I Survived Orlando Megacon 2024

You regular readers know I indulge in attending the local (Central Florida) comic cons as I grew up on science fiction, comic books superheroes, anime, and general geekery.

This year for some reason, Orlando hosted their MegaCon in early February (they've usually been in May). While I missed attending last year's, I decided to attend this year as there were a couple of celebrities I hoped to see during the Q&A sessions and because I am trying to get into Magic The Gathering gaming and was hoping there would be an open table session for beginners to attend.

So I braved the I-4 Saturday traffic in relatively cool weather - yes, it drops below 60 F in Florida - and made reasonable time to get to the South Concourse parking lot to get on a shuttle bus to circle five blocks over to the West Concourse (the LOOOOOONG part of the Orange County Convention Center) and begin my day's journey.

This is actually the South Convention Center Concourse, where most of the
day parking is located. There are buses running shuttle service all
comiccon long. Seriously though, Orange County needs
to build an elevated rail between the Concourses to free up the
regular traffic on International Drive.

Getting into a comic con nowadays is a convoluted affair.
They give you a badge with a microchip in it, so you
HAVE to "activate" the card using the con's App. It takes forever
if you're not tech-savvy, and about 10 minutes if you ARE.

And this was the badge they gave me. Chewie Einstein.

This is the part of walking through a massive empty space
to get to the part of the West Concourse where the vendors set up.

Once you get inside, you then have to find your events between
three (or in some places four) levels. This was still early in the morning
before noontime as more people got inside Megacon.

At least I found the LEGO Club display room!!! Thank you
Greater Florida Lego Users Group!

Give me a minute or twelve to upload video of a working
LEGO City!

I showed up for Paul Bettany's Q&A session on the 
slight possibility his wife Jennifer Connelly would show up
and keep him in line. Alas.

This is in the Chapin Theater, an auditorium where the comic con
holds a number of A-lister interviews. I was last in here for
Hayley Atwell's appearance, if I recall it properly.

You'd be amazed how many of the fans gushed over
Bettany's work in A Knight's Tale instead of his work as
The MCU's Vision.

This was around 2:00 PM as the crowds were clearly
packing the main floor.

It's R2D2, rolling like a boss!!!

Got to sit in on a panel for Frank Cho, one of the better-known
"Good Girl" artists in the comics industry. It's more than just fanservice though, as
Cho is regarded as one of the best illustrators, period.
I got into him through his Liberty Meadows work (a cartoon strip in the vein of
Bloom County but with more gratuitous sex and violence as part of the absurdist humor).

They had a camera set up to focus on Cho's penciling as
he demonstrated the illustrator's work creating a comic book scene.

Cho took suggestions from the room, which bounced between
Wolverine to Wonder Woman to dinosaurs. I suggested "Wolverine
dancing with Wonder Woman with a T-Rex playing bass guitar
in the background" and Cho immediately called for security
to escort me out.

So as you can see he's drawing Wolverine.

Cho is using the mid-90s outfit that was more dark browns
and more shading than the famous bright yellow uniform
of the 70s-80s.

So it looks like Wolverine is punching somebody.
'Cause that's what Wolverine DOES...

Hey wait a second...

Is that...?

Oh no...

WOLVERINE JUST GUTTED HOWARD THE DUCK!!!
AAAAAAaaaaaaaa!

This is one of the prints I bought from Cho at his artist's booth, to give you an idea of what he draws. I also bought a Liberty Meadows and a Batman/Catwoman prints.

Speaking of artists, a number of famous comics artists were in Artist' Alley this MegaCon,
including a rare visit from Frank Miller, one of the creative forces from the late 1970s-
early 1980s who contributed to the massive culture boom - The Dark Knight Returns - of graphic narratives/superhero stories in the mainstream.
I took this picture late in the day to demonstrate the line that had been ongoing since 11:00AM...
which stretched across the open footpath to another line you can kind of see stretching off
to the right of the photo. If I had joined that line at 11, I would have arguably gotten to 
meet Mr. Miller and get an autographed poster or some such... in about two hours of waiting!
I'd have missed half of everything else I wanted to do at the con. NONE of the other
major artists had a waiting line that long. 

Speaking of long lines, THIS awaited me as I walked over to the Chapin Theater part
of the complex in hopes of attending the big celebrity draw of the day:
Ewan McGregor (Obi Wan) and Hayden Christensen (Anakin), both insanely hot Star Wars
fandom draws due to their return in popular Disney-Plus series. 

This is the Fourth floor entrance to Chapin Theater... packed wall to wall with fans many of
whom started forming the line at 2:00PM (!). I got there about 5:15PM... only to get the 
word from the con's security handlers announcing to the whole floor that they've already
reached max capacity for the auditorium and the cutoff was... can you see that one white hat
to the middle left of the photo? Yeah. That was the cutoff. Everybody else between that hat
and me were doomed. DOOMED I SAY.
That was kind of the last thing on my to-do list, and unable to do that I headed to the shuttle buses...

Except when I got to the buses they were coded by color routes instead of parking lots, and I had
no idea which color route went back to the South parking lot! /rage
Instead of waiting for the bus, I dared to walk back across a sky bridge between the Concourses
(See? The county at least did THAT! They should put in rail lines instead...). On the way back
I decided to get a photo of the Orlando Eye that's up the road on International Drive.

And here's a closer shot of it at a traffic stop as I drove to where all the restaurants are north
of the convention center. 'Cause after a full day of walking, I earned that pizza for dinner!

It took another three hours to get back home - an hour and an half getting off a packed
International Drive coping with merging traffic, escapees from the MegaCon, and idiot drivers, THIS
is why I scream about Orlando/Orange County needing an elevated rail system - 
just so I could get in a head rub with Mal the Panfurr who turns 10 years old this weekend!

And so that was my comic con adventure. I've gotten a little weary of attending these things - yes, I am getting too old to walk across half the landscape, and there aren't enough chairs and benches to go around - unless I can scare up any friends or family who might want to attend any cons in the future, this might be my last one. Who knows? A future MegaCon may entice with a can't miss celebrity (but it would involve me risking the entire day getting in line and waiting, sigh).

A Quick Reminder How BAD trump Was As We Head Into 2024

Saw this on Twitter (screw your X, Elon) and needed to share:

The thing that gets me about Trump is that not only is he a terrible person and his policies mostly just jumbled nonsense. It’s that he’s a terrible administrator- people seemed to have memory-holed how dysfunctional his Administration was. Nobody who worked for him praises him.

