unraveling

Leap Day, 2024

The wheels on the SCOTUS bus do not go round and round

Rachel Maddow, speaking about the inference that the delay in (not) refusing to take up the fatuous "former guy is above the law" immunity case: "If you think about the court as the Supreme Court of the United States, and rational actor, and a decent one, that was a reasonable supposition, and it just turns out, they're not that." She went on to say that "it would be FULLY insane for them to side with Trump here" and "UNTHINKABLE, and also beside the point."

"The conclusion that we can arrive at right now, based on what they've done, without having to wait for the ruling, is that they are assuring that Trump will not face trial, and that when they inevitably rule that presidents aren't immune from prosecution after they leave office, what that will tell Donald Trump, if by then he is president, that he can never leave the office of the president."

I'm not so sure anything is "inevitable" any more. Lawrence O'Donnell said his hair isn't on fire yet; he's confident the voters will come to the rescue of the republic this fall. (In spite of the perversely anti-democratic Electoral College, and the remarkable capacity for mischief from state legislatures, &tc.) He's also heartened by the seemingly narrow question the radical justices agreed to take up in their own sweet time, granting certiorari for TRUMP V. UNITED STATES:

"Whether and if so to what extent does a former president enjoy presidential immunity from criminal prosecution for conduct alleged to involve official acts during his tenure in office."

The petitioner and amici have two and a half weeks to file briefs, the respondent until April 8, and April 15 for the petitioner's reply. Then they might poke around until IDK, June? before sharing their opinions with us. But O'Donnell is happy that "they just threw out half of Donald Trump's appeal, which was the double jeopardy part." And they also didn't send it back to the 11th Circuit for an en banc hearing (offering still more delay before they would then certainly appeal a losing decision). So three of the tires on the bus still have air in them?

26.Feb.2024

Living in interesting times

Word is, the American oligarch Charles Koch's political network, Americans for Prosperity Action, has decided to pull the plug on spending for Nikki Haley, and "focus its resources down the ballot on House and Senate races." That takes the gas out of the "Super Tuesday" excitement, if there ever was any.

So much for reversing the "downward spiral"? The Cuckolded Old Party contest never had much in it, and coming in 2nd in the state where she was governor was a disappointment, but still, 2 out of 5 Republican voters weren't in to the former guy. If only it weren't just about money, eh.

Joyce Vance's take on the week ahead has a lot of moving parts, including Alabama's IVF catastrophe; the big juke going after the prosecutor in Fulton County (who knew that “unless a state law prohibits such disclosure, AT&T Mobility is required to respond to valid subpoena demands from civil litigants or criminal defendants for call detail records, which ... may include location information”); likely continued delays in the Mar-a-Lago stolen documents case; and a baker's dozen from the bottom of the Senate barrel pressing for a full-on impeachment trial of DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. (For the record, said bottom: Mike Lee, Ted Cruz, Eric Schmitt, Rick Scott, Ron Johnson, J.D. Vance, Roger Marshall, Josh Hawley, Mike Braun, Tommy Tuberville, Ted Budd, Cynthia Lummis and Marsha Blackburn.)

And oh, yet another threat of a government shutdown, starting Friday, just after the House gets back from its extended vacation "unless House Speaker Mike Johnson kicks the can down the road again, or manages to pass a budget—something he was supposed to do by October 1 of last year." More distraction and delay for addtional aid to Ukraine, serving Russian interests over those of the U.S.

24.Feb.24

Onward Christian soldiers

As a free-rider on Joyce Vance's Civil Discourse blog, I'm outside the paywall for the "Five Questions" feature, but this, from the teaser, Politico’s Heidi Przybyla, on the subject of +rump allies preparing to infuse ‘Christian nationalism’ in a second term:

“On the eve of the Iowa caucuses, Trump promoted on his social media a video that suggests his campaign is, actually, a divine mission from God.”

That'd be an Old Testament-flavored deity, of course. The endless stream of reporting included this (last November), about kicking weaponization of the federal government into high gear. Flipping the biblical script is an even easier lift than actual election thieves gaslighting about a "stolen election" for a decade or more. Insurrection 2.0 might feature "deploying the military" to quell "political unrest" on Inauguration Day. Big thinkers are making plans.

You know there's an enemies list already; the once-close, now not-so-much are at the top. John Kelly. Bill Barr. Ty Cobb. Mark Milley. Men who don't generally suffer fools lightly. From Cobb's lips to God's ears:

“Trump himself is more likely to rot in jail than anyone on his alleged list,” said Cobb, who accused Trump of “stifling truth, making threats and bullying weaklings into doing his bidding.”

23.Feb.2024

Egg noggin'

Remember when the former guy had that "perfect phone call" with the president of Ukraine, and asked for the favor of digging up some dirt on one of his political opponents? And got his sorry kiester impeached for it? yeah, good times. Fast forward a few years, and with the Republicans back in control of the House, they set up a subcommittee (of the Judiciary Committee, to go whole hog on the Orwellian theme) "investigating" (wink, wink, nudge, nudge) the "weaponization of the federal government." Or as the ranking Democrat, Delegate Stacey Plaskett put it, creating "a place to settle scores, showcase conspiracy theories and advance an extreme agenda that risks undermining Americans' faith in our democracy."

Which is to say, pick up where the gang that couldn't shoot straight (Rudy, Igor, Lev and so on) left off, attempting to manufacture a "bribery scandal" out of smoke, mirrors, and the creative testimony of a Russian agent.

The Status Kuo deconstructs: Russian Egg on GOP Faces. "Republicans are scrambling to rewrite history over their reliance on Russian-fed disinformation from an indicted informant."

The power of negative thinking

It's looking like "American politics is being consumed by the flesh-eating bacteria of a new nihilism—a desire to see existing institutions destroyed, with no particular plan or interest to replace and improve them." Here's why you might want to break out of the cycle—pull your head out of social media, as it were:

"Consumers face a bonanza of news-mediated despondency about quality of life, in part because news outlets are responding to audience negativity bias by telling the worst, most dangerous, and most catastrophic stories about the world."

Somebody else's (short-term) gift URL to Derek Thompson's piece in The Atlantic The Americans Who Need Chaos; embracing nihilism and upending politics.

Another session, another bad library bill... defeated!

Hopefully the paywall won't get in the way of Brian Myrick's May, 2022 photo for the Idaho Press story. No spoiler here, but he hit the mark for the ongoing public library culture war saga. The Idaho Senate defeated the latest "library porn bill," by one vote. Last mention here in the blog was on Groundhog Day , suitably enough. That was when the first library bill, HB384, got squelched by Sen. Geoff Schroeder, who wanted to rework it some. He trimmed the vigilante cash bounty but still wanted to add a new section of Code, 18-1517B, for CHILDREN'S SCHOOL AND LIBRARY PROTECTION in his S1289.

No later than next January 1st, every library would have to "adopt written policies and procedures to process requests for relocation of library materials that may be harmful to minors," and create a "library materials review committee of no fewer than three persons who reside in the school district's or library district's boundaries or service area," at least one of whom "must be the parent of a minor child." There'd be meetings and notice of review hearings in the newspaper, and "reasoned decisions," maybe requests for reconsideration and more notices and decisions, all the livelong day.

Then judicial review if the aggrieved are not satisfied. The pot of gold at the end of that rainbow is spelled out as a mere two hundred fifty dollars ($250) in statutory damages, but "as well as actual damages and any other relief available by law, including but not limited to injunctive relief sufficient to prevent the defendant library from violating the requirements of this section." It was ten times that amount last year, so we're making progress?

Opinions differed. The 18 Senators who prevailed in voting it down were an unlikely combination of "the very conservative Freedom Caucus and [all but one] of the Democrats."

"Most of those who debated against the bill said either it didn’t do enough for families who wanted to get books moved or removed, or that it wasn’t necessary because librarians already follow practices and there isn’t pornographic material available to minors."

Senate President Pro Tempore Chuck Winder said “I don’t want to go home without a library bill,” and “I think this is the best we’re going to get this year.” So... expect something worse? Otherwise, they can't go home again.

Boise State public radio has a report too, no paywall, but boring picture.

Washington's Birthday, 2024

Firing for effect

Timothy Snyder: Beware the Weak Man. "You shall know him by his itinerary."

"Instead of aiding Ukraine, the weak men of Congress have dedicated months to a long series of lies that have wasted the energy and good faith of others. First Johnson said that he wanted to protect the border and would pass aid for Ukraine if it was connected to a border bill; then, when presented with exactly this solution, he rejected it. When aid for Ukraine was then separated from the border issue in another bill, he rejected that too, on the grounds that the border was not mentioned. The weak men of Congress want inaction both at the border and in Ukraine. They only mention the one to explain why they are not acting on the other.

