Republicans Will Vote For a Convicted trump

One of the oddities of the American electoral system is that our Constitution barely spelled out any requirements for the office the Presidency.

All that's needed are that the candidate be of 35 years of age, a natural-born citizen of the United States, and having lived in the United States for 14 years.

There are no other qualifications, like say the candidate having previous elected experience (as a Governor or Senator or Congresscritter), or that the candidate has a college degree of some kind, or that the candidate pass some kind of intellectual competency test.

This becomes an oddity because it leaves open the possibility of some monstrously unqualified person running for - and winning - the office of the President. You could have someone who didn't even finish getting a high school education and shows a decided inability to write and read or even perform basic math. You could have someone who displays open psychological disorders like extreme sociopathy and narcissism (oh wait, we already had...). You could have someone getting elected President while sitting in a jail cell as a convicted felon.

Don't laugh, that almost happened. Sort of.

We've had people putting their name in for the highest office in the land while sitting with their homies in Cell Block D. Victoria Woodhull did it in 1872, running as a protest candidate at a time women weren't allowed to vote or hold office. Eugene V. Debs ran on the Socialist Party ticket in 1920 while sitting in jail for violation of the Espionage Act. Lyndon LaRouche ran for President in 1992 while in jail for tax and mail fraud.

It should be noted none of those examples even had a snowball's chance in hell. Woodhull wasn't taken seriously by the (mostly male) voters and none of them were ready for women to have such basic rights until the 1900s when the 19th Amendment finally passed. Debs - who had the best success among these examples with about a million votes - was running as a Socialist in a place - the United States - that never embraced socialism as a political philosophy even during the Progressive Era of the early 20th Century (much to the dismay of the Bernie Bros to this day). LaRouche was a verifiable conspiracy nut spouting racist and incoherent thoughts, and never garnered any major support even when he tried running on a Democratic Party label.

So why should this even be a problem for us?

Because donald trump, currently facing at least THREE criminal investigations and several civil court trials (one of which - the New York inquiry into tax fraud - could involve jail time), could well be a convicted felon by the time the 2024 election cycle rolls around... and the goddamned Republican Party - with enough base voters to give trump at least 62 million votes and at most 74 million - will likely have trump at the top of their ticket for another shot at the Presidency.

We're going to have a future 2024 campaign where one of the candidates - trump - will be forced to wear an orange jumpsuit while Zooming his debate performance from the Florence SuperMax prison.

I'm not the only one looking at this train wreck happen (again). David Frum is documenting the horror over at the Atlantic (paywall):

...Big-money Republicans hoped that 2022 would be the year the GOP quietly sidelined Trump. Those hopes have been fading all year, as extreme and unstable pro-Trump candidates have triumphed in primary after primary. Their last best hope was that the reelection of Ron DeSantis as governor of Florida would painlessly shoulder Trump out of contention for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. Now that hope, too, is dying.

DeSantis ran in 2018 as a craven Trump sycophant. He had four years to become his own man. He battled culture wars—even turning against his former backers at Disney—all to prove himself the snarling alpha-male bully that Republican primary voters reward. But since the Mar-a-Lago search, DeSantis has dropped back into the beta-male role, sidekick and cheering section for Trump.

Trump has reasserted dominance. DeSantis has submitted. And if Republican presidential politics in the Trump era has one rule, it’s that there’s no recovery from submission. Roll over once, and you cannot get back on your feet again...

Or as I like to say it "Once you become trump's bitch you will ALWAYS be trump's bitch." Back to Frum:

Historically, conservatives spoke the language of stability; progressives, the language of change. This summer, however, the Trump Republicans are speaking the language of confrontation, of threat, of violence. Five days ago, Peter Wehner described here at The Atlantic the angry shouts on right-wing message boards and websites. That language of menace is now being used by the former president himself. Allow me impunity or else face more armed violence from my supporters is the implicit Trump warning...

I've mentioned before how terrifying trump is as a political figure: In nearly every situation where a political scandal would bring down an elected official, for some godforsaken reason trump defies gravity and becomes even more entrenched as the standard-bearer for the twisted and broken GOP. In my own words back in 2016:

Here's where my hope turns to despair. For more than a year we've seen Trump campaign exactly in this manner: Shameless, reckless, lying, self-serving, arrogant, noisy, inhuman, insane. Everything he did last night was a greatest hits version of every horror Trump displayed on the campaign trail... and in all those previous disasters, Trump's numbers went up. He kept moving, he kept lying, he kept winning in the worst ways. That shamelessness is key: Most other politicians would never sink to the levels Trump does, because they are actually concerned about their reputation and their futures. Trump doesn't care: He believes his reputation is flawless - hint: it's not - and his soul unblemished, so he continues to behave this way because nobody stops him and because too many people buy into his con game.

The normal dynamics of an election cycle tells us that what happened to Trump tonight would sink any campaign. The law of gravity regarding any single gaffe requires that Trump sinks below his support and fades into zero. But that has not happened to him yet: And after all of the failures and insults and chaos, Trump keeps gaining ground he should not gain. I've seriously begun worrying that either the polls are rigged or that there really are that many clueless voters buying into Trump's scam...

Well, the elections in 2016 and 2020 proved to me there were a lot of voters buying into trump's scam (you may notice I hadn't developed the habit of insulting him by typing his name in lower caps), but it turned out they weren't clueless. Those voters were mostly as spiteful and hateful as he is, and as he granted them license to be that hateful to the world they have sworn him undying loyalty.

It is that shared spite that drives trump's support. To the MAGA voters out there, all of these criminal investigations are not honest efforts to protect our Constitution and our national security: They eagerly accept trump's deflections of them as shams and witch hunts by craven bureaucrats and liberals afraid of trump's "true" popularity and greatness. To these voters, they don't care if trump exposed classified information or violated the Espionage Act, they don't care if trump evaded paying taxes, they don't care if trump has been flushing documents down toilets like he had everything to hide, they don't care if trump has been lying to them for decades. Because to them trump is TRUMP (God/Savior/Emperor) and he can do whatever he likes.

This view among the MAGA crowd is, by the way, open hypocrisy considering how these same wingnuts were screaming - STILL screaming - "But Her Emails" with regards to Hillary Clinton's private server and email scandals... both of which were heavily investigated by Republican-led Congresses and Justice Departments and nothing found criminal. Hillary doesn't break the law and yet the Far Right still screams "Lock Her Up".

For all the fears that when - not if - donald trump finds himself in handcuffs facing criminal charges - be it in Georgia for election law violations, be it in South Florida for espionage, be it in Washington DC for ignoring the Presidential Records Act - that trump's followers will erupt into violence; the equally shocking thing is that even with trump in handcuffs by 2022 and in jail by 2024, the vast majority of Republican voters will still vote for a felon convicted by a jury of his peers.

If there's any good news, it's that trump may appeal to his rabid base but he's not that popular to the general voting public. He lost the popular vote in 2016 when he got 62 million to Hillary by 3 million voters, he only won the Presidency through a broken Electoral College system that favored smaller states. He lost the popular vote in 2020 when he got 74 million to Biden by 7 million voters, which was enough to give Biden the Electoral count as well.

With varying demographic realities - the slow shift to younger Millennial and Gen Z voters who are more liberal as aging conservative Boomers die off - and with the likelihood that enough Independent voters in 2024 will recoil from the reality that the Republican candidate is in jail, it seems unlikely trump can reclaim those 74 million he got in 2020. As long as Biden and the Democrats retain the 81 million who voted for him, trump can't win.

Then again: motherfucking trump defies political gravity (and the Republicans may try to cheat with election results in their GOP-controlled Red states).

Gods help us.

Elections matter, America. If trump does indeed meet justice and is found guilty of his crimes, for the LOVE OF GOD DO NOT ELECT AN HONEST-TO-GOD CROOK TO THE WHITE HOUSE.

Remembering Woodstock '69 in 2022

We're starting to get further away from the original festival of music and arts (and hope), but we need to remind ourselves our nation - the kids, the cops, the bands, the citizenry of Bethel - did okay in a confusing chaotic weekend.

I may go visit the museum in Bethel when I find the time, maybe plan ahead for next year.

In the meantime, some Youtube clips I've scavenged: 

WHAT'S THAT SPELL?

I met a girl who sang the blues/

And I asked her for some happy news/

But she just smiled and turned away...

And as always, a big thank you to Mr. Taggart, Hero of Woodstock Nation.

