Thursday, September 30, 2021

‘Tis The Season

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"Will You Please Be Quiet, Please!"

A) We did read it in the news. And then it got swamped by all the other "news" coming out of the advance copies of Peril.*  Blame the media, if you must.

B)  Almost every legal expert who read it agreed the Eastman memo had the same credibility as Sidney Powell's claim that Justice Alito was just waiting to give the election to Trump, and would have done it, too!  If not for Pelosi and those meddling kids...er, Representatives and Senators who returned to the joint session after the attack on the Capitol.

Yeah, that wasn't going to happen, either.  For one thing, Alito could have enjoined the proceedings whether they were active or suspended.  For another, that was simply never going to happen.  Alito referred the suit to the full court; they all agreed it was a nothingburger.  Pretty much like Eastman's memo. The risk of the Supremes intervening?  Zero.

Once again:  while I'm not arguing we can just relax because the courts are here to protect us, I am arguing that the Chicken Littles who insist the sky is falling always leave out how no effort to stop, overturn, reverse, "decertify," or otherwise overturn the results of the Presidential election of 2020, ever got any traction in the legal system, where such efforts would have to turn.  The Eastman memo even presumed a concordance with Congressional Republicans that never so much as made an appearance (voting against certification of electoral votes you know is an empty gesture of a vote is a far cry from actually provoking a Constitutional crisis with all the authority at your command).  Had the GOP even tried to implement the "strategy," Pelosi could have simply cancelled the joint session, and refused to reconvene until 12:01 on January 20th, when Trump was no longer President as a matter of law.  The Congress then could have certified Biden, and the whole matter would be no more than a footnote in American Presidential history.

We have a three-part system, and while one part was under the ostensible control of a toddler with a shotgun with, fortunately, no idea even after 4 years of how government works, the other part, Congress, was never going to go along with his insanity, and the third-part, the courts, tossed everything he tried into their shredders.

Frankly, we were in greater constitutional peril when Lincoln suspended habeas corpus.

*Which everybody and his dog "obtained a copy" of because the publisher supplied them, not because the journalists are such good buddies with bookstore buyers. Can't buy free publicity unless you at least send the book around to people who will write/talk about it in the media.
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If Looks Could Kill

Ever seen a picture of an intubation? Ever seen somebody intubated? It’s not the old oxygen tent, or the plastic face mask, or even the nose plugs strapped on your head. The tube is inserted deep down the throat. The patient is in an induced coma. It’s the only way to keep the patient calm enough to tolerate the tube 24/7.

Ever seen a picture of smallpox? I hadn’t, not until today. Oh, I must have sometime in 66 years. But I don’t remember it. I could find them on the internet, if I ever thought to look. You can find diagrams, cross-section drawings of intubations. You just have to look for them. Does that make any difference?

I knew adults crippled by poliomyelitis in childhood. They were my parents contemporaries. My parents grew up with many of the childhood diseases I was vaccinated against. We all got the polio vaccine as soon as it was available. I still think it’s the experience of that which made us accept vaccines. Thanks to vaccines, some of us think all of us are safe. Or that we were never in danger.

Is seeing believing? I’ve long quit thinking so. Believing is believing. My daughter is alive because of medicine. She has a puppy now, and calls the vet to be sure it’s safe to give the dog Benadryl when he’s stung by a bee, or more likely eats one. But she tells me she doesn’t trust doctors, because. Just because. Obviously she doesn’t quite mean it, because she’s fully vaccinated, takes medicine for a chronic condition, visits doctors regularly for the same reason. Does she see the results? Well, she’s not dead. But does she question the need for medicine? No, not really. She trusts; but she thinks it wise to say she doesn’t trust.

Believing is believing. That’s all there is to it. Pictures can be denied. Experiences can be reimagined, reinterpreted, just flat rejected. I’ve seen people do it. We believe, but we don’t call it belief; that’s because it’s trust. We trust, though we probably can’t name what it is we trust. We just do.

Can we change our trust easily? No. Often that’s the problem: what we trust, is not trustworthy. But we don’t even know we trust it. We don’t know what’s wrong. We’re just sure the problem is not us, not what we trust. That means the problem has to be something else. So would a picture change our beliefs? Not likely.

If it would, the pictures already on the internet would have certainly changed more hearts and minds.

Setting all that aside, the resistance to the Covid vaccine has nothing to do with vaccines.
There’s a lot of that going around. Although it’s not as strongly held a belief as some might think.
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OMG!

And it's: her political opponent!

"She's basically the mastermind of the 2020 election," Lake insisted. "The secretary of state oversees the election and we know and we saw it proved last Friday when we saw the forensic audit report detailed for us, all of the fraud, all of the -- what appears to be criminal activity. I mean, who goes in the day before and deletes millions of election files the day before the audit is to begin. That is criminal."

As goes Arizona, so goes the nation?  Does she understand this was a 50-state election? (Well, and Puerto Rico and Guam, if I understand correctly.)

As for the allegation of fraud:  a) fraud is not necessarily a criminal activity.  There is civil fraud, and there is criminal fraud.  Two different beasts, and proving one doesn't necessarily prove the other.  Of course, there's also: 

b) evidence of fraud.  The "deletion" of "millions of election files" didn't happen.  Even the Cyber Ninjas admitted they got that wrong.  What Lake is referring to is what we call a "lie."  Oddly, lies are the basis of most charges of fraud (criminal or civil); which is not to say this is such a case.  Just to note the irony.  Also to note this is why 60+ cases were tossed out of court summarily when Trump & Co. went to court on lies, not evidence.  Without evidence, you can't prove fraud; or a criminal violation of law, for that matter.

Lake is referring to a report that wasn't issued.  She is citing a claim that even the authors of the actual report had to admit was an error on their part, because they had no idea how elections work.  Much like non-lawyers or law enforcement professionals, who think whatever action they don't like is "criminal," reveal they don't know how the law works.

These are the clowns we're supposed to be afraid of?  Well, if they got control of the courts, I would be afraid.  But they haven't.  Even the "philosophers" of the Supreme Court (they want to reassert their Olympian postures by telling select crowds how right they are, and how august), though they might overturn Roe (and woe be unto us when they do, but maybe we'll take matters into our hands, eh? Always look on the bright side...), will never inject the chaos and extra-legal actions of "de-certifying" an election or declaring it fraudulent and so deciding it for the runner up (what, only the Presidential votes were fraudulent?  What about the rest of the ballot?  Can we unzip all those votes for Republicans down ballot, too?).