After this parade, Johnson called to House of Representatives to recess. But Johnson himself is not on vacation. He has to put on a tie and abase himself before Trump in Florida. In the photograph Johnson posted, Trump lacks the strength to raise his thumb. Trump submits to Putin, and encourages Russia to attack American allies."

We didn't think Kevin McCarthy's self-abasement in Mar-a-Lago could be topped (er, bottomed), but Mike Johnson said "hold my beer." (Suitably enough, Johnson posted it on Xitter; Snyder's blog has the link if you want to see what treason looks like.)

The question Snyder gives us: Will the vacuum created by the party of fear consume our democracy? Do not speak of "fatigue" and fall in line behind the fearful.

"We will need the courage to admire the courageous, and to say something that might feel risky. For example: we believe in our values, and we believe in our strength. Ukraine can win this war, Biden can win this election, and democracy can thrive."

Hospitality from close personal friends

18% confidence in the Supreme Court, bringing it to a 50 year low. Heckuva job, Johnny. I certainly haven't trusted them, even before watching John Oliver's tour de force on Last Week Tonight, Supreme Court Ethics. (So to speak.)

Props to Nazi memorabilia collector and billionaire Harlan Crowe for not buying his personal Associate Justice at the market price, but going genuinely over the top with gratuities. 38 destination vacations, 26 private jet flights plus 8 by helicopter, a dozen VIP passes to professional and college sporting events, 2 stays at luxury resorts in Florida and Jamaica, and a partridge in a pear tree. Whoops, no, that was a standing invitation to the "uber-exclusive" Floridian National Golf Club.

The clip of a fireside chat—yeah, Harlan Crowe's fireplace—between Thomas and... is that John Yoo? Yes, it is, May 13, 2022, Justice Clarence Thomas on Racial Inequality and the Supreme Court, as told to the guy who provided "near boilerplate" advice to then-president George W. Bush "that federal laws prohibiting assault, maiming and other crimes did not apply to military interrogators who questioned al-Qaeda captives." It's always been "Us" (the royal us, apparently) "against the Elites," Thomas opined about his four decades in the limelight.

I know none of my readers will have missed it, but just for posterity, another link to ProPublica's coverage of Friends of the Court (about the whole swamp, not just Clarence Thomas). You probably also know about John Oliver's "special officer" punchline that's gone viral, but trust me, it's worth watching the whole half hour of Last Week Tonight. You're welcome.

21.Feb.2024

Deep in the weeds

With the daily news cycle mostly focused on variations of HULK SMASH (the orange Hulk IRL), and with make-believe conspiracy theories poisoning the well of fact, it's not easy to discern what's going on? Marcy Wheeler's emptywheel blog is a deep dive into more than I can follow, but it's reassuring to think that someone is keeping track of all the craziness, even if I can't. Jay Kuo and The Big Picture provide a useful introduction in and interview with her, for one important story.

The Big Q&A with Marcy Wheeler fills in some of the backstory of Alexander Smirnov, who, well, I can't begin to describe it all. Take the jump. It's about weaponizing government, and Russian agents, to manufacture "dirt on the Bidens." You can guess who's the main driver, but the cast of characters takes some unraveling.

Update:
Saw a video bite of Jim "Gym" Jordan really punching the emphasis on "highly credible," and as ever when I see the guy, it made my skin crawl. That phrase pops up in Heather Cox Richardson's latest:

"The accusation that the Bidens accepted bribes broke into public channels on May 3, 2023, when Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Representative James Comer (R-KY), chair of the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, wrote to Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Christopher Wray saying they had received “highly credible…whistleblower disclosures” that said the Department of Justice and the FBI appeared to have “valuable, verifiable information that you have failed to disclose to the American people.”

Marjorie Taylor Greene piled on, as did Ted Cruz, and Kevin McCarthy (remember him?). That James Comer bombshell we've been waiting for? Not exactly repeating myself because, boy the story just keeps getting wilder and crazier.

TL;DR: The Trump campaign(s) colluded with Russia. Bigly. And the current one is still serving Russian interests.

18.Feb.2024

Over half a $billion

Pepper your writing with action verbs to liven it up. The former crime-fraud exception guy "vented about his latest legal defeat to freezing supporters" in Michigan Saturday night, that's good. Except the "lashes out" headline about a $355 million fine isn't the whole deal; it's $450 million, with interest. (Gift link!) Tack on the $83.3 million judgment for defamation of E. Jean Carroll, and it'll be maybe "all his available cash." So, ah, time to pony up some more, MAGAts! Why just "border" on pathological when you can go whole hog?

The Michigander GOP is in a bit of a tizzy though, "headed for chaos" with the "feud, already being waged in state court, appears to be only gaining intensity."

"In a little over a week, the state will host a traditional primary on one day, and then a caucus-style convention a few days later. Now, it seems, there could actually be two conventions, in different parts of the state, each claiming legitimacy."

Our state's Republican Party isn't fractured in quite the same way, but it definitely has its whack on. With last year's legislative session "whoops we broke the primary" ("seemingly unintentionally") taken us back in time to caucuses, they've now declared that reporters wouldn't be allowed inside their March 2 caucus, nor to observe party officials tabulating the results at party HQ. "Party rules" don't you know.

“Chairman [Dorothy, "over the"] Moon’s decision to block press access to the presidential caucus and the official tabulation of votes betrays the presumption of openness that inheres in our democracy and, certainly, in the electoral contests for public office,” [political scientist and president of the the Alturas Institute, David] Adler added. “ I don’t understand Moon’s penchant for secrecy, and question the GOP’s alleged advocacy for free, fair and transparent elections.”

Betsy Russell, president of Idahoans for Openness in Government had a few words, too.

"Selecting our leaders is a public matter in this country, not something that should be conducted in secrecy in back rooms. This announcement by the Idaho Republican Party prompts the question: What are they trying to hide? ... At a time when suspicion of public institutions is running high and conspiracy theories abound, it’s mind-boggling that a major party would want to undermine public trust by conducting such an important process in secret.”

Especially mind-boggling given that they're already in the bag for The Donald, whose campaigns and sordid term in office were replete with cause for suspicion, and conspiracy theories, much of them put up as chaff to hide the swirling corruption.

Speaking of their guy, further down the NYT story, we read that "While Mr. Trump appeals the financial penalty, he will have to either come up with the money or secure a bond within 30 days of when the court enters a judgment against him." A company providing the bond "essentially assures the state that Mr. Trump has the money to pay the judgment, and prevents it from collecting while appeals are heard."

Can you imagine taking that bet? How much collateral and premium would it take to cover the risk of the most famous deadbeat in the country doing what he does? Maybe the Saudis will step up yet again. Weird how there's always a repressive regime in the mix, isn't it?

At any rate, we can be sure the recriminations will be televised in endless episodes of The Wee Whiner, set just outside a courtroom, with four criminal cases and 91 felony counts to adjudicate.

"If he lashes out at a woman whom a jury found that he sexually abused, if he hits back at a prosecutor, if he slams a fraud case against his business, the headlines and TV captions are Trump Lashes, Trump Hits, Trump Slams — the kind of verbs of vitality and power (Hulk smash!) that are as valuable to him as currency."

17.Feb.2024

Useful idiots

Quoted from (and boosted on) Mastodon, from Randahl Fink (@randahl):

Avdiivka has fallen.
Putin should call Mike Johnson and congratulate him on their successful collaboration.
Republican theater has very real consequences.

The BBC reports this is after "almost all of Avdiivka's pre-war population of more than 30,000 people have left and the city itself is almost completely destroyed."

The whole world wants to know, is the US a reliable ally? We need to clean House before we can answer in the affirmative, given that when the going got tough, our quisling Speaker declared a two-week recess.

Heather Cox Richardson's latest daily shines a light on Putin's murderous suppression of dissent after Alexei Navalny's death in an arctic prison colony, through disgraced Fox News talking head Tucker Carlson, after Carlson's fluffing interview of the dictator in Moscow. (Putin expressed surprise that there were no tough questions.)

On Monday, in Dubai, Egyptian journalist Emad El Din Adeeb asked Carlson asked Carlson why, when interviewing Putin, he “did not talk about Navalny, about assassinations, about restrictions on opposition in the coming elections.” Carlson replied by equating Russia and the U.S., saying: “Every leader kills people…. Some kill more than others. Leadership requires killing people.”