Always Himself That the Coward Abandons First (w/ Update)

Long before morning I knew that what I was seeking to discover was a thing I'd always known. That all courage was a form of constancy. That it is always himself that the coward abandoned first. After this all other betrayals come easily.
-- All the Pretty Horses, Cormac McCarthy

Good Lord, I've been blogging once a day ever since the word dropped that trump finally pissed off the wrong people - librarians! - and I was hoping to take a break from the matter, but during the day THIS popped up on the tweets. Well, originally it popped up on trump's bad attempt at Twitter, but apparently during the FBI warrant search at Mar-A-Lago they also seized three of donald trump's passports (via Meredith McGraw at Politico):

On Monday, the former president announced that the FBI confiscated three of his passports — two of which were active, one expired — during the search of his private residence in Palm Beach last week.

“Wow! In the raid of Mar-a-Lago, they stole my three Passports (one expired), along with everything else. This is an assault on a political opponent at a level never seen before in our Country. Third World!” Trump shared on his social media platform, Truth Social.

Before you start wondering why one person needs that many passports when one usually suffices:

It’s not uncommon for people to own two passports, especially those who do a large amount of government-related or international business traveling. It’s unclear why Trump’s were taken. Trump is embroiled in a number of complex legal matters though he has not been charged in any of them.

Amid all the drama over the FBI search, Trump had wanted to travel overseas to spend time at his golf resorts in Scotland. The Trump Organization owns three golf resorts in Scotland and Ireland. Trump Turnberry, Trump International Scotland in Aberdeen, and Trump International Golf Links in Doonbeg, Ireland...

It does seems a bit odd that trump would want to travel abroad just as various civil and criminal matters back here stateside are kicking into gear. Hence the near-immediate speculation on social media that trump - with serious criminal allegations involving his theft of records and possible espionage charges related to that - is turning into a flight risk.

Which of course begs the most obvious question: Where the hell could donald trump flee to avoid criminal arrest?

If the situation here in the United States becomes dire for trump, it's likely involving legal woes that would alienate and anger our allies abroad. So fleeing to any of those places - especially Europe where NATO and the EU would reject any sanctuary for trump - is extremely unlikely. If trump thinks he can run and hide in the nations where he owns his golf courses - which is pretty much just Scotland - he's in for a rude welcome (and boot out the door).

Any of the nations who trade extensively with the United States - whose economies rely a lot on that trade - also will not risk the likely sanctions that our government would slap on them the second they find out trump is hiding in their borders. I would think most of the Caribbean, Central America, and South America (even Brazil where a friendly autocrat reigns) will be off-limits to trump.

Basically any nation with an extradition agreement with the United States would be a risky hiding spot. Again, a lot of these nations can ill afford to have an angry American government cutting them off financially to force trump's return.

Granted, there are some nations out there strongly allied to the U.S. who also don't have an extradition treaty, and are in a complex political situation that could disrupt any effort to apprehend a fugitive trump. Most obvious one that comes to mind is Saudi Arabia. Of the nations out there, they provide a key commodity for U.S. interests - oil - and are major allies in geopolitical matters - stability in the Middle East and the containment of Iran. It doesn't help matters that trump and Saudi Arabia are tied together through some questionable business matters including trump's son-in-law getting a $2 billion investment deal with the Saudis... and that Saudi Arabia may be one of the foreign powers that trump may have shopped the national security documents.

But allowing trump to find sanctuary in Saudi Arabia would be a shocking move, and one that would alienate them from not just the United States but other allied nations. It could provide an impetus for anti-Saudi forces in the U.S. - and there are a number of them angry at Saudi human rights abuses and probable ties to anti-U.S. terror groups - to push to cut all diplomatic, military, and financial ties. While it would be a major shock to the global economy, it's one the Saudis may not survive - it would leave them vulnerable to Iran and to their own extremist factions looking to form a more fanatical regime - unless they throw in with the only forgiving superpowers left on the planet (China and Russia).

Which then brings up the few nations where trump could flee: the nations that are in political and economic rivalry with the United States, like China and Russia.

Other nations opposed to us - Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea, Iran - may be intrigued with the idea of housing trump to thumb their noses in our general direction. But even they have to know trump brings his own baggage and bad behavior with him, and he may not be worth the headache. Not to mention the possibility that providing trump sanctuary would be a casus belli excusing the United States to invade them (even North Korea with their threat of unleashing their small nuclear arsenal at our regional allies), and force a regime change without even caring to stick around and rebuild once we got trump in irons. Those nations don't owe trump a thing. So they dare not risk it.

But China and Russia could. Any escalation with either nation would stir up a larger global conflict that would well trigger World War III (with a possible risk of a limited nuclear exchange). At best the United States would hit whichever nation gives trump sanctuary with severe sanctions. China would simply treat it like another tariff war, and respond accordingly. The U.S. would arguably suffer from the supply chain cutoffs, and a prolonged standoff may cripple our diplomatic standing across Asia. It would be a question if China is willing to stick their nation's global standing on protecting a man who openly insulted them and who started those tariff wars in the first place.

Russia is currently struggling with heavy sanctions due to their invasion of Ukraine, and would suffer a lot more if the U.S. hits them at every remaining economic soft point we haven't touched yet. NATO and EU nations could arguably join in with more sanctions, and one possibility would be for several NATO nations affected by trump's betrayals - especially France, if the stories about trump holding onto intel files on their President Macron are accurate - could provide more direct military support to Ukraine, hurting Putin's chances to hold onto contested regions. But that's as far as we'd go to force trump out of hiding. Any direct fight with American forces would pretty much lead to nuclear war.

In the meantime, while Putin and his Russian media cohorts have enjoyed using trump to embarrass and destabilize the U.S., if trump does go running to them for safety it would finally confirm the accusations of trump being Putin's puppet all along. It would be embarrassing to Putin to have trump fleeing like a broken asset to his doorstep, and he'd be stuck with someone who is no longer useful to him. The only reason to hide him would be to make sure trump didn't expose any of Putin's ongoing subterfuge in the U.S. and NATO.

There is an honest question if trump would even risk fleeing in the first place: It would expose him as a coward to his followers to where the spell he has over some of them would crack. It would hurt trump's ability to role-play himself as a victim, and would arguably expose whatever is left of his financial empire - which may be crumbling right now as I type this - to judicial actions like asset forfeiture (make him broke enough that he has no way to buy his protection overseas).

But for all of trump's bluster and bravado, trump is still a coward at heart. This is a guy who happily dodged the draft with "bone spurs" and then went golfing. This is a guy who sets up his underlings to fight each other for his amusement but then get someone else to do the firing for him when those underlings are no longer useful. This is a guy who hid in the White House basement when protestors showed up outside, and then had the National Guard disperse the crowds with tear gas and rubber bullets so he could pose at a nearby church for a photo op once it was safe to do so. If you think it was bravery that got trump demanding to his protection detail to take him to the Capitol riots on January 6, he was likely going to watch safely from the Secret Service vehicle and pose on the edge of the skirmish for another photo op when the smoke cleared.

Confronted with the possibility of the worst photo op of all - getting dragged before the cameras outside of Mar-A-Lago in handcuffs on whichever felony charge reaches him first - trump would arguably flee for his life and lie about it from the safety of a foreign shore.

All he really needs is a private jet fueled nearby and a thirty-minute head start. trump will take it, because his cowardice will get the better of him.

Update 8/18: According to reports, the FBI returned the passports to trump's people... but they did so before trump even railed about it happening, which comes across as a blatant attempt by trump to make himself the victim (again) over something that wasn't even an issue. Still, we're looking at the possibility of trump being a flight risk if the investigations reveal his actions.

Setting It Off as trump's Followers Cross One More Line (w/ Update)

Update 8/16: Many thanks again to Tengrain for including this article in Crooks & Liars' Mike's Blog Round-Up! Please take some time to review the other stuff that's got me ranting all week long...

Just noting for the record, I feel sympathy for the poor guy who has to manage the Wikipedia page on donald trump's ongoing civil matters. It is interesting to note the web encyclopedia made all the criminal investigations into separate pages, but still at any moment the way things are going there's bound to be two to three new civil court filings by now.

Speaking of, if you're looking for the stuff on "trump espionage" it's actually under "FBI Search of Mar-A-Lago," have fun.

In the meanwhile, this weekend post-warranted search has seen a bit of uneasy response from the Far Right regarding donald trump's pending troubles involving the theft of Presidential Records (18 USC 2071), destruction / obstruction of records involving federal investigations (18 USC 1519), and possible espionage (18 USC 793).