I ain't skeered.  Mostly I'm just tired of being told the sky is falling; or that Hitler is renascent, and he's coming from Florida, unless he goes broke or gets arrested first. I’m tired of people thinking the only viable position is the polar opposite of their enemies. That’s how those who fight demons become demons themselves.

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Yes, It Does

Yes, the poll does show that.

But who's running in 2022 matters a great deal more than who respondents to a poll like in late 2021.  Will it be Beto?  McConaghey? (Is he a Dem, or a Republican?  Nobody knows yet.).  Will it be a Democrat yet to be named?

Hell, I'll cut to the chase and cite the poll report:

Today, Governor Abbott receives a divided 44 - 47 percent job approval rating, marking the first time Abbott's score is underwater since Quinnipiac University began polling in Texas in April 2018. In today's poll, Republicans approve 83 - 12 percent, independents are divided with 43 percent approving and 47 percent disapproving, and Democrats disapprove 89 - 6 percent.

Texas voters say 50 - 33 percent that they do not think Beto O'Rourke would make a good governor, while 17 percent did not offer an opinion. Voters say 49 - 25 percent that they do not think Matthew McConaughey would make a good governor, while 26 percent did not offer an opinion.

If I'm Abbott, I'm still more worried about my primary opponents than my opponents in the general.  As the poll analyst quoted in the article says:

"A lukewarm to downright cool response to an Abbott rerun in Austin, but compared to the high-profile young guns who may have eyes on a possible gubernatorial run, the governor is tall in the saddle,"

Pardon me if I don't get excited by what fits in the tweet.
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Whose Anguish Counts?

The answer is always the same.
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Trans Is The New Black

"STAND UP FOR YOUR KIDS!" As long as they aren't trans.

Some people always gotta have someone to be hatin' on.  I really don't understand that.  It's a sad, withered way to live.
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Wednesday, September 29, 2021

Stand Down From Red Alert 🚨

Remember the "Arizona 'audit' to be repeated everywhere!"? Yeah, not so much.

The secretary of state's documentation explaining the parameters of the reviews notes the first phase includes partial manual counts of ballots and security assessments, which all counties are already required to undergo.

The second phase, which is slated for “spring 2022,” will be an examination of election records “to ensure election administration procedures were properly followed.” That includes reviews of records of voting machine accuracy tests, rosters for early voting, forms detailing chain of custody for sealed ballot boxes and other election materials maintained by the counties.

But the secretary of state also indicates it will review records that counties already provide to the office, including the “reasonable impediment declarations” filled out by voters who indicate they lack one of the photo IDs the state requires voters to present to cast a ballot.

Although there probably is a reason for this; and it's not a good one:

In announcing the reviews, the secretary of state’s office said it was focusing its efforts on Texas’ two largest Democrat counties, Harris and Dallas, and two largest Republican counties, Tarrant and Collin. But both longtime Republican strongholds show signs of inching away from the GOP. Tarrant narrowly voted Democratic at the top of the ticket in 2018 and 2020. In Collin County, Trump saw his margin of victory fall from 16% in 2016 to 4.6% in 2020. 

The devil is still in the details:

In releasing the details about the reviews, a spokesperson for the secretary of state emphasized the office would not be “hiring or contracting with an outside firm to conduct these audits.”

The months following Trump’s loss have been roiled by Republican efforts to pursue election reviews across the country. The reviews announced by the Texas secretary of state’s office came just weeks after Republicans in the Texas Senate showed an interest in passing legislation that would pave the way for county audits of the 2020 general election. Time ran out on the last special legislative session during which it was considered.

But the secretary of state’s office on Tuesday said its reviews could trigger full manual recounts of ballots cast in some precincts or polling locations if the office finds “irregularities or deviations from election administration procedures” that could have affected the accuracy of a county’s electronic ballot count. 

But nobody's inviting Cyber Ninja's for a sleepover.  Not yet, anyway.  And does this mean we actually know what's going on?  No; and that's the point;

Officials in Harris County on Tuesday morning said they remained unaware of what the audits would cover despite comments by Abbott that the reviews “actually began months ago.” Now, it appears the governor was, at least in part, referring to processes counties are separately required by law to complete. 

Government as three-card monte; but nobody knows how to work the hustle. 

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We Are Already Conducting Triage Of Patients

The only difference is whether the system is formal and overseen by "ethics committees" terribly concerned about the burden of making the decisions; or whether we're doing it on a "first-come, first-served" basis.

The latter, of course, absolves everyone of responsibility.  And I've come to believe avoiding responsibility is the primary task of human beings as social animals.  "Heroes" are the people in our stories who actually take responsibility, from Beowulf to Batman.  The rest of us are just glad they do, so we don't have to.

"Religion is responsibility, or it is nothing at all."

We are not a religious country.  Not in the slightest.
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Generating Gaps

 Realizing Steve Schmidt is 7 years younger than Rick Wilson (who is just at the cusp between Boomers and Gen X), and that generalizations based on year of birth are as reasonable as astrological signs (not at all), one can still make generalizations about “generations” based on history.

Mr. Wilson, for example, was 26 when the Berlin Wall came down.  I was 34.  The difference of 8 years is a major difference in this case (Mr. Schmidt was 19).  I saw a “Twilight Zone” re-run last night, from 1963. The story concerned people trying to live after the nuclear holocaust.  This, in itself, was not remarkable in 1963.  I haven’t done a study of it, but nuclear holocaust provided the backdrop for apocalypse movies for decades, until zombies and pandemics in general, took over.  The TZ story, then, was a familiar trope in 1963.  It was, of course, set in the future; the future many people feared (Serling used this trope several times in the run of the series).  In this case, the future was 1974.  Not important to us 47 years after that, whose worst crime against humanity was the rise of disco; but the story was set 10 years after the war to end all wars (and civilization itself).

I can think of four or five such stories across the series; stories set after the holocaust, the complete destruction of civilization, or just the unholy terror of what everyone was sure was bound to happen.  It was the droning background noise of the '60's.  We all heard it, we all thought about it, we all feared it.

Neither date in the story itself is significant, except that the war being 10 years in the past in the story, and the story being set in 1974, meant the war had come in 1964.  Only one year in the future from the year of first broadcast.  It wouldn't be plausible today, unless it was something as implausible as a zombie apocalypse.  Nuclear war was all too plausible in 1963.

