hookers-and-blow parties he threw right up until the damn bill came due.

Popcorn GIFs, anyone?

They're Taking an Awful Big Risk

The Republicans are doubling down on trump, as they push trump's Big Lie of the 2020 election being "stolen" and as they exile any Republican official who dares defy that Narrative.

But is that really a good idea?

Consider:

• There has been no evidence that trump aided Republicans in mid-terms or off-cycle elections in 2018 - he kind of broke even, and overall the Republicans lost control of the House - to where he would be of any help this upcoming 2022 cycle. As the electorate overall tracks further Left into the near future, there's no sign being all-in on trump will be a boon. If all trump has to bring to a rally are his grievances and Big Lie bullshit, it'll be easy service to the trump faithful but not a damn bit of good winning over other voters who'll have the same reasons they had in 2020 to side with the Democrats. The only thing the Republicans will have an advantage in this situation are their voter suppression laws... which may backfire and suppress too many Republican voters instead.
• trump is facing a number of civil court cases (there's so many there's a dedicated Wiki page for them) - he's currently (May 2021) facing three sexual harassment and defamation lawsuits that may see him compelled to give testimony on the stand, and a number of contractual fraud cases involving the trump Corporation - as well as a number of criminal investigations involving state-level tax fraud (New York) and election interference (Georgia) that could well see him on trial by 2022 and in jail by 2024.
• There's still the ongoing legal matter of Jeffrey Epstein's sex trafficking empire with serious ties to trump and a number of trump allies.
• trump is facing legal scrutiny and possible conspiracy charges involving the January 6 Insurrection. As the Justice Dept. and FBI are rounding up more of the trump-led rioters and presenting evidence of conspiring between the Oath Keepers, Proud Boys, and other pro-trump groups - follow Emptywheel for more info on all that - there's more and more evidence of trump's closest handlers - hi, Roger Stone! Hi, Michael Flynn! - involved in the planning and staging, increasing the odds the prosecutors can establish links to trump himself. There are good odds trump may not be available to help Republicans if he's tied up with all these legal matters, especially if even one of these cases ends up with him behind bars. Granted, trump has survived avoiding any serious legal punishment in the many years of court cases and bankruptcies and harassment accusations, but he's running out of favors and legal protectors and any cover he once had. trump's facing serious cases now, and his lawyers are running out of tricks.
• Speaking of running out of tricks, trump is also running out of allies. All of the legal nightmares affecting trump are also affecting his inner circle. Who is going to help trump in 2024 if Roger Stone is out of the picture on his current legal battles over back taxes, Steve Bannon is facing a fraud case this year, and Rudy Giuliani under investigation for shenanigans in Ukraine and here at home. There's still Michael Flynn, but he's a serious liability and will be under tight scrutiny if he ever shows up running anything on a future trump campaign.
• For all of trump's bragging about how popular he is, the facts are he's one of the least popular political figures of the last 20-30 years, and both elections - 2016 and 2020 - he LOST the popular vote (by 3 million to Hillary and 6 million to Biden). He only won in 2016 due to the failings of the Electoral College. If trump were going to run again in 2024 - which he could, and like 2016 he'll mow down any opposition in the primaries because his ONLY popularity is with the rabid Far Right base of the GOP - he's going to try something that hasn't happened since Grover Cleveland ran three times and won two separate terms. And Cleveland got away with it because HE was more popular than his opponents all three times: he lost the Electoral College in 1888, in reverse to how trump pulled it off in 2016. There is no sane way trump could pull his EC flip if he's facing the overwhelmingly popular Biden again in 2024.
• One last thing: trump is old and getting older. Yes, he's actually a few years (74) younger than President Biden (78) now, but trump is not in the best of shape, never had been. There still hasn't been a satisfactory answer about his unscheduled visit to Walter Reed in 2019, fueling speculation he's had "mini-strokes" or at least a heart attack. By 2024, trump will be 78, and he's doing nothing as of now to cut back on a lot of his bad habits. By all signs, Biden's doing a better job taking care of himself if he's looking at re-election when he's 82.

Any one of these things under normal political conditions would be a death-knell for the political candidate. Then again, trump has made it a habit of defying the norms and the many ways of crashing due to political gravity.

