What If: A Different Dynamic for a Democratic 2024

Let me state officially for the record that I am terrible at this prognostication shit.

Not just the fact that I never do well at the Powerball lotteries (cries), but that I'm terrible at plotting out how these 4-year presidential cycles go. When the horserace starts up and the primary candidates line up to get humiliated, I tend to be off by a candidate or three when the official lineups survive to their convention celebrations.

I mean, last year I jumped ahead of everything to try and guess the 2024 election results thinking that it was going to be a repeat matchup between Biden and trump. Granted, certain facts were unavoidable: Biden was the sitting incumbent and they always run for a second term; trump had bullied and cowed the Republican party into taking him back a third time as a candidate retained his maniacal MAGA voting base in spite of a few hopeful candidates like DeSantis and Haley challenging to be a fresh candidate for 2024. A second round of Biden v. trump was kind of a given.

What I hadn't counted on was a mainstream media desperate to hijack the electoral process to force their own choice on a national electorate, hammering on Biden for being too old over and over even as he beat down his younger primary challenger Dean Phillips by 90 percent of the party vote, as well as hammering on trump for also being too old as well as facing criminal indictments and 34 felony convictions no wait, the media still hasn't hammered him on that. Gee, wonder why... /sarcasm

We saw what happened after the early debate between Biden and trump got the media riled up for Biden's scalp: Biden read the room, realized he wasn't going to win back the Beltway mob that was a little too eager to throw the election to trump, and made the move to pass along his primary gains to his running mate Kamala Harris, ensuring a smooth transition for the Democratic campaign while giving the would-be kingmakers in the press both middle fingers.

So now, instead of facing the likelihood of a repeat performance of 2020 results - although possibly switching out Georgia for North Carolina, as things looked in the polls - we're facing a different dynamic for 2024, with massive enthusiasm boosting Democratic chances across the electoral board while the Republicans find themselves doubling-down on an older, out-of-touch, and hate-filled ticket.

I had posted the 2020 Electoral Map as a foundation for what the 2024 map would be when it was Biden:

from 270towin.com 

But now with Harris, what should we expect?

Well, electorally, probably more of the same. The partisan nature of the modern electorate has calcified most of the states into their Red/Blue status for the most part. Only a handful of states - Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina - would be considered battlegrounds, where the shifting independent votes and overall voter turnout matter a whole lot more than in say California or New York or Tennessee or (alas) Florida (Texas keeps threatening to flip, so voter suppression keeps that GOP Red).

But the way Harris is redefining the campaign - and spurring more voter interest at levels not seen since 2008 - is making it more likely the battleground states that went for Biden in 2020 are near-locks this election. Yes, I know the polls can't be trusted. And yet. Depending on what bounce Kamala gets post-convention this week, even on-the-fence states like Georgia and North Carolina could well turn into solid gains. Not merely winning by hundreds of votes but tens of thousands, well out of reach for trump and the GOP to whine that the election was "stollen".

Also 270towin.com 
I'm projecting Kansas and Nebraska to flip Blue
because Walz's appeal to the Midwest is THAT good!

So don't be surprised that trump whines "stollen election!" just like he did in 2020. This is the easiest part of any guessing game with how the 2024 November results play out: trump will scream that he "won" and never concede even the states he honest-to-God never had a chance to win anyway.

Remember this fact: trump can never admit he ever loses.

So what will trump do when confronted with the likelihood he is not only going to lose the popular vote for the third time in a row, but also the likelihood he is going to lose the Electoral College for a second time?

All the signs point to trump scheming with his cronies and state-level allies to stir utter chaos and not allow elections to get certified in the first place.

In 2020, trump and his cronies tried to cook up plans to have "fake electors" put in place to override the legitimate electors giving Biden the Electoral votes - from Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Arizona - in order to flip the 270 needed from Biden to trump. Those "fake elector" schemes didn't exactly work, and there's criminal trials and plea deals happening in Georgia, Michigan, and Arizona as we speak (with trump delaying the Georgia one to save his ass before this year's election). Obviously, setting up fake electors didn't help him.

So now trump is taking aim at making sure the votes from certain counties and states don't even count at all. Via Sam Levin at the Guardian (US):

Nearly three dozen officials who have refused to certify elections since 2020 remain in office and will play a role in certifying the presidential vote in nearly every battleground state this fall, according to a new report by the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (Crew), a watchdog group.

The report underscores the concerns that Donald Trump and allies will attack the certification process at the local level as part of any possible effort to contest a loss in the election. In a presidential election, there are tight deadlines at the local, state and federal levels to certify the vote. Delaying the vote at the local level could cause states to miss deadlines and open up protracted court battles and give oxygen to conspiracy theories...

Certification is generally considered a ministerial duty and the officials charged with doing it can’t unilaterally decide not to officialize election results, legal experts say. Ballot disputes and discrepancies are typically adjudicated before an election moves to the certification stage.

“Each of these states have procedures for examining potential voter fraud and voter irregularities and none of those procedures concern the certification process at the country level. In other words, there are things you can do. County elections officials denying certification is none of those things. That’s not allowed under the law,” said Noah Bookbinder, the president and CEO of Crew.

No effort to block certification thus far has been successful. Each time that local officials have tried, they have been either forced to certify by a court, outvoted by their fellow commissioners or reversed course...

Just because it hasn't happened before doesn't mean it won't happen now. trump has broken a centuries-long Good Faith effort by our governments to abide by the ceremonial acts of bipartisanship, especially when it comes to elections. Granted, we've had broken and corrupt elections at local, state, and arguably federal levels over the years, but for the most part they were aberrations or part of local corrupt political machines that our Civil Rights era of the 1960s and 1970s cleaned up.

The last time I can think of an honest-to-God broken electoral process - to be fair, elections like 1960 and 2000 were procedural question marks (it's just that the Supreme Court over-reached in deciding the 2000 results) - at the Presidential election level was 1876 when the Republicans raised a stink about the electoral results from several states, which forced a congressional committee to "recommend" the results in such a way the Republicans with Hayes won (literally by one committee vote).

It's painful - not ironic - that trump is aiming to stir enough chaos this election cycle to force a repeat of 1876: Get enough (Republican) elections officials to refuse to certify results, which will deny Electoral counts for Harris (and himself) to where no one gets over the 270 hurdle to win the College, and then force the matter into a possibly-Republican-controlled House of Representatives to anoint trump "the winner" even if trump officially loses the popular vote by more than the 7 million in 2020.

If there's any good news, it's that 1) the states where trump's cronies can pull these stunts were likely going Republican in the first place, 2) the battleground states where trump could try this and fail - like Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Arizona - have enough pro-election players in office to prevent this from happening, and 3) there's a chance the voter turnout in enough states will be so overwhelming for Harris/Walz that the local elections officials will have no legal excuse to avoid certifying and not even risk it for trump's sake.

Because much like the fake electors scheme trump and his cronies cooked up, the plans to force non-certification are likely violating a lot of state and federal laws as well (via Marina Villeneuve at Salon): 

“I think there's every indication that Trump and perhaps other candidates will try to disrupt or overturn results if they lose,” said Ben Berwick, a former DOJ trial attorney who is now counsel leading advocacy group Protect Democracy’s election law and litigation team.

Berwick said four years after Trump and his allies failed to overturn the results of the 2020 election based on unsubstantiated allegations, the rule of law still weighs against such legal arguments. Protect Democracy released a March report that stressed that courts and lawmakers have created a certification process that will hold up to manipulation.

“Bottom line is, there is really nothing that local election officials and state election officials can do legitimately or legally to overturn election results,” he said. “That doesn't mean it won't be tried...”

Isn't it just like a convicted felon (trump) to think that illegal acts are perfectly normal things to do? But I digress.

Harvard Law School professor Lawrence Lessig, a 2016 Democratic presidential candidate and the co-author of the book “How to Steal a Presidential Election,” said he's more troubled by potential scenarios where Trump and allies could exploit gaps in existing election law, put pressure on state legislatures or governors and get their case to the Supreme Court.