Someone might set a zombie apocalypse story a few years in the future today.  Devious things happen in a large secretive corporation, evil virus/AI/what have you escapes, apocalypse follows.  The focus is mostly on the evil corporation.  The proximity in time (The Day After Tomorrow, which was actually the title of a nuclear war scenario film, IIRC) of course just makes it scarier, if not more plausible.  But in 1963 nuclear holocaust was all too real, all too expected. Twenty years later, that expectation very nearly became reality:

Fear of nuclear holocaust had considerably abated by 1983, which is one reason that story is not more widely known, that Stanislav Petrov’s name isn’t more widely recognized.  In 1983, Rick Wilson was 20; Steve Schmidt was 13; and your humble host was 28 and had been married for 6 years.

Why am I hammering on our respective ages?  Because when you grew up in post-war (WWII, I mean) America marks what you remember, how you grew up.  I remember “duck ‘n’ cover.”  I remember air raid sirens and CONELRAD, AM car radios with the CONELRAD logo to indicate where to tune when the radios all suddenly left the air.  I remember public bomb shelters and PSA's about locating one in your daily routine so you could rush to it when the air raid sirens went off. They had convenient signs and logos, too.  We were expected to know them. I remember going home to my mother one day in elementary school and asking why we didn’t build a fallout shelter just in case.  She told me she didn’t want to be alive in the post-war world popular fiction and TV and movies described.  That’s not the answer a young child expects; or forgets, ever.

And that’s where my thesis begins:  that Gen Xer’s and even tail-end Boomers who missed the paranoia (Red Scare was around for a long time) and anxiety of the years when The Bomb could fall without warning, missed what made life significant for the rest of the Boomer generation, the event that scarred and scared us all.  Those who missed it, but grew up in our shadow, seem to have a sort of envy for an event that crossed all concerns, that every other event was measured against, the ground that set the tone for the tune of the age.

It gave the age its central significance.  It should be the civil rights movement, which paved the way for the women’s liberation movement, the gay rights movement, basically the social world we live in today.  But what marked us, what imprinted all of us, was the fear of nuclear annihilation, and the fact we survived it.  I remember fallout shelters as a real thing.  Panic rooms and tornado shelters are a faint echo of the original. Storm cellars at least served more than one purpose, and could be used regularly, especially in tornado alley.  But fallout shelters ostensibly knew no region and no season, and had only one purpose:  to ride out the final war and emerge alive into a different, and certainly deadly, world.  Every movie where a disaster ends life as we know it is based on, or at least inspired by, the expectations of a nuclear war.  

The shadow is long.  The threat is long since over; but it inspired other anticipations of disaster.  I had a songbook from the ‘70’s with a cover illustration of a polluted, lifeless world overcome with the consequences of industrialization.  Long before we feared global warming (and with good reason do we do so), we feared air and water pollution killing all life on our planet.  Nuclear annihilation was replaced with chemical earth death.

And now it’s Trump and the end of democracy.

We have to put this in context in order to understand it.  A common threat is a generationally binding thing; it gives purpose.  Maybe that’s the lesson the WWII generation bequeathed us. After Pearl Harbor we became one nation under arms.  Watch “Them,” the giant ant movie, made in the ‘50’s and based on the idea nuclear bomb radiation would create giant mutant ants. The army is the only force sufficient to defeat the ants (of course; giant cans of Raid are never considered; although IIRC they do use DDT, but don't get all the ants with it), and there are scenes of army vehicles racing through the streets of Los Angeles, as ordinary people look on quietly.  The scene is not one of martial law or government usurpation of liberty or the assertion of tyranny or even the collapse of social order.  It shows what the government would be expected to do, just as it had done after Pearl Harbor.  Today?  That scene would bring us all to a halt.  In the ‘50’s, it was a unifying idea, another example of the nation coming together to meet a common threat. A threat that wasn’t “savages” (“Injuns!”) or bad guys or foreign powers, but simply the by-product of our scientific success.  And that science (military weapons) provided the means to destroy the giant mutant ants.  Together we are stronger.

Today, what are we together on?  Even under the bomb scare, we were unified in our fear.  So the lesson is to be afraid?  It seems to be.  We can’t recreate the anger of Pearl Harbor (9/11 didn’t do it).  So maybe we can recreate the fear of the Bomb?  It’s impossible to do that on an international stage, but perhaps a national one?

Which is not to say fear of Trump is a false flag effort by frustrated political consultants eager to make their lives important, part of something more significant than party politics.  Fear of Trump is real; but how reasonable is it?  Is Trump truly going to destroy the American Republic?  Is he Hitler, leading us to nightmare?  Or should we remember he’s in his 70’s, will be nearer 80 in 2024 than he is today, and not as charismatic as Joe Biden, nor as determined to build a movement as even Ron DeSantis is (and how’s that working out for DeSantis?), and seriously not in good health?  Is Trump really going to lead a revolution?  It hardly seems likely.

So why the determination to make him so much more than he is?  Shock and awe left over from 2016?  Fear of another Trump Administration, a whole lot louder and a whole lot worse?  But is that reasonable?  Is there grounds for so much fear?  Or is the fear itself the reason?  Does it provide the opportunity for the kind of event that shaped the Boomers?  Because the fear of those years is the only thing we can hope (or fear) to reproduce today.

Is it merely rhetorical to call theses events “monumental”? Or is it desirable?  The desire for historical significance, for another generation-binding event?

Beware people selling you fear.  They don't have your best interests at heart.
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Chickens Coming Home To Roost!

How dare you avoid doing what we said you could avoid doing?

Texas legislators have been playing this dodge for as long as I can remember.  Will the voters notice in 2022?  2024?

I’m not holding my breath.
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: ;

Grisham wrote that Trump told people he had the colonoscopy without anesthesia. The story, in other words, comes from Trump. 

It’s the great-grandfather of “Sir” stories, as anyone who has had the procedure can tell you. Trump could no more endure it awake and aware than he could go without Diet Coke for a day.

But if people want to mock Trump for fearing to give up authority to Pence for only a few hours, I’m good with that.

And speaking of “Sir” stories:
60+ failed  cases later, and we’re still surprised to find out what the courts said: it was all lies? Some of those cases were tossed by the Supreme Court. All of them, without exception, couldn’t stand up to the least amount of scrutiny. (A reminder: summary dismissal requires viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the plaintiff, and STILL deciding they don’t have a case.) A federal judge sanctioned lawyers for their baseless claims (a.k.a “lies”). Giuliani is being disbarred for his lies. Other sanctions hearings against the lawyers are pending.