— Aaron Astor (@AstorAaron) February 2, 2024

Every tell-all book, every post-administration interview of trump's Cabinet members and advisors, every single story we got out of those dark years told us how trump would berate and belittle his own people, insult them to their faces, mock their expertise. trump drove half his staff to resign every six months by my recollection, and the ones who stayed on the whole tenure were doing so to manage their own grifts.

trump was an agent of chaos, unlike any other Active-Negative force we had sitting in the Oval Office. The likes of Nixon, Johnson, Hoover, Wilson... at least they maintained some form of self-discipline and awareness.

Even if trump fails to make himself dictator should he ever cheat his way back into the White House, his failures as a leader will tear this nation apart for good. We barely survived the last time.

For the LOVE OF GOD AND COUNTRY, America, do NOT vote trump this 2024.

 

The Mock Trials of a Mockable Republican House

Update: Many thanks to driftglass for sharing this article to Crooks & Liars' Mike's Blog Round-Up! Please take a moment to read the blog, I have more articles to share (alas, I am out of punch and pie).

I've written before how the Republican Party has no issues to run on, just outrage... and much of that outrage manufactured by themselves in order to frame the debate on their terms and move the goalposts whenever they want.

For 2024 - desperate to make Joe Biden presidency look bad to both the Beltway media and the general voters - the Republicans are doing everything they can to raise the partisan specter of impeachment, even when they have nothing to go on. Not only at Biden himself, but at people in his administration, such as the Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas (via David A. Graham at the Atlantic):

The entire thing is a fantasy. The impeachment is based on differences in border policy, rather than any misconduct. Even as they move it forward, House Republicans are avoiding legislation on the matter, working to snuff out a bill that would actually affect the border. And if Mayorkas is impeached, he is all but certain to avoid conviction in the Senate.

No precedent exists for such an impeachment. In fact, only one Cabinet speaker has been impeached in American history. In 1876, War Secretary William Belknap was accused of accepting kickbacks in return for lucrative federal posts. Facing impeachment, he resigned. The House impeached him anyway, but the Senate didn’t convict, in part because some members felt the resignation removed Belknap from their jurisdiction...

The articles allege that Mayorkas “repeatedly violated laws enacted by Congress regarding immigration and border security. In large part because of his unlawful conduct, millions of aliens have illegally entered the United States on an annual basis with many unlawfully remaining in the United States.” But experts on both constitutional law and immigration have roundly criticized the move as overreach, noting that Mayorkas is under attack for using powers that administrations of both parties have employed legally for decades...

The charges themselves are a mess. David Bier, an immigration expert at the libertarian Cato Institute, has picked apart the articles of impeachment and found, for example, that Mayorkas is charged with failing to follow circuit-court decisions that were reversed by the Supreme Court. Another passage appears to charge Mayorkas with using a power granted to him by Congress.

If Congress doesn’t like the laws, it could change them. But in recent years, under both Democrats and Republicans, Congress has left more and more power to the executive branch. This is especially true in the area of immigration, where bipartisan attempts at overhauls keep falling short. Because neither party can get exactly what it wants, they’ve chosen to do nothing. That has left the system riddled with holes, often sloppily patched by successive administrations...

If the House Republicans are serious about fixing immigration - even if it's to pander to the racist demagoguery by making it harder for asylum seekers and gainfully employable to even apply for the paperwork - they'd be passing legislation. Instead, they're holding sham trials against their hated targets. Mayorkas is not the guilty party here: the House Republicans are.

If only there were a way for the Senate Democrats to flip any impeachment matter the House brings to them by charging the House Republicans over false allegations, manufactured evidence, and acts of perjury. Maybe then the Republicans will settle the fuck down and actually pass legislation to resolve the matter however possible.

Except they won't. donald trump openly doesn't want any immigration laws passed this year because it's the only means of stoking MAGA outrage he's got left.

(trump and his acolytes begin attacking Taylor Swift for being a fan of her boyfriend's football team)

Oh you gotta be fucking kidding me...

The Drumbeats To Another Unhelpful War

The Middle East is back to being a full-blown military crisis, with Israel and Hamas happily drowning each other in a bloody Gaza battlefield, and with Yemeni rebels staging drone and missile attacks on shipping lanes, and now with extremist forces in Syria staging deadly attacks on a U.S. outpost along the Jordanian border (via Zeke Miller and Lolita C Baldor at AP News):

President Joe Biden said Sunday that the U.S. “shall respond” after three American troops were killed and dozens more were injured in an overnight drone strike in northeast Jordan near the Syrian border. Biden blamed Iran-backed militias for the first U.S. fatalities after months of strikes by such groups against American forces across the Middle East since the start of the Israel-Hamas war.

Biden, who was traveling in South Carolina, asked for a moment of silence during an appearance at a Baptist church’s banquet hall.

“We had a tough day last night in the Middle East. We lost three brave souls in an attack on one of our bases,” he said. After the moment of silence, Biden added, “and we shall respond...”

The large drone struck a logistics support base in Jordan known as Tower 22. It is along the Syrian border and is used largely by troops involved in the advise-and-assist mission for Jordanian forces.

Central Command said approximately 350 U.S. Army and Air Force personnel were deployed to the base. The three who were killed and most of the wounded were Army soldiers, according to several U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to give details not yet made public.

The small installation, which Jordan does not publicly disclose, includes U.S. engineering, aviation, logistics and security troops. Austin said the troops were deployed there “to work for the lasting defeat of ISIS.” Three officials said the drone struck near the troops’ sleeping quarters, which they said explained the high casualty count...

We are facing here in the states calls by the usual suspects of neoconservative foreign policy rabblerousers still eager for major military strikes - if not straight-up invasion - of Iran. Never mind how most of these "bomb Tehran" advocates are refusing to provide any military aid to Ukraine against a major global threat to democracy in Russia.

Whatever threat Iran poses to American interests abroad - and it is serious - we have to recognize how Iran and Russia are linked at the hips in their efforts to disrupt the Middle East. They've teamed up to provide military support to Syria - the source of that deadly attack - as well as providing aid through Syria to anti-Israeli forces like Hamas and Hezbollah.

As much as Iran hates the U.S. on their own terms, they're just the front, the public face of the bigger threat of Putin backing the Ayatollahs in order to give Putin what he needs: A major distraction for the United States to abandon NATO and Ukraine to Russian conquest. (Think Sollozzo and Tattaglia fronting for Barzini all along).

Going into a direct war with Iran is still a bad idea, same as I said years ago when trump was threatening to invade. If the U.S. goes barging in, we'll be doing it mostly on our own as our regional allies are either too busy committing war crimes (Israel) or unable to engage without disruptions in their own nations (Saudi Arabia and Iraq and Jordan). NATO won't engage because they'll be too wary of Putin's ambitions to send their military forces elsewhere.