All those scenarios, Lessig said, require more than actions by local election officials alone.

“I think all of these strategies require something more than just as county officials or election boards screwing around with the results,” he said. “We don't know what's actually being planned, beyond what we've seen on the surface so far.”

What may end up happening will be the same thing that happened in 2020: trump will scream that "illegal immigrants voted" or that Democratic officials "switched out ballot boxes" or some other "stealing my win" excuse. Anything to claim that "the wrong people voted that shouldn't have." And yet for all that screaming, when trump and his lawyers are called to prevent their evidence of "voter fraud" they still won't be able to present evidence that massive voter fraud on the scale they're claiming even happened. They will find scattered individual cases of potential fraud usually committed because that voter was confused, not criminally involved in a conspiracy.

It will then be up to the courts - at the state and then federal levels - to accept trump's conspiracy claims without any actual basis in fact. Many courts won't, because they have to rely on evidence on which to base their decisions. This is something that can well vex the US Supreme Court itself, which we've seen bend over backwards several times to give trump all the wiggle room he needs to escape accountability.

Can a Roberts Court truly throw out all lack of evidence and simply go by trump's claims lies that the 2024 election results were wrong if Harris actually wins? If they do that - if at least five Justices side with trump in spite of the popular and Electoral votes, if they decide on a matter more far-reaching than anything settled in Bush v. Gore - we will have a judiciary essentially invalidating the very concept of free and fair elections for all time.

Gods help us if that happens.

The best way to make sure it doesn't? Massive voter turnout on a scale so convincing for Harris/Walz and the Democrats that any claim of fraud by trump is laughable, to where Roberts and the other Far Right justices won't even risk the end of the U.S. Constitution to save trump.

Elections still matter. Voter turnout still matters, especially in this election cycle, when trump is poised to lie and bluff and bully his way out of certain electoral doom.

For the LOVE OF GOD AND COUNTRY AND THE CONSTITUTION, America, get the vote out this election cycle and vote for Kamala and Tim and for every Democrat up and down the ballot. Get the vote count for Democrats over 81 million again, while trump and JD show every sign of sliding well below the 74 million trump got in 2020.

P.S. one of the other funny thoughts I've had if trump tries to pull off his "don't certify" stunt with local elections officials: Many other elected officials like state legislators and U.S. congresscritters are going to rely on those same election results. It's been proven that not everyone votes a party line: Some candidates will get more votes than others from the same party due to various Indy/moderate voters refusing to vote a straight ticket down the ballot. What happens in a county where trump doesn't win it and screams at the elections official to not certify, but a lower-ticket guy like a state Senator did win and needs that election certified to keep his seat? They can't cherry-pick the ballots: Either the voter was legal to submit a ballot or not at all. 

This could lead to a rather interesting dynamic where the state-level Republicans can't side with trump in order to keep enough seats to control the state legislatures to try and steal the election for trump anyway. This particular paradox can prove most interesting...

When the War on Woke Destroys Libraries, It Destroys People Too

Just seeing this now on social media, and as a librarian I AM LIVID AS HELL (via Steven Walker with the Sarasota Herald-Tribune): 

Hundreds of New College of Florida library books, including many on LGBTQ+ topics and religious studies, are headed to a landfill.

A dumpster in the parking lot of Jane Bancroft Cook Library on the campus of New College overflowed with books and collections from the now-defunct Gender and Diversity Center on Tuesday afternoon. Video captured in the afternoon showed a vehicle driving away with the books before students were notified. In the past, students were given an opportunity to purchase books that were leaving the college's library collection.

Some discarded books included "Nine and Counting: The Women of the Senate", "The War of the Worlds" and "When I Knew" — which is a collection of stories from LGBTQ+ people recounting when they knew they were gay.

New College spokesperson Nathan March acknowledged the Herald-Tribune's request for comment but had not provided the college's response as of 2 p.m...

Fuck Governor DeSantis. Fuck Chris Rufo. Damn their anti-Woke, racist sexist asses.

This may not be literal book-burning but it's as damn close as the Far Right wingnuts will get.

I guarantee you there's no practical reason they're clearing these books. It's not for shelf space, or for updating to current understanding. These bastards are dumping these books out of spite, out of their sadistic need to make intellectuals and researchers and readers suffer. They intentionally purged a Gender and Diversity Center, for God's sake.

This isn't about faith either. These bastards are purging books about religions that only they disagree with, in violation of the First Amendment and the Constitutional right that no religious test should ever be applied to anything.

Any other rational actor at the academic level would have made good-faith efforts to see books that are weeded from a collection have a chance of going to another college that may need those titles for research purposes. Do you realize how many rare or hard-to-find titles survive at universities exactly because of their research value? If New College had a rare book that DeSantis and Rufo just tossed into the dumpster, they have knowingly denied current and future generations of researchers any opportunity to learn from that book.

SONS OF BITCHES.

For the LOVE OF FREEDOM, and AN HONEST GOD that does NOT ban thought or the SIMPLE RIGHT TO EXIST that every gay and lesbian and trans person has as human beings, and OUR SOULS. Florida, Please. Please please PLEASE STOP VOTING REPUBLICAN. Stop giving these haters and anti-intellectual dickweeds any power over all of us.

SAVE THE BOOKS. SAVE OURSELVES.

Woodstock Anniversary! Let's Bop!

It is August 15th, time again for a nostalgic look back at the 1969 Woodstock Festival.

This time, we're taking the dry, academic review provided by the History Channel itself!

...

You know what, that's boring. Here's Sha-Na-Na instead!

--

P.S. buy my books! (ow stop hitting me)

The Grift in Gainesville

Update: Many thanks again to Batocchio at Crooks & Liars for including this at Mike's Blog Round-Up! Please do your part to support Harris-Walz for the Presidential ticket this 2024, as well as voting out every goddamned Republican hack at the state level especially here in Florida. /rage

Someone pointed this article in the Independent Alligator to me this afternoon, and after reading the lede and the next three paragraphs as a U of Florida alum I am livid (via Garrett Shanley):

In his 17-month stint as UF president, Ben Sasse more than tripled his office’s spending, directing millions in university funds into secretive consulting contracts and high-paying positions for his GOP allies.

Sasse ballooned spending under the president’s office to $17.3 million in his first year in office — up from $5.6 million in former UF President Kent Fuchs’ last year, according to publicly available administrative budget data.

A majority of the spending surge was driven by lucrative contracts with big-name consulting firms and high-salaried, remote positions for Sasse’s former U.S. Senate staff and Republican officials.

Sasse’s consulting contracts have been kept largely under wraps, leaving the public in the dark about what the contracted firms did to earn their fees. The university also declined to clarify specific duties carried out by Sasse’s ex-Senate staff, several of whom were salaried as presidential advisers...

Graft. Grift. Corruption. Paying off cronies and buddies in every direction. There's no other way to describe this.

I wrote back in 2023 how Governor Ron DeSantis was sacrificing Florida's higher education system to pander to the MAGA voters:

It's been noted before that Florida's current Governor Ron "Pander Away" DeSantis is waging a war against "Wokeness," the current catch-all phrase by Far Right wingnuts describing anything that exposes our nation's history of racism, sexism, and bad behavior by conservative elites.

DeSantis has escalated his efforts across every level of education our state can offer. Not only are the classrooms at our public schools been emptied of every book so that DeSantis' foot soldier censors can refuse whichever titles they fear, but DeSantis is happily plugging in conservative political hacks into leadership roles at every major state university...

At the time, the big scandal revolved around DeSantis breaking the rules and hiring practices at New College, an experimental honors-level program that the Far Right anti-education forces wanted to convert into a Christianist Vo-Tech. But UF was getting the treatment as well:

If any of this feels the same as the situation leading to University of Florida - a flagship institution that had become one of the top universities in the nation - hiring an unqualified political hack like Ben Sasse earlier this school year, don't be shocked.