And still we are looking for the smoking gun? Does everything require a tearful confession of guilt before we know whodunnit? Are we trapped in a simulation based on the Perry Mason TeeVee show? Are we collectively just not quite as dumb as those we oppose?

Yeah, we might just be…
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Happy Days Are Here Again

Trump’s conspiracy theory about elections is credited with Gavin Newsom’s win in the recall election (I know, no longer in the future, so who cares?), and he’s breaking up the GOP into little pieces.

What part of this am I not supposed to be worried about? Maybe this part?
[Doug] Logan [CEO of Cyber Ninjas], who led the ballot review for Arizona Senate Republicans, says he never recommended that Maricopa County's 2020 election be decertified, which is included in an edited version of Logan's report posted on far-right media outlet The Gateway Pundit.

The edited version claims that "57,734 ballots with serious issues were identified in the audit" and, therefore, "the election should not be certified, and the reported results are not reliable."

The real results of Logan's review did not claim an issue with that number of ballots, and did not show evidence of fraud. The hand count of ballots affirmed President Joe Biden's win in the county.

Or this?

"In Arizona, the demands for even more audits occasionally came with lurid fantasies of revenge. State Rep. Walt Blackman, who represents the same mostly-rural district as [Wendy] Rogers, said on Friday that 'we need to find these folks accountable that come up from this audit and this hearing' and, once identified, 'put them in jail, put them behind bars.' State Sen. Sonny Borrelli, the majority whip, suggested that the election might have been hacked — the report didn't show that — and suggested that if it was, the hackers should be put to death," Weigel noted.

As goes Arizona, so goes the world?  Of course, in Texas, they can't find their ass with both hands and a flashlight.  Abbott keeps pushing stories about an "audit" although nobody else in Texas government knows what the hell he's talking about.  Not exactly a hotbed of "lurid fantasies of revenge" down here.  And honestly, "lurid fantasies of revenge" sound like the clowns who wanted to kidnap the governor of Michigan.  I'm still not convinced they were as close to carrying that out as the FBI thinks they were.  As for demands to "Put them in jail, put them behind bars" (it went further; he wanted them all to face the death penalty, and the sooner sentence was carried out, the better), yeah:  that's not gonna happen.

But it'll probably convince even more GOP voters not to vote again soon, because, why bother?  It's all rigged!  (well, the GOP voters who are still alive when the pandemic is over.  I wish I was only being mordantly humorous with that.  I'm actually dead serious.)

Logan’s final report raised questions about 53,305 ballots, although he notes multiple times in the report that there may be explanations for the discrepancies he found, affecting a fairly even split of Republican, Democratic and independent, undeclared or third-party voters.

The county, for its part, offered explanations on social media as Logan presented the report to state Senate leaders on Friday.  

Logan told The Arizona Republic on Monday that the version of the report posted on the far-right media website "is not one I ever wrote, nor was it ever part of our drafts reviewed with the Senate." 

Logan said in a news release on Tuesday that the claim this was his language, but that it was watered down because of supposed threats from the Senate, is "absolutely false."

....

Logan also said he did not write the line about the "57,734 ballots," and did not know where that number came from.

I know Hitler built his government in part on the dolchstosslegende coming out of the loss in World War I.  If I read another "historian" who says Trump is Hitler and we're Weimar Germany, I'm gonna throw something at my computer screen.  WWII was the finale of what started with WWI.  The final proof of that is that the Allies rebuilt Germany (and America Japan) because the carving up and "punishment" of Germany after WWI was clearly the source of the anger that lead to Nazism and WWII.  The nations who fought that war could see that, but 75 years on we just look at Mein Kampf and the Reichstag fire and scream:  "HISTORY REPEATS!"

No; and in this case, it doesn't even rhyme.  And the idea that Trump is going to lead a bunch of brownshirts into revolt is laughable.  His primary concern is staying in their good graces, and getting them to cheer his tired old lines at silly rallies.  He has no plan beyond is own self-satisfaction in the moment.  Will he run in 2024?  If he's under indictment in Georgia or New York (or by the DOJ), probably not.  He may even be facing criminal trial at that point, or fighting appeals of convictions.  2024 is a long way off, and Trump's appeal is to a diminishing base that, if it doesn't save him in 2022, the GOP is going to finally cut off like a gangrenous limb.

Or not, and it takes the entire party down.  Either way, as a yellow-dog Democrat, I'm fine with that.  On the horizon, McConnell's filibuster of the debt ceiling increase and continued funding of the government (a/k/a the "government shutdown") may convince even Sens. Sinema and Manchin that the filibuster has to go.  If the GOP is willing to use it to trifle with the full faith and credit of the United States (and they'd surely filibuster removing the debt ceiling as a thing they have to deal with at all), even those cloth-headed clowns would have to realize they can have their precious Senate traditions, or they can wreck the U.S. economy.  Something their corporate sponsors and grass-roots voters would agree was not at all a good thing.

Future's so bright I gotta wear shades!

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Trampling The Constitution And The Law In The Name Of Democracy

Hundreds of migrants arrested under Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s “catch and jail” border security push have been sitting in prison for weeks with no charges filed against them, and dozens were imprisoned for more than a month without being appointed lawyers.

Most of the men are Latino and many don’t speak English. Arrested on the border and dropped in prisons hundreds of miles away, they’ve spent weeks or months with little to no legal help, few opportunities to talk to their families and often fewer chances to find out what is happening to them or how long they will be imprisoned.

Citing the widespread violations of state laws and constitutional due process rights that have mushroomed as local justice systems remain overwhelmed by the volume of arrests, defense attorneys and immigrant advocacy groups are asking courts to release the men. 

Meanwhile, the latest “crisis” on the border is still over. And our Governor’s solution is lawlessness, in the name of the law. Have I mentioned he was a Texas Supreme Court justice? And before that the Texas AG? And the odds of him being disbarred for trampling the laws and Constitution are zip and none? As are the odds of him even losing re-election?

Yeah, we can sure pick ‘em.


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Comes Earlier And Earlier Every Year

Or, if it’s on Twitter, it must be true. I’m just surprised I didn’t see this on “Best of NextDoor.” Maybe it’s still too early. Hallowe'en is the gateway drug to diabetes, anyway.
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Well, Small Town Texas

If this had happened in Harris County (Houston, basically), I think the driver would be out on bail by now, at least.  This happened in Waller County, where, as the article notes, they consider Houston bicyclists "a menace."