If there's any good news, it's that Iran won't be in any decent shape to engage in war themselves, having shipped off a lot of their own weaponry to Russia's war effort and dealing with internal unrest that the U.S. could exploit instead of sending in troops.

Biden has difficult choices ahead. "Proportional responses" by bombing specific Iranian - or Syrian, considering how they are the proxies to Iran's involvement - military hubs hasn't worked well as deterrents before. More aggressive attacks would escalate in ways our regional allies would regret.

It's not helping that the Republicans in Congress - especially the House - are refusing to provide any kind of military funding to allow Biden a free hand in whatever foreign policy decision he makes here. Especially considering how obvious it is that Putin benefits from Middle East turmoil - to where providing more military and financial aid to Ukraine would actually help our efforts to calm the region - and so trump's political allies do not want to upset that apple cart.

I would not argue for war with Iran. I would look to doing something to cut into Syria's military capabilities, and something to support the Iranian citizenry's efforts to end the theocratic despotism hurting them. Anything to avoid another quagmire as our nation tries to bring the bloodshed in Gaza to a peaceful end.

The Drug-Induced Highs of a trumpian White House

Studio producer: Boys! Are you buzzing?
Beatle John: No thanks! We've got the car! 

-- from "Help!"

Having survived - barely - the insanity of donald trump's presidency - in which the madness of the Far Right wingnut mindset converged on our nation's capital and didn't let us relax for a single moment - there was this oft-asked question "Are you fucking high or something" during those years that never really got answered because not a lot of people wanted a serious confirmation.

There'd been rumors for years that trump himself was thriving on an Adderall addiction - or at least some variation of it used to treat ADHD - and it'd been something deserving of a full investigation to ensure our leader on the global stage wasn't as high a fooking kite half the time. Considering the many crazy things that came from the trump years - not just the constant barrage of insane statements - such as trump's open musing about using NUKES to combat hurricanes as well revelations the staff couldn't figure out light switches, this was not an unwarranted concern.

It turns out the concern did lead to a formal investigation by an Inspector General's office, which finally released a full report which documented how the White House's internal clinic had turned into a pill-mill dispensary that would put a South Florida pharmacy to shame:

In 2018, the DoD Office of Inspector General (DoD OIG) Hotline received complaints alleging that a senior military medical officer assigned to the White House Medical Unit engaged in improper medical practices. Additionally, several of the Hotline complaints were regarding the pharmaceutical practices and eligibility for care of some patients treated at DoD executive medicine facilities within the National Capital Region. In May 2018, the DoD OIG initiated an investigation of the allegations about the White House Medical Unit senior military medical officer.

In September 2019, the DoD OIG announced this evaluation to determine how executive medicine facilities within the National Capital Region, including the White House Medical Unit, implement internal controls to ensure safe pharmaceutical practices and patient eligibility. We conducted site visits to meet with key officials and observe executive medicine eligibility and pharmaceutical management practices. We interviewed over 120 officials, including interviews of hospital administrators, military medical providers, and pharmacists. We analyzed the transcripts of 70 interviews conducted by the DoD OIG Administrative Investigations (AI) Component of former White House Military Office employees who served within the White House between 2009 and 2018. This evaluation incorporates direct quotes from the testimony of these witnesses. We reviewed over 200 documents, including Federal criteria, DoD guidance, military Service policies, MTF internal standard operating procedures, and pharmacy procurement and inventory records...

We concluded that, except for the White House Medical Unit, the National Capital Region executive medicine clinics that we visited did not procure, store, or dispense controlled substances or other prescription medications; rather, they relied on full‑service military treatment facility pharmacies for all pharmaceutical support. The National Capital Region executive medicine clinics relied on full‑service base or post pharmacies for all pharmaceutical support. Additionally, other than the White House Medical Unit, the Joint Commission, an independent health care accreditation agency, accredited all National Capital Region pharmacy operations, as required by DoD Manual 6025.13.

Conversely, the White House Medical Unit’s pharmaceutical services included the full scope of pharmacy operations, including storage and inventory, prescribing and dispensing, procurement, and disposal, and was not credentialed by any outside agency. We concluded that all phases of the White House Medical Unit’s pharmacy operations had severe and systemic problems due to the unit’s reliance on ineffective internal controls to ensure compliance with pharmacy safety standards. In addition, the Military Health System senior leaders did not oversee the White House Medical Unit’s pharmacy operations.

Without oversight from qualified pharmacy staff, the White House Medical Unit’s pharmaceutical management practices may have been subject to prescribing errors and inadequate medication management, increasing the risk to the health and safety of patients treated within the unit. Additionally, the White House Medical Unit’s pharmaceutical management practices ineffectively used DoD funds by obtaining brand‑name medications instead of generic equivalents and increased the risk for the diversion of controlled substances...

The IG report added a footnote that "diversion of controlled substances" is unlawful.

We found that the White House Medical Unit provided a wide range of health care and pharmaceutical services to ineligible White House staff in violation of Federal law and regulation and DoD policy. Additionally, the White House Medical Unit dispensed prescription medications, including controlled substances, to ineligible White House staff. In analyzing the testimonies of former White House Military Office employees, we found that White House Medical Unit senior leaders directed eligibility practices that did not comply with DoD guidance. This analysis also found that several former White House Medical Unit military medical providers stated that they were unable to act outside of the White House Medical Unit’s historical practices and that they were not empowered to deny requests from senior White House Medical Unit leaders...

The report itself is about 80 pages long and includes a full list of the types of drugs getting doled out by the Medical Unit, you can see a list on p. 24 that happens to include a bunch of mood-altering meds and stuff like Fentanyl that can get you arrested if you were carrying this stuff down the road to Anacostia.

Why fight a War on Drugs when your in-house pharmacy
can order it all for you? Avon and Marlo can keep their corners...

The original news coverage on this story focused on the IG's complaint that the White House was wasting thousands of dollars prescribing brand-name medications when government policy is to order the cheaper generics. But the mainstream media needs to wake up and recognize that they've been sitting on this story since reports got out in 2018 that the White House pharmacy had turned into a "grab and go" dealer's corner.

There are serious questions coming from this report that need answering here:

• Who was in control at the White House Medical Unit that allowed this situation to spiral out of control? (Hint: Ronny Jackson has a lot of fingerprints all over this)
• Who are the unauthorized people at the White House getting all these meds? Did they abuse these drugs in any way, or worse were they reselling it to other staffers or people on the outside?
• Were any of these questionable mood-altering medications going to White House personnel without proper approval or oversight from actual doctors? Considering the "authorized" persons would be the President, Vice President, Cabinet-level Secretaries, Joint Chiefs, and close family members, we need to know if trump or VP Pence were downing Ambien like M&Ms (seriously, I doubt Pence is a pill-popper here. It's the other guy who has that rep). 