How was Sasse unqualified? Above all, he wasn't even from this state, carpetbagging his way here from Nebraska where he served as U.S. Senator. Where he did have qualifications, it was serving as president of a small college in that state that was facing financial shutdown. Sasse was able to bring in fundraising, and merging in students from a nearby college that did close in order to boost enrollment to a survivable level.

Thing was, University of Florida wasn't facing financial straits when DeSantis brought him on, only political targeting as a primary battleground over diversity hiring and enrollment that the Far Right Republicans like DeSantis wanted to stop. Sasse wasn't needed for any financial acumen: He was a party ally needed to push a political agenda.

And with that political agenda came a cash grab.

One of the things you'll notice about the modern Republican Party - at least from the 1990s, and arguably well back into the Nixon years - is how they view the public sector as a personal piggy bank to raid for their own pockets. Instead of managing revenues and spending for the public trust, the Republicans happily funnel taxpayer dollars to privatized businesses and contractors who happily overbill in order to get millions of money nobody keeps count of. Republicans in office will spend money on themselves and their vacation buddies without concern (or consequence).

Just look at the allegations leveled at Sasse: 

Amid protests over his conservative track record as a Nebraska Republican senator, Sasse promised during his ascension to the UF presidency in Fall 2022 that he would divorce himself from partisan politics under what he called a vow of “political celibacy.”

But the senator-turned-university president quietly broke that promise in his 17-month term at the university’s helm, hiring six ex-Senate staffers and two former Republican officials to high-paying, remote jobs at the university. 

Under Sasse’s administration, two of his former Senate staffers — Raymond Sass and James Wegmann — were among the highest-ranking and highest-paid officials at UF. Both worked remotely from the D.C. area, roughly 800 miles from UF’s main campus in Gainesville.

It's called "No-show jobs" and I doubt these guys even spent any actual minutes working for UF.

Sass, Sasse’s former Senate chief of staff, was UF’s vice president for innovation and partnerships — a position which didn’t exist under previous administrations. His starting salary at UF was $396,000, more than double the $181,677 he made on Capitol Hill. 

Wegmann, Sasse’s former Senate communications director, is UF’s vice president of communications, a position he works remotely from his $725,000 home in Washington, D.C.

They invented new jobs - arguably without any defined duties and responsibilities - just to fill them with cronies.

Sasse appointed his former Senate press secretary, Taylor Sliva, as UF’s Assistant Vice President of Presidential Communications and Public Affairs, a new position. Sliva’s $232,000 salary made him the second-highest-paid employee in UF’s Office of Strategic Communications and Marketing, trailing only Wegmann. 

The remaining three ex-Senate staffers — Raven Shirley, Kari Ridder and Kelicia Rice — served as presidential advisers to Sasse, though their specific duties remain unclear. Rice, Sasse’s Senate scheduler, is listed as a presidential adviser in UF’s salary directory but in practice remained as Sasse’s scheduler, according to her LinkedIn profile.

Sasse raised his former Senate staffs’ salaries at UF by an average of 44% compared to their Capitol Hill pay, contributing to a $4.3 million increase in presidential salary expenses over Fuchs’ last year in office.

Outside of his Senate staff, Sasse also tapped former Republican Tennessee Commissioner of Education Penny Schwinn as UF’s inaugural vice president of PK-12 and pre-bachelors programs. Schwinn, with a starting salary of $367,500, worked the newly-created position from her $1 million home in Nashville, Tennessee.

Additionally, Sasse hired Alice James Burns, former scheduler for Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC), as Director of Presidential Relations and Major Events. Burns, salaried at $205,000, also worked for UF outside of Florida.

Jesus. I doubt any of them ever set foot on campus except for the occasional photo op with Sasse and to pick up their paychecks (oh wait, they probably used direct deposit). How the hell could any of them claim to know what they were doing when they were NEVER there to do it?

In Sasse’s first full fiscal year at the university’s helm, travel expenses for the president’s office soared to $633,000 — over 20 times higher than Fuchs’ annual average of $28,000. Sasse spent more on travel in his 17 months at UF than Fuchs’ entire eight-year tenure.

Notice how Republicans love to claim they're the party of fiscal responsibility? How can they be, when they're more wasteful with money than drunken teenagers ahold of their parents' credit cards (Gods, this is a phrase I've been using since 2010). In all seriousness, Republicans are fiscally responsible only when it's their money: They will waste other's people's money to their hearts' content.

Remember how I said earlier Sasse had some experience running a college? Well, UF is a university: Vastly larger, more complex, and requiring more skill than Sasse apparently brought with him... because he hired in private consultants at expensive rates to walk him through it:

His track record in higher education administration was limited to his five-year presidency at Midland University, a small, private liberal arts college in Fremont, Nebraska. At UF, which enrolls over 60,000 students and pulls in an annual $1 billion in research grants, Sasse faced a steep learning curve.

He turned to consultants for help.

During his presidency, Sasse spent $7.2 million in university funds to consultants for advice on his strategic planning and to fill leadership gaps — over 40 times more than Fuchs’ total consulting expenses over his eight-year term.

Sasse paid nearly two-thirds of the $7.2 million to McKinsey & Company, where he once worked as an adviser on an hourly contract. The firm carries prestige as one of the “big three” management consulting giants, but is notoriously secretive about its dealings and shielded its work from public view using records laws protecting trade secrets.

A critical “scope of work” attachment, which would outline McKinsey's responsibilities to UF, was redacted from a copy of the contract obtained from a public records request. The redaction, permissible under state public records laws, makes it virtually impossible for the public to know what the firm did to earn its fees...

For all we know, those fees were for covering their tee times and martini luncheons at whatever golf courses they visited. It'd be nice to prove me wrong, McKinsey & Co.

Everything about this situation screams corruption, intentional wasteful spending of public dollars for private use and straight-up greed.

There is no way the crooks at the top of this chain - DeSantis and the state Republican leadership - will do anything to investigate these allegations (and will likely replace Sasse with one of their own corrupt colleagues).

Goddammit. Call in the feds. Get the Department of Education down here, get the Justice Department, bring the U.S. Marshals, whatever it takes. Find out how bad the rot is before it eats at everything else in the Sunshine State that hasn't been broken yet.

And for the love of GOD, Floridians: Vote these corrupt Republican SOBs out of office.

August 12th, A Notable Day for the Citizenry In Respect to the Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico

It is August 12th, in my mind - although I'm getting reports it's January 8th - Emperor Norton Day:

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

So while it's sad that Norton I - if he lives in this day and age - may not yet vote for Kamala Harris for the Presidency of the United States due to her status as a Democratic candidate - that he may insist on the imprisonment of any party member, although I have hope the Emperor is a forgiving soul - I am of firm belief that Norton I would never vote for that crazy-ass third-party hack RFK Jr.

I mean, other than the whole emperor business, Joshua Abraham Norton was a reasonably sound and forward-thinking person. And he might not have been wrong about that emperor business anyway.

from The Sandman (1989 series) comic #31
art by Sam Keith, dialog by Neil Gaiman, based on the actual life of Norton I

Remember to pay your .50 tax to the Emperor, kiddos! And name that bridge in honor of his service to the city of San Francisco and the nation at large.

Ukraine Punching Russia - And Putin - Where It Hurts

Holy forking shirtballs, this is happening right now in the Russian-Ukrainian War (via Institute for the Study of War): 

Ukrainian cross-border mechanized offensive operations into Kursk Oblast that began on August 6 are continuing as part of a Ukrainian operational effort within Russian territory. ISW will not offer assessments about the intent of this Ukrainian operation in order to avoid compromising Ukrainian operational security. ISW will not make forecasts about what Ukrainian forces might or might not do or where or when they might do it. ISW will continue to map, track, and evaluate operations as they unfold but will not offer insight into Ukrainian planning, tactics, or techniques. ISW is not prepared to map control of terrain within Russia at this time and will instead map observed events associated with the Ukrainian incursion into Russian territory as well the maximalist extent of claims and unverified reports about Ukrainian advances. Maximalist claims and unverified reports about Ukrainian advances within Russia do not represent territory that ISW assesses that Ukrainian forces have seized or control. Inferring predictions about Ukrainian operations from ISW maps and assessments that do not explicitly offer such predictions is inappropriate and not in accord with their intended use.