In that acts of violence took place, committed by likely MAGA true believers triggered by the news that their Lord and Savior donald trump is facing serious legal trouble he can't lie his way out of.

On Thursday, a gunman attacked the FBI field office in Cincinnati with both a nail gun and an AR-15 rifle, then fled the scene and chased into another county before one last shootout killed him. More details from Elisha Fieldstadt, Ken Dilanian, Tim Stelloh and Ryan J. Reilly at NBC News:

Officers fatally shot the suspect (Walter Shiffer) after failing to negotiate with him, an Ohio State Highway Patrol spokesman, Lt. Nathan Dennis, told reporters.

The man raised a gun and officers opened fire, Dennis said.

It wasn't clear whether he fired, Dennis said, nor was it clear who fired the fatal shot. The man was pronounced dead at the scene, which Dennis described as a rural area off Interstate 71.

No officers were injured, and a motive is still under investigation, Dennis said.

The two officials said Shiffer appeared to have posted in recent days about his desire to kill FBI agents after former President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago residence was searched...

Shiffer was seen at the Capitol on Jan. 6, although it's unclear whether he breached the building, said three people aiding law enforcement who saw him in photos. Shiffer frequently posted about going to the Capitol on social media.

In the days after the FBI searched Mar-a-Lago, Trump's compound in Palm Beach, Florida, he appeared to post multiple times on Trump's social media platform, Truth Social.

In one comment, he appeared to call on people to prepare for "combat." In another, his apparent account said users should kill FBI agents "on sight..."

Brian Murphy, a former official at the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI who’s now an executive at the open source intelligence firm Logically, said Wednesday that his company has observed a big rise in threats against FBI personnel and facilities on social media platforms since the FBI searched Trump's home...

And there's the doxxing attempts by media agitators especially Breitbart's media outlet - which received an unredacted copy of the search warrant from trump's people that included the names of the FBI agents overseeing the search - and a former aide to trump Garrett Ziegler who named those agents and issued threats bad enough that trump's own version of Twitter (Truth Social) had to delete his posts (via Alia Shoaib at Business Insider):

"This is one of the two feds who signed the 'Receipt for Property' form, which detailed—at a very high level—the fishing expedition that the FBI performed at Mar-a-Lago," Ziegler wrote on both Truth Social and Telegram, per the outlet.

Along with the message, Ziegler shared the FBI agents' date of birth, work emails, and supposed links to family members' social media accounts, according to the outlet...

As anyone who pays attention to domestic terrorism activity, what Ziegler did crosses into the threshold of stochastic terrorism. Ziegler claims he's providing "transparency" about "illegal FBI actions" but why the hell drag those agents' families into this mess?

(Saturday night, there was a suicidal car driver who slammed into a Capitol building barricade and shot himself as his car burst into flames. Until the police can find out if the guy had a motive, this is as much as should be said about it)

Not to mention the armed people protesting outside of an Arizona FBI field office on Saturday.

Also: Kind of need to mention the reports of how "The Dark Web" of Far Right secret Internet servers are on fire with talk of civil war.

In short: Yeah, the pro-trump violence is ticking upward.

I almost saw this coming, barely a month ago. I wrote back then the reality we're in the early stages of a second civil war. I knew it was going to be something involving trump getting held to account for any number of his misdeeds surrounding the 2020 elections, the January 6th insurrection, or maybe even one of the big civil lawsuits like the one in New York (where trump had to testify in person and ended up pleading the Fifth Amendment over 440 times). Here's what I wrote:

You can feel it: We are one final step from the "Cannons Firing on Fort Sumter" point of no return. The battle lines are drawn over the January 6th Insurrection and the recent extremist Supreme Court rulings. All it's going to take is one more nudge from the goddamn wingnuts and we will be quoting Fred Thompson's "We will be lucky to live through it" line until the shooting stops, and either the United States remains intact but with the conservatives shattered for 100 years or with the nation broken under an authoritarian bootheel...

I'd bet good money - okay, 50 bucks, I'm a librarian I'm not rich - it's going to involve donald trump freaking out in some way, and most likely over criminal charges that would interfere with his plans to retake the White House in 2024. Thing is, there's a number of separate criminal charges he's still facing...

In that article, I gambled on the likely trigger being the Georgia grand jury investigation into trump's attempt to bully the state's Secretary of State - who oversaw the election results - into throwing the votes out for Biden and giving trump (falsely) the state's Electoral votes.

I honestly didn't even think about the simmering situation surrounding trump's failure to turn over Presidential Records until this February as the possible trigger. To be fair, the Justice Department had kept a tight lid on their investigations into - even in June when they pursued the remaining boxes of classified materials trump STILL hadn't turned over - the possibility trump violated the Presidential Records Act.

Who knew - other than the DOJ - that the case would also involve even more serious allegations of espionage?

As it stands, among all the other possible criminal matters trump is facing - in Georgia, in Arizona and Wisconsin involving "fake electors", with the January 6th investigations into various legal violations the House Committee has already uncovered - this one right here revolving around trump's illicit hoarding of national security/classified documents could well be the first big criminal charge trump will face between now and the end of the year.

And as I noted in my previous article, the minute trump gets charged with actual criminal felonies, his followers will erupt in violent madness. As Zach Beauchamp notes at Vox:

What we are seeing is shocking, but it’s part of an established pattern. Trump engages in some kind of egregious misbehavior, prompting official scrutiny and condemnation of his actions. He treats these actions as unjustified persecution, proof that the “deep state” is out to get him, a claim that the Republican Party and conservative press dutifully echo. His most radical supporters become even more radical, even contemplating violence.

None of these investigations is a witch hunt. In each case, there are serious reasons to believe that the president violated the law. If prosecutors chose not to even investigate Trump, that itself would be politically motivated — a tacit admission that if a political figure is popular enough, he is above the law.

But the result of prosecutors doing their job is predictable: Trump reacts by casting it as proof that he is under attack by nefarious forces...

The litany of grievances, the sense that Trump has been forever persecuted by the government, the unfounded implication that the FBI was “planting information” at his house — all of it screams victimization, that Trump is the target of a vast and shadowy conspiracy pulling the FBI’s strings.

The fact that a Truth Social user had just been radicalized by such talk — posting violent threats on the site before attempting an armed breach of an FBI building — isn’t deterring Trump at all. He is, as the political scientist Julia Azari puts it, a nationalist who has no concept of a nation; a narcissist who abuses the language of patriotism without any commitment to the underlying idea that he has some responsibility to preserve order and cohesion in the polity. In fact, he does the opposite — sowing division and stoking violent distrust if it helps him.

Perhaps Trump’s talk wouldn’t be so dangerous if the rest of the GOP would work to tamp it down. Yet it’s become excruciatingly clear in the wake of his emergence as the GOP’s standard-bearer that Republicans are not taking Trump’s transgressions and troubles as opportunities to dump him, but rather to dig in, right by his side, in similarly radical terms...

The Far Right cannot cut themselves off from trump because trump has given the Far Right everything they've ever wanted and still left them angry and violent for more.

If there's any good news, it's that the rabid trumpian fanbase won't attack the rest of America in large numbers. For all the millions of "true Americans" they think have their back, most Americans - even among the 74 million who voted for trump in 2020 - will not rise to violence when the call goes out. The simple fact is that a lot of them - even the ones yelling and screaming the most - have obligations in the real world that would not allow them to go off and live out the militant cosplay some of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers revel in. Most people are not that violent.

The bad news, obviously, is that in this day it doesn't take a lot of people to commit enough violence to cause grief. Even one gun nut with an AR-15 and MAGA outrage can ruin a small town's entire day.

Like it or not, we're facing dark days ahead. If the Justice Department pursues criminal charges on trump, it will escalate the current civil strife we're in to the next level of open warfare. If Justice is not pursued, all it will do is encourage trump to keep violating more laws, safe with the knowledge his mob rule overrides the rule of law.

Best to hold trump accountable. Let justice be done though the heavens fall. Best to face facts: trump is proving himself a clear and present danger to the safety of the United States itself, and the sooner he faces jail for his crimes the better it will be... in spite of the violence his followers will unleash on the rest of us.

Just be ready for when the day comes, America.

Florida Primary for 2022 Midterms, It's On

In some Florida counties they've already started early voting, but by today (Saturday August 13) they all should have the Early Voting setups for the party-level Primaries for this year's midterms.