This is a serious scandal. Our leadership up and down the chain of command needs to be clear-headed as much as possible. If enough people were doped out on stuff that would inhibit thought - or worse promote impulsive dangerous behavior - we would have had major crises that would have caused pain and suffering across the b--

(re-evaluates the insanity of how trump's administration triggered tariff wars, those immigration policies based on cruelty and racism, the flubbed responses to COVID pandemic and other emergencies, and trump's utter failure using Sharpies to redraw maps)

Yyyyeeeeeeaaaah, holy crap a lot of that makes more sense now.

In the meantime, don't look at me when it comes to drug abuse. I don't even get drunk (much). Always Sober and Never Sane is my motto. 

I get high on life. And America!!!

And to everyone caught working at trump's White House back in the day:

Beatle John: It WAS you buzzing! You naughty boy!

trump's Refuge in Vulgarity Now Costs him Millions

Lordy, all this not winning from trump when it comes to legal accountability. A second trial involving trump's defamation towards E. Jean Carroll when she came forward with her rape allegations ended with the jury finding major punitive damages against him (via Ximena Bustillo at NPR):

A New York jury on Friday ordered former President Donald Trump to pay a total of $83.3 million to E. Jean Carroll for ruining her credibility as an advice columnist when he called her a liar after she accused him of sexual assault.

The jury awarded Carroll $65 million in punitive damages, $11 million for the damage to her reputation and another $7.3 million. Trump is almost certain to appeal the verdict.

Despite the size of the penalty, the verdict was not unexpected. Judge Lewis Kaplan ruled even before the trial that Trump had in fact defamed Carroll. The jury only had to decide how much Trump owed her — not if he was liable. This is the second time Trump has been ordered pay Carroll; last year he was mandated by a jury to pay $5 million for a separate instance of defamation...

This one is different from the first trial trump faced against Carroll and lost. That matter revolved around her rape allegations directly, which she was able to file under a special law New York had passed to let rape victims confront their attackers in civil court. This matter revolved around trump just being a vicious gaslighting defaming asshole, which Carroll's lawyers were able to prove in court especially as trump kept attacking her AND the judge throughout this particular matter.

It quickly became a question not if the jury would find trump liable, but how much they would set the punishment to see what would work to shut him up. David A. Graham at the Atlantic is curious to see if $83 million-plus at this point would do it:

Although Trump’s fortune is enormous, usually estimated in the billions, he is likely to feel the cost of today’s verdict. First, he is a notorious skinflint—he once cashed a 16-cent check sent to him as a prank by Spy magazine—so any cost, especially one denominated in eight figures, will pain him. Second, much of his net worth is tied up in illiquid assets such as real estate or intangible ones such as brand value. The former president sometimes acts like he has limited cash flow, so coming up with $83 million (if that amount is sustained) might not be simple...

The second defamation case was entirely an own goal by Trump. Having lost the first case, all he really had to do was stop publicly assailing Carroll. He didn’t have to admit that he was wrong. He didn’t have to admit that he had sexually assaulted Carroll. He didn’t even have to admit that he had defamed her. He just had to stay quiet.

But this being Trump, he couldn’t do it...

What had been trump's greatest legal strength - his willingness to bully and harass his legal targets until they surrendered to him and settled for less money and no admission from himself - is now his biggest weakness because he can never shut up. trump can't stop attacking anyone and everyone he perceives are his enemies, and trump can't stop lying like he does when he sells himself as both hero and victim.

And he's now going against legal opponents who either cannot walk away from the fight (like Carroll), or they have the resources both legal and financial to take the fights to the bitter end, like the state of New York going after trump's tax evasion and acts of fraud.

We are all, by the by, waiting for the judge to return the findings in THAT matter any day now. Which should come before the New York criminal trial into trump's hush money payments set for late March. We're still waiting to find out if the federal appellate court will determine if trump has absolute immunity, and if that would allow the DC court case into trump's involvement in January 6th to proceed sometime in March as well (it's looking like it might get delayed until mid-year).

And this is the grifting, law-breaking, vulgar con artist the Republican Party still wants to represent them for the presidency in 2024. Gods help us all.

The Disaster of DeSantis

I hadn't been paying too much attention to Ron DeSantis' presidential campaigns because quite honestly there wasn't much there to begin with.

I could have kept up with all the reporting about how mismanaged and unfocused his organization had been. I could have spent a lot of time focusing on DeSantis' many failures to even pretend to be a normal human being, given all the reports out there of how he can't even smile properly at rallies and debates.

I did spend time headdesking over how DeSantis - supposedly with this great Ivy League education going to Harvard and Yale - didn't have enough brain cells to spot the word FASCIST in a snowflake a stealth protestor gifted him at an early rally. How the hell did he even get out of Dunedin High with that lack of awareness?

What did matter about DeSantis' presidential ambitions was how he used his role as bully (not governor) to get the Florida Legislature to pass increasingly obscene legislation to ban abortion; attack trans and gay teens across the state; decry studies of racism and slavery as woke even trying to rewrite history to claim slavery had "benefits" (that was particularly offensive); and even go after corporations like Disney because they refused to roll over and play to his anti-gay agenda.

All so DeSantis could pander to the extremist Far Right voting base of the Republican Party and steal them away from donald trump.

Well, guess what Ron.

Those MAGA morons sold their souls to trump ages ago, and they ain't giving him up for some unhappy, wallowing mental midget trying to pretend he's a Machiavellian mastermind. Anybody thinking they were going to steal away trump's support have to be morons themselves. The best chance was to outlast the primaries, keep your name on the ballot at least, and pray to God trump ended up convicted in any of the criminal trials happening this year (or gets barred from the ballot for inciting insurrection under the 14th Amendment).

DeSantis spent apparently $130 million on his presidential bid, and all he got was a terrible second-place finish in a barely-attended Iowa caucus and every sign he was going to lose New Hampshire to Nikki Haley. (this begs the question for a campaign as mismanaged as this where the hell did that $130 million go?)

So of course DeSantis decided today to suspend the campaign and support the monstrous trump (via Jeongyoon Han at NPR):

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, whose hardline right-wing policies in his state garnered much public attention and made him an early favorite for the 2024 presidential race, suspended his bid for the Republican nomination on Sunday in a video posted on X, formerly known as Twitter. Gov. DeSantis also endorsed the former President Donald Trump, the frontrunner for the GOP presidential nomination...