Since August 6th, Ukraine started a counter-offensive into Russia itself - going into the Kursk Oblast bordering their nation - that has achieved stunning results 48 hours later. Here's a map from the ISW report:

More accurate than Risk, what what.

The fun thing about Kursk? It's the region right between Ukraine and Moscow. 

Where Putin has put Ukraine on the defensive since 2014 - don't forget, this all started with Putin seizing Crimea back then - and then creating a bloodied stalemate along the southeastern part (Donbas) of Ukraine over the last two years, this is the first true military offensive that Ukraine has put together. That counter-offensive in autumn of 2022 that reclaimed most of eastern Ukraine to them only went as far as the Russian border. Now they've crossed that border, and they've exposed a soft underbelly of how fragile Russia's own defensive capabilities are:

Russian milbloggers claimed that small Ukrainian armored groups are advancing further into the Russian rear and bypassing Russian fortifications before engaging Russian forces and then withdrawing from the engagements without attempting to consolidate control over their furthest advances. Russian milbloggers noted that the prevalence of these armored groups is leading to conflicting reporting because Ukrainian forces are able to quickly engage Russian forces near a settlement and then withdraw from the area. Ukrainian forces appear to be able to use these small armored groups to conduct assaults past the engagement line due to the low density of Russian personnel in the border areas of Kursk Oblast. Larger Ukrainian units are reportedly operating in areas of Kursk Oblast closer to the international border and are reportedly consolidating and fortifying some positions...

A lot of this echoes what happened last year when the Wagner mercenary forces mutinied against Putin's mishandling of the war effort. If I can recall what I wrote then:

Throughout this crisis, Russia's own military failed to respond in full against a "turncoat" private army, highlighting the low morale and poor discipline plaguing the regular forces. Prigozhin made faster advancements marching into Russia within 24 hours where it took him and his Wagner brigades over three months to achieve anything at Bakhmut.

It looks like Zelensky and his generals paid attention to what Prigozhin did - before he wimped out, surrendered to Putin, and got himself and others killed on his next plane flight - and realized how vulnerable Russia itself was to a military offensive. With Putin hellbent on seizing as much of Ukraine as possible before he's forced to into any ceasefire - so he can claim all that territory is legally Russia, and maintain a foothold he can use to invade the rest of Ukraine in the future - most of Russia's military might is stuck in the Donbas front lines.

While Russian forces are advancing in Ukraine, they're doing it slowly due to their draining resources. Putin's been able to turn it into a meatgrinder in the hopes of wearing down the defenses and whittle away Ukraine's own limited ammo and armaments. The US and NATO are NOT doing enough to supply Ukraine out of fears of escalation (something frustrating the hell out of policy experts like Adam L. Silverman).

But now it's looking like Ukraine had been intentionally holding back on their arms and armaments the last several months to pull off this Kursk offensive. And it's looking like - at least to this armchair general colonel major okay the highest rank I ever got was library branch manager - the Ukrainians are trying to catch the Russians in a risky Either-Or decision: 

1) Redeploy any and all reserves - especially armored units and air support - away from supporting the Donbas offensives, which would weaken their offensive capabilities and give Ukrainian forces there a chance to punch through their defenses, taking away Putin's land grabs, or

2) Refocus more military effort into Donbas - where Ukrainian defenses are already pitched in and can make it too costly - to take more territory (and force Zelensky to at last relent), and hope that the mostly untrained and undersupplied conscript forces in Russia itself can set up effective defenses to halt any advances that would be politically damaging (like say Ukrainian tanks rolling in plain sight up the Kremlin driveway in Moscow itself) to Putin.

Already three days into the Kursk Offensive, and the Ukrainian forces have beaten back most of the Russian counterattacks with ease. Russia couldn't do any of the heavy defensive fortifications they made in Donbas - you can't place landmines in your own country, after all - and they're relying on recently drafted conscripts - since this April - to work up the nerve to charge into a Ukrainian position. Whatever armored capabilities Russia has, their failures to fight back - at the moment - are highlighting the likelihood Russia's military has almost nothing left to defend with.

If I can go back to Silverman at Balloon Juice for a minute about the current (well, last night) situation regarding all of this:

The more I think about it, the more I think the second answer – that the Ukrainians are trying to demonstrate to the Biden administration, as well everyone else, that the emperor – Putin – has no clothes. That no matter what red lines he declares, no matter what he says he’ll do if they’re breached, such as tactically using nukes during a conventional war, these are just agitprop and hollow threats in order to establish reflexive control over the leaders of his adversaries in order to give himself a preemptive veto in their decision-making process. I also think they have studied Prigozhin’s aborted revolt from a little over a year ago, how Putin personally responded, and how Russia’s military, security services, and law enforcement were unable to do anything to actually stop his Wagner mercenaries. I think they have a very, very, very good understanding of what Russia is not able to do to actually defend itself within its own borders and is exploiting those weaknesses...

There is every likelihood that Ukraine is over-extending their own military with this offensive - after all, they're not making incursions into other Russian oblasts (not yet) - although there are signs they are setting up strong defensive positions at key locations inside Kursk if/when their attack forces need to pull back. Thing is with this operation Ukraine is clearly proving they know what they're doing and how to pull it off, whereas Russia is still swinging blindly to land any punches they think they can make.

Silverman is right in that Zelensky and his government are proving how much of a feeble paper tiger Russia truly is: That past the threat of launching nuclear reprisals, there's nothing left behind Russia except bluster. And even the threat of nukes seems ludicrous because A) Putin dare not use them in Ukraine or Eastern Europe due to literal fallout returning to Russia itself and B) going nuclear against the US and Europe period is basically summoning a full apocalypse out of sheer spite because it will leave all of Earth a radioactive dust-ball.

Biden - and NATO - needs to be doing more for Ukraine. They need more tanks, more ammo, more body armor, more resources. They need more Patriots and anti-missile systems to stop Putin's ongoing attack on civilian populations (the one thing Putin will never stop doing, because he's a genocidal sadist). And Ukraine needs all that yesterday.

Today, Ukraine is kicking ass. The western powers need to pony up to help Ukraine kick Putin's ass tomorrow. And keep aiding Ukraine until Putin and his ilk are all gone from power.

Honest Bumper Stickers 2024: Phase One In Which DougJBalloon Get His Oats

Hey kids, remember those brief fun moments when I carved out Honest Bumper Stickers?

Like this one?

Well, here's 2024, the candidates are set, the conventions are happening (or have happened), and it's time to see if I can remember how Inkscape works!

Okay, now that I've gotten THAT out of my system... HERE'S SOME MORE!

because the saying "Balls to the Walls" is a term to go full speed, and...
and... (sigh) look, I *have* to explain it, not everybody gets it!

And just to be fair, I crafted a couple of trump-friendly bumper stickers for this election cycle!

took me hours to find a decent
commons use image of prison bars

I'd make one for the struggling, tone-deaf, cruel-to-animals RFK Jr campaign: Alas I do have standards.

The Ballz to the Walz T-Shirt Exists

Actually there's a number of t-shirts, but THIS one just "pops" don't it!!!

I think that's Biden's aviator sunglasses y'all

So it's on sale at Etsy. Click on that link. No excuses. GO. BUY IT! IT EVEN COMES IN CHAMBRAY!!!

...that's "light blue" to you peeps.

BALLZ TO THE WALZ, AMERICA!

LET'S FUCKING GOOOOOO! GET THE VOTE OUT, DEMOCRATS!

Suck it, trump. Back to the couch for you, Vance.

Ballz to the Walz, Dems

I said this earlier about the importance of making a Vice Presidential pick for your campaign: Your pick sets the tone.