SO GET THE VOTE OUT, DEMOCRATS AND LEFT-LEANING INDY VO... well, the thing about Florida is that the primaries tend to be closed to party-only, but there WILL BE items on the ballot - non-partisan races and local referenda - that Independent voters should cast ballots for as well.

You need to check your county's Elections website (check the state's elections directory here) and find out where the Early Voting polls are located. It helps to vote early to make sure you avoid the long lines that tend to form on August 23 for the Primary, and then November 8 for Election Day itself (for that, YOU NEED to be registered to vote by October 11 in Florida, so git 'er dun). 

Your county Supervisor should also provide Sample Ballots - search your Precinct info - so you can plan ahead (read up on the ballot issues and on the non-partisan candidates because they may actually be very partisan off-the-record).

They've crunched the timeline on Early Voting to where you get only a week to do it, otherwise plan ahead to stop at your local precinct to vote and get your choices known.

DO IT, FLORIDIANS. VOTE. These elections matter. Holding corrupt Republicans who haven't done a thing for our environment or our schools or our lives since the 1990s: That all matters. Ballot referendums regarding our schools and our health care and our rights: That all matters. Please get out the vote, and PLEASE for the LOVE OF GOD stop voting Republican.

Emperor Norton Versus the Madman

Usually on August 12, I like to honor the memory of the one and only Norton I, Emperor of the United States and (Oft-times) Protector of Mexico.

It's because on this day back in 1869, Norton issued one of his more famous decrees abolishing political parties due to the strife they brought to the nation:

Norton I., Dea Gratia, Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico, Being desirous of allaying the dissensions of party strife now existing within our realm, I do hereby dissolve and abolish the Democratic and Republican parties, and also do hereby decree the disfranchisement and imprisonment, for not more than ten nor less than five years, to all persons leading to any violation of this our imperial decree. - San Francisco Herald

Today, it's a little hard to be thoughtful about our long-departed Emperor due to all of the current strife caused by one party in particular (cough Far Right Republicans cough), except the more I thought about it, the more I realize I can compare Emperor Norton against the would-be king of MAGA, donald effing trump.

The comparisons start off relatively easy. 

Joshua Abraham Norton was a Jewish immigrant from South Africa who traveled to San Francisco by 1849 to start up business ventures as the newly-made US territory (later state) of California offered much as people swarmed in for opportunities. Starting up with some moderate wealth inherited from his parents just as the Gold Rush kicked off, he invested in real estate and commodities to improve his finances. By 1959 he was a wealthy landowner with investments everywhere, reportedly one of San Francisco's richest men, but then he risked it all in an attempt to corner the rice market. He bought a shipment of rice while a famine in China cut off a main diet staple for the growing Chinese population in California, and hoped the value of that stock would go up to turn a profit. Unfortunately for him, more shipments from Peru glutted the market and made his rice worthless. The losses destroyed his investments and he was forced into bankruptcy. 

donald john trump is a New York-born American raised into wealth with a father who invested heavily in real estate, making donald a millionaire by the time he left college. Except that donald kept wasting his money and borrowing more off of his own father to inflate his own worth. His business empire ranged from own his own properties towards other investments and various marketing schemes. trump famously started up a number of casinos, only to drive each one into bankruptcy. trump attempted other business ventures, ranging from an airline to owning a sports team with a fledging football league (USFL) to a self-branded online university... all of which were financial disasters due to trump's own foolishness, forced into bankruptcy, and pleaded out in civil courts. (I still hold a personal grudge against trump for killing the USFL back in the 1980s) Amazingly, none of the bankruptcies stopped trump in his tracks, as he shook off each failure and moved onto another venture to disguise the destruction he left in his wake.

In 1860, facing destitution and ruin, Norton began going to the local newspapers to issue decrees, starting off first that he was proclaimed by popular acclaim as "Emperor of the United States" and called upon to end the then-fractious buildup to the Civil War between North and South. Since the newspapers had nothing else to fill their pages, one of the editors decided to run the decree... and quickly found the locals would buy up issues to read Norton's latest proclamations. So they printed more, and for the newspapers that didn't get his decrees they cheated and forged their own (and because journalists were lousy with English, you could spot the fake decrees with their poor spelling and grammar). Soon, Norton's decrees - noted for their sagacity and focus on improving public works - were published across the United States, making him a household name. And when train travel improved by the 1870s to where Americans could go on vacation to San Francisco, he became one of the first celebrity attractions.

By the 1980s, donald trump started playing up to the local press, hounding the New York papers with flattering portrayals of himself as a successful businessman. The local papers would usually put his stuff in the gossip sections, or allow them to run because his political and financial (and racist) views drew controversy (and readership). He hired a ghost writer to pen "his" book The Art of the Deal, which became his big marketing draw, and displayed his knack for self-promotion. He used that self-promotion by 2004 to talk others into making a "reality" television show called The Apprentice about himself posing as a decisive businessman, which inflated his media presence a thousand-fold. Once he achieved this, he took up his interests in politics - primarily after President Obama humiliated him on national television - to run as a Presidential candidate by 2016, during which his vulgar behavior won over the rabid voting base of the Republican Party. trump actually lost the Presidential popular vote but due to the archaic and broken nature of the Electoral College he won that, making him President of the United States.

During his tenure as Emperor, Norton I would inspect the city where he lived, write decrees asking the citizenry to invest in various engineering marvels to improve transit. Norton would ask for "taxes" paid by the local businesses, but he kept a strict book and never harassed the locals for more than their allotted fifty cents (which was the price of a good meal at hotels and bars in those days). He called for an international gathering of nations to form a permanent assembly of ambassadors to promote world peace (a precursor to the League of Nations/United Nations). He was known to visit the Academy of Sciences to speak at lectures. He famously argued for a bridge to be built between Oakland and San Francisco (not the Golden Gate), which eventually was built the way Norton envisioned. Legends would crop up about Norton's actions: One story had him turn away an angry anti-Chinese mob by simply standing in their way and reciting the Lord's Prayer until they turned away in shame. 

During his tenure as President, trump would travel frequently to his own resorts and golf courses, forcing the federal government to spend millions in Secret Service details and other gaudy expenses, in open violation of the Constitution's Emoluments Clause. he openly expressed disdain at international treaties, and regularly issued tariff wars that disrupted trade. trump insisted on building a billions-dollar border wall to stop illegal immigrants from entering the nation, and instructed agencies to promote a brutal family separation policy in an attempt to hurt immigrant children. he would insist on getting the best treatment and then never paying for it. trump showed little interest in anything scientific, other than expressing a belief that nuclear weapons could stop hurricanes. trump mocked our foreign allies and pandered happily to foreign dictators who were in opposition to American interests overseas.

Emperor Norton printed his own scrip (private bonds) which businesses in San Francisco would accept as legal currency. Any scrip that has survived to this day are treated as valued collectibles.

trump could have printed himself $1 million bills if he thought the Treasury Department and Congress would let him do it. I'm actually a little surprised he never even tried that.

In 1867, a local patrolman (private security, think "mall cop") at a hotel accused him of being a vagrant for hanging around too long in a lobby area, and dragged him into the police station. When the policeman on duty pointed out Norton had a known address and enough money in his pocket to pay for a meal and a room if he desired, the patrolman argued changing the charge from vagrancy to "having a mental disorder." The public outrage was swift as the city rose to defend their local eccentric. The chief of police let Norton go with an apology and said "Mister Norton had shed no blood, robbed no one, and despoiled no country; which is more than can be said of his fellows in the King line."

By 2020, donald trump had demonstrated to enough people that he was mentally unstable at best for the King business he had bullied and bluffed his way into. When protests over racial injustice rose up, he would call on violent crackdowns. When he needed to clear out a protest in front the White House, he had the police shoot tear gas and rubber bullets at the crowd so he could walk across the park to a nearby church and pose for a disastrous photo op. trump betrayed some of our allies in the Middle East so he could pander to others for personal gain. trump attempted to force Ukraine into lying about trump's political opponents by cutting off military aid Ukraine would need in the near future to defend themselves from Russian invasion. trump gave up on Afghanistan and staged our military withdrawal to make his successor Biden suffer the consequences. When trump failed to bluff and lie his way into overturning the 2020 election results, he called on his mob of followers to riot on Capitol Hill itself to disrupt it in a brazen attempt to hold onto power he didn't earn. Mister trump was responsible for shedding blood, robbing even his own followers, and despoiled countries through inaction and betrayal.