DeSantis' exit from the Republican presidential nomination field creates a path for former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley as the only conservative alternative to Trump's candidacy left in the race. Trump and Haley will square off in the New GOP Hampshire primary on Tuesday...

There have been real questions about DeSantis' campaign after his distant second-place finish in Iowa. He pledged to continue and focus on South Carolina, but his campaign and super PAC supporting him, which had spent tens of millions supporting him, has spent nothing on campaign ads since Iowa.

DeSantis' main campaign message was that he would be better at delivering the same kinds of policies that Trump would be in favor of, because he doesn't have the same baggage that Trump carries from his numerous indictments and federal charges. He vowed to rid the country of "wokeism," a term he often used to criticize liberal policies, win the presidency by a wide margin, and deliver on issues that Republicans care about — much like how he says he has in Florida...

It turned out attacking "Wokeism" didn't appeal in other states where racism is not as controversial a topic. It didn't help DeSantis that in half of his battles fighting "The Woke" he's lost - or is losing - in humiliating fashion. Getting outmaneuvered by Disney lawyers using British-era "Rules Against Perpetuities" to deny DeSantis' takeover of their Reedy Creek oversight board didn't look good either.

All DeSantis has really done for the state of Florida is mismanage it all - much like his national campaign - focusing on appearances instead of creating actual solutions. While DeSantis has been attacking gays and trans and women and Blacks, he's ignored the growing home insurance crisis. While DeSantis has been warring against Woke, he's been dismantling what had been a growing and successful public university system even turning the honors-level New College institution into a virtual paper mill.

If you think DeSantis' ending his failed presidential bid will make him let up on his arch-conservative governing, don't. He's still a petty little tyrant hoping to get his revenge on all the people who humiliated him on his climb to the top (and arguably thinking about running in 2028 if - Gods help us - trump fails to steal 2024).

All this disastrous campaign proved is that trump is an unstoppable juggernaut within the Republican Party. trump pretty much owns the GOP now. It's just a question of how many Republican voters who haven't bought into the MAGA madness are willing to turn away from that.

Just stop voting Republican, America. Doesn't matter if it's DeSantis or trump or Haley or any of the other would-be dictators waiting in the wings.

The Definition of Ignorance

What actually is a dictionary? If we go by primary entry at the Merriam-Webster Dictionary:

1 : a reference source in print or electronic form containing words usually alphabetically arranged along with information about their forms, pronunciations, functions, etymologies, meanings, and syntactic and idiomatic uses.

A dictionary is not a work of fiction. It is not a narrative of personal conflict or derring-do or happy endings.

A dictionary is not an opinion piece, it is not a partisan or biased source of information. A dictionary relies on fact, on word origin history, usage, and common meaning; displaying known varieties of interpretations and even recognizing slang usage when appropriate.

A dictionary is a language tool, which teaches and reminds users of that language - in our case, American English - what we mean when we say and write things to each other.

And now in the state of Florida - where Republicans led by goddamned Ron DeSantis are waging a War Against Woke - the English Dictionary is getting banned in school libraries because God forbid it teaches our kids what the meaning of words like "Woke" and "Racism" and "Sexism" really mean. Via Gloria Oladipo at the Guardian:

A Florida school district is facing a federal lawsuit after it decided to remove copies of dictionaries, encyclopedia and other books because the works included descriptions of “sexual conduct”.

The Escambia county school district, located in Pensacola, Florida, removed several dictionaries and encyclopedias from school libraries after school officials determined that the books violated Florida law HB 1069.

The law, signed by the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, last year, restricts access to materials containing “sexual conduct” in Florida classrooms.

During the district’s 2023 summer break, officials removed at least eight encyclopedias and five dictionaries...

Encyclopedias - like World Book and Britannica - are also basic research and reference tools that give summarized information about persons, places, and things. Publishers try to remove as much graphic information - and any kind of political or partisan point-of-view - from those works as possible, and STILL the goddamned GOP book banners went after them.

Alongside removing books like biographies of prominent African-Americans and women, these book-banners are taking away ANY kind of information our children need to learn things like actual language composition and literacy. These censors want to make every child - and soon, every adult - in Florida as book dumb and ignorant as possible.

Ignorant (adjective): 

1) a) : destitute of knowledge or education, an ignorant society

also : lacking knowledge or comprehension of the thing specified

parents ignorant of modern mathematics

b) : resulting from or showing lack of knowledge or intelligence

ignorant errors

2) : UNAWARE, UNINFORMED

The excuse by the book-banners is that they object to "questionable" words in the dictionaries and encyclopedias, as though learning the word "breast" or "penis" would turn eight-year-olds into sex perverts. But what they're really doing is taking away the sources that could teach those kids not only the using of those words but also their meaning, to where kids won't understand the concept of words like "slavery" or "feminism" and thus not consider them. To make our kids - our future adults - UNAWARE and UNINFORMED (and easier to lie to).

Along all the fiction books I read as a kid, when I was around 8 or so I also took the time to thumb through my mom's beat-up college dictionary to better understand the words I was coming across in the higher-level teen books I was getting into (the juvenile-level books kind of bored me at that age). This was when I came across words like "statutory" which described certain legal realities, because it used "statutory rape" as an example (and not in graphic detail). It clued me in to the meaning of the word "consent" and I grokked - yes, that IS now an accepted word, Mr. Heinlein - that certain behaviors were illegal (and morally wrong). THIS is how I learned words, I learned meaning, I learned period.

This is what George Orwell warned us about in 1984 - another banned work by the by - when he delved into how the Big Brother regime attacked language itself to control their nation. Concepts like Newspeak (invention of nonsensical words) to diminish the range of thought, along with Doublethink (self-deception by thinking and believing two contradictory ideas), all of which would lead to Crimethink (believing things heretical - "thoughtcrime" - to what Big Brother wants you to think).

This is DeSantis and his Florida Republican cronies going after ANY form of literary work that would dare give our children - ourselves - the ability to think, to comprehend, to express ourselves in ways HIS Big Brother regime doesn't want us to do.

DeSantis and the Far Right are terrified of those who don't think - and fear, and hate - the same way they think. So they're going out of their way to BAN such thought, to remove the tools we need to be our better selves and honest citizens of our state/nation/world. O'Brien would be proud.

There's only one word to describe DeSantis and his ilk:

Asshole (noun):

1) usually vulgar : ANUS

2) a) usually vulgar : a stupid, annoying, or detestable person

b) usually vulgar : the least attractive or desirable part or area —used in phrases like asshole of the world

We'll go with the number 2a) definition, please and thank you.

What If They Gave a GOP Primary Debate and Nobody Cared?