So the tone Kamala Harris set for the Democratic Party by selecting Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate is this:

BALLZ TO THE WALZ, BABY.

What? It's a perfectly cromulent phrase from my youth as a suburban white punk. It means to "go all out," to blitz, to push forward with great force, to fight and not stop until the fight is done. Learned it in middle school, said it through high school, and then didn't really say it much in college because the study load was a bit fatiguing.

I am awaiting the inevitable t-shirt from Etsy, by the by.

The Balloon Juice community is all aflutter, as are my folks from the TNC Horde. To get a sense of why, here's Russell Berman at the Atlantic (paywalled) to explain it some:

In the realm of presidential politics, progressives have become accustomed to disappointment. Joe Biden wasn’t their first (or second) choice in 2020. Nor, for that matter, was Kamala Harris. And Democratic nominees typically pick moderates for their running mates. So when Harris announced Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her choice for vice president this morning, progressives experienced an unusual feeling: elation...

Progressives had latched onto Walz’s dark-horse candidacy over the past two weeks, seeing him as a more appealing option, both ideologically and politically, than Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, whom many believed to be the front-runner. Walz, a former teacher and high-school football coach, impressed liberals with his governing success in Minnesota, where he’s signed legislation enacting paid family leave, expanding the child-tax credit, protecting abortion rights, and lowering the cost of insulin. More recently—and perhaps more important—he charmed them with his folksy takedowns on cable news of Donald Trump and J. D. Vance.

“He’s just plainspoken and direct, and he’s very funny,” Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland, who served with Walz in the House, told me. “He’s got the common touch, and I think it’s an ingenious choice.”

In Walz, progressives believe they have found a Democrat who can connect with rural and white working-class voters in the crucial battlegrounds of the Midwest without compromising on the party’s policy platform. “He’s the anti-elite candidate. He comes across as the Everyman,” Joseph Geevarghese, the executive director of the progressive group Our Revolution, told me this morning. He called Walz “a perfect counterbalance” to Harris, whom Republicans have tried to portray as, in his words, “an out-of-touch California elite...”

Harris’s announcement drew praise across a wide ideological spectrum, from Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia to Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York. In the final days leading up to the selection, however, the largely behind-the-scenes contest between Walz and Shapiro had become a stand-in for larger Democratic fights that the party’s embrace of Harris had otherwise suppressed. The proxy war dismayed some party allies, who urged progressives to stop their attacks on Shapiro. “It’s a false binary,” Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, told me. She said that although she was “ecstatic” about the choice of Walz, she would have been just as happy if Harris had picked Shapiro or any of the other finalists, including Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona and Governor Andy Beshear of Kentucky...

Harris' selection of a popular regional governor does more than just help lock in Minnesota: Walz's brand of Democratic politics has the means to appeal across the entire Rust Belt (every state in the Great Lakes region) that can provide the same electoral appeal that Shapiro or Beshear (or Gretchen Whitmer from Michigan) could have provided.

But with Walz you get a little more: Someone with a personal narrative - he and his wife used In-Vitro to have children, for example - in clear opposition to the fearmongering hypocrisy that trump's presidential ticket is offering to voters. He's not only been a soldier - 24 years of National Guard service in the artillery, putting in the years most other political wannabes would shrug off - but also a high school social sciences teacher and football coach. Someone who would be a key figure in any small town community across America.

And while he was a high school football coach - leading his team to the state finals, no less - he took the time to become the faculty advisor of that school's first Gay/Straight Alliance student group. This is one of many reasons why progressives are elated: Walz is Pro-People, has been since even before Obama and Biden stood public for gay marriage.

Where trump's pick of Vance doubled down on trump's open hostility towards immigrants, women, blacks, gays, trans, and young people, Harris' pick of Walz doubled down on getting a candidate who's eager and grinning from ear to ear and willing to work on solving problems instead of making things worse.

Balls to the walls, guys. Let's get the vote out for Dems this year.

Bad Numbers and Bad Vibes and a Bad Choice

Vanz can't dance, but he'll steal your money/
Watch him or he'll rob you blind...
-- John Fogerty, "Vanz Kant Danz"
(and I'm not the only one who thought of this song when JD Vance got picked for trump's Veep)

It's taken me awhile to write about donald trump's Vice Presidential selection of Senator JD Vance for his 2024 ticket, but in the few weeks that Vance has been on that ticket it's become hilariously - and horrifyingly - clear that picking Vance was a bad idea.

Given trump's previous history with his Veep - trying to bully Pence into throwing the election results in 2020 to the point of sending an insurrectionist mob at him - it was a bit sad to see other Republican figures audition themselves on Fox Not-News for the 2024 ticket, but there was nothing you could do dissuade them. DeSantis, Tim Scott, Doug (seriously, North Dakota?) Burgum, all of them made their daily talking head shows to argue their own submission to trump's will; but none of them pandered - attacking Ukraine, praising Russia, showcasing misogyny - like Vance did.

Thing is, when trump picked Vance - or had others pick him, depending on the story - he didn't do a good enough job of finding out if Vance would boost the ticket or not.

For all I've said about the need for Vice Presidents, as long as that office is part of the electoral process it matters that you choose wisely. A Presidential candidate choosing his/her campaign partner is signaling to voters what he/she values as skills for those who will work in their potential administration. If you're a domestic policy guru, tagging someone with foreign policy cred helps win over the voting base (definitely the punditry) that you'll balance out your agenda. If you're a Moderate from the Midwest, it helps to get a more die-hard candidate from another region (South, Pacific, Northeast) to appease the other party factions (and vice versa). And no matter what, you have to make sure the VP choice has their own charisma or credibility (just not too much to outshine the boss) to win over the mainstream media.

In short: Your Veep pick sets the tone.

What trump and his handlers found out real quick post-convention was that Vance - for all that he's known at the state and federal level of politics- is tone-deaf. And more unpopular than anyone - other than several polling services who were firing off emergency flares - realized.

Let's hear it from Nicholas Liu at Salon:

Senator JD Vance, R-Ohio, is making history as Donald Trump's 2024 running mate, but not in the way that the Trump campaign had hoped. According to a CNN survey taken after the Republican National Convention, Vance has an approval rating of -6 points, making him the first vice presidential nominee to enter the general election with a negative rating since 1980.

The average rating for a running mate after a party convention has been +19 points.

"Frankly, I don't really understand the pick, and apparently neither do the American voters," CNN data analyst Harry Enten said on Tuesday's OutFront with Erin Burnett. Vance, he said, is "dragging Trump down..."

With Trump struggling to appeal to moderate women, the former president may rue choosing a man who ran for Senate on a hardline anti-abortion stance, criticized childcare subsidies as "class war against normal people" and suggested that married women would be selfish for divorcing their abusive husbands, saying in 2021 that "one of the great tricks that the sexual revolution pulled on the American populace" was "making it easier for people to shift spouses like they change their underwear...”

Even Vance's purported appeal among white working-class voters appears overstated. He won Ohio in his 2022 Senate election by 6 points; by comparison, Trump won by 8 points in 2020 and Gov. Mike DeWine carried the state in 2022 by 25 points. Among white voters without a college degree, Vance, with a 31-point lead over Democrat Tim Ryan, also lagged behind Trump and DeWine, who won by 36 and 45 points respectively...

I've talked before about how at the state level, a candidate can overcome personal faults to win election all because the partisan nature of local elections make it too easy to win no matter what. Ohio could have run a dead dog for the Senate back in 2022, and that poor mutt could have beaten Tim Ryan by double digits. Vance arguably eked by at 6 percent.

And trump picked a guy with negative popularity at the national level, something that hadn't happened since 1980 (was that Bush the Elder?). For a campaign that's supposed to be tracking every favorable poll to feed trump's vanity, how did they mess that up?

Think back to some of the, ahem, more questionable Veep picks we've seen. 