And this last word from Navalny, just in his mid-40s:

In his 2022 documentary about Alexei Navalny, director Daniel Roher asked Navalny what message he would leave for the Russian people if he were killed. “Listen,” Navalny answered. “I’ve got something very obvious to tell you. You’re not allowed to give up. If they decide to kill me, it means that we are incredibly strong. We need to utilize this power to not give up, to remember we are a huge power that is being oppressed by these bad dudes. We don’t realize how strong we actually are.”

16.Feb.2024

Finally, a genuine James Comer bombshell

Or was that an exploding cigar? Joyce Vance explains, in the lead item in her latest Civil Discourse blog post, Who's on Trial, and When?

"[Alexander] Smirnov was a confidential FBI source when he peddled his lies to federal agents. He faces up to 25 years in prison. So much for House Republicans’ efforts to investigate and impeach Joe Biden on this basis. You may enjoy reviewing our earlier discussion of the absence of any evidence of high crimes or misdemeanors by the President. It’s a sad day for Representative James Comer (R-KY), who has been trying to push claims based on these allegations. The President’s brother, James Biden, is scheduled to testify on February 21 before House Republicans conducting the impeachment inquiry. Perhaps they’ll just call that off now?"

Ha ha. That's the first of four items in the post. The others are the Fani Willis kerfuffle in the way of the criminal trial, The State of Georgia vs. Donald John Trump, et al.; another criminal trial, The People of the State of New York against Donald J. Trump, now set to start on March 25; and the big kahuna, the federal criminal case, United States of America v. Donald J. Trump, where Trump is pleading to the Supreme Court to have them declare the president is above the law, immune from prosecution, and can stay in office as long as he likes.

If I had a hammer

It's the Hammer of Justice, and Judge Arthur Engoron just gave it a mighty whack for one of the swamp of court cases the former guy is mired in. $355 million is a lot of walking around money for a guy who might not really be a billionaire. (I mean, he doesn't act like one, always begging for money and stuff.)

In their newsletter (non-giftable URL, sorry), Alan Feuer and Maggie Haberman note the "slimmest of silver linings," that he's only barred from running any New York corporation for three years. Would be he chastened as an octogenerian come-back "kid"? You wouldn't think so. The judge doesn't really think so, either.

“Their complete lack of contrition and remorse border on the pathological,” Justice Engoron wrote of Trump and his co-defendants in the case, including his two adult sons, Eric and Don Jr.

The judge went on to say that the accusation of “inflating asset values to make money” was “not a mortal sin” and that Trump, his sons and two of his top aides at the company “did not rob a bank at gunpoint.” And yet, Justice Engoron concluded, “defendants are incapable of admitting the error of their ways. Instead, they adopt a ‘See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil’ posture that the evidence belies.”

I think the family is over the border of pathological, but ok. As compared to the hammer, the wheels of justice still grind slowly.

"It was not immediately clear how soon Trump and the others, who faced smaller judgments, will have to come up with the money. The provision in the ruling barring Trump from applying for any loans in New York in the next three years could make it challenging to obtain the bond he would need to post with the court as he appeals the decision."

Valentine's Day, 2024

Night soil

Weird thing to do on this holiday, but you know, I hate to miss a legitimate email. A quarter of the spam bucket can be quickly filtered on "trump"; scanning the subject lines is a catalog of pathos. Kind of a new direction in today's load:

Pretty please
Please, please, please!
Pretty Please...
Will you join me in prayer for President [sic] Trump?
Will you send me a letter? [Gimme an EFF!]

Manners and "pretty" are not words I associate with the former guy. Hard to imagine it as a winning spam strategy, but I guess they're making up for it with volume? The prayer call was from the insurrectionist Josh Hawley, by the way. What else?

"We can win this election in a LANDSLIDE," Junior says, and "The old GOP is dead and gone," true dat. The pliant and execrable Speaker of the House tries his hand at whining, "The lawfare against President [sic] Trump is a disgrace!" Only in the slow pace of it, Mike.

"I'm in court again today" and oh, how precious, "Your decision to open this email could change the course of history."

Don't break my heart by answering question #1 wrong, oh it's a Valentine's Day theme! And this timeless truth from Junior: "When it comes to me and my father, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree."

One of the proliferating +rump spam engines sends as "Witch Hunt Alerts," a red alert emoji in the subject, before TRUMP JUST WALKED OUT OF HIS SHAM CLASSIFIED DOCS TRIAL, which weirdly enough isn't actually a "sham," even though its +rump-appointed judge, Aileen Cannon, is putting on a Sham-Wow performance. (The dueling, sealed, ex parte meetings were off the record, other than the minute entries on her docket noting how many lawyers were dancing on the pinhead, and for how long. 3h 25m for 8 lawyers, and the client himself for the defense, and 2h for 4 lawyers for the United States.)

Trying out new chant-slogans, how about Build the wall, deport them all? That should delight the foaming torch-and-pitchfork crowd. Elise Stefanik renders a VERDICT that President [sic] Trump is innocent. Ha ha, yeah, no he isn't.

13.Feb.2024

Musical interlude

Looking for something else, I found an unread Will Bunch newsletter/column from the middle of last August, right as "the 45th president of the United States was indicted. For the fourth time." The back-link had expired, but Bunch's "Attytood" is still up: The problem with "Rich Men North of Richmond." The text is replete with remarkable facts and allusions, starting with a Robert E. Lee epigraph, and a comparison nobody saw coming (links and emphases in the original):

"The Civil War that ravaged America from 1861 to 1865 was in many ways the Woodstock of U.S. combat. Historians say that as many as 54,000 musicians marched on the battlefield, either with fife-and-drum corps or in the larger military bands. Soldiers woke up to the sound of a bugle, marched into the war’s famously bloody battles to the rat-a-tat of drums, and were buried to the mournful melody of the newly written “Taps,” which Union soldiers played at funerals instead of traditional rifle volleys, for fear of rousting nearby Confederate troops."

"Try That In a Small Town" is the anthem for small-mindedness and "solving" problems with violence. (Idaho Rep. Ted Hill [R-Eagle] put it in prose last month, shilling for the NRA to get more guns in schools. “Some people will get nervous about this, but they don’t understand the violence,” Hill said. “If you understand the pattern of violence, you have to answer violence with violence.”. HB 415 has been awaiting action by the Senate State Affairs committee for most of 2 weeks.)

"Rich Men North of Richmond" doesn't have its plaintive derision sights set high enough by Bunch's estimate.

"He never makes it up I-95 as far as Wall Street, home of the super rich who actually fixed Anthony’s starvation wages. He’s not really thinking about who keeps worker pay so low, but instead he fixates on who’s getting the tax dollars on those puny wages. ...

"[I]t’s Republicans (who get their votes from the white working class) who’ve kept the federal minimum wage at a paltry $7.25 since 2009. But the real problem is the focus on government and not billionaires. As the great labor writer Hamilton Nolan said in a searing essay about the song: “‘Do not let the rage of the populace become focused on the capitalists’ is the number one rule of capitalism’s perpetuation of itself.”

It's not just "the economy" that makes us stupid, but the politics of racial resentment, going back to Lee Atwater. The hearkening of MAGA is to "a restoration of a time when there was a power and prestige that came with simply being white and male."

Think of all the current culture war tropes and see how well that fits: Critical Race Theory; Diversity, Equity and Inclusion; Blood and Soil; the demonization of immigrants and all things LGBTQ.

Dregs of dynasty

One of the weirder sidelights of the current campaign is the 3rd-party bid from a scion of a famous political family that ain't what it used to be. The ad during last Sunday's football game came out of the blue, with weird, old-timey imagery mashed-up with a jingle of all things. When everything is imagined to be "fake," all that's left is branding, it seems. And the Kennedy brand still has legs; "political gold" in Robert Reich's telling, even as it's being deployed by subversive elements.

January's Gallup poll had RFK Jr., the New Coke of the lineage, reported at 52% favorable. The polling outfit delicately asterisked that to say it's "unclear how much [that] is influenced by his family name as opposed to people’s knowledge of him personally." Let's say 90% or so?

It isn't clear what's in it for Junior, or if he cares about how much damage he might do. He's already done a lot, spouting racist Covid-19 conspiracy theories, vaccine misinformation, and "libelous nonsense" about public health.

After the WTF moment of the $7 million Sunday ad, I saw that it was from a PAC, and he apologized, so, uncoordinated, and all forgiven? Except that Reich reports "Junior placed the ad at the top of his X feed, and it remained there Monday."