Back when I was practicing law (which I did pretty much like a kid practices piano, when he'd rather be outside.  I speak from experience in that metaphor.), I had reason to once travel to district court in Bastrop County, neighbor to Travis.  This was in the day when Bastrop (county seat) was mostly a large wide spot in the road (today it's unrecognizable as that small town I visited 30+ years ago, and it's practically a suburb of Austin, rather than in it's own rural setting).  Austin then didn't have the complex of courthouses Harris County does now (I've been to probate court here, in a building that dwarfs the Austin County Courthouse.  It's one of several Houston courthouses.  Austin had the time I was there had one satellite location, devoted almost entirely to child support cases being handled by the Texas AG for women who couldn't afford a lawyer.  It could have run 24/7 and still been crowded with cases.  That place was another story entirely.).  As I was saying, Austin was hardly the "big city," but driving 30 minutes to Bastrop was like driving back in time 50 years, and in space to somewhere in deep East Texas, where the good ol' boys grow.

The judge knew the lawyer for the husband, and I knew the minute I walked into court my client didn't have a prayer, because the judge knew the husband, too, and he was a good ol' boy, the judge assured me, as he spent more time chatting with the opposing counsel from the bench than worrying about whatever I had to say.

Bastrop County may have changed by now, with population growth and more people living there and working in Austin, but the point is, I didn't have to go all that far to drop off the map into terra incognita where the natives all knew each other and despite your accent (mine is thickly Texan when I need it to be, and I've lived here most of my 66 years), "you ain't from around here."

So I wish I was surprised at Waller County being so cirumspect about charging a 16 year old with a big pick up with manslaughter.  But I'm not.  It also kinda depends on who his daddy is.  Big expensive truck like that in the hands of a 16 year old who just got his license, and the cops don't want to put him in jail now?  Yeah, there's a reason for that, and it may well go to the jury pool in Waller County.

I wouldn't be a bit surprised.  Which doesn't mean the cyclists can't sue Jr. and get into Daddy's insurance carrier pretty deep (or past them into Daddy's pockets, if it comes to that).  But criminal liability?  Well, we'll just have to see, won't we?
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Tuesday, September 28, 2021

There's A Sucker Born Every Minute

So Gohmert v Pence was the vehicle Powell apparently thought would get her to the Supremes. That’s a far cry from saying Alito was going to stop the Congressional proceedings. (The idea that a lone justice, especially Alito, would do that is separately but equally ludicrous.  As it stands, Alito didn't.  He referred the case to the full court, which said:  "Uh, no.") 

And now I at least see the reason why she promotes this nonsense:
In this day and age, "fundraising" is always the first explanation you should reach for.  Trump may affect our electoral processes across the nation (I remain to be convinced on that.  Too much of the "analysis" of that is based on "everybody knows" because it's the topic du jour and not coincidentally lighting up Twitter at the moment of greatest demand that we TAKE THIS SERIOIUSLY!  Because, after all, "everybody" on Twitter is. Well, at the moment.  Pardon me if I'm a bit more circumspect, despite the authority of those setting their hair on fire.), but his deeper effect is setting the grift in motion.

I get (still!) a number of e-mails from various political concerns (purportedly) because I gave some money to Beto's failed Senatorial campaign back in the day.  Too many of them read like I expect Trump efforts at fundraising read, and what is Trump raising funds for?  The ones I get are at least ostensibly about political races around the country.  Trump?  He's not running for dog-catcher of Mar-A-Lago, much less for higher office.  He's publicly said he won't declare because when he does, the money he raises becomes subject to federal election law (such as it is).  Trump has set the gravy train running, and Powell (not as badly shamed as Giuliani; at least not yet.  Then again,  Giuliani is all but disbarred.  Powell should be, IMHLO.) is boarding that train at the station.  What is she fundraising for?  Herself, of course.  She's grifting the rubes so she can go on claiming to be fighting the good fight, because she's not collecting many clients and she's surely collecting a large number of court imposed sanctions, some of which will come with price tags beyond lawyer's fees to defend those claims.
I mean, I agree. But I'm not sure being a "pathologically-lying sociopath," as much as it discredits the profession, is grounds at trial (that's what it takes in Texas) to disbar a lawyer. Bad accounting of what you did with the client's money (i.e., breach of fiduciary duty), yeah: removal instanter. Wandering the world babbling dangerous nonsense and piling up sanctions like parking tickets? Eh, maybe not so much.

I'm not defending it; I'm just explaining it.  Ken Paxton still has his law license, after all.  And odds are he will for quite some time (if he's ever convicted of the felony(ies) he's been charged with, that might do it.  Probably sooner than the complaint against him over Texas v. Philadelphia).  The State Bar of Texas has got a lot o' 'splainin' to do, but the state of the law on disbarment is pretty much a law of precedent, and lying lawyers are no more unprecedented than lying politicians.  It's all about what the lies are about (facts and/or law v. client's money, basically).  One set of lies is sure to get you disbarred.  The other?  Well, lawyers have a reputation for being liars for good reason.
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Truth Is Mutable

And non-white people are harassing white people! And look at what an illiterate boob can accomplish! (I know he has an Ivy League degree. That doesn't mean he's educated.)
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Social Media Tyranny -NOW WITH UPDATES!

(Satirical) (Not Satirical) (Frightening) (Pockets full of what? And from whom?) (Presumed sardonic, and presumed serious. We report, you decide.)
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Monday, September 27, 2021

For Those Of You Keeping Count

This “audit” was announced late Thursday night of last week. Friday morning, the day after, nobody knew what was going on. Not the SOS, not any one of the four counties where the audit is supposed to occur.

So Abbott announced it again Sunday night. And Monday morning? Same as Friday; nobody knows what the fuck Abbott is talking about. He hasn’t even put the funding of it on the agenda of the current special session. 

So what’s happening? Who the fuck knows?


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Another Shining Example of Texas Public School Education

I know we pronounce the two words the same way, but when I was in 7th grade learning grammar was much more important than learning cursive (which we did in the 4th grade, IIRC. Or was it 3rd? Either way I gave it up in high school when my English teacher asked me to resubmit a hand-written essay (these were the days when typewriters were exotic office equipment) in block print rather than cursive, because she couldn't read it.  She wasn't wrong.).