Update 1/15/24: Thanks again to Batocchio for including my blog in the Crooks & Liars' Mike's Blog Round-Up. If you can do me a favor, visit me here as I'm trying to narrow down blog articles to submit to the Annual Royal Palm Literary Awards for 2024, please let me know either in the comments or by dropping me a tweet (yes I know it's dying but I still check it for shits and giggles).

Just for the record, last night the Republicans hosted a presidential primary debate of all the possible candidates trying to usurp donald trump from the front-runner spot heading into 2024.

If it looked like an empty stage, that's because it kinda was.

With trump refusing to show up for these things - having already locked up the MAGA voting base and unwilling to get caught by moderators to explain his pending criminal trials - it's been a parade of second-and-third tier pretenders hoping to be the last one(s) standing if/when trump gets convicted and unable to run anymore or blocked from the ballots.

Or at least it was a parade. The standard attrition process of the primaries saw many of the wannabes who couldn't keep up their fundraising to pay off six-figure consultant fees falling to the wayside.

Remember all the clowns back in August 2023? The likes of Doug Burgum (who?) and Ada Hutchinson (why?) and Tim Scott (this one was actually a personal shock, I thought he had a sugar daddy keeping him afloat) and Mike Pence (ahahahahahahahaha) all trying to appeal to the trumpian base and failing.

The ones that had remained weren't exactly the charismatic types to keep the audiences entertained. Vivak Ramaswamy did his best to mimic trump's raging persona but as a pitiful tone-deaf elitist trying to insult everyone else he was too ridiculous to accept. Chris Christie at least had the bullying persona down to an art, but as his game plan was to attack trump as a danger to the party itself there was no way Christie was going to win over the base (what's heart-breaking is how his message didn't gave favor from whatever moderate anti-Trump voters remain in the GOP). It didn't help Christie's message that he himself surrendered to trump back in 2016 and was last seen staring at the cameras during his "endorsement" of a raving trump with an expression that screamed "my God, I sold my soul to the biggest moron in the nation."

Neither Ramaswamy nor Christie were on the stage, as both couldn't qualify for this round. As such, Christie announced just before this debate he was dropping out. In the process, Christie denounced the remaining survivors as incapable of stopping trump and basically left it all open for trump to win even without being present.

That left the challengers to Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis.

...

...

Yeah, the GOP's screwed. I didn't even have to watch that debate to know how quickly it devolved into direct insults and inability to focus on issues.

Having said that, it becomes interesting to see how the non-trump elements of the voting base come to terms with either backing a nightmarish homunculus like DeSantis who can't even fake basic human emotions or body language, or a pandering Lost Cause supporter like Haley who at least retains some semblance of functioning brain cells. The terrifying thing is that nobody really cares at this point.

But it is looking nobody will force a contentious Republican primary. The nature of the Winner-Take-All system that will accumulate delegates at a fast rate will likely honor trump as the winner before Super Tuesday even rolls up by early March. It then becomes a question if the Republican Convention has to scramble and find a replacement candidate should trump get barred from the ballot due to the 14th Amendment.

The insanity will just keep going through to November. Gods help us.

Two Tales Of the Same GOP House

Today was the brutal indictment of how badly the modern Republican Party can run the House of Representatives.

First off, they staged - yet again - another impeachment hearing on Joe Biden by going after Biden's son Hunter for contempt, claiming he was refusing to testify before their committee when in truth he wants to testify but in public so everyone can confirm his answers are his and not quoted out of context - or lied about - by the Republican committee members.

In fact, Hunter Biden showed up unannounced at today's hearing, openly conflicting with the House Republicans' narrative, practically daring them to let him testify right then and there (via Gabriel J Sanchez for NPR):

President Joe Biden's son Hunter Biden surprised members of the House Oversight Committee Wednesday when he made an unannounced appearance at a hearing on a resolution to hold him in contempt of Congress for refusing to appear before the same committee.

Sitting in the audience, not appearing for a private deposition, spurred Republican House members like Congresswoman Nancy Mace from South Carolina to call his appearance a "PR stunt."

Hunter Biden refused last month to testify in a closed-door setting, despite a subpoena for him to appear. The younger Biden and his attorneys cited concerns that Republicans would distort his comments and offered instead to appear at a public hearing.

Representative Mace questioned why the eldest son of the first family showed up. "My first question is, who bribed Hunter Biden to be here today? That's my first question."

Maybe Hunter showed up knowing it would make YOU look bad and he did it for free. But you won't put him under oath and ask him those questions, would you Mace?

The committee continued without the unscheduled star witness in a hearing that devolved into lengthy disagreements between members over everything from the rules of procedure to personal bickering.

Basically the hearing devolved in a circus, with Committee Chair James Comer unable to keep his wilder allies - Marjorie Taylor Greene, Paul Gosar, Jim Jordan - under control. It took one of the Democratic representatives Jared Moskowitz to point out the folly of the entire shit-show (via Tori Otten at the New Republic):

Toward the end of the hearing, Moskowitz pointed out that if the issue is that Biden won’t testify, it could be easily resolved then and there. After all, Biden was at the hearing.

But when Moskowitz asked for a show of hands from people who wanted to hear Biden’s testimony, almost no Republicans raised their hand.

“I’m a visual learner,” Moskowitz quipped. “And the visual is clear. Nobody over there wants to hear from the witness.”

“The majority of my colleagues over there, including the chairman, don’t want to hear from the witness with the American people watching.”

This was never about Hunter Biden's possible criminal acts. This was never about investigating corruption in the White House. This was always about embarrassing Joe Biden to weaken his chances of winning re-election against a truly corrupt monster in donald trump.

In another part of the universe, probably about three or four doors down the hallway, the House Republicans were screwing up another matter of legislative importance: The passing of any kind of federal budget - even a continuing resolution - because their extremist Freedom Caucus members still want their bloody shutdown (via Amy B Wang and Marianna Sotomayor at the Washington Post (paywalled)):

House GOP hard-liners tanked a procedural vote Wednesday, in protest of House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) striking a bipartisan spending deal with Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.). The revolt has once again paralyzed the chamber, even as lawmakers have fewer than 10 days to pass legislation to fund the federal government in order to avert a partial shutdown.

In a 203-216 vote Wednesday afternoon, the House failed to pass the rule to consider upcoming bills, with 13 hard-right Republicans joining Democrats in voting no. The “rules” vote has historically been a mundane procedural step in considering legislation — and one that is typically easily passed by the majority party. However, hard-line GOP lawmakers have in the past year adopted the tactic of sinking rules votes to protest decisions by party leaders that they dislike.