"Timothy Mellon — grandson of Andrew Mellon and an heir to the Mellon banking fortune — gave RFK Junior’s SuperPAC $15 million. Hmmm. Mellon is also a major donor to PACs supporting Trump. RFK Junior’s candidacy is backed by a PAC that also funds Marjorie Taylor Greene."

Do we need a reminder? Vladimir Putin and Tim Mellon don't. Barely three years ago, now

"Democracy won by a whisker in 2020. Just 44,000 votes in Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin decided the outcome. If RFK Junior or any third-party candidate peels off just a fraction of the vote from Biden, while Trump’s base stays with him, they will deliver a victory to Trump."

We're all bozos on this bus

Diversion to the Bulwark brought this jolly spit-take on the Kiss-up Sitdown between Liar Tuck and Vlad the current Impaler, a few things I hadn't noticed, what with Superb Owl weekend and all. Love the Gavriil Grigorov photo capturing Carlson's famous "confused" look, also captured in prose:

"Putin’s deep dive into Russian and Ukrainian history—the “30 seconds”-turned-25 minutes, complete with a folder of supporting documents translated from Old Church Slavonic—occasioned as much derision in the independent Russian media as they did in the United States. It was “very irresponsible” of Putin to start in the ninth century and not in the Mesozoic era, with the separation of continents and the descent of man, quipped journalist Maria Pevchikh. Others said Carlson’s face as Putin spoke looked like that of someone stuck on a long train trip next to a slightly looney fellow passenger who just won’t shut up."

And ICYMI, my headline homage is to the 1971 Firesign Theatre, "one complete narrative that covers both sides of one LP." Since we didn't have Wikipedia back in the day, I'm just now learning the names of two of the three holograms (the Whispering Squash, and the Lonesome Beet) who sang "Back From the Shadows Again." (The plot coverage is lovingly detailed.)

In the reboot, minor characters include Melon Usk, "who assiduously promoted the interview" with his X-out antisocial media bird site. For the Russian propaganda team, somewhat incredibly, coverage of the interview "was intended to demonstrate to Russians that Putin is sufficiently respected to be interviewed by a big-league American journalist," as if, well. Carlson still looks bigly to the Russian mainstream? Unfortunately, "giving Putin enough uninterrupted time to show himself as a paranoid, rambling, grievance-obsessed fascist" is not likely to make a difference, given the effectiveness of Putin's paranoid, rambling, grievance-obsessed fascism.

While we're on the Bulwark, another piece about Mr. T's "signs of strength, not weakness" among the Quisling Old Pals, but look here, there's a Man Bites Dog story that some Republicans are speaking truth to power, and, uh, ending their careers? "Outbreak" seems a bit overstated, but ok.

"There was Sen. Thom Tillis, who called out his colleagues for playing politics on Ukraine—hiding behind voter sentiment and Trump’s wishes to oppose military aid. “Our base cannot possibly know what’s at stake at the level that any well-briefed U.S. senator should know about what’s at stake if Putin wins,” Tillis said, according to Punchbowl News."

“Some people around here—if they really are being driven just by the perceptions of their base, they should grow a spine and explain if they think it’s a tough vote.”

Tillis was reëlected with a bit of a squeaker plurality in 2020; he might be able to outlast the noisome wave of MAGA; Sen. James Lankford, "deputized by his leadership to craft the immigration compromise that Trump tanked," won 64% of Oklahoma's vote in 2022, so he's good to go till 2028, at least, if he can stomach being ostracized from the cult.

And Texas Rep. Chip Roy is a little squishy, whaaat? Wisconsin's Rep. Mike Gallagher clearly has a "take this job and shove it" attitude on his way out. But the forecast remains gloomy.

"Their quiet chirps for help do nothing to mitigate the threat of Trump. And if he wins, even they will go silent."

12.Feb.2024

Flubber

I'm old enough to remember when Flubber was the new, new thing, existing in the alternate universe of the 1961 Disney movie The Absent Minded Professor. And its sequel, Son of Flubber. (Also to know about the 1997 remake, simply Flubber, starring Robin Williams, in spite of never seeing it. That might be fun? Critics didn't think so, apparently.) Fred MacMurray rather defined "avuncular" for me, before I knew that was a word, so a tough act to follow. I probably didn't see the movie until it was on TV, and what little I recall is in black and white. Perhaps the colors faded? Poking around Wikipedia, I see that "it was one of the the first Disney films to be colorized (for the 1986 VHS release)," so my B&W recall was spot-on.

The remakes page says it was based on the 1943 short story "A Situation of Gravity" by Samuel Woolley Taylor, and this jolly detail:

"The title character was based in part on Hubert Alyea, a professor emeritus of chemistry at Princeton University, who was known as "Dr. Boom" for his explosive demonstrations."

But the "franchise" page said (before I fixed it) that Taylor's story was written in 1922? Samuel W. Taylor's own Wikipedia page says he was born in February, 1907; if he wrote that short story at age 15, he would've been a precocious talent. His own page doesn't mention the story directly, just that he authored "two short stories, published in Liberty weekly magazine, on which the Disney movies The Absent-Minded Professor (1961), Son of Flubber (1963), and Flubber (1997) were based. (Good luck finding it on the web; many have tried.)

Nearing the end of my 7th decade, I'm not as sharp as I used to be (that's an improvement in some ways), but then I have a lot more to remember than I did when I was younger, you know? There's an accumulation, and older stuff slips away, from distance, and disuse. Medicare bugs me to do that annual marbles check, where I have to remember five or six things for a little while, and one of them is a banana, and one is a color. Green, let's say. And draw some time on a clock face, can you do that? I loved the algebra problems of figuring out what time makes certain angles. Three o'clock makes a nice right angle, what's the next one after 3? Something after 4, call it x, and x = 5 + x/12, so 60/11ths (there are always elevenths in it), 5 and 5/11ths past 4. (EDIT: Whoops, the next one is just after 3:30, 3:32 and 8/11ths. Half the distance: 2 x 2⁸/₁₁ = 5⁵/₁₁.) I think for the next test, I'll draw the 12 hour ticks, and the 48 minutes in the interestices, and give the doc a quiz, see how he (or she) does.

If you get annoyed or challenge the test administrator, I imagine they count that against you. The Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA®), developed by a Lebanese immigrant to Canada, has an industry surrounding it these days, busy with Boomers sliding into oblivion. There is training, and certification, and you're supposed to be "a health professional with expertise in the cognitive field" to interpret the results. (Whereas "any clinician, health professional, researcher or worker who has successfully completed the official MoCA training and certification module can administer and score" it.)

The MoCA "about" page mentions "a gold standard neuropsychological assessment" without saying what that is. Back in 2010, some researchers nominated MoCA as better than what they called "the current Gold Standard," Folstein's Mini-Mental Status Examination (MMSE), but they used the "benchmark" of the "CERAD test battery for conclusive differentiation." They don't expand that acronym, but you can find stuff these days, it's the Consortium to Establish a Registry for Alzheimer's Disease. Pop the "Assessment Instruments & Materials Available for Request" accordion button to see an outline of the battery. (It's a tougher test.)

We're talking about this because of Special Counsel Robert Hur appending a freelance neuropsychological assessment without expertise in the cognitive field, and the major national print media outlets rolling in the catnip.

Judd Legum's Popular Information sampled the manufactured "crisis" to find 81 articles in four days from the New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal, all failing the perseveration part of the contest.

Top right of the NYT front page on our Sunday edition had "Flubs" in the dek of a meta-analysis of who's hurt more by them, our Silent Generation current president, or our just barely a Boomer former guy? As if, IDK, naming animals by little line drawings were the most important issue for the leader of the free world?

There is definitely a political disaster, nightmare, crisis, and mess going on, and it's not in Joe Biden's Delaware garage. It's not about the Lord of Mar-a-Lago's gaffes, either, confusing Turkey with Hungary (and Viktor Orbán with Colonel Sanders), or who's the president of the United States (he thinks he still is), or which strong woman has most recently showed up the depth of his vicious incompetence in serving the American people, or even common decency. (It's not as common as it used to be, let me tell you.)

Will Bunch is understandably apoplectic about the slow train wreck of American democracy (which seems to be picking up speed) and the former guy, plotting the betrayal of Europe and a kind of American Kristallnacht against immigrants."