It was prescriptive grammar in those days, the Latin-based form British grammarians came up with as part of their undying fealty to the Empire (Roman, I mean).  I wouldn't go back to that, but basic spelling and word use could be more important than cursive writing.

I've been dealing with the product of Texas public schools for 20 years now as a teacher myself.  I know what I'm talking about.
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Oh What A Tangled Web We Weave…”

I’d have thought Cheney would be better at this. 

Trump questioned the 2016 election, too. Nothing about him has changed. So why was it okay before Jan. 6th, but not after?
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Credit Where Credit Is Due; or Blame, On The Same Basis

What I appreciate here is Dan Balz putting the blame where it lies.

Most of the response to this among the punderati has been hand-wringing about "the republic!  the republic!", which is a convenient way to refuse to hold anyone responsible except, maybe, the "supporters of Trump," which is conflated with the entirety of the GOP, and also allows them to talk about abstractions rather than concrete matters.  How many of the punderati know any "supporters of Trump" personally?  I'm guessing damned few.

Balz cuts that whinging off at the knees.  The GOP leadership is responsible for this mess.  They won't stand up to Trump (not even McConnell, who reportedly despises The Donald, and who has a reputation as a "tough guy"), so they look the other way.  And the narrative allows them to, because "OMG, the REPUBLIC!"  Oh, and lots of hand-wringing about how terrible it is, backed by the defensive measure: “IF YOU AIN'T SKEERED, YOU TOO DUMB TO UNDERSTAND HOW BAD IT IS!"

No, I'm not exaggerating:
Dan Balz is not suddenly my hero, but holy shit how hard is this? The problem here is the GOP, from McConnell to the primary voter in Bumfuck, Egypt. Plain and goddamned simple. If the republic is in such serious danger (and I still maintain it is not) the solution is to hold those in power and postitions of responsibility, responsible!  The GOP is, by law in every state in the country, a major political party (the laws clear the way for GOP/Democratic candidates to get on state ballots (and they are ALL state ballots), and much harder for "third-party" candidates to do so.  They aren't literally the legal parties of the country, but in effect: yes, they are.)  As such it has responsibilities to the form of government we operate under.  Then again, the GOP has been abrogating those responsiblities since at least the days of Gingrich on the back bench of the House, and now it includes several time-wasters and space fillers in the Congress including, but not limited to:  MTG; Boebert; Madison Cawthorn; and Ted Cruz.  At least Cruz is on some Senate committees.  MTG wanders the steps of the Capitol looking for reasons to make a viral video, Cawthorn gets attention by accident, and Boebert's major contribution to the state of Colorado has been paying herself from campaign funds. They aren't even McConnell, trying to stop government from functioning effectively.  They're just drawing a paycheck for a job that includes not having a boss to answer to.  And what is Kevin McCarthy doing about it?  Bupkis.

I don't worry about Trump re-taking the White House (pro tip:  he won't).  I worry about McCarthy taking the Speaker's gavel.  Gawdelpusall!

Yesterday morning on MTP the usual suspects (including Meghan McCain?  Huh?) were blathering about the "deadheads" following Trump from state to state, "thousands" who are die-hard supporters.  "Thousands"?  In a school board election that number might matter, but in a Presidential one?  Are you kidding?  There are towns of "thousands" all over America, and most of us can't name two of them.  Are we afraid of them, too?  

Or are we just afraid to say that the politicians the reporters talk to every day are the ones responsible for this state of affairs in the GOP?  Because:  they are.  That's the job they wanted:  the job with authority, clean work and no heavy lifting.  That job also comes with responsibility.  And if there's a failing in the American civic process, look to them to take the blame.  If the people aren't following the leaders, then the leaders need to follow the law and the traditions that got us all this far and tell the people to get on board or get lost.

The latest bogus narrative is that Trump will fill the offices of Secretary of State across our fair land with Trumpistas who will see that he wins in 2024, whether he wins or not.  Have we already forgotten he tried that in 2020, albeit without the hypothetically compliant SOS's?  Even if he had gotten Georgia and Arizona to bend his way, would it have worked?  Or would the Congress have rejected the electors from both states, thus (as the Constitution requires, see Amend. 12) all things equal and Joe Biden still the victor?  Honestly, the people promoting this nonsense either know it's bullshit (just like Trump does, one presumes, but can never be sure) or they are as stupid as Trump (one can be sure of that).  Or they just like the role of Chicken Little, because they are perpetually being struck on the head and respond by screaming that the sky is falling!

It's time to call the liar a liar, and force people to choose.  Lies only succeed because we let them.  They really don't have a life of their own; it's only in constantly retelling them, and never challenging them, that they thrive.  If we can't stop the lies, we can hold people responsible for beliving them.  Shame is actually a very powerful social tool. Time we put it to use.
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Outrage Meter Retired

Rick Wilson is absolutely right, but aren't I supposed to be afraid for the republic's future because someone on Twitter tweeted this? My advice would be: Never argue with a fool. The outcome is seldom what you expect it to be, and it just raises the recognition of the fool beyond deserving. Kinda like this: Yes, there really are such people in the world. The biggest problem they are creating right now is crowding ICU's across the country and driving nurses and healthcare workers to quit the profession in droves. THAT is a serious problem. This clown-show blather about an "audit" (it wasn't) in Arizona that proved anything (it didn't, except that the election is long over) is NOT a serious problem. The problem arises from the people who think the chief Bozo must be taken seriously, because reasons. Which reasons all come down to clickbait, mostly.

I mean, come on, even the major news outlets have moved on.  Chattering heads on Sunday morning return to it because it's "politics" and it beats talking about how Biden cleared up that "crisis on the border" so fast it didn't really appear on the radar this Sunday, and how Afghanistan which was supposed to be Biden's downfall is already so far beneath the horizon in the rear view mirror nobody's even looking back for it anymore.

Trump is an eternal source of commentary for when all else fails.  He is the ground upon which the variations can be endlessly spun out.  At least for the people who like the sound of their own "singing."