Hard-right Republicans sank a similar procedural vote in June, lashing out against then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) for working with Democrats to pass a debt ceiling bill. It was the first rule vote to fail since 2002. In November, after McCarthy was ousted and Johnson elected speaker, a small faction of Republicans once again sank a procedural vote to protest the fact that Johnson had relied on Democrats to pass a stopgap funding measure to keep federal agencies open for several weeks...

Notice the trend here? The wingnuts keep shooting down even partial victories that their own party leadership can hammer out all because it offends their contractual purity to shut everything down and drown it in Grover's bathtub.

The vote also followed a tense Republican conference meeting Wednesday morning. It was the first time Johnson had faced GOP lawmakers to explain his deal with Schumer, and some lawmakers were angry that they had learned of the bipartisan spending agreement over the weekend via the press, rather than from their own speaker.

Several members of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus criticized Johnson for accepting a deal McCarthy had made. Notably, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), a House Freedom Caucus member who unsuccessfully ran for the speakership, stood up to confront Johnson during the meeting, according to people familiar with the exchange who spoke on the condition of anonymity to detail the private meeting. Jordan accused Johnson of accepting a $69 billion “side deal” and not fighting hard enough to cap spending at $1.59 trillion, as the House Freedom Caucus had wanted.

What the Freedom Caucus demands are things that will never pass a Democratic Senate... and they know it. This is the wingnuts' way of pretending the problem is with everyone else not surrendering to their whims.

There'd been buzz earlier today that the Freedom Caucus were plotting yet another Motion to Vacate, so quickly on the aftermath of removing McCarthy, but it's died down since because even the crazies know they can only crash that particular bus over the cliffs so many times before they lose the control they think they still have. If they try that motion - if they remove yet another Speaker of their own party - it opens up further rifts between the Rational and Irrational wings of the House. It may scare away any remaining Rational leader from trying for the Speakership (again), but it will convince the Rational factions to refuse promoting any Irrational knowing full well they shouldn't reward this bad behavior with that prize.

If the Freedom Caucus thinks they can get the Democrats to relent and give them everything they want - destruction of immigration policy, tax cuts for the rich and deregulations across the board, defunding the IRS, making donald trump Queen of the May Fair, what have you - they haven't noticed how the Democrats refuse to concede in previous hostage-taking attempts, and simply waited out until the GOP Speaker wriggled out a compromise deal the Freedom Caucus can't sabotage. No, it won't be what the Dems would like to pass, but it'll be better than caving to the Crash-The-Bus-Over-the-Cliffs extremists.

It may seem odd that Speaker Johnson committed a bipartisan deal like this considering how it was the same type of deal-making that doomed McCarthy earlier. But this proves that once in the seat of power, even the Republican wingnut Speaker realizes that leadership requires action, and that in spite of the bomb-throwing anti-government rhetoric of his own party he is responsible for getting things done. Hence making deals that the angry Irrational factions can't abide.

In the meantime, the House Republicans keep demonstrating two things over and over: They are not serious about passing legislation a majority of Americans truly want; and they are incapable of governing themselves let alone the entire nation.

Kakistocracy in action, people. Gods, they suck. 

"Just Let ME and ME ALONE Get Away With Everything," Begged trump

Today was a huge day in the American constitutional system when the appellate court considered donald "it's all about ME" trump begging the court to let him get away with EVERYTHING under his claim of "absolute immunity" while as President Loser of the Popular Vote (Twice) (via Carrie Johnson at NPR): 

In arguments that extended for more than an hour, three judges for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit pressed Trump's attorney on his sweeping claims of immunity from federal prosecution...

Trump has pleaded not guilty to four felony counts that accuse him of leading a conspiracy to cling to power and disenfranchise millions of voters in 2020. Prosecutors say that this culminated in violence at the U.S. Capitol three years ago that injured 140 law enforcement officers and shook the foundations of American democracy...

Prosecutors working for Smith say in court papers that if the U.S. Court of Appeals accepts Trump's sweeping claims, it would "undermine democracy." The special counsel team says such reasoning would give presidents license to commit crimes while in the White House, such as accepting bribes for directing government contracts or selling nuclear secrets to a foreign adversary.

James Pearce, representing the special counsel, argued Tuesday that "the president has a unique constitutional role, but he is not above the law." He added that a former president enjoys no immunity from criminal prosecution. To conclude otherwise, he said, would give rise to a "frightening" future.

No former president has ever been charged with a crime. Trump is the first. So an eventual ruling will be a landmark no matter which way the court rules. If the court sides with Trump, the federal case in Washington would be all but over...

Several conclusions from today's brief hearing as noted by Perry Stein at the Washington Post (paywalled):

...The judges seemed skeptical that presidential immunity extends as far as Trump’s lawyers claim it does.

Trump attorney D. John Sauer argued that presidential immunity means that a president cannot be prosecuted for any actions that fall under his presidential duties — unless the House first votes to impeach him and the Senate then convicts him.

Judge Florence Y. Pan, an appointee of President Biden, asked Sauer if a president could be criminally prosecuted if he ordered SEAL Team 6 to assassinate a political rival. Such a scenario — ordering the military to do something — would fall under presidential duties. But having a rival murdered would also be a clear violation of the law.

Sauer said the Justice Department could only charge the president for giving such an order if the Senate votes to convict him first. Pan also asked him whether a president could sell pardons or nuclear secrets without being prosecuted. Sauer responded similarly.

Pan seemed skeptical and said that conceding that a president can be prosecuted for official acts in any instance — say, after the congressional impeachment and conviction process — undermines the president’s presidential immunity argument.

“Given that you’re conceding that presidents can be criminally prosecuted, doesn’t that narrow the issues before us to, ‘Can a president be prosecuted without first being impeached and convicted?’” Pan said. She added, “Once you concede that presidents can be prosecuted under some circumstances, your other arguments fall away.”

The judges were clearly concerned that accepting Trump’s argument would open a Pandora’s box of horrible acts by future presidents that would go unchecked and unpunished.

Trump’s lawyer tried to convince the panel that the real danger was letting this case go forward and opening a door to future presidents operating in fear of being prosecuted when they left office.

Gee, making future Presidents realize they can be held accountable if they break shit? MORE of that, please.

2. The judges’ ruling could rely on their reading of the impeachment clause of the U.S. Constitution.

Lawyers for both sides and the judges spent a chunk of oral arguments debating the Constitution’s impeachment clause. Under Trump attorneys’ reading of the clause, a president can only be criminally prosecuted once Congress has voted to both impeach and convict him.

Congress had voted to impeach Trump for his actions around the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. The Senate then voted to acquit him. At the time, some Republicans said they were voting against conviction because they said the Justice Department could investigate and decide whether to charge Trump...