"Once upon a time, it was unthinkable that anyone would make a serious effort to stop the peaceful transition of presidential power. It was unthinkable that the tools we thought existed to punish someone who did this — impeachment, constitutional sanctions, the courts — would not rise to the occasion. And it was most unthinkable of all that the coup plotter could run for president again, and win....

[T]he biggest story of the week [was] Trump’s confirmation that he and his anti-immigration guru, Stephen Miller, are advancing plans for a Day One policy in January 2025 of large-scale deportations of undocumented immigrants, bringing dead-of-night door-knocking terror to the neighborhoods where people who deserve a path toward citizenship are working and raising families. The huge number of deportees would require massive detention camps near the Texas border, in a grim echo of the worst of modern world history."

Call it a "biggest story" toss-up with Trump's confirmation that he'd take Putin's side over our NATO allies. What Gen. Wesley K. Clark (ret.), former NATO Supreme Allied Commander responded to with this statement::

“On 9/11, when America was under attack, NATO nations all mobilized to come to our defense and fought alongside us to crush al Qaeda. They didn’t ask us for money. They didn’t put strings on it. That is the kind of iron-clad commitment that has kept Western democracies — including our own — alive for 75 years.

“For Donald Trump to publicly signal to Vladimir Putin that he can take as much of Europe as he wants, and we will sit by and cheer him on, isn’t just breaking the promise the United States has made, and it isn’t just threatening Europe. It is encouraging World War III, which will hit our shores and cost American lives.

“It is the kind of statement that can only come from a deranged and twisted mind. I do not say this lightly: The lives of every American, both in uniform and civilian, are at severe risk if Donald Trump wins this election.”

10.Feb.2024

P.R. coups

Let's start with a relevant summary, from Brian Tyler Cohen (and h/t to HCR):

"The thing about Biden’s memory is that he’s presided over the addition of ~15 million jobs & 800k manufacturing jobs, 23 straight months of sub-4% unemployment, surging consumer sentiment, wages outpacing inflation, the American Rescue Plan, Inflation Reduction Act, CHIPs Act, PACT Act, infrastructure law, gun safety law, VAWA, codified marriage equality, canceled[] $136 billion in student loan debt for 3.7 million borrowers, bolstered NATO, and presided over electoral wins in ‘20, ‘22 and ‘23."

What was the question again? Nobody really asked for Bob Hur's book-length commentary appendix after he figured out that no criminal charges were warranted, but there it was, dangled for the media to lap up and regurgitate. Marcy Wheeler digs deeper to point out that the "8 words" that Hur found a way to thump 23 times (in bold face!) were in the middle of 58 other words that was about a 40-page memorandum.

"Hur spent a year trying to find facts that would allow him to charge Joe Biden, charge a President, doing backflips with the evidence along the way, and then writing up a report that provides far more evidence about 40 year old documents covered by Speech and Debate than we’ll ever learn about the stolen documents at Mar-a-Lago.

"This was never an ethical prosecutorial pursuit. It was always about writing a novel for a rabid audience."

Meanwhile, the twice-impeached former guy who is currently facing charges for theft of top secret documents, and stuff gave his 8th speech to the NRA promising to ensure moar guns for everbody! (It was a big hit.) T.J. Ducklo shared his thoughts (and a list of more than two dozen lies from this latest outing).

“Every single time Donald Trump opens his mouth, he’s confused, deranged, lying, or worse. Tonight, he lied more than two dozen times, slurred his words, confused basic facts, and placated the gun lobby weeks after telling parents to “get over it” after their kids were gunned down at school. But you won’t hear about any of it if you watch cable news, read this weekend’s papers, or watch the Sunday shows. Beltway reporters may be numb to Trump’s horrifying candidacy defined by chaos, division, and violence—but the American people are the ones who will suffer and die if he’s allowed anywhere near the Oval Office again.

“This is not a drill—Donald Trump is THE fundamental threat facing the American people and everyone needs to act like it. Including the free press—while we still have one.”

8.Feb.2024

Hearing

For the first time in my life, I listened to the audio feed of oral argument before the Supreme Court of the United States, in the momentous case of Trump v. Anderson, this morning. Jonathan F. Mitchell represented Trump; Jason Murray, the voters that filed the original request; and Shannon Stevenson from the Colorado Attorney General's office represented Jena Griswold, the Colorado Secretary of State. (The orginal case was Anderson v. Griswold.)

Much of the questioning from the justices seemed designed to provide them support of the opinions they've already formed. In Justice Sotomayor's case, I'm not sure about that inference; she may have been playing devil's advocate for the positions she knows the "conservatives" have staked out. I didn't hear any new arguments, I don't think, but lots of pettifogging about "officer" and "office," "of" and "under," and fear-mongering about different flavors of chaos that may ensue if they decide one way or the other.

One of the more dangerous notions put forth by Mitchell is that the states don't have any power to disqualify somone from their ballot "ahead of time," they have to wait until... inauguration day, should he be elected?! Because you know, Congress could remove the disqualification of an oath-breaking insurrectionist by a two-thirds vote. (Never mind that pigs will be flying in formation before that happens for Trump's benefit.)

"We don't think this problem is fatal" Trump's solicitor said. "We do acknowlege the tension, but we don't think it's insurmountable..."

Asked by Justice Kavanaugh about the (former) president being subject to prosecution for insurrection, Mitchell says "yes [he is], but he has immunity," which is not what the DC Circuit just said. That's another outrageous argument, that the "conservatives" might be entertaining, shortly.

Mitchell also proposed that the proper analogy for the constitutional requirement of not being an oath-breaking insurrectionist would be state residency requirements, as if residency and insurrection were somehow equivalent. It doesn't have to make sense.

Meanwhile, the insurrection is still simmering in the MAGA ranks. Heather Cox Richardson's latest tackles the fluctuating "border crisis," responding to the whim of the man who's torched any sort of "rule of law" platform, and is fighting against good economic news as well as prosecutors and judges. (At least he's got Aileen Cannon on his side, until she's so far off the rails she's removed from Trump's theft of documents case.)

HCR is a bit understated in supposing that "Trump is trying to turn the Republican Party into an instrument he can use as he wishes"; El Trumptanic sailed quite some time ago. He's already unleashing retribution on supporters of primary opponents, and is busy forcing out the insufficiently sycophantic functionaries from party roles. (Hello, Ronna Romney McDaniel!) He is on his way to dementia, but he ain't crazy; he's power-mad.

"[T[here is a method behind the madness. Trump’s actions are not those designed to win an election by getting a majority of the votes. They are the tools someone who cannot win a majority uses to seize power."

With an apparently endless supply of factotums.

"Yesterday, Representative Matt Gaetz (R-FL) introduced, and more than 60 House Republicans co-sponsored, a resolution denying that Trump had engaged in insurrection in his attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election."

Former D.C. Police Officer Michael Fanone responded:

“This resolution is a slap in the face to those of us who almost lost everything defending the Capitol on January 6th, including protecting some of the very Members of Congress who are now attempting to rewrite history to exonerate former President Trump. But no piece of paper signed by a group of spineless extremists will ever change the facts about that dark day: the insurrection was violent, it was deadly and it will happen again if we do not expunge the MAGA ideology that stoked the flames of insurrection in the first place. Rep. Matt Gaetz and every supporter of this resolution must be held accountable for their lies and un-American efforts to undermine our democracy.”

Update:
The "skepticism" of the Supremes was the lead story after the fact, and it does seem unlikely they're going to take the bold action demanded by the oath-breaking insurrectionist. It's not their job?

Thom Hartmann's column, recapitulating the sorry history of the 2000 election poses the essential question in the headline (and forecasts the outcome in the dek): Will SCOTUS Remove the Threat of Trump or be as Political & Corrupt as Bush v Gore Was? "Odds are, however, that this decision will be as political and corrupt as the 2000 Bush v Gore was. But I’m more than willing to be surprised."

7.Feb.2024

Law or Fear

Tomorrow's not The big day, but it's going to be A big day. Our Supreme Court will hear arguments in Trump v. Anderson, and, after their deliberation issue a ruling (on The big day) as to whether they will acknowledge (for all of us) that the constitutional self-defense of the 14th Amendment stands, or will by shirking their duty under a slathering of fetid palaver, declare it to be a dead letter.

Historian Timothy Snyder has been thinking—and writing—about this for some time, and his latest blog post is a must-read for those who love our republic and its constitution. Read it. This is not a time to tire of the most important subject confronting our nation. Law or Fear; The Supreme Court Chooses.