Sarah Palin? She had a positive boost - and genuinely gave McCain and the GOP a healthy poll bounce - coming out of the convention before her appearances and interviews quickly exposed her as a near-illiterate self-absorbed fool before the November election. Joe Lieberman? In terms of polling and voter turnout, Lieberman mattered little to how Gore performed: However, Lieberman's more conservative stances turned off the more progressive Dem voters which hurt the eventual turnout (the same might be said for Hillary's VP pick Kaine). Dan Quayle? The jokes about him started flying the moment he was tabbed, but even then he brought enough positives to the table that his polling wasn't as bad as Vance.

In each of their cases, there were valid reasons at the time for their picks that did help balance the ticket - geographically, demographically, ideologically - even as those picks ended up hurting or negating the overall effort. The same can't be said for Vance: He mimics trump's ideology to a horrifying tee, and he doesn't appeal to the youth demographics of Millennials or Generation X. He only fulfills a geographic necessity by being from a Midwest (Rust Belt) state, and that will get negated by whomever Kamala picks as her running mate (especially if it's a Rust Belt figure like Walz, Beshear, or Shapiro).

Vance is standing on the national stage with little in the way of genuine charisma or likeability. One of the new breed of Culture War Republicans who attack often and impress rarely, he's demonstrated a shocking ability to alienate people in a heartbeat even among his own Far Right audiences. His anti-immigrant and "DEI" stances - and eagerness to attack a biracial opponent like Kamala Harris - are hard to reconcile with the fact Vance married an Indian (Asian) American woman (where Kamala is Jamaican-Indian (Asian) with a similar background). And Vance's views on women? "Misogynistic" is the nicest word you can say about that.

As Paige Oamek at the New Republic notes in her article title, "Everyone Hates JD":

Just when J.D. Vance thought his polling numbers couldn’t get worse, they have.

Vance’s net negative favorability rating was a major topic of discussion during a Tuesday night CNN roundtable. According to this week’s ABC News/IPSOS polling, Donald Trump’s running mate is polling at a staggeringly low minus 15 points.

It's like watching the rushing numbers by UMass' football team get worse every drive they play against Georgia's defense.

During the CNN segment, former South Carolina state Representative Bakari Sellers called Vance “the Sarah Palin of Dan Quayles.” But as Enten pointed out last week, both former vice presidential picks began with positive favorability ratings: Quayle with 15 points and Palin with 26 points.

“He is historically unpopular, even more so than V.P. nominees who of course went on to infamy,” Enten said of the Ohio Republican.

Vance also won’t be saved by his home state or by the Rust Belt, where last week he polled even worse at minus 16 points, according to a CNN/SSRS poll, with 44 percent of people saying they have an unfavorable view of the senator...

When I noted earlier how intraparty dynamics would give Vance a chance to survive in Ohio, now that he's a candidate on the national level that state-level partisanship won't be able to help him (this is what Scott Walker and Jeb Bush and Rick Perry and other milquetoast candidates found out long ago).

Vance is so unlikeable he's vulnerable to that most dreaded of political attacks, the Whisper Campaign. 

Someone off in the far corners of social media posted a joke rumor - completely unfounded and without direct evidence - that JD Vance wrote a scene in his best-selling book Hillbilly Elegy - by the way the "memoir" turned out to be exaggeration at best and deplorable at worst - having sex with a couch. The joke spread quickly on Twitter to where the AP Newswire had to publish a report calling the story "false"... but then retracted that report because of the slight possibility that Vance could have engaged in that act anyway the editors claimed it wasn't vetted properly.

As Zachary Folk covered at the Daily Beast (paywalled):

The anonymous poster who started the viral—but false—rumor that Republican vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance had sex with a couch said he came up with the smear while shopping at a grocery store. The viral post’s author, who only identified himself as “Rick,” gave his first interview to Business Insider on Tuesday, telling the publication the joke came from “a place of irreverence if not outright disrespect.” The viral tweet has since attracted the attention of late night hosts, Fox News talking heads, and even Vice President Harris’ campaign. Rick said he has since protected his account and changed his Twitter handle to avoid unwanted attention. He also said he did not intend to spread misinformation, but instead simply wanted mock the Republican candidate...

Since then, while the mainstream media tried to keep away from it everyone else went all-in on the "couchfucker" mockery. Why is this joke proving so harmful to Vance?

Because being this unlikeable already didn't provide Vance with enough popular support to laugh off or shrug away the insult. Just looking at Vance - his physical appearance is just on the wrong side of being creepy, his hateful demeanor that just advertises "messed-up psychology," the general vibe of being weird - makes it more believable to the general population that this is a guy who would do something tawdry with your living room sofa.

Any stand-up comedian - or wannabe who did the Open Mic nights in South Florida back in the 1990s, ahem - can tell you this: When the majority of people are laughing at you instead of with you, you're screwed.

Rumors are now swirling that trump has soured on Vance already (don't forget, trump is a Bad Boss who will kick you to the street curb once he thinks you're no longer useful) while other party leaders are discussing how to remove Vance from the ticket. Problem is, replacing a ticket partner at this stage of the election is dicey at best (and that's just the paperwork you need to refill). The last time a Vice Presidential candidate got replaced mid-campaign was Eagleton back in 1972, and all that did was confirm that McGovern's campaign was in utter chaos and led to one of the biggest Electoral College defeats in history (that fact gets diminished with how Nixon's campaign unleashed massive sabotage and trickery against the Democrats when the facts of Watergate went public). 

trump can't afford to dump Vance even at this early stage of the final leg of the 2024 election cycle. trump can't afford to keep Vance because the way things are going JD is going to make Sarah Palin look like Margaret Thatcher.

This needs to be a warning to the American voting public at large: trump has no idea how to pick competent people to work for him. The Republicans don't have any competent or quality candidates to choose from anymore. For the LOVE OF GOD, don't vote trump/Vance this 2024, or for any other Republican hack ready and willing to destroy everything America stands for.

And in the meantime, ScotchGard your ottomans!

One Sentence Thought About trump's Hideous Performance at the National Association of Black Journalists

By appearing for an interview at the NABJ conference in Chicago this Wednesday just to use his time to attack Kamala Harris' ethnicity and mock not only the attendees but every honest American watching at home, trump got exactly what he thinks he wanted: Not only did trump get his fearmongering racist bullshit out there in the national dialogue for his racist voting base to lap up, he got to present himself as a "victim" of a hostile and angry audience so that he can justify further attacks against Kamala Harris as well as everyone supporting her.

As I mentioned in my previous post, trump and his Republican handlers seem to think that attacking their opponent's very existence is a winning move, when history proved that the same tactics applied to Barack Obama never worked at all as he won decisive majorities in 2008 and 2012.

Okay, that's two sentences three sentences on this topic, but it had to be said.

Update: YES I KNOW this is going to be more than one sentence, but the Psy Of Life blogger CalicoJack goes into a more thorough review of trump's racist actions and intent, and it a must-read.

The Zeal in the Moment

Revolution doesn't have to do with smashing something; it has to do with bringing something forth. If you spend all your time thinking about that which you are attacking, then you are negatively bound to it. You have to find the zeal in yourself and bring that out.
-- Joseph Campbell, Pathways to Bliss: Mythology and Personal Transformation

Some thoughts I'm trying to put together over the past week since Biden dropped from the race and threw his support to Kamala Harris.

The quick shift between Biden to Harris was like a seismic turnaround. Where there had been guarded hope among the Biden supporters - shaken by the poor debate performance this June - there is unabashed enthusiasm now among the Democratic and Left-leaning voting base.

Within a day of the announcement that Biden was stepping aside in the campaign and throwing all his support to his Vice President, fundraising for Kamala went through the roof setting records throughout the week (via Aamer Madhani and Bill Barrow at AP News): 

Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign has raised $200 million since she emerged as the likely Democratic presidential nominee last week, an eyepopping haul in her race against the Republican nominee, former President Donald Trump.

The campaign, which announced its latest fundraising total on Sunday, said the bulk of the donations — 66% — comes from first-time contributors in the 2024 election cycle and were made after President Joe Biden announced his exit from the race and endorsed Harris.