The rest of us have lives.  As Lawrence Tribe quotes: “We are living through a revolt against the future. The future will prevail.” — Anand Giridharadas  Which, honestly, is about as profound as Gramsci: "La crisi consiste appunto nel fatto che il vecchio muore e il nuovo non può nascere: in questo interregno si verificano i fenomeni morbosi piú svariati." ("The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.")  When I first saw that I thought it was stunningly profound; only later did I realize it was stunningly mundane.  When is the present not definable as a "crisis" in which the old is dying while the new cannot be born?  When can the present not be identified with "a great variety of morbid  symptoms"?  I first read that in the late '70's and thought he'd nailed the era perfectly.  Of course, it could have applied to the late '60's (but I hadn't read it then), or to the 80's (Reagan), the '90's (the tech bubble), 2001; 2016 (obvious); and why not right now?

It's the profound observation that keeps on being observable; and consequently, not all that profound.  I mean, it comes down to this:  is the glass half empty?  Or half full?

Feh.  I'm turning into an old man, but like Tireisias I feel like I have foresuffered all.  "Crisis" is a way of making your age seem important; just like being angry makes you think people must pay attention to you, and that will make you important.  The crisis is a spiritual one, not a political one or a social one or even an economic one.  It's spiritual.  It is the complete lack of self-worth that annoys so many people, especially after a year of true crisis with Covid.  Here, take a little Rudolf Bultmann for over 60 years ago:

Thus modern man is in danger of forgetting two things:  first, that his plans and undertakings should be guided not by his own desires for happiness and security, usefulness and profit, but rather by obedient response to the challenge of goodness, truth and love, by obedience to the commandment of God which man forgets in his selfishness and presumption; and, secondly, that it is an illusion to suppose that real security can be gained by men [sic] organizing their own personal and community life. p. 39.

There are encounters and destinies which man cannot master.  He cannot secure endurance for his works.  His life is fleeting and its end is death.  History goes on and pulls down all the towers of Babel again and again.  There is no real, definitive security, and it is precisely this illusion to which men are prone to succumb in their yearning for security. pp. 39-40.

It is the word of God which calls man away from his selfishness and from the illusory security which he has built up for himself.  It calls him to God, who is beyond the world and beyond scientific thinking.  At the same time, it calls man to his true self.  For the self of man, his inner life, his personal existence is also beyond the visible world and beyond rational thinking.  The Word of God addresses man in his personal existence and thereby it gives him freedom from the world and from the sorrow and anxiety which overwhelm him when he forgets the beyond.....To believe in the Word of God means to abandon all merely human security and thus to overcome the despair which arises from the attempt to find security, an attempt which is always in vain. p. 40.

Do think if we ignore Trump he will go away?  No.  I don't want to ignore him; I want to treat him as he deserves to be treated:  not as a threat, but as a problem we can solve with congressional investigations and new laws and criminal investigations and even prosecutions, if they are warranted.  Treat him as we treat any problem. We even handled covid, when we were told a vaccine might be decades away, we got three in less than a year.  Then we had other problems, and we still do.  We deal with those, too.

And remember we have already defeated him.  He lost his re-election, decisively.  He lost 60 court cases challenging that loss, all decisively.  Not one institution of government stepped forward to support his insane claims, and the members of Congress who did, did so in large part secure in the knowledge they would never be responsible for what they asked for, coming to pass.  What isn't over is Trump shouting; but we can ignore that.  Ignore his actions, his lawlessness?  No.  But ignore his complete disregard for the world except as it pleases him and makes him the center of attention, treat him as the internet troll escaped into RL that he is?  Yes.  Starve him of the attention.  Cut him off from serious consideration.  Leave him to the investigators and the prosecutors.  It's all the attention he deserves now.

But wringing our hands over how much worse it's going to be in some dystopian future that's bound to come?  Feh!  Begone!  Think on the words of Bultmann, and consider where such fears of the future come from, and what solutions will apply that don't involve politics, law, money, or hand-wringing.  Think on Thoreau, and consider whether you are hacking at the branches of the tree of evil, or are you chopping at its roots. Think on the problems that can be addressed by more conventional means, and those that are more fundamental still, and need “unconventional” solutions.

And more of this, please:
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Asking For A Friend

Which one of these am I supposed to be afraid of? Which one represents a dire threat to the republic?

You know, there are just some bull goose loonies out there.
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Sunday, September 26, 2021

VERY Slow Sunday Afternoon

A) it's not the Freedom of Information Act (that only applies to the feds), it's an Open Records request that needs to be filed (that's the law that applies to state agencies in Texas.)

B) You're not going to get anywhere, unless you can find the entity who would keep and maintain records like this.  If you ask the wrong person/agency, they just tell you they don't have anything.  If you ask the "right" person/agency, you're still presuming there is a record that they can access and present to you.

An Open Records request does not require that a record be created (like a transcript of a conversation).  It only applies to records already in existence (like, say, e-mails or text messages, or just general business records kept in the course of actually functioning).  You can't use it to demand creation of a transcript of a conversation between two people, especially if the conversation wasn't recorded and the recording wasn't maintained in the ordinary course of business. 

So, no, you can't file a FOIA request (wrong government), and even an Open Records request would be a waste of time.

As most of them are.
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OMG

Powell said that while then-President Donald Trump was inciting a riot at the Capitol, her team was filing a "12th Amendment constitutional challenge to the process the Congress was about to use."

"Justice Alito was our circuit justice for that," she recalled. "And we were suing the vice president to follow the 12th Amendment as opposed to the Electoral College Act."

Powell alleged that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi learned of the lawsuit and rushed to have Congress certify the election despite the ongoing attack on the U.S. Capitol.

"Everything broke loose and she really had to speed up reconvening Congress to get the vote going before Justice Alito might have issued an injunction to stop it all, which is what should have happened," the attorney said.

I have no idea what her legal theory was, but I looked up arguments about the constitutionality of the EVCA, and they center on the statute giving Congress a bigger role in the constitutionally mandated joint session than the constitution does. 

 The constitutional analysis of the Electoral Vote Count Act is:

In this essay, and in light of the controversy that arose in the wake of the 2020 presidential election, we explain the constitutional process for counting electoral votes. In short, every four years, the Twelfth Amendment requires the President of the Senate (usually the Vice President of the United States) to open certificates provided by state presidential electors and count the votes contained therein. The Constitution allows no role for Congress in this process, and thus, the provisions of the Electoral Count Act purporting to grant Congress the power, by concurrent resolution, to reject a state's electoral votes, is unconstitutional. Further, the objections raised to two states' electoral votes on January 6, 2021, were not proper within the terms of the Act, and therefore, even if Congress has the power specified in the Act, congressional action rejecting states' electoral votes would have been contrary to law. While state executive or state judicially-ordered departures from the requirements of state election laws in presidential elections might violate the federal Constitution's requirement that electors be chosen as specified by state legislatures, determining whether this has taken place is much more complicated than simply examining the language of state election statutes. We suggest that making this determination requires a careful examination of state interpretation traditions that we decline to undertake in this brief essay on the constitutional process for counting electoral votes.