"Although we may not like to see this, we find ourselves in the moment for which the authors of Section 3 prepared us: amidst an oath-breaking insurrection that can become a larger conflict. Donald Trump did not just violate his oath of office on January 6th, 2021: that horrible day was the peak of a larger pattern of activities that began long before the election and continues until the present day. Trump said in 2020 (as he had said in 2016, and as he also says now) that he would not respect the outcome if he lost.

"When he did lose in 2020, Trump acted much as leaders in places like Belarus and Côte d'Ivoire have recently behaved: he sought to manipulate the vote-counting apparatus and other relevant institutions, and he encouraged violence to upset the the transition of authority...."

(Spoiler alert: the oath-breaking insurrectionist thus disqualified himself.)

Update:
Snyder provided an index to his multiple writings on this subject, with links to other key resources from which he learned.

Couldn't make this up

HB 392 from Rep. Jacyn Gallagher (R-Weiser) and Sen. Brian Lenney (R-Nampa) as it stands this morning doesn't ask for much, just that the powers and duties of Idaho's district health boards be scaled back from doing "all things required for the preservation and protection of the public health and preventive health" to just the "necessary and reasonable" things. And strike "and preventive health" after "public health." That's a bridge too far?

(2) To do all necessary and reasonable things required for the preservation and protection of the public health and preventive health and to enter into agreements with the director of the state department of health and welfare...

It seems almost, idk, reasonable, until you get a load of what Gallagher had to say about why they're doing this. Reported by Laura Guido in the Idaho Press (The Idaho Capital Sun has coverage too.)

"Gallagher told the House Health and Welfare Committee on Tuesday that this change would keep health districts in check. She gave the example that a health district might try to prohibit the sale of food with sugar and white flour as a diabetes prevention tool.

“This is kind of an extreme example, but it’s an example that I thought of,” she said. “(The bill) is a preventive measure.”

In other words, they may take our lives, but they’ll never take our freedom!SUGAR AND WHITE FLOUR!

The House Majority Leader, Megan Blanksma, did express concern about striking “preventive health,” god love her. But Gallagher had more up her apron sleeves than the ingredients list. She found the word collective on the Southwest District Health website. The About page says this (emphasis added):

"We believe we are stronger together. There is amazing power in the collective. The power to creatively innovate and inspire each other to find solutions to wicked problems that impact health. We energize our communities through leadership, strategy development, and resource placement. ...

"Employees at SWDH take pride in their efforts to improve the health of their community by delivering excellent service and working with partners in the community to make a collective difference on overall health and vitality."

Some web editor over there in the ruby red southwest corner of the state done screwed up, and has "alarmed" Rep. Gallagher. Did you know that "collectivism" is "the basis of a major political system such as socialism, communism and fascism"? (Not to mention our constitutional republic too, but ok.) She's here to tell you.

A former Washington Co. Commissioner, Kirk Chandler, also spoke in favor of the bill. To wit (and lest you miss the drumbeat, moar emphasis!):

“For our county, it says, the county commissioners can regulate for health, safety, morals, and welfare of the community. That’s communism,” Chandler said. “Any time you talk about the commonwealth or the common good, or doing something for the community, that takes away my personal freedom.”

ZOMG, don't get me started on common sense. The, ah, good news, is that striking "all" and replacing it with "necessary and reasonable" things will not make a bit of difference in the work of Idaho's health district boards, doing "things required for the preservation and protection of the public health" within the quite limited resources at their disposal.

The bad news is the Idaho legislature, generally.

6.Feb.2024

Supreme forecast

The unanimous ruling by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit denying the former guy's bid for past (and future) immunity from criminal acts while in office seems an appropriate occasion to hand out one of my ten gift links to the New York Times this month. Every credible commentator I follow and I are not surprised at the ruling, although I am pleased it was unanimous. I'm also pleased they short-circuited the means to further delay the trial in question. +rump could still appeal the decision to the Supreme Court and extend the current suspension, but he won't be able to delay for an appeal to the en banc circuit court.

"[T]he panel ... said that if Mr. Trump took that route, the underlying case would not remain on hold as the full court mulled whether to to hear the case and issued its own order pausing it."

Giving the three judges credit for doing their homework, before reading the decision or other commentary about it, I'll predict that the Supreme Court will simply refuse to take up the case, and the trial will go forward. I don't know enough to guess when, but surely, "despite the privileges [while holding] the office," a former president is "subject to federal criminal law like any other American."

Notwithstanding the latest skeevy lawyer's (or political hack's) threat that "every future president who leaves office will be immediately indicted by the opposing party" without bothering with credible evidence, like the way, you know, the Biden "impeachment inquiry" is going.

We may have to address that abuse of power, too. But the threat of what little accountability we seem to have left being abused is not a reason to give a lawless executive office carte blanche. Were the Supremes to write that blank check, their own jolly game would be up.

Betrayal

One of our US Senators has employed the hoary "counter" meme from the dawn of the web to supposedly keep track of our national debt. The triplet of ones, tens, hundreds virtually spins, and the thousands tick along. You don't need much patience to see a $million tick over. $34 trillion is out in front. Our Census Bureau's U.S. and World Population Clock is much more stately. Yes, the one's digit for the world spins as it adds to the 8 billion, but the U.S. population changes in comparative slow motion. "Components of Population Change," tabulated below the odometers are for the U.S., and nearly in balance: one birth every 9 seconds, and one death every 10 seconds. Those two components would result in an increase of one person every minute and a half. But there is also the "one (net) international migrant" every 26 seconds, giving us 3.46 immigrants in 90 seconds. Altogether, one new person every 22 seconds, said person 71% immigrant flavored, and 29% native born. All estimated of course, but close enough. 336 million, and counting.

The tally in the long-awaited national security supplemental appropriations bill in Heather Cox Richardson's Feb. 5 Letter from an American prompts me to come up with a divisor. Translated to per capita, here we go:

• $178.87 per capita for military aid to Ukraine;
• $41.96 for security aid to Israel;
• $29.76 for humanitarian aid for Palestinians, Ukrainians, and other civilians in crises; and
• $59.52 for securing the southern border.

As has been made obvious by their strutting about on propaganda TV, "MAGA Republicans never really intended for such a measure to pass. They apparently thought that demanding that Congress agree to a border measure, which it has not been able to do now for decades, would kill the national security bill altogether."

Kill the national security bill altogether. Because... actually doing something about the border "crisis" (they keep insisting it is) would blunt it as a campaign issue, which both the MAGA king and his lickspittle factotum Speaker are desperate to prop up. "Drumming up hysteria," and sabotaging any effort to deal with actual problems, while—sorry about that!—serving the Russian dictator's interests at the same time.

HCR links to David Kurtz in TalkingPointsMemo, Dems Fall For GOP’s Kabuki Theater Over Ukraine, Israel, And The Border. The naming is the damning, just as national security is transmogrified into THE BORDER! or, more effectively, INVASION! Did the Dems "fall" for it, or have they only failed to work around the Republican perfidy yet? Kurtz's short take ends with "We've seen this play before," and sure enough.

Speaking of "falling for it," I finally clicked through one of those idiotic push-polls our Congressman has been spamming (NO, I don't think impeaching the Homeland Security Secretary is a bright idea to "solve" the "crisis") and got added to his newsletter distribution. Again.

I did write to Simpson (and our Senators) about Ukraine aid, and as recently as Groundhog Day (poetically), he sent me the Ukraine boilerplate letter, enumerating the small change of previous legislation, as if it demonstrated commitment. All told, the seven items he lists amount to about $90 per capita, in almost 2 years. (He does mention a catalog of "security assistance and military training" without enumerating dollar amounts.) I can "rest assured":

"As the United States considers how to respond to Russian aggression in Europe, rest assured that I am carefully monitoring this situation with your comments in mind. This is a dynamic and grave situation, and as Congress presses the Administration to respond appropriately, I value your input on how these issues affect Idahoans."

Congress pressing, is that what's going on? Back to HCR's blog. As Russia's dictator works to destroy the rules-based international order that protects the United States, even as his war (and sanctions) "[have] drained Russia's money and men,"

"Trump and the MAGA Republicans have always had an unusually close relationship with Putin. Over the weekend, former Fox News Channel personality Tucker Carlson, who routinely echoed Russian talking points on his show [and said on Fox, before he was fired, that he was "rooting for Moscow"], was spotted in Moscow. Reports say he has been there since last Thursday, staying in the city’s top hotels and visiting its main cultural sites."