By every metric of leadership and basic human decency, Norton would have been a far better Emperor of the United States than trump ever was as failed President. And yet, we're supposed to think Norton was the madman. Compared to the eternal Shitgibbon, Norton was sane.

Oh, and one last comparison: Emperor Norton I never sold out the United States' national security secrets to foreign powers the way donald trump is trying to.

Three huzzahs for Joshua Norton, First Of His Name, Builder of Bridges, Owner of Nice Hats, and Erudite Blogger of His Era.

 

Quick Update on Blogging Awards August 2022

As mentioned on this blog many times, I've submitted various articles over the years to the Florida Writers' Association's Royal Palm Literary Awards, which has a category for Nonfiction - Blogging.

Back in January, I had decided to submit five articles to see how well the judges accepted them:

• Irrational
• Hark! A Ranking of Nirvana Albums
• The Big Lie and the One Truth
• The Tragedy In Surfside
• Strange Days Inside the Job Lines

There's three rounds of judging: Semifinalist, Finalist, and Awards. FWA uses a rubric system where everything's graded, and anything over a certain score (say, 80 points) can be deemed a Semifinalist. It then goes through a second round of reading, and submissions reach Finalist over a tougher, higher score (say, 90 points). The Finalists then get invited to the annual conference banquet and wait to find out what scored the top three highest for the First, Second, and Third Place awards. There can be more than three finalists (could be five, could be twenty), so there can be some heartbreak if you don't get a trophy.

The good news, the banquet desserts are incredible.

Anywho, of the five I submitted, Irrational, Hark! A Ranking..., and Tragedy In Surfside passed the Semifinalist stage (whee). 

Today I heard back from the judging coordinator that of those three...

• Irrational
• Hark! A Ranking of Nirvana Albums

Both achieved Finalist grades.

I'm a bit stunned the Surfside article didn't make it considering it was a somber take on the building collapse in South Florida, which I figured would be of regional interest. Also a little stunned Irrational has gotten as far as it had, although I do consider it one of my better blogging efforts in 2021 (well enough to have it for Batocchio's annual Jon Swift Roundup).

So, anyway, now I have to attend the annual conference and eat some sweet tasty dessert. (Yes, priorities matter) In the meantime, here's the Finalist banner I can show off for the rest of the year.

 Update 10/29/22: Holy forking shirtballs, "Irrational" earned a Silver award (2nd Place)!

Justice Is Not a Game, Yet trump Is Still Losing (w/ Update)

(Update: Thanks to Batocchio for sharing this article at Crooks & Liars' Mike's Blog Round-Up! Here's hoping we all survive this trumpian mess...)

The reaction to Monday's warranted search of donald trump's Mar-A-Lago resort for classified documents just keeps ratcheting upward to new levels of wingnut farce and legal resolve.

Due to trump publicly denouncing the FBI search as "a raid" and implying that the whole thing was improper, Attorney General Merrick Garland came out this afternoon at a press conference to inform the media that A) He himself signed off on getting the warrant, B) the warrant was necessary after months of delays and denials by trump about the stolen documents, C) there were national security concerns about those documents, and that D) in order to prove all that, the Department of Justice was putting in a request to unseal the portions of the warrant - stuff already known to trump and his lawyers - to the general public as trump "insisted" they should know.

You could kind of hear a large "Oh CRAP" scream halfway across the state of Florida emanating from the shores of Palm Beach at the moment Garland called trump's bluff.

trump, you see, loves playing the victim as much as playing a hero. As long as the FBI and Justice Department kept their investigations into his activities under wraps, trump could complain to his rabid voting base that he's being targeted for a partisan "witch hunt" and that he's the noble suffering martyr to the wingnut cause.

By making the move to unseal the warrant they gave trump's lawyers, the Justice Department is going to reveal exactly HOW they got the warrant, WHAT it focused on finding, WHY it had to happen, and above all discredit all the Far Right media allegations of 'planted' evidence and agency 'misconduct'. trump can no longer play the victim when that happens: At that point, the warrant is going to reveal WHO is a criminal suspect (hint: his nickname rhymes with 'Gitshibbon').

Let's go to legal expert Emptywheel for her take on today's bombshell:

But (Garland)’s not asking to unseal the whole warrant application.

On the contrary. He’s only unsealing precisely the documents that Trump already has in his possession: the warrant itself and Appendices A (describing this house) and B (describing what can be seized). Indeed, the motion notes that the FBI gave Trump these documents...

These documents are precisely the ones that Trump could have released all by himself, but chose not to. He could object now. But if he did, it would make clear — as if all the refusals to release it to journalists hasn’t already — that it’s really damning.

And now — in a short announcement where he took no questions, but where Garland made a fierce defense of DOJ and the FBI — Garland is calling Trump’s bluff...

trump can't afford to let the warrant go public, because it'll reveal that the FBI has legitimate reasons to search Mar-A-Lago in the first place. But trump's made so much noise about it already that if he turns around and demands the warrant be kept private, he'll be admitting to the public that he's in deep legal trouble anyway.

For his entire adult life, donald trump has played the legal system like a game. he avoided accountability for his criminal and civil misdeeds ever since he was a corrupt NYC landlord in the 1970s. trump played the bankruptcy rules like a lark keeping himself afloat while screwing his creditors, running his casinos into the ground and repeatedly pushing his business empire into more questionable - if not outright criminal - actions.

As long as he kept his army of lawyers well-paid and aggressively hounding his victims into despair, trump had no respect for anything or anyone (other than the dictators he admired as powerful men who answered to no one, like he wants to be).

Thing is, trump seems to have crossed a serious line here. While he got away with bending breaking the rules about national security as he sat in the White House, the second trump got kicked out of office he became accountable for all the documents he stole and all the secret intel he's likely exposed.

trump's still trying to play all of this like a game only he is allowed to win.

But he's playing against a federal government that no longer answers to him, that no longer lets him cheat. The Justice Department apparently could tolerate trump's decades of business fraud, the agency had to tolerate the damage he did when he became President Loser of the Popular Vote (Twice), but the rule of law has to kick in now that trump is breaking laws - possibly committing acts of espionage - that cannot be shrugged away.

All that's left now is for AG Garland to tell trump to his face "Game Over."

Not Only Did trump Piss Off Archivists, He May Have Violated National Security

Following up on the big story about the FBI's warrant to recover materials at Mar-A-Lago.

It always helps to follow Emptywheel: A good place IMHO to check on any legal matters. With regards to trump's legal woes over the warrant and seizure at his luxury resort/fake home this past Monday, she's pointing out a few things of interest:

1) The Department of Justice visited trump at Mar-A-Lago back in June to discuss additional boxes of documents he failed to turned over earlier this February (he was forced to hand over 15 boxes back then). There were apparently attempts to subpoena for the documents - a means to get trump to voluntarily return the papers as part of an ongoing investigation into what happened - but trump refused. It seems these papers were so important to him that he wouldn't give them up... and they were so valuable to him he wouldn't shred them either, meaning the DOJ had to get the warrant to get those docs back.

2) As discussed earlier about the Presidential Records Act of 1978, trump wasn't supposed to flee the White House with any documents at all (they were supposed to go to National Archives), and yet he did so in January 2021. trump has also been documented destroying papers during his time in the Oval Office, meaning he's violated the US Code in multiple ways when it comes to concealing, destroying, or mutilating documents.

3) The documents in question were verified back in February of being "Classified" in nature, meaning trump's ongoing possession of them became a national security risk. Turns out, when Biden became President he refused to give trump clearance to receive any more intelligence briefings (ex-Presidents may retain the privilege in case the current President needs to consult with them on ongoing matters. It is after all a very exclusive club...). Whatever security status trump had between 2016 to 2020 no longer applies, meaning his possession of those boxes of documents were illegal, and above all he had no authority to share those documents (which the DOJ investigation may have found out, hence the urgency to get that warrant).

Remember kids: While trump served as President Loser of the Popular Vote (Twice), trump behaved rather... poorly with national security intel. He revealed in 2017 a then-undercover operation shared between US Intelligence and Israel's Mossad to a pair of Russian buddies, which blew the operation and may have risked the lives of Mossad agents. He later gloated in 2019 over a failed Iranian rocket launch by sharing a top-secret high-orbital photograph of the launch site, which exposed our nation's intelligence gathering capabilities. THAT was so egregiously stupid it enraged Adam L Silverman - a paid professional expert on foreign intel - at Balloon-Juice to infinity and beyond. Yet in spite of the security blunders, trump was untouchable because there was a standing policy that the President - as Commander-in-Chief - can declassify anything he likes. As Silverman noted "...the President can just put classified information out there, claim he has the right to do it, even if it hasn’t been formerly and properly declassified, and he faces no jeopardy and the rest of us with clearances do, it is because THE RULES WERE NOT CONCEIVED OF AND WRITTEN WITH (trump) IN MIND!!!!! NOT A SINGLE ONE OF THEM!!!! The assumption was, based on historic performance of previous presidents, that NO FUTURE PRESIDENT WOULD BE THIS STUPID AND CARELESS!!!!"