But the odds can't keep favoring him. trump is too toxic and prone to self-destruction: we've seen that already.

For the Republicans to keep their faith in such a toxic person highlights their party's own toxic nature. This is how far they've sunk. For the Republican Party since 2015 and well into the 2020s, it's been and it's going to be nothing but trumps all the way down. 

The Big Lie And the One Truth (w/ Update)

(Update: Many thanks again to Batocchio for adding me to Crooks&Liars' Mike's Blog Round Up! As always, you're invited to leave a comment and visit the rest of the blog. Today (Wed. May 12) is looking like it's going to be an insane day...)

So the Republican downward spiral seems to be gaining speed. Via Zach Beauchamp at Vox: 

Remaining in the GOP’s good graces requires that elected officials either actively embrace lies about 2020 or, at very least, refuse to condemn them. As a result, 2020 conspiracy theories are exerting a dominant influence on the party — shaping both legislation and the base’s worldview...

From top to bottom, the GOP has been conquered by the Big Lie (note: trump claiming the 2020 results were stolen and that he won both the Popular Vote and the Electoral College). Much as North Korean state press proclaims that Kim Jong Il invented the hamburger, Republicans must now proclaim that was something fishy about Joe Biden’s victory...

Trump’s pronouncements, endorsed and spread by a number of prominent Republicans, radicalize the base — undermining faith in democracy itself. Republicans inclined to challenge this view realize they’re out of step with the party and mostly stay quiet; those that do speak up publicly, like Cheney or Raffensperger, get marginalized or stripped of their power. This weakens the constituency to challenge any future lies from Trump and other like-minded Republicans.

It’s a one-way ratchet, where a faction of the GOP elite led by Trump pushes the party further and further down an anti-democratic road. And there’s no obvious way to stop it...

What is happening now is that the Republican Party and all of its apparatus - not just the elected officials but the party handlers and above all their media punditry allies at Fox Not-News and elsewhere - are stuck defending an incredibly Big yet easily-disprovable Lie. 

They got stuck partly because they got stuck with a Big Lying Bullshitter in trump placing himself at the head of their table. trump came in lying on Day One, proclaiming himself the most popular and most beloved even at the emptiest Inauguration in memory, and forced not only his underlings to shill that lie but got the rest of the GOP to either buy in or stay silent (which re-enforced the lie's power).

I said it before: Once you become trump's Bitch you will ALWAYS be trump's Bitch. Once he gets you lying for him to prove your worth, he will make you lie even more with even flimsier bullshit until your reputation is worthless.

But this isn't entirely trump's fault the Republican Party has caught itself trapped defending an indefensible Big Lie.

The Republicans are stuck with the Big Lie because it happens to fit this One Truth:

The Republican Party cannot and will not share power with a Democratic Party they view as un-American and thus illegitimate.

Somewhere back in time - you can argue happening between the rise of the conservative Southern Strategy in the late 1960s or the rise of Saint Ronnie in the 1980s or the corruption of Newt's Contract On America in the 1990s - the Republican Party bought into the idea that only they were true God-fearing God-chosen Gun-worshiping patriots. (Letting the Far Right Christian forces take control of the Party had a lot to do with that mindset winning out)

The ongoing slander of accusing liberal Democrats of being Socialists or Communists or both from the 1940s grew like a cancer into the belief - even as Socialism faded and Communism collapsed in the 1990s - that Democrats are destructive and anti-American. It doesn't help that a lot of liberalism brought Blacks and Jews (and slowly among more Women) in large numbers into the Democratic ranks to where the Republican paranoia fell even more into racism, sexism, and anti-Semitism.

All of that fuels the fear and anger and paranoia of not only the Republican voting base but also a Republican leadership that has driven out any moderating voices and replaced them with more rabid and aggressive haters. It's gotten harder and harder for the GOP to even reconsider its world-view against Democrats because it keeps adding more members to their ranks who will never change their hatred of the Dreaded Other Democrats.

This Republican Truth - Democrats Should Never Hold Power That Rightfully Belongs To Us - fits easily into trump's Big Lie - Democrats Stole My God-Given Rightful Power - and now those two parts have fused into one.