And from our House GOP Team of Toadies:

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA), Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-MN), and Conference Chair Elise Stefanik (R-NY)—had released a statement saying: “Any consideration of this Senate bill in its current form is a waste of time. It is DEAD on arrival in the House. We encourage the U.S. Senate to reject it.” Although it seemed clear that the measure would pass the House if it came to the floor, Johnson said he would not introduce it.

By the end of the "exceedingly weird," and execrable 24 hours, House extremists, in service to their criminal boss, appear to have succeeded in killing the deal. To preserve an issue for +rump's campaign, incredibly. Spoiler alert! HCR's wrap from three people in the know, my emphases:

Anne Applebaum: “People will die, today, because of the cynical game played by the American Republican party. Their irresponsibility is breathtaking.”

Tom Nichols of The Atlantic: “Letting Ukraine fall because of [Republicans’] cultish loyalty to Trump will be a betrayal that will stain America forever—and probably end up pulling us into a fight for Europe later. This is one of the rare moments when the path to disaster is clearly marked and avoidable.”

And Liz Cheney: “On Trump’s orders, Republicans in Congress are rejecting the border security deal. They’re also abandoning America’s allies in Ukraine. Trump and the [Republicans] are losing the war on purpose in an inexcusable betrayal that will strengthen America’s enemies for years to come.”

24.2.4

Brief-o-rama

I've read a couple of the amicus briefs in Trump v. Anderson, on the issue of whether the Colorado Supreme Court erred in ordering former President Donald Trump excluded from the 2024 presidential primary ballot. Timothy Snyder has been outspoken on the argument that "no, it did not," as in his blog lede overnight (emphasis added):

"Anyone who can read the Constitution knows that Donald Trump cannot hold office. Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution forbids anyone who has taken an oath as an "officer of the United States" and then engaged in insurrection from holding office again."

That's if enough people in charge actually support and defend the Constitution, as they're sworn to. Things that used to go without saying, eh? After noting that argument begins this coming Thursday, Snyder's 3rd paragraph has a hyperlink on "briefs," and I see it goes to the whole shebang of them on SCOTUSblog, sort of helpfully color-coded, and omg there are 102 Proceedings and Orders, SEVENTY-NINE of which are amicus briefs, by my count. Brief amicus and amici curiae, then on Jan. 31, they're labeled Amicus brief, and the color coding isn't keeping up.

Happened to notice that unlike all the other tabulated document types, the "Joint Appendix" has no word limit. It's in 4 volumes, apparently running past 1,400 pages, but the scotusblog link is only to the hundred page 4th volume. That includes an excerpt from the Senate Staff Report, "Examining the U.S. Capitol Attack," and 81 pages of tweets from the sur-@realDonaldTrump account, from November 2016 through January 6, 2021, and one "truth" from the Truth Social alt @realDonaldTrump, on Dec. 3, 2022, helpfully cataloging a compendium of perfidy such as the world has never seen.

All the various sorts of documents are required to have "Forty (40) copies" "in booklet-format, and one unbound copy of the document on 8½- by 11-inch paper." Boom times in the paper industry.

Somebody (some bodies) have to swim through all this palaver, and I'm not sure anyone out here in the cheap seats is prepared to even read the whole list of filers. (I did notice the one from J. Michael Luttig, et al. and queued that up, at least.) Behind the headline amici, there are the et alia, and everyone has to have counsel, right? Boom times in the legal industry, too. Here's the synopsis of the shebang list as best I could filter it out of the index. Knock yourself out:

• Senator Steve Daines & National Republican Senatorial Committee
• Indiana, West Virginia, 25 Other States, and the Arizona Legislature
• Republican National Committee and National Republican Congressional Committee
• Professor Seth Barrett Tillman
• Landmark Legal Foundation
• Vivek Ramaswamy
• David E. Weisberg
• Professor Kurt T. Lash
• William Jones
• Ryan Binkley, Binkley for President 2024, et al.
• Public Interest Legal Foundation, et al.
• respondent Colorado Republican State Central Committee
• 102 Colorado Registered Electors
• Jack Coben
• The League for Sportsmen, Law Enforcement and Defense
• Pearl O. Madrial
• The Claremont Institute's Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence
• Devin Watkins and Charles Watkins
• Children's Rights Legal Scholars and Advocates
• Senator Steve Daines & National Republican Senatorial Committee
• The Association of the Bar of the City of New York
• Judicial Watch, Inc. and Allied Educational Foundation
• Derek T. Muller
• U.S. Senator Ted Cruz, Majority Leader Steve Scalise, and 177 Other Members of Congress
• Brennan Center for Justice, et al.
• James Madison Center for Free Speech
• NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund
• Former United States Attorneys Robert S. Brewer, et al.
• Edward B. Foley, et al.
• David Boyle
• The Honorable Peter Meijer
• Indiana, et al.
• Akhil Reed Amar, et al.
• Terpsehore “Tore” Maras, et al.
• Condemned USA
• Chuck Gray, Secretary of State of Wyoming
• Professor James T. Lindgren
• Larry Kidd
• Kansas Republican Party and 32 Other State and Territorial Republican Parties
• Professors and Legal Scholars
• Former Attorneys General Edwin Meese III, et al.
• U.S. Term Limits
• Republican National Committee and National Republican Congressional Committee
• Kansas
• Christian Family Coalition (CFC) Florida, Inc.
• Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson
• The Secretaries of State of Missouri, et al.
• America's Future, et al.
• Gavin M. Wax, et al.
• G. Antaeus B. Edelsohn
• respondents Norma Anderson, et al.
• Professors Orville Vernon Burton, et al.
• Brian J. Martin
• J. Michael Luttig, et al.
• American Historians
• Common Cause
• Floyd Abrams, et al.
• Former Republican Governors
• Professor Kermit Roosevelt
• Professors Carol Anderson, et al.
• Constitutional Accountability Center
• Michael T. Worley
• Constitutional Law Professor Mark A. Graber
• Former Colorado Secretary of State Mary Estill Buchanan
• Josh Autry
• Former Republican Members of Congress
• Retired State Supreme Court Justices
• David P. Cullenberg, Bryant "Corky" Messner, William C. Saturley
• Professor Sherrilyn Ifill
• Experts in Democracy
• San Francisco Taxpayers Association, The Honorable Pete McCloskey & The Honorable Quentin L. Kopp
• Capitol Police Officers Present at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021
• Professor David M. Driesen, et al.
• Professor Ilya Somin
• Jordan L. Michelson
• United States Justice Foundation & Policy Issues Institute, Inc.
• Professor Edward J. Larson
• David B. Tatge
• Jeremy Bates

The gist of a proper brief is spelled out well enough in its table of contents. Here, for example, is an excerpt from the ToC of the brief of J. Michael Luttig, and his pals (in surname alphabetical order), Charles Stevenson Abbot; Donald Ayer; Richard Bernstein; Louis E. Caldera; George Conway; Eric Edelman; Mickey Edwards; Stuart M. Gerson; John Giraudo; Peter Keisler; John M. Mitnick; Jonathan C. Rose; Paul Rosenzweig; Nicholas Rostow; Robert Shanks; Christopher Shays; Larry Thompson; Stanley Twardy; and Wendell Willkie II:

I. STATE COURTS AND THIS COURT HAVE THE JUDICIAL POWER TO DECIDE A PRESIDENTIAL DISQUALIFICATION DISPUTE (in sections A-D); and

II. THE FAIR MEANING OF SECTION 3 DISQUALIFIES FORMER PRESIDENT TRUMP

1. Section 3 Must Be Accorded Its Fair Meaning, Not A Narrow Construction
2. The “President Of The United States” Is An “[O]fficer of the United States”
3. The January 6, 2021 Armed Attempt To Prevent The Peaceful Transfer Of Executive Power Was An “Insurrection ... Against The” Constitution
4. Mr. Trump “Engaged In” The Insurrection

Detail from II.D., a reminder of the insurrection timeline, with emphasis added:

By December 14, 2020, (1) the electors certified by state officials had cast 306 electoral votes for Joe Biden; (2) this Court had refused to intervene, see Texas v. Pennsylvania, 141 S. Ct. 1230 (Dec. 11, 2020); and (3) the supreme courts in all six swing states had rejected Mr. Trump’s claims. On December 18, Mr. Trump was told by White House staff that his court challenges had failed.... The next day, Mr. Trump issued his first tweet summoning his supporters en masse to Washington on January 6, 2021: “Big protest in D.C. on January 6. Be there, will be wild.” ... He repeated this summons “at least twelve times.”