Once out of office, however (and THANK GOD), trump no longer has that power to declassify a damn thing. Meaning if he DID do that with any of those 15 actually 25 no wait it's been bumped up to 27 (!) boxes of national security documents he took to Mar-A-Lago, he could be in real serious trouble.

According to Emptywheel, trump's handling of those docs at Mar-A-Lago might involve violating 18 US Code sect.793, Gathering, Transmitting or Losing Defense Information (!), specifically part e). Whoa, what:

Whoever having unauthorized possession of, access to, or control over any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blueprint, plan, map, model, instrument, appliance, or note relating to the national defense, or information relating to the national defense which information the possessor has reason to believe could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation, willfully communicates, delivers, transmits or causes to be communicated, delivered, or transmitted, or attempts to communicate, deliver, transmit or cause to be communicated, delivered, or transmitted the same to any person not entitled to receive it, or willfully retains the same and fails to deliver it to the officer or employee of the United States entitled to receive it... Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both...

In short: If trump even offered to share any one of those classified documents to another person - especially to a foreign agent - he's toast. That trump failed to deliver those documents to the officer/employee of the United States entitled to receive it (cough National Archivist cough) means he's toast.

That trump resisted to deliver the entirety of the remaining boxes he basically stole from the White House from June onward tells this observer that trump intended to willfully communicate, deliver, transit those documents to any person not entitled to receive them. Which could not only mean adversarial nations like Russia getting access to them, but even allied nations like Saudi Arabia (there are things at some point we dare not share with allies due to competing economic and foreign policy interests).

Even Emptywheel has her concerns:

Trump is such a psychopath that the answer to this might normally be in question. After all, he routinely treated top secret intelligence like it was toilet paper or party favors for visiting Russians.

Except DOJ went to Trump’s residence in June and told him this information could harm the US. Then they wrote him a letter, saying that it could harm the US and could he please put a padlock on the basement room that had, up until that point, been accessible to all the suspected foreign assets who’ve paid the price of admission to Mar-a-Lago...

Again, DOJ asked and asked and asked. Trump exhibited awareness the Archives were asking. He stopped in to say “hi!” when Jay Bratt, the head of DOJ’s espionage section, came to visit. And he still hoarded the document.

This may be why Trump claims that nothing was in the hotel safe in his bridal suite, by the way. Keeping these documents at Mar-a-Lago was willful by itself. But keeping such documents in his safe would be proof that he, personally, was hoarding it.

If the FBI really did scoop up highly sensitive documents when they were at Mar-a-Lago the other day, then there may be relatively few steps left to charging him — aside from cataloging the 12 new boxes of stolen documents. DOJ may only need permission from the agencies that own these documents to make the declassifications required to prosecute it.

By going to Mar-a-Lago and asking for these documents in person on June 3, DOJ made it very easy to prove that Trump had been asked, but refused, to give any classified documents found in Trump’s possession on Monday back...

Again, in short: trump is toast. It's now a question of how soon the Justice Dept. can declassify enough of what trump had in possession and whether Attorney General Merrick Garland - who has, after more than a year of seeming inaction, revealed he had the DOJ doing exactly what it needed to do - will file charges on a former President Loser of the Popular Vote (Twice) in a criminal proceeding our nation has never seen before.

Then again, we've never had a crook like trump in the White House before. trump's violations of national security, and disdain for executive responsibility, above all refusal to adhere to decent common sense brought us to this crisis. The partisan outrage may explode - literally - but for the LOVE OF GOD AND COUNTRY, Garland, trump is an ongoing threat to all of us. You HAVE to make this a matter for the courts, and trump HAS to answer to the law for the damage he's done (and still doing).

Quick Notes on a Big Biden Win August 2022 Version

I wanted to make a few comments about the recently passed Inflation Reduction Act:

The trick was finding out which trade-offs the Senatorial logjammers like Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema were willing to take in order for President Biden's agenda see moderate gains. As I noted before, there are few political forces as damaging as a self-serving Senator and Manchin had disrupted efforts at a massive liberal federal budget before. This time around, Majority Leader Schumer (and likely some back-room dealing from Biden) found out what Manchin's (and then Sinema's, which was apparently more money for drought rescue in her state) asking price was and got it done.

We should note that not everything the majority of Democrats wanted is in this bill, but as always there is still time for individual bills tackling those issues to get passed before the November midterms.

The optics on this passing the Senate can't be understated. For once in a long time, the Democratic Party does not look like it's in disarray and warring among its ranks. True, the factions persist - and the Far Left progressives like Bernie Sanders are upset they didn't get a "perfect" bill passed - but this Democratic-led Senate (and next up, a Democratic-led House effectively whipped into line by Speaker Pelosi) was able to get something done that the Republicans couldn't do the last time they ruled both parts of Congress (outside of a massive tax cut haul for the super-rich that no one else wanted).

With my thoughts spoken, let's go to what Emily Stewart, Li Zhou, and Rebecca Leber are saying at Vox:

It’s a lot smaller than the grand dreams Democrats had when President Joe Biden took office in 2021. But the bill, the Inflation Reduction Act, still does quite a lot. It contains historic provisions to tackle climate change and takes steps toward fulfilling a longtime Democratic policy goal: letting Medicare negotiate the prices of some prescription drugs.

The bill could affect what kind of car you buy and how you heat your home. It will prevent big price increases this year for some people who purchase individual health insurance. And if you aren’t paying your taxes, there’s a better chance that the IRS will find out.

Here’s what’s in the bill and what it would mean for American life in the coming years...

The Inflation Reduction Act would be the biggest thing the US has ever done to tackle climate change, and climate makes up the largest share of the bill’s spending: nearly $370 billion.

That’s smaller than the House version from last fall, and a fraction of what Biden originally envisioned for climate. Senate Democrats claim these investments will be enough to cut climate pollution by roughly 40 percent...

The policies overall aim to push American consumers and industry away from reliance on fossil fuels. The biggest share of the funding goes to tax credits and rebates for a host of renewable technologies — solar panels, wind turbines, heat pumps, energy efficiency, and electric vehicles. It includes incentives for companies to manufacture more of that technology in the United States. The bill would also invest in energy efficiency at industrial sites that can help lower the sector’s hefty carbon footprint, while also dedicating some funds to forest and coastal restoration.

The bill, if enacted, would break new ground on other problematic areas of the climate crisis. It sets the first methane fee that penalizes fossil fuel companies for excess emissions of the especially powerful climate pollutant. Another substantial part of the funding helps disadvantaged communities with monitoring and cleaning up pollution, and builds their resilience to climate impacts...

One way Obamacare expanded health care coverage was by creating marketplaces for people to purchase insurance and offering federal subsidies to help low- and middle-income households afford it. Households making up to 400 percent of the federal poverty line — about $106,000 for a family of four — could get federal help to pay their premiums. After that, they were on their own.

But in 2021, Congress eliminated those caps, instead saying that no household should have to pay more than 8.5 percent of their income for health insurance. The change had the biggest effect on people making between 400 and 600 percent of the federal poverty line (for the same household of four, that would be up to $159,000 per year). As Vox’s Dylan Scott previously reported, the changes also enabled roughly 7 million people to qualify for free health insurance under the ACA.

Those policies, however, were set to sunset by the end of this year, leaving millions of people to face much higher health care expenses moving forward. The Inflation Reduction Act extends these subsidies for three years through the end of 2025, ensuring that people won’t face that surge for a while yet...

This bill allows them to finally fulfill that campaign promise by enabling Medicare to negotiate on prescription drugs — a major change that could lead to significant cost reductions for a small subset of drugs.

As outlined in the bill, Medicare will be able to negotiate on a handful of drugs, with those new prices taking effect in 2026. In 2026, Medicare will only be able to address costs for 10 drugs; over time, that will increase to 20 drugs. The drugs in question will be determined based on a slew of criteria, including how expensive they are...