Over 170,000 volunteers have also signed up to help the Harris campaign with phone banking, canvassing and other get-out-the-vote efforts. Election Day is 100 days away.

“The momentum and energy for Vice President Harris is real — and so are the fundamentals of this race: this election will be very close and decided by a small number of voters in just a few states,” Michael Tyler, the campaign’s communications director, wrote in a memo...

Another thing that Biden's announcement did was undercut any momentum trump and the Republicans were hoping to get out of their just-finished convention in Milwaukee (which had turned into a rather dull, alienating affair). Instead of talking about trump's pick of JD Vance for his Veep, instead of talking about trump's bravado over surviving an assassination attempt... The mainstream media had focused on all the increased interest in Kamala (or worse, focused on how bad a pick Vance is turning into. But that's another story...)

As part of the fundraising pace, more and more social-media driven events crowded the attention. A "White Women for Kamala" Zoom call turned out 100,000 viewers and literally broke the chat app. Other Zoom events fed off the momentum of that, leading up to one that even I - and my cats - could partake: White Dudes for Kamala.

Childless Cat Guy ready for #whitedudesforharris pic.twitter.com/ODQCV0RnBa

— Witty Librarian 2024 (@PaulWartenberg) July 29, 2024

Jeff Bridges showed up! THE DUDE HIMSELF, AND HE ABIDES.

Luke Skywalker showed up. Every Democratic White Male - vying for the Veep spot - showed up. My cat Ocean rested on the sofa - or was trying to protect it from Vance (again, another story) - and watched alongside me.

Even the cats - and the hoomans they own - are excited in the shift towards Kamala as the Democratic standard bearer.

All that said, with all this zeal and raised hopes for the Democratic ticket, the realities of the campaign are still here.

Voter turnout is everything. The good thing about the Kamala Bump is how this excitement will get not only the Democratic base turning up at the polls in November, but also the undecideds and waverers who are no longer distracted by the "Biden's too old" hammering the GOP was inflicting on the national psyche.

This shift has noticeably caught the Republicans off-balance. Everything they've done since 2020 to negate any appeal for Biden has been for nothing. The grandstanding and impeachment threats from the GOP-controlled House since 2023 has turned into a meaningless joke. The one thing the Far Right had as an attack on Joe was his age: Now that becomes a liability for an obviously elderly, cranky, ill-looking, dementia-driven trump.

The Republicans will clearly stay on the attack, but the messaging is going to be so obvious and grating it ought to alienate any remaining Independent and undecided voters they needed to draw in. The wingnut media is already going after Kamala's birth status, trying to rehash the Birther conspiracy nonsense they tried against Obama. But it never worked against Obama in the first place.

They'll also try attacking Harris for her gender, bringing out the worst of the Far Right misogyny already on display with the GOP attacks on abortion rights, birth control, and women's roles in the workplace. They'll try all the stuff they used on Hillary Clinton back in 2016, dragging out all the fearmongering towards feminism they know to use. But Kamala isn't Hillary: Where the Beltway Media spent decades since 1992 turning Hillary into a hated figure on the national stage, Kamala doesn't have that disadvantage. Harris' favorables are already well above the dismal numbers Hillary had that reduced voter turnout for her.

That was the thing in 2016: Clinton won the popular vote, but not by much, and had lost voters in key battleground states to where the Electoral College flipped to trump. Hillary's unpopularity in those states - driven by constant negative reporting by the media - were her undoing. 

Kamala Harris doesn't have that disadvantage: For all the noise the GOP can bring to the table, there are no realistic scandals to hit Harris with. Her dating life 20 years ago is already well-known and unrelated to her current situation as a happily-married wife. The Republicans can't effectively go after her history as a state prosecutor or State Attorney General without undermining their own (false) Law And Order ideology. They'll accuse her of being a "San Francisco Socialist" but that doesn't have much appeal outside of the already-rabid MAGA base.

All said, the enthusiasm - the zeal - for the Democratic voter base is truly alit and gaining momentum by the hour.

It's all a question now of getting voter turnout for the Democrats across all 50 states to make any attempts by trump and his cronies to steal the results impossible to pull off.

GET THE VOTE OUT FOR HARRIS, AMERICA. Your cats demand it.

Down And Out Under the Palms

Welp. I got word back from the judges at the FWA Royal Palm Literary panels.

All four submissions I put in for Non-Fiction: Blogging/Article did NOT make the Semifinalist cut this year.

After the high of winning a Gold for last year, striking out this year just hurts.

I wasn't in a good mental place since last week. This isn't helping.

...if y'all can get 500,000 people to buy my ebooks, that would be great.

/sigh

Quick Break July 2024 edition

Just need to take a quick break. I may come back and blog pretty soon, but my head and soul are not in good places right now.

 

Everything Changed Today

So I woke up today to this stuff getting posted in Bluesky Social, but because I haven't figured out how to embed those posts into this blog I went to Twitter (fuck you, Elon, it's not X) to do this:

Aaron Sorkin published an op-ed in NYT this morning that calls on Democrats to nominate a Republican in place of Pres. Biden next month at the convention, specifically Mitt Romney. For real. Don't click on it. Don't read it. I promise you ain't missing anything.

Parody has died. pic.twitter.com/Ricu3sjIJE

— Charlotte Clymer 🇺🇦 (@cmclymer) July 21, 2024

"I FEEL LIKE I'M TAKING CRAZY PILLS" times infinity.

It case the tweet goes bad, I screen-captured:

This? This is what you get when you think
quoting the HMS Pinafore all the time makes you smart.

I did read it just to see if it's as bad as Clymer says, and Gods yes it's terrible. Sorkin's idea of a unity candidate is - get this - going for a Republican candidate... Mitt Romney.

MITT FCKING ROMNEY?!

Not only is it offensive to suggest the Democrats have to roll over and take a REPUBLICAN on their ticket, but to go with Romney whose sole objective running - and losing - in 2012 was to get a massive tax cut for the rich. Never mind the reality that Mitt is opposed to most things - unions, abortion rights, immigration reform - that the Democratic voting base supports. It's like these so-called "liberal elites" - the pundits, the "actively engaged" celebrities, who are pulling in six-figure incomes where the rest of us are struggling around $35k a year to survive - don't give a damn about the millions of primary voters who happily re-nominated their incumbent President for a second go.

So here I was for most of the morning, putting this blog article together to tear Sorkin a new one when by 1:00 PM... everything changed.

pic.twitter.com/RMIRvlSOYw

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) July 21, 2024

I had to go off to one side and rant for a couple hours after that bombshell. I've calmed a little, but I'm still at the LIVID stage.

Livid and angry towards the goddamned Beltway media - especially that godforsaken rag the New York Times - that were beating the drums to get Biden to drop out. Angry at the Right-of-Center Democrats like Joe Manchin kneecapping any party unity that was needed for the upcoming convention this August. Well, congratulations you sons of bitches, you got your scalp.

If there is any good news from this announcement, it's that Biden openly supports his Vice President Kamala Harris to take over the campaign for him. Running now on their administration's legacy of job growth, infrastructure investment, debt forgiveness for tens of thousands of Americans, and financial reforms. Harris in particular has been touring the nation campaigning against the Dobbs ruling and the Republicans who are working to deny women their basic rights (not just abortion but their right to divorce, their right to work, their right to get education, their right to live).

But those buzzards are still circling. The likes of David Axelrod are complaining that Harris didn't get "vetted" by the primaries - ignoring that she was part of Biden's ticket at the time, and that she's got years of experience in the Executive branch already - and are demanding "an open convention" where the goddamned special interest factions - backed by billionaires that had been funding this anti-Biden effort - will try their best to return to the "smoke-filled backrooms" of power brokering to force an unpalatable pro-business / anti-tax candidate on the Democratic base.

At a moment when the Democratic Party needs to unite behind a standard bearer - be it Biden or be it Harris - we still have these corrupted factions still looking to sabotage it all and let the likes of trump and his Republican hacks steal their way back into the White House.