This becomes part of the circular Catch-22 that the Far Right argued that trump shouldn't be impeached if his conduct was criminal, but then that he shouldn't be charged with crimes because he should have been impeached.

But we've seen impeachment and how it doesn't work: It is too partisan a mechanism. Relying on impeachment for accountability would never happen if the corrupt President's party controlled Congress and refused to be bipartisan enough to vote for removal. Impeachment is a political tool, not a prosecutorial one. That argument also ignores how previous former Presidents facing criminal charges for acts done in the White House - Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton - still had that happen even though impeachment never removed them from office (Nixon resigned first and then took a pardon, and Clinton survived the Senate vote and pled out his perjury counts). Saying that impeachment triggers double jeopardy doesn't pass the established case law.

3. The judges questioned whether Trump’s actions around the Jan 6. attack on the U.S. Capitol qualified as his official presidential duties — and whether the appeals court should even decide this.

Sauer said Trump’s actions around Jan. 6 — including meeting with the Justice Department and members of Congress about his belief that the election was stolen — were part of his presidential duties.

He also said Trump’s Twitter social media posts, some of which encouraged people to go to the Capitol on Jan. 6, also constituted an official presidential communication channel.

“All of those tweets were obviously immune,” Sauer said.

In a notable exchange, Judge Karen Henderson, an appointee of President George H.W. Bush, seemed skeptical of that claim, saying: “I think it’s paradoxical to say that his constitutional duty to take care [that] the laws be faithfully executed allows him to violate federal laws.”

But she also raised the idea of sending the case back to the U.S. District Court to untangle whether Trump’s alleged acts were part of his official duties or discretionary and carried out in his capacity as a private citizen...

Judge Henderson may express that concern but it's uncertain if the other two on the panel will agree with her. This could prove a potential delay in the March trial related to this matter, but by the looks of it the whole panel isn't buying that inciting a mob to riot against Congress is part of the Executive's duties.

4. Trump attended the hearing in person, suggesting he believes his criminal prosecutions could boost his presidential bid.

One of the paradoxical problems with putting trump on criminal trial for his actions is that trump can use this to paint himself the victim of "the real crooks, the Democrats" even as he faces every likelihood of failing these appeals and finding himself in a federal court three months from now. trump is also using these trials as a means of keeping his MAGA supporters stoked and angry and ready to riot - again - on his orders should a Guilty verdict be reached before the November general election.

But trump is also powered by his narcissism. He showed up in court today as though his mere presence could intimidate the appellate judges into granting him the immunity he craves.

trump isn't interested in the legal ramifications of what he's arguing for - that a sitting President can never be held accountable for any actions committed during his tenure - he is only interested in making sure that immunity from the law applies to himself. That trump's arguments would clearly grant Joe Biden - the current sitting President - to apply that immunity by ordering a SEAL Team to assassinate trump doesn't seem to register in that Id of his. Probably because he's convinced Biden is too much of a political wimp - that Biden as a career politician respects the limitations of the office, and won't break actual laws no matter how much the Far Right lie to themselves about Biden being corrupt - to take the dark route to power trump aspires to take.

We have to remember: For decades trump has been thumbing his nose at the legal system as a businessman committing corrupt act after corrupt act, bankrupting his casinos, breaking contracts with workers, bullying victims to settle out of court, making a mockery of regulations because our prosecutors and oversight agencies never take white-collar fraud serious enough. trump is used to the idea of being immune from accountability, and he's struggling to come to terms with all the recent courtroom setbacks that are about to cripple his empire.

trump is hoping - begging even, although he'll never admit it - that the appeals court grants him that immunity, because it clears the electoral battlefield of the federal charges he's facing in DC and South Florida and makes it easier to defy the state-level trials awaiting him in New York City and Fulton County. Without that haunting him, trump can then attack Biden with impunity while his allies in the US House and Red states conspire to throw the Electoral College to trump in spite of the likely popular vote going Biden's way.

And if trump achieves all he desires, if trump regains control of the Presidency? With that belief in HIS absolute immunity, trump will run amok as a dictator the likes of which our nation's never seen (via Greg Sargent now at New Republic after the WaPo downsized him):

But there’s another way to understand Trump’s move: It’s about what comes next. If he wins on this front, he’d be largely unshackled in a second presidential term, free to pursue all manner of corrupt designs with little fear of legal consequences after leaving office again.

That Trump might attempt such moves is not idle speculation. He’s telling us so himself. He is openly threatening a range of second-term actions—such as prosecuting political enemies with zero basis in evidence—that would almost certainly strain the boundaries of the law in ugly new ways.

Now imagine him pursuing this project with a get-out-of-prosecution-free card in his pocket. “It really would permit him to be completely unconstrained if he were reelected,” Neil Eggleston, who served as White House counsel under President Barack Obama, told me...

It’s been said on social media that if Trump wins here, his second-term powers would be quasi-absolute—that he could order, say, the assassination of political foes with impunity. That overstates the matter. As former White House lawyers told me, if Trump prevails, the courts will likely affirm that actions within the “outer realm” of official duties are immune to prosecution, not that any actions (such as assassinations) are.

But a favorable decision could still unshackle Trump in a big way. Trevor Morrison, associate White House counsel under Obama, says the key is whether the courts rule that Trump has immunity on the theory that his alleged criminal conduct does fall in the outer perimeter of presidential duties—and how the courts define that perimeter. If they accept Trump’s broad version of immunity or something like it, he might argue that future potentially criminal acts also fall within that perimeter...

Kristy Parker, counsel at Protect Democracy who served as a lawyer in multiple administrations, notes that Trump has signaled clear intent to do exactly this sort of thing. He has attacked Willis’s prosecution of him as corrupt, hinted at full-scale persecution of “vermin” Americans who oppose him, and openly threatened to prosecute President Biden as retribution. “If I don’t get immunity, then Crooked Joe Biden doesn’t get immunity,” Trump recently raged.

In saying this, Trump essentially declared that if he is denied immunity, he will prosecute Biden on a fake finding of corruption, just as he invented corruption as a pretext for his alleged election crimes. What happens if those efforts to name and target fabricated corruption are in some sense deemed official acts?

“Trump has threatened to use the presidency to punish enemies, reward friends, and protect himself,” Parker told me. “If the courts recognize immunity for the broad array of official acts of the presidency, that will incentivize Trump to abuse those powers further...”

Gods help us if this happens.

FOR THE LOVE OF GOD AND DEMOCRACY AND THE RULE OF LAW, JUDGES, DO NOT GRANT trump ABSOLUTE IMMUNITY.

And for the LOVE OF GOD, AMERICA, DO NOT VOTE FOR trump.