This is mostly good news for Medicare users, which is most everyone ages 65 and up. As they're retirees on limited incomes, they need this protection. The bad news is that fixing drug prices for private insurers - those of us on HMOs - didn't pass. The failure to get insulin - a life-saving drug for millions - capped is a glaring problem, and one that Republicans refused to budge. Back to the report:

Actually raising taxes can be hard, politically. So Democrats are, in part, taking a different approach: getting people to pay more of the taxes they already owe. The Inflation Reduction Act agreement increases funding for the IRS so that it can up enforcement and go after unpaid taxes. Senate Democrats, drawing from Congressional Budget Office numbers, estimate that, by investing $80 billion in the IRS over a decade, it will collect $203 billion...

There is, in short, a large number of large corporations that have been tax dodging for years: Not just finding tax loopholes to exploit but basically refusing to hand over the taxes they still owe. There is a backlog of unpaid taxes, and there hasn't been enough IRS agents to deal with that backlog.

One 2019 paper by Natasha Sarin, now at the Treasury Department, and economist Larry Summers put the tax gap at $7.5 trillion from 2020 to 2029, with most of that figure linked to the wealthy. They calculated that underreporting was five times higher among people making more than $10 million annually than for those making under $200,000. Senate Democrats say that none of the funds directed to the IRS will be intended to increase taxes on anyone making under $400,000...

For all of the screaming by Republicans that the IRS is going to come audit you, relax. A solid majority of Americans earn well under $200,000 (the most common wage is around $45,000, and middle class would be somewhere around $65,000. If you are earning more than $100,000 you are NOT middle class, you're rich fuck you) and literally not worth the IRS' time to audit. Seriously, studies have shown most working Americans pay their taxes and with little cheating. What the IRS is going to do is go after the people and corporations who are over that $10 million cutoff, the ones who ARE most likely cheating and more deserving of those audits.

The agreement also includes a 15 percent minimum tax on corporations with profits over $1 billion. Senate Democrats note that while the current corporate tax rate is 21 percent, dozens of major companies, including AT&T, Amazon, and ExxonMobil, pay much less than that. Originally, the provision was expected to raise $313 billion, though new carveouts were added to win Sen. Kyrsten Sinema’s (D-AZ) vote, which give manufacturers and private equity firms more leeway when it comes to the new minimum tax rate. Those changes are likely to reduce the revenue this measure will bring in.

There is also a 1 percent excise tax on corporations’ stock buybacks, which are currently not subject to any taxes at all. That excise tax is estimated to raise roughly $73 billion in revenue...

This last one poses a bit of a puzzler. One of the big reasons why large corporations kept making their stock buybacks was how easy it was: a Buyback increased your stock value and gave the corporation more ownership of its own stock without really doing anything of value to justify it. Instead of putting your profits into things like raising wages for employees or investing in more capital to expand your business, you just put it back into your stocks and made the boards and CEOs richer.

The puzzler is: Will corporations live with this tax? Given how these mega-businesses are loathe to pay any tax at all, how many of them would start refusing to run their own buybacks anymore? What would happen to their profits then? They'll probably ask their army of accountants to come up with fresh ways to hide their profits and deny the U.S. government any fresh revenue.

Well, it's certainly one more reason the corporations will not give up their dark money funding for Republican election attempts.

Do us a favor, Americans: If you want Big Business to pay their fair share in taxes, make sure to vote Democratic this midterms and keep the Republicans from another round of unnecessary, deficit-causing, only-for-the-rich tax cuts. 

Who's Dat Knocking At Mar-A-Lago? It's the Feds With a Warrant, Go Figure (w/ Update)

I was planning on blogging tonight about the victory lap President Biden and the Senate Democrats could enjoy this week after having passed major legislation that guarantees most of what Biden promised in 2020 would get done...

But then news broke early this evening about something more Schadenfreude-licious (ever so tasty), so I decided to distract myself with some malicious joy instead.

Apparently, mister donald trump, former President Loser of the Popular Vote (Twice) is upset as hell tonight because FBI agents bearing a warrant to search Mar-A-Lago showed up and seized evidence, although it's not yet clear exactly what the investigation was looking for.

To Deepa Shivaram and Ryan Lucas at NPR for more:

Former President Donald Trump said on Monday that FBI agents had searched his Mar-a-Lago club and residence in Palm Beach, Fla., and opened his safe.

The FBI and Department of Justice declined to comment, although the department is known to be investigating the possible mishandling of government secrets after the National Archives retrieved White House records from Mar-a-Lago

The search, which would have required a court order from a federal judge, signals the president is under greater scrutiny from federal investigators than was previously known...

As they note, a warrant means a federal judge had to sign off on this raid. And the only way the feds can do that is present enough existing evidence of wrong-doing to justify entering a location - be it home for trump or a resort business also for trump - and search for specific things. The fact his safe was targeted meant the FBI had evidence there was something there relevant to an ongoing investigation.

While Shivaram and Lucas point out that the Justice Department does have an ongoing investigation focusing on mishandled government documents - and Mar-A-Lago is where trump hid 15 boxes from NARA after he left the White House in January 2021 - there are other possible investigations at play here:

Monday's action also comes as the Justice Department was ramping up its investigations into Trump's attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election — though there have not been reports of an investigation into Trump himself...

The ongoing House Committee investigation into the January 6th Insurrection has reportedly been sharing information - and referring materials for official investigation - with Justice, implying there is at least a federal grand jury digging into possible criminal charges into trump and his handlers for their involvement in the rioting that day.

One avenue of investigation the DoJ is reportedly working on are the efforts by some of trump's allies in various Red states where Biden won of organizing "Fake Electors" to trick the state legislatures into approving their set of Electors instead of Biden's. Wisconsin and Arizona in particular are under scrutiny, and there had been reports that trump was in direct contact with some of those organizers.

And of course, there's the taxes thing. Not just any investigation by the IRS into trump's financials, but also recent revelations that trump allegedly ordered the IRS to harass former administrative figures like James Comey and Andy McCabe, FBI officials whom trump fired when they wouldn't swear fealty to him.

With all this going on, of course trump is jumping onto social media to proclaim his innocence and how this is all a partisan witch-hunt. Of course the Far Right - Fox Not-News is reportedly enflamed with rage tonight - is screaming that the FBI is persecuting trump for political reasons (did one of the crazy congresscritters insist that the FBI should be dissolved for this?). They're all insisting that something like this has never happened to a former President Loser of the Popular Vote (Twice) before.

That's kind of true. The FBI has never gone after ex-Presidents before. Even the likes of Richard Nixon who was facing impeachment for serious federal crimes never had his personal safe hit with a warrant search. Then again, we've never had an openly corrupt and crooked ex-President like donald fucking trump before.

None of the others in recent history - not LBJ (and he had some dirty secrets to hide), not Nixon, not Ford, not Carter, not Reagan, not Bush the Elder, not even Bill Clinton who was under near-constant investigation due to Whitewater (and who faced public scandal regarding Lewinsky), not Bush the Lesser, not Obama in spite of all the screaming by the Far Right he was guilty of something - had personally violated so many laws while in office (with Reagan and Bush the Lesser overseeing some corrupt and broken administrations). Worse, none of them had violated so many laws while leaving office.

Any expectation that any former President should be exempt from criminal investigation is a fantasy (the OLC ruling about sitting Presidents being exempt is just when they're in office. Once out, they are exposed to liability as long as the clock on statute of limitations are ticking). No one person is above the law, and if trump broke any laws - and there's at least four things under investigation now that points to a solid "MAYBE" - then By God the FBI is going to show up knocking at the door with a warrant in hand.

There is always the fear in politics than a partisan autocrat - a wannabe dictator in the Jacksonian (and now trumpian) mold - would abuse the powers of the Justice Department and agencies like the FBI into hounding political opponents with unjustified "criminal" probes.

But as tonight's revelations are showing, the current Biden administration under Attorney General Garland isn't playing rough with those rules. Everything about the warrant search is by-the-book: The agents presented a case to a judge and that judge signed the warrant. It's not as though Biden himself penciled in the warrants or Garland rubber-stamping something, or even the FBI smashing the doors in without a warrant at all.

And given the sensitivity, nay the severity of the situation - the judge HAD to know issuing a warrant on a former President Loser of the Popular Vote (Twice) would raise legal questions - the feds still went through with it.

Let me just say this: I'm not fearing the FBI knocking on my door - or smashing it down - because I know I'm not breaking any laws that warrant their attention.