Goddamn them.

This is an open call to every Democratic and Independent voter I know. Ignore the haters. Focus on what matters. The Democratic Party is the one thing standing for our American democrat-republic institutions and way of life. We got 81 million people to vote for Biden and Harris in 2020 and we can do that again for Harris and whomever she picks to stand as her Vice President. 

We need to stand for women's rights, we need to stand for the good jobs at good wages Biden and the Democrats have brought to us, we need to stand for a future where the uber-rich oligarchs don't decide our fates, we do.

For the LOVE OF GOD AND COUNTRY, do NOT vote for that convicted felon and sex offender donald trump. Do NOT vote for the Republican Party that has surrendered to his greed and his Id.

Elections always matter. Get the vote out for Harris and the Democratic Party across every seat across every county across every state. 

Do not let Joe Biden down, people. He's counting on US to secure his administration's legacy.

Update: What, NOW Sorkin regrets his bullshit?!?! /rage

I've Taken The Crazy Pills, Haven't I: July 2024 Edition

WHAT DID I JUST SAY?

Jesus. Even in the moment of donald trump's self-crowning - with an oversized bandage on his ear and every lapdog at his feet - at an overtly racist and sexist RNC, the Democratic Party cannot get out of their own way.

WaterGirl over at Balloon Juice is feeling the same frustration I am about the Dem party leadership buying into the mainstream media freakout and getting caught in more rumor-mongering to force Joe Biden to step down from the 2024 re-election bid:

I am heartsick at the spiraling anxiety, and angry at the own-goals.  This madness needs to stop – if not in the media, then at least in Balloon Juice threads that I put up.

So until something changes, this will be my last post related to “Biden, will he or won’t he, should he or shouldn’t he”.

We are wasting so much time and energy on this, at a time when there is so much work to be done. There is so much work to be done.  So much work, and so little time.

I’m sure there will still be plenty of Balloon Juice threads where anyone who wants to can continue to endlessly hash this out, with both sides endlessly repeating the same things, over and over, sincere people and trolls, alike.  But I’m done.  And I’m pretty sure the other side is laughing...

This panic - which echoes a lot of the Dem panic from 2004 when they worried Howard Dean was more vulnerable than John Kerry all because Karl Rove made them second-guess themselves - isn't doing them any favors. It's feeding into the Beltway narrative of "Dems In Disarray" and is going to upset / discourage millions of primary voters who already sided with Biden as their choice.

If anybody is thrilled to the idea of an "open convention" this August, please punch yourself in the face. This 2024 primary season didn't present the party with any strong alternatives to Biden, and such a convention between up-and-comers like Governors Newsom or Whitmer or some third person suddenly flush with questionable dark money will turn bloody and divisive, which once again favors the goddamn trumpsters.

Anybody thinking that things will get easier if Biden steps aside for his Vice President Kamala Harris need to remember just how racist the mainstream media let the Republicans play it when it was Obama as the candidate in 2008 and 2012, and will just as easily allow trump and his cohort to attack Harris over the same goddamn racist dog-whistles bullhorns. And Harris is going to face the same kind of sexism that Hillary faced in 2016, by the same mainstream media that cannot overcome their own misogyny when dealing with "ambitious women" as candidates. You know how many reporters are itching to jump on the stories that came out during 2020 about the bad blood within Harris' primary campaign back then, eager to pull that same shit if she becomes the ticket headliner?

We've gotten 81 million voters to side with Biden in 2020 and a supermajority (90 percent or more) of primary voters to stick with Biden against the likes of Dean Phillips (a conservative congresscritter who got talked into undermining party incumbancy), and yet the Democratic party leadership is getting brow-beaten by a hostile Beltway media desperate to keep their horserace and "Dems in Disarray" narratives going until November.

There's a reason why I've got "Democrats Are Cowards" as a blog label, and you're watching it as it happens. Goddamn them.

Man up. Support Biden, here and NOW. Get the vote out. Get those 81 million voters back. Get every man and woman who supports abortion rights. Get every man and woman who opposes even one tidbit of that hideous Project 2025 agenda. Get every American voting for a unified Democratic Party.

For the LOVE OF GOD. Turning on each other now does not help.

Destroying Justice All To Serve trump

Dear America: I am so sorry I jinxed it.

I wrote this back in February:

We've had other corrupt men in high office before, just that none of them reached the criminal lows that trump has. trump's not facing criminal trials because he's a "great conservative American," he's facing criminal trials now because 40 years of bills over his bullshit are finally coming due.

The civil trials are mostly done, and trump has to pay those dues soon. The criminal trials start March, and the countdown to just even ONE felony conviction begins.

Tick fucking tock, trump.

While the criminal trial regarding hush money and election interference in Manhattan happened and trump answered for that (so far), the other three trials got hit with delays and more delays - trump's favorite legal tactic - to where trump can gamble on lying/cheating/stealing his way into the White House and claim Presidential Immunity (as this corrupt SCOTUS intends it).

And today, trump's run for the Mexican Border for the Presidency got a lot sweeter when his judge Aileen Cannon - there is no other way to describe her - dismissed the Mar-A-Lago classified documents case on the argument that the special counsel overseeing it is unconstitutional (via Carrie Johnson at NPR):

U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon has dismissed the classified documents case against former President Donald Trump in an order Monday morning over the manner in which special counsel Jack Smith was appointed.

“The Superseding Indictment is DISMISSED because Special Counsel Smith’s appointment violates the Appointments Clause of the United States Constitution,” wrote Judge Cannon, who was appointed to the bench by the former president.

Special counsel Jack Smith had contested this argument, and other federal courts had upheld the constitutionality of special counsels.

“None of the statutes cited as legal authority for the appointment…gives the Attorney General broad inferior-officer appointing power or bestows upon him the right to appoint a federal officer with the kind of prosecutorial power wielded by Special Counsel Smith," Cannon wrote. "Nor do the Special Counsel’s strained statutory arguments, appeals to inconsistent history, or reliance on out-of-circuit authority persuade otherwise...”

Cannon is using a provision offered by Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas in his Immunity concurrence, something that no other judge or court agreed with... and will require even more appeals back up to the high court before this mess can ever get straightened out. As it is, Thomas' opinion would negate every special counsel matter currently out there at the federal level... including the matter involving Hunter Biden. But hey, this is a deal for trump, so why bother eh?

Going to Marcy Wheeler at her Emptywheel site for comment:

It’s hilarious.

It’s hilarious, because it doesn’t create any delay that Cannon was not pursuing anyway. Indeed, Jack Smith could immediately appeal this and try to get her tossed, so it may hasten things (unless Trump wins!).

It’s hilarious because it is unbelievably hubristic. The only credible future for Judge Cannon now is Trump’s first SCOTUS appointment in a second term.

It’s hilarious because the way she did this, if it were upheld (not an impossibility given how nutty SCOTUS has gotten), it would be even more useful for Hunter Biden than Donald Trump (especially if Trump didn’t win reelection), because the statutes of limitation on Hunter’s alleged crimes have started to expire.

As for Smith appealing, yes he has. This now depends on how quickly the 11th Circuit handles this... and if the appellate court can remove Cannon for her bias and ineptitude.

And it all depends on the American voters coming out in huge numbers to vote for Biden and deny trump any sanctuary from justice.

trump has defeated justice for now, but he ought to - needs to - answer to the law in spite of the conservatives in the judiciary shredding all of it to protect their hold on power. trump is not running to serve the interests of Americans, he is not running for ideology or purpose, he is not running to uphold the public trust. trump is running to save his own ass from jail, and he will burn everything down to avoid that fate.

America cannot survive a criminal in the White House AGAIN.

To the 81 million of us who voted for Biden in 2020, we have a responsibility to return to the ballot and vote for Joe again. And let us bring about 44 million more with us across all 50 states just to make certain of it.

For the LOVE OF GOD AND COUNTRY AND JUSTICE, America. Do not vote trump this year.