I will not say if these things are right or wrong.  It's an argument, nothing more.  But the argument is that Congress can't raise objections to slates of electors, and certainly can't reject the state's electors. The argument is that Congress, like the Vice-President sitting as President of the Senate, has only a ministerial role.

Now, on Jan. 6th, the states electors were regularly presented through the results of the vote of the electoral college.  The Trump strategy was to challenge enough electoral votes to lower the threshold until Trump had more electoral votes than Biden, and a majority of those accepted by Congress, and so Pence would declare him the victor,  I have no idea what Sidney Powell's legal argument was going to be to the Supreme Court (if she even had one), but the outcome could only have been that Congress act as ministerially as Pence, and accept the results of the electoral college vote.

And Biden wins.

That she doesn't understand that calls into question whether she even had a claim ready to file with the Supreme Court in the first place (and why they would have original jurisdiction is the real question).  It also calls into question her competence as a lawyer (again).

Here's the relevant language of the 12th Amendment:

The electors shall meet in their respective states and vote by ballot for President and Vice-President, one of whom, at least, shall not be an inhabitant of the same state with themselves; they shall name in their ballots the person voted for as President, and in distinct ballots the person voted for as Vice-President, and they shall make distinct lists of all persons voted for as President, and of all persons voted for as Vice-President, and of the number of votes for each, which lists they shall sign and certify, and transmit sealed to the seat of the government of the United States, directed to the President of the Senate;--The President of the Senate shall, in the presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the certificates and the votes shall then be counted;--the person having the greatest number of votes for President, shall be the President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of electors appointed;

Take away the EVCA (which allows for objections in the joint session) and the entire proceeding is pro forma:  the President of the Senate "shall," which is as determinative as the law gets; no wiggle room like "may" there; "in the presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the certificates and the votes shall then be counted;" there's "shall" again; and "the person having the greatest number of votes for President, shall"  (a third time!) "be the President."

EOD.  QED.  If the Supremes ever declared the EVCA unconstitutional, how does that help Powell's purported client, the ex-POTUS Donald Trump?

OMG is this woman stupid.

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But Trump Controls The GOP!

All the kewl kids say so! When do we get the "Trump was never really a Republican" stories? Will even accept “Republicans in disarray.”  Or at least powerless.  McConnell toothlessly demanding the Democrats increase the debt ceiling without GOP help (he won’t allow a national default) is Exhibit “A” that the GOP is now completely in exile.

But still they will destroy the republic.  All the kewl kids say so.
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The Only Moral Authority

When I ask why anyone pays attention to this clown, I don't mean we should ignore him, at our peril or otherwise. I mean: "Why does anyone give him any serious attention?" I don't care how many people come to his "rallies," I don't care how many people tell pollsters they support Trump: it is all meaningless unless we give it meaning. The obverse of "the greatest trick the Devil ever pulled is making everyone believe he doesn’t exist" (a ridiculous statement that only sounds clever; pace C.S. Lewis) is "the greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing people to see him in every shadow." And we are letting Trump cast such a long, long shadow. That's the latest; that Obama didn’t win re-election over Romney, because the vote counts can’t be trusted if Trump doesn’t like them.  Yes:  pay attention to that:  if Trump doesn’t like them.  Trump’s a terrible conman:  he fools himself more than he fools others.  He’s not even in on the con: he believes the con.  He lives the con.  Well, the rest of us don’t have to. The Arizona vote count must be "decertified"?  How does that even happen, except in his fevered imagination?  This “the republic only.stands if we all agree it stands” nonsense is the pernicious lie, not Trump’s idiotic rantings.  It’s as if our government(s) only exist because we all say they do, and the moment we stop, the emperor is naked (or non-existent), and the bubble of this democratic republic bursts. There is a strong part of our society which is based on agreement, not just coercion.  We don’t need a policeman in every house to keep us all from becoming anarchists and to prevent rising chaos.  But we do have a strong system of laws which, as I keep saying, batted away the stupid attacks on the election Trump tried to use.  It has even punished the lawyers who went to court promoting it.

I’m listening to local PBS as I type, and they mention that 70% of those under 20 in Houston today, are African American/Latino.  By 2050, the entire country will look like Houston today.  There’s your “economic anxiety.”  There’s where Trump is getting his “power.”  That’s why racism is becoming more public and more popular. That’s why the generation under 30 in America, by and large, is not interested in any picture of society which is not multi-racial and multi-cultural (I’m old enough to remember the invention of the latter term, and what a flashpoint it was.  Today that argument is recast as “CRT”.). And why Trump’s supporters are all white and old, or wish they were old. They wish they were old because they wish for the return of a past that never was, instead of the future that is (thank goodness) finally coming.  Our children, whether they know it or not, have learned the lessons we taught them.

That’s a mixed bag, of course.

Fear of Trump is also fear of the future.  David Gergen, eminence gris who’s real claim to fame is being as mundane and unchallenging as a human being can be, never presenting anything riskier than sheer mendacity, fears the future Trump will bring.  But why?  Because people whose existence he has ignored for decades now impinge upon his comfortable world? Because democracy is, indeed, messy in America? Is more than a snowball thrown at a top hat? Has Jacksonian roots as well as Madisonian ones? David Gergen fears the future, and so he fears Donald Trump. I don’t fear either.

As a character in a British murder mystery series I’m now watching just said: “They’re angry because it makes them feel important.”  Life is full of such serendipities; or maybe it’s Joycean epiphany?  Nah, probably not. Anyway, it’s a sound way of regarding Trump and those who gather publicly to cheer him on.  Anger makes them feel important.

It doesn’t mean they are; or that we should make them important.
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Republicans In Disarray?

Anybody? Anybody?

Bueller? Ferris Bueller?

Or do we need the alliteration? “Republicans in revolt’? Will that do?
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Only In America

Context: White man whitesplains racism in America to children of American icon slain for his work exposing and challenging racism in America.
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And I Want A ‘64 MGB In My Driveway

Which one of us has any hope of getting what we want?

Which one of us is a U.S. Representative?

It is, alas, a representative government.
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Trump Is A Pakled

QED.
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