This is happening because there is solid evidence donald trump broke various laws, and there was evidence today he possessed additional proof of his misdeeds that required this "home/business" search.

The Far Right outrage will be out of control over this, we're seeing the first wave of it tonight. But let justice be done though the heavens fall. 

trump's been laughing at the legal system for 50 years. It's way past time to hold him accountable to the law.

Unleash all the schadenfreude this night, people. Let the popcorn pop and the wine flow.

(Update 8/9): It's turning out the warrant search IS in relation to the National Archives investigation. Speculation is no longer wondering if trump kept possession of highly classified documents after he was supposed to hand them over ('cause he clearly and illegally kept them): Speculation is now ruminating if trump exposed those documents to a third party (which is when the seriousness of this kicks to the next level up), and who tipped off the feds that trump still had these papers (which suggests someone real close to him just ratted trump out big time).

The likelihood of donald trump getting charged for violating the Presidential Records Act just went from "Toss Up" to "Leans Yes."

(pops open another champagne bottle)

Official: Strangely Funny IX Now Available

To all nine readers of the blog here, if you don't follow the librarian/writing one, I want to inform you that the latest volume of the Strangely Funny humor-horror anthology is available via Amazon!

(I know, some of you are philosophically opposed to Amazon, but Kindle Direct is one of the few ways small-press publishers can get the work out there, so be kind...)

Yes yes, they've heard that song...

My short "The Brides Of Wi-Fi," a modern-day take on the vampire brides of lore, is part of Volume IX, so if you enjoy humorous takes on horror tropes, the entire series should be a good read from Volumes I to now.

If you need to know which other volumes to peruse:

"I Must Be Your First" in Strangely Funny

"Minette Dances With the Golem of Albany" in Strangely Funny III

"The Pumpkin Spice Must Flow" in Strangely Funny V

"How a Vampire Gets a Tan" in Strangely Funny VI

"War of the Murder Hornets" in Strangely Funny VIII

Also check out "Why The Mask" in Mardi Gras Murder and "The Secret of the Battle of Los Angeles" in History and Mystery Oh My! 

I shall resume some political angst blogging shortly. But in the meantime, please, BUY MY BOOKS. ;-)

The Pro-Choice News Out of Kansas

I don't want to always be "doom and gloom" around here, so when a bright ray of hope shines through I'd like to make a few comments about it (well, also refer to other people's comments to reinforce my own arguments, but that's how I roll son).

It's taken me a few days to blog about this development, but after all the bad news about Republicans banning abortion and trying to punish women across every Red state they control we've finally got one state where the majority of voters who are pro-choice pushed back. 

While Kansas has been a reliably Red state for ages - I have a personal joke that Kansas is so old-school Republican they make Ohio look Blue - it's also a state that had written a personal rights clause into their state constitution that their supreme court back in 2019 ruled meant women had a right to choose an abortion if they needed one. Angry that they couldn't punish women as soon as the U.S. Supreme Court nuked Roe with their Dobbs ruling, the state Republicans pushed a referendum onto the 2022 midterm ballots that would have cut that part of their state constitution and allow the state legislature to issue their anti-abortion laws.

And just to make sure not enough people would vote on it, they set the referendum along with the primary election cycle of the midterm, when usually only the party voters turn up (meaning a low-enough turnout to ensure the GOP plurality dominating Kansas politics would cast their likely YES vote to gut the abortion protection).

Funny thing. It turns out a lot of voters in Kansas turned up to vote on the referendum, a lot more than expected, and enough of them - not just Democrats by the looks of things, but also the Indy voters AND enough Kansas Republicans - voted NO to stop the ballot from passing. I shouldn't say "enough" as though it was a close vote: It was a DAMN BLOWOUT (it was 63-39 percent at one point but it's settled to 59-41 percent) in a clear sign Kansas voters across the spectrum wanted to keep abortion a legal right.

I could go into more detail, but Rani Molla over at Vox went there and so let's refer to her findings:

More than 900,000 Kansans showed up to the polls to vote on the state’s abortion referendum. That’s the biggest turnout for a primary election in the state’s history, according to the Kansas Secretary of State’s office. That number is closer to what we’d expect to see in a general election turnout, which is always vastly higher than primaries. And it suggests we could also see high turnout in upcoming primaries where abortion is on the docket...

Molla also included a number of charts, so let's take a look:

This is for primary cycle turnout. Reportedly, the Kansas Sec of State was expecting turnout around 36 percent, which would have matched the 2020 primary numbers. But look at that chart: 2022 turnout at near 50 percent of registered voters saw the greatest jump between 2-year election gaps. Something really got the voter turnout to spike higher than usual.

Molla provided some interesting context by pointing out the voter makeup of Kansas itself:

Seriously, I'm not kidding about Kansas being a Republican stronghold. Hell, If the "Unaffiliated" voting bloc formed its own party, it would put Democrats in THIRD place in that state.

So you would think that given the dominance of Republican voters would equate to dominance of conservative thought (if you consider the Indy voters between equally divided in leaning either way), and that conservative thought would equate to being anti-abortion enough to vote YES.

And yet, they did not.

Because, if it's been noted here already, a majority of Americans - a number that crosses into Republican ranks just a bit - are pro-choice when push comes to shove.

Ever since the Dobbs decision dropped, reports about the horrors of the Far Right war on women's rights have gone up. The reality that Republican leaders are using their state powers to force-birth pregnancies on 10-year-old rape victims. Stories about how women are denied medications because the pharmacies and doctors issuing them might get charged for triggering miscarriages. The growing realization that GOP-controlled states are passing "No Travel" bans that would intrude on women's privacy rights even when they're not pregnant.

In her Vox article, Molla points to evidence that women were key to the voter turnout against the referendum:

The referendum in particular seems to have brought out women, who are considered to be most affected by abortion laws. As Tom Bonier, CEO of a Democratic data firm TargetSmart, pointed out, the share of new Kansas registrants who were women skyrocketed after news of US Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision.

The Dobbs decision engaged women in Kansas to an unprecedented degree.

This chart shows the percent of new registrants in the state who were women (as a 7 day average). Note the spike after the Dobbs decision leaked, and huge jump after the Supreme Court handed it down. pic.twitter.com/pvi3WpuR86

— Tom Bonier (@tbonier) August 3, 2022

One of the concerns before this conservative Supreme Court made their move to end Roe turned on what might happen, what might the public's response be to women losing a personal right. Word is Chief Justice Roberts wanted to rein in Alito's wording (which made it an absolute ban) to create some wriggle room where reasonable exceptions like allowing it for cases of rape/incest and "health of mother" were involved. Which was why Alito's first draft got leaked, because someone in SCOTUS wanted to make sure the hard-liner stance stayed firm.

Well, now we're seeing what the public's response could be. In even the Reddest of Republican states, a solid majority of voters want to protect abortion as a right. Before Dobbs, there may have been a number of moderate/centrist-leaning Americans who disapproved of abortion but saw it as necessary to protect at-risk women suffering life-threatening situations, and to protect rape victims from the psychological (and for pre-teens, physical) harms of forcing them to birth. (Note: I do not want to underscore the reality that women SHOULD HAVE their personal right to choose no matter what, but I am pointing out how moderates view this issue, where they focus on guaranteeing those exceptions...) By denying the reality that there are times when abortion is a necessity to save the life of the mother, the Far Right have likely pushed Indy/Moderate voters to the side of Pro-Choice. As well as driving away whatever Moderate Republicans were still left after all the RINO purging.

Even in Red States like Kansas, alienating those Indy voters - who may now give Democrats a fighting chance to win statewide elections - as well as driving up voter registration for women - who may have tuned out political issues before, but now realize they've been turned into second-class breeding stock - can well add to the likelihood of another midterm Blue Wave much like 2018.

Everyone, this is where voter turnout matters. To every Democrat suffering in Republican-controlled states, you have a chance to turn the tables. To every Independent/No-Party Affiliate voter out there, you have an opportunity to show up and vote the anti-abortion bastards out of office. To every Pro-Choice Republican still out there - and yes, the Kansas referendum proves you're there - you have every reason to turn against a Republican party that no longer respects you or the women in your lives.

Get the damn vote out, America. If you believe women are equal, if you believe women have the right to control their own selves, if you believe Roe should be restored as the law of the land, YOU GOT TO VOTE DAMMIT, vote for every Democrat, vote against every Republican, VOTE VOTE VOTE.

Your vote is your power. Republicans are trying to deny you that power. Don't let them. 

VOTE VOTE VOTE.