And they refer back to that December 3, 2022 [sic] "truth" from Truth Social-@realDonaldTrump, which you can see on pg. 1332 of the Joint Appendix, his "virtual confession" (their italics, my bold):

...Trump posted that his unfounded accusation of widespread election fraud “allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution.” He had said much the same in his January 6, 2021 speech on the Ellipse: “When you catch somebody in a fraud, you’re allowed to go by very different rules.” Mr. Trump deliberately tried to break the Constitution—to incite threatened and actual armed force to prevent the peaceful transfer of executive power mandated by the Executive Vesting Clause and the Twelfth and Twentieth Amendments. That constituted engaging in an insurrection against the Constitution.

In conclusion, "This Court should affirm."

Update:
Running long today, but after a reader responded and prompted me to look at another brief, and then circling around to actually read Snyder's blog post (which is focused on the "bad arguments" others are making), there's a bit more to say.

Vivek Ramaswamy's name in the list of briefs caught my eye. It's a good example of a bad, dare I say execrable go at it. It's his brief, cooked up with the help of five counselors from three offices of Holtzman Vogel Baran Torchinsky & Josefiak PLLC, with a pathetic attempt at an argument. He proposes that "Trump's political opponents have sought to disqualify him from the ballot in multiple states because they fear they cannot beat him in a free and fair election." Beat him AGAIN, it should be noted.

He impugns a motive in the opposition and attacks the strawman of his own creation. If that goes nowhere, the fallback is the specious and unsupported claim that "'officer of the United States' in the context of Section 3 has never been understood to include the President of the United States," amply disproven by the historical record. And when that goes nowhere, worry about the "disruptive effects of disqualification" should rule the day? The disruptive effects of insurrection are waved away as a trifle.

The amicus brief that Snyder co-signed, with five other experts on democracy, political violence, the rule of law, and the decline and collapse of contemporary democracies addresses this argument directly. From Snyder's blog:

"One reason people seek bad arguments and excuses for the Supreme Court is that they are afraid of Trump and and his followers. Trump has threatened "bedlam" if his name is not on the ballots. Aside from proving (if proof were needed) that he is an insurrectionist, this illustrates very clearly what constitutional government cannot allow. Should the Court yield in advance to the threat of violence, it is no longer a court and this is no longer a rule-of-law state. The whole point of Section 3 is to allow the Constitution to defend itself against those who would use violence to overturn our constitutional order."

3.Feb.2024

Good good news (and some same old)

Catching up (just a bit; still securely 11,800+ undisposed items in my inbox), HCR's February 1 Letter makes it feel like it's still Groundhog Day. But nice to talk about the booming economy some more, right? Leading the G7 nations out of the pandemic malaise, another big jobs report... I looked for something to link to, but it's all over the tubes. CNN: "shockingly good"; BI: "'Wow' Jobs Report"; Fox Business: "expected to show that hiring slowed last month," whoops, wrong again.

And you know the opposite of "Progress," right? Congress. The House voted to renew the expanded Child Tax Credit with 357 votes, while Chuck Grassley, apparently still alive,

told a reporter not to have too much faith that the child tax credit measure would pass the Senate, where Republicans can kill it with the filibuster. “Passing a tax bill that makes the president look good… means he could be reelected, and then we won’t extend the 2017 tax cuts.”

As Jonathan Capeheart observed on the PBS Newshour last night,

"Congress is broken. The House is broken. The Senate is broken. ... [We're seeing] the metastasization of what happened when Justice Scalia died. President Obama nominates Merrick Garland to be the Supreme Court justice — [and Majority Leader] Mitch McConnell, says, eh — and it was February — no thanks. We should wait for the presidential election."

"Look where we are now, where legislation can't even get out of either chamber because it would give a win to the president, never mind the [] American people who would be helped by both pieces of legislation getting out and getting to the president's desk for his signature."

Not working too hard to keep from saying the quiet part out loud anymore. The worst economic news of the last couple years, high inflation, turns out to have been looting in another form, "greedflation," "in which corporations raised prices far beyond cost increases, padding payouts for their shareholders." But here we are, the economy booming, the stock market hitting record highs, our idiot Sun King taking credit, and omg, Fox News "forced to grudgingly admit" something good is happening, even a "mea culpa" from Larry Kudlow.

There's so much good news, I hadn't heard about the latest Quinnipiac poll showing Biden now leading Trump 50 to 44 in the general election matchup that doesn't seem particularly "hypothetical" just now. (They found Republican/leaning voters in the bag for the orange man over Nikki Haley 77 to 21.)

In spite of the considerable chaff of right-wing media "reward[ing] extremism" (HCR), the Republican disinformation machine, and right-wing influencers building their audience by stoking anger, the Q poll found that the MOST URGENT issue in a list of 10 was PRESERVING DEMOCRACY (24%), over "the economy" (20%) and "immigration" (20%). Nevermind that 94% of Republicans say they disapprove of the way Joe Biden is handling the economy (same as "the situation at the Mexican border"). On a scale of excellent, good, not so good, poor, more than half of Republicans polled said "poor."

I guess their inflation is too high, and their wages too low, and all they're hearing is bad news, and they can't figure out how to change the channel?

Question 24 did find a bipartisan super-majority: "Do you think the nation's democracy is in danger of collapse, or don't you think so?" Two-thirds said YES. 67% of Republicans, 71% of Democrats, 61% of independents. (And yet the Republicans put immigration ahead of that for "most urgent" at 38%, the economy at 29%, and a scant 12% "meh" for democracy. So urgent, we need to... block action until we can reinstall the psychopath. Got it.) And one last h/t to HCR for the link to Jennifer Rubin's Feb. 1 column (WaPo gift link for ya):

"House Republicans who have become indifferent to the adverse consequences of nihilism and performative politics might want to consider the toll their chaos-producing antics are taking. From vowing to pursue meritless impeachments to nixing a border security measure to please former president Donald Trump, they have given Democrats plenty of ammunition to blast them out of the majority in November."

Texas blowhard Chip Roy's call remains unanswered: “One thing: I want my Republican colleagues to give me one thing — one — that I can go campaign on and say we did. One!” The next best thing seems to be taking credit for the good results of Democrats' legislation they voted against.

Groundhog Day, 2024

Republican perfidy

Regular readers will have noted the increased usage of that p-word here in the blog, which, ICYMI, is "deliberate breach of faith; calculated violation of trust; treachery." I suspect where I've used it, Mitch McConnell is not far behind, but he's hardly the only nexus. It has trickled down to the state, county, and local level. Ada County's commissioners appoint a "freedom loving doctor" who knowingly shared disinformation about COVID-19 and broke medical standards by virtually prescribing ivermectin to COVID-19 patients – against medical evidence.

The Washington Medical Commission has done more about it than any body in Idaho, restricting him from practicing primary care medicine and prescribing medications in that state, for five years. Way out in Idaho, he still sits on the Central District Board of Health, the sole "physician representative" on the state's largest regional public health department. Accountability comes slowly, if at all. Meanwhile, Cole's pathology has provided him a lucrative side gig:

"A 2022 investigation by the Idaho Capital Sun found that Cole gave talks and presentations in at least four foreign countries — England, France, Brazil and Ireland — and at least 15 states including Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Florida, Hawaii, Indiana, Missouri, New Hampshire, New York, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, Washington and Idaho, as well as in Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C. In addition, Cole had done more than 70 online presentations, podcasts and video interviews since early 2021...."

With the Idaho legislature in session, daily examples of the violation of the public trust are legion. I wrote about Wednesday's hearing of the House State Affairs committee. The pattern of overwhelming public testimony in opposition and super-majority party-line votes (without any meaningful consideration of the said testimony) is depressingly familiar, and so reliable the christian nationalist Idaho Family Policy Center hasn't made news (that I've seen) this session. But their website/bloggy front page is screaming at the top of its lungs at least, about "library porn" (HO384 burbling in rewrite, might get its vigilante bounty provision trimmed, thanks to Sen. Geoff Schroeder); "pretecting conservatives from false charges of 'domestic terrorism'" (S1220, passed by the senate, would protected them from true charges of it as well); and not so much bad faith as failed public policy, starting another sorry chapter in the "mandatory minimum sentences" in the never-ending war on drugs (H0406).

The IFPC seems to have abortion and gender issues on cruise control, no recent blog posts about turning fetuses into "preborn children" H0381; or H0421, to make Genesis 5:2 the law of the land, expressing its intent in a magical realism contradiction: "Rare disorders of sexual development are not exceptions to the binary nature of sex."

Take all the time you need on that one.

raveling

Tom von Alten