But the Republicans have a problem. Where their One Truth was merely a world-view that did not expose itself to self-destructive implosion (Republicans could keep believing it and still function rationally in polite society), the Big Lie is a direct attack on the Real World that sooner rather than later is going to hit the Brick Wall of Unbreakable Facts. The Big Lie compels trump's believers into direct action - SEE the January 6th Insurrection - and these actions have legal consequences where the Big Lie has not and cannot prevail.

The Republicans are betting on their Big Lie carrying them forward into the future. But it's a Big Lie stuck in the past of a failed 2020 election, pushed constantly by a Big Liar in trump who cannot avoid his impending fate either in civil or criminal courts.

The Republicans' One Truth has become their Big Lie.

It's just a question now of when they pay for that lie, because it's too big to avoid.

Brief Thought About Cinco De Mayo This 2021

Look, I understand it's CINCO DE MAYO, the annual day of EATING ALL THE TACOS and DRINKING ALL THE MARGARITAS.

I understand we're slowly coming out of a year-long pandemic that had kept a lot of us from restaurants and bars that would be serving us those tacos and margaritas.

I know that a lot of us have gotten our vaccinations, that a lot of us can risk going out again to restaurants as long as we maintained some respectable distances and kept wearing the masks.

Sad thing is, when I went to my local Mexican restaurant to pick-up a Carryout - I am NOT going to sit in a restaurant until we are damn certain COVID-19 has been contained/managed - I ran into a full parking lot, with 30 people gathered at the front door ignoring every social-distance rule and most of them not wearing masks, and when I went inside to get my meal it was worse: tables packed back to back with every seat filled. I may have only been inside for less than five minutes to get my meal, but my anxiety levels were through the roof.

What. The. Bleep.

To hell with DeSantis and the other deniers saying it's safe - or worse, the ones who keep claiming COVID is a hoax - they are overlooking the reality that COVID-19 is STILL out there, it's still a risk, and Florida alone is one of the higher-risk states (we're ranked 9th right now) thanks to a less-than-average vaccination effort. 

I know people want to go back to normal. I know you want to go out to bars and night-life and stuff. I know you want the ambience again of crowded places and happy noises of fellow diners.

But Christ, Florida. We're not there yet.

Are we going to have another spike of COVID by next week?!

This is not what General Zaragoza fought for, people. /sigh

Republican Party Won't Truly Die. It'll Just Keep Purging

So in the moment right now, the Republican Party has a bit of drama with Liz Cheney - Dick's kid who bought her way into a Congressional seat in Wyoming - trying to carve out a spot as The Voice Of Reason in a party that's long gone batshit insane. Per Mistermix at Balloon Juice: 

I’ve said it before, but Cheney is in a weak position at home and in Congress. She didn’t have the political backing to run for the Senate seat vacated by Mike Enzi — instead, the absolutely terrible Cynthia Lummis won it. The fact that Cheney didn’t even try shows how little pull she has in Wyoming, despite her name. Her dad has been out of the state for 30 years, and she’s a carpetbagger herself in a state where almost every pickup has a “native” bumper sticker. My guess is that another Republican like Lummis, who voted against impeachment and against certifying the election, will give Liz a run for her money in the 2022 primary. Losing her job as conference chair is just the beginning...

Cheney's leadership position with the House Republicans is pretty much taken from her, even with all the whispered rumors that a sizable number of fellow Republicans agree with her that trump's Big Lie of a stolen election will wreck the Republican Party's reputation (if not their party's ability to gerrymander and suppress votes to stay in power anyway).

But to anyone (like Beltway pundit Jennifer Rubin) thinking that Liz Cheney - or Mitt Romney, or Joe "What Child Support" Walsh, or David Jolly - can become a beacon of a Third Party to rise up and save True Conservatism from themselves, forget it. I've said it before: There is no GOP Savior coming to rescue a party that's been consumed by rage and lies for the last three decades.

What we're getting is this ongoing fantasy, this wish fulfillment, among the Far Right pols and pundits desirous for The Return Of The Reagan Heir: the Prince That Was Promised. We're talking about a set of people pining for the days when it was 1985: when Reagan stomped the hell out of Mondale and his dirty hippie librul army of Electoral College no-shows, Bipartisanship meant Democrats paid for the bar tabs, Capitalism was ascendant, Soviets were getting blown up in Afghanistan, Wall Street was peaking, Grenada was pacified, MTV gave us endless loops of "Money For Nothing", and it was safe for decent honest hard-working folk to openly declare they were proud to be Republicans Americans.

