Author: jamesgillen@yahoo.com

“Upon this a question arises: whether it be better to be loved than feared or feared than loved? It may be answered that one should wish to be both, but, because it is difficult to unite them in one person, is much safer to be feared than loved, when, of the two, either must be dispensed with. Because this is to be asserted in general of men, that they are ungrateful, fickle, false, cowardly,covetous, and as long as you succeed they are yours entirely; they will offer you their blood, property, life and children, as is said above, when the need is far distant; but when it approaches they turn against you. And that prince who, relying entirely on their promises, has neglected other precautions, is ruined; because friendships that are obtained by payments, and not by greatness or nobility of mind, may indeed be earned, but they are not secured, and in time of need cannot be relied upon; and men have less scruple in offending one who is beloved than one who is feared, for love is preserved by the link of obligation which, owing to the baseness of men, is broken at every opportunity for their advantage; but fear preserves you by a dread of punishment which never fails. “

• Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince, Chapter XVII

So all the Democrats were fretting and all the Republicans were gloating about all the laws they would get to pass and all the investigations they would get to start against Democrats once they had control over the House of Representatives this term. Except, officially, they’re not in control. Kevin McCarthy (BR.-California) was the designated candidate for Speaker and did get an overwhelming majority of his caucus to make him leader of his party, but unlike the Senate (where unwritten tradition apparently allows the leader of the majority party to run the whole show just because), Article I of the Constitution says the House has to elect its leader by consensus of the entire chamber, including the opposition. Because the Speaker is the presiding officer, no other procedures, including the swearing in of members, can begin until the Speaker is chosen. And since the Republican majority in the House, including the people who voted against McCarthy’s leadership, are only ten more than the Democrats, those opponents only need five votes to torpedo McCarthy’s Speaker bid. Well, guess what. The first round of votes, all 212 Democrats voted for their leader, Hakeem Jeffries (New York) and 19 Republicans went against McCarthy. Since then, they have gone through the same result, as of Thursday night, ten more times. Well, not exactly the same result. In the fourth and subsequent ballots, Victoria Spartz (R.-Indiana) voted “present” which lowered the threshold McCarthy needed but ultimately meant one less vote in his favor since none of the defectors went to his side. On Friday, McCarthy still fell short on a twelfth and thirteenth vote, but got more than ten Republicans back to his side, perhaps because today is the second anniversary of their Viceroy trying to seize control of our government by force, and they wanted to honor the occasion.

This after McCarthy went to any and every length to make sure he had the whole Republican Party behind him in his quest for the Speaker’s office. He admitted on tape after the Trump Riots (TM), “I’ve had it with this guy. What he did is unacceptable” but McCarthy continued to support Trump’s claims that the 2020 election of Joe Biden was illegitimate. For example, he had signed an amicus brief supporting Trump’s case in Texas v. Pennsylvania, which the Supreme Court refused to hear on the grounds that one state cannot contest the election process of another state. Hours after the Trump Riots, McCarthy was one of the Republicans who voted against certifying Biden’s win in two states. On January 28, McCarthy appeared at Mar-a-Lago to take a picture with Trump, an act that the mainstream media described as “kissing Trump’s ring”, since they’re operating on the rules of basic cable. He aceeded to the wishes of Matt Gaetz (BR.-Florida) and other Trumpniks who demanded the excommunication of Liz Cheney (R.-Wyoming) from House leadership for opposing Trump’s auto-coup. This as Kevin insisted, “I don’t think anybody is questioning the legitimacy of the presidential election”. In June 2021, McCarthy opposed the creation of a bipartisan House commission to investigate the Capitol riots, threatening the committee assignments of any Republicans who participated, inadvertently giving a free hand to Speaker Nancy Pelosi to have her own committee with two Republicans, Cheney and retiring Congressman Adam Kinzinger (Illinois) who were already on the outs with the Church of Trump. Which is part of how the committee got recordings that both McCarthy and Cheney had participated in, which might be why Gaetz and the other Trumpniks won’t back him as leader, since they have no more reason to trust what he tells them than Cheney had to trust what he told her.

McCarthy is – what’s the term I’m looking for here? – Ah yes. A “bitch-ass nigga.”

One of my Facebook friends posted that Kevin must have a thing for public humiliation. I said, “I figured that out from his actions immediately after January 6.”

One of the journalists reporting on this for MSDNC said that Kevin McCarthy’s problem is that he can’t change being Kevin McCarthy. No, I would say the problem is the exact opposite. Kevin McCarthy has changed being Kevin McCarthy lots of times. Nobody trusts him, nobody likes him, nobody respects him, and no one will follow him.

Apparently Kevin didn’t figure out that if you’ve already conceded everything to the other party, you have no leverage to make them hold to their side of the deal. But among Kevin’s myriad vices, the foremost of them is stupidity.

The spiritual lesson I get from Kevin McCarthy is that you should never crave a thing so desperately that you make it obvious to others how much you want it. Because then they know how to make you dance on their string.

He’d already agreed to bring back the old House rule (prudently tanked by Pelosi) that members could bring a vote of no confidence in the Speaker if it had just five supporters. After the sixth ballot, McCarthy agreed that McCarthy’s leadership PAC would not spend any money on “safe” seats for Congress, meaning he would not support any candidate who was opposed to the Trumpniks. He has also now agreed that a no-confidence vote only requires one Congressman, so basically anything he does is subject to liberum veto. What is liberum veto? Well, in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, this was a right of any man in the Sejm (senate) to hold up any legislation at will, meaning one person could thwart an otherwise overwhelming consensus. This weakness in the system made “Polish parliament” an insult term in Western Europe and is considered one of the reasons that the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth declined and died, because Russia (among other countries) figured out they could buy the vote of any Polish senator to stop the Commonwealth from doing anything in its best interest, including stopping Russia from undermining and seizing their territory.

Why am I bringing up Russia buying legislators to act against their own country? No reason.

McCarthy is in a way just as serious about government as his opponents. Any such deal isn’t worth the toilet paper it is written on and will soon be flushed down the john after