These pundits and pols still don't get it: that was all an illusion...

When the modern Republican Party is pining for a Savior, they're really pining for a candidate who can be this Passive-Positive person, someone likable and pleasing to the audience. Which was why a lot of pundits kept falling in love with these photogenic types like Marco Rubio or Scott Walker. But that person doesn't exist anymore. And for one very good reason.

The Republican Party doesn't HAVE anyone anymore who is genuinely likable or congenial. The Far Right has driven everyone out who can be open-minded and receptive and appealing on a personal level. They've created an environment within their party ranks that every member HAS to support a dogmatic agenda - restrict or kill a federal government they view as "bad" - that can only be backed by Active-Negative types of dour and sour politicians. That type of agenda can only attract that type of candidate, no matter how hard they try to fake empathy.

This is it, Republicans. This is it, Bill Kristol and Erick Erickson and David Brooks and others raging against the oncoming storm that is Trump. No more lies, no more illusions. The reason you're getting Trump as your banner-carrier is because all your efforts the last 30 years to build a new Reagan has instead built a toxic stew of racism, sexism, anti-Establishment anarchy, and failure of leadership within your own ranks...

I am not seeing anything now that changes my mind. The current party leadership still kowtows and worships at the foot of the man who staged an insurrection that almost got themselves killed. Minority Leader McCarthy isn't leading anything but a mob of wingnuts who spew every QAnon conspiracy at the TV cameras any chance they get.

This is not a Republican Party that is in the mood to change its mind. They have spent the last thirty years shilling a Narrative that Democrats are Socialist-Commie criminals worse than child molesters (even when those molesters are other Republicans), and they're so dug into that world-view they dare not admit how much of a lie that is. They've become so calcified in their political ideology that they don't even need to post a party platform to campaign on anymore.

There is no GOP Savior coming to save them because there's nothing left of the Republican Party to save.

If there is any real, honest way for the Republican Party to regroup and rethink itself, it has to happen through straight-up implosion: Enough of the Party elected officials across the board giving up on the madness and walking away. Much in the same way the Whigs of the 1850s fell apart when their party collapsed over their failures to combat the slavery issues made worse by the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act.

Problem with that scenario is that any disaffected Republican leaders in this situation will have nowhere else TO go. There is no standing Third Party of repute - sorry, Libertarians, you don't count - where these ex-GOP apostates can regroup. These ex-Republicans would have to form a new party by scratch, and I've blogged before about how hard that can be. 

The biggest issue would be money: the Sensible GOP Faction - they'll need to come up with a name if they do split off - are going to need a massive bankroll to get on state-level ballots and set up campaigns. While these ex-parrots ex-Republicans can reach out to corporations and rich folk to help out, there's no guarantee enough of them will abandon the existing Republican Party and risk it all on a brand-new Third Party. How many deep-pocket SuperPACs support the fearmongering against minorities, feminists, and immigrants? Too many, alas...

A lot also depends on how this anti-trump GOP Savior Party identifies itself: Are they going to dismiss a lot of the Culture War hysteria, the racism and sexism that has been the meat-and-potatoes of the modern Republican Party? They could form themselves as a pro-business faction and denounce the wingnuttia that has consumed the Republican base... but would enough voters swing away from that madness? When you have 70 percent of the existing GOP base believing trump's Big Lie that the 2020 election was stolen, there's a good bet your new anti-trump party isn't getting that 70 percent bloc and you'd be damn lucky even to get the 30 percent that still live in the Real World.

In the end, like I keep saying, there IS NO Savior coming to rescue the Republican Party from itself.

All we're going to get is a fresh new cycle of purges, similar to the RINO hunts of the 1990s that began the party's descent into the madness we see today.

It will only be a purge of any elected officials who oppose the Far Right Narrative. The Republican voters themselves won't get purged, with every sign the base will gleefully stay with a party that plays to their fears and nothing else.

Gods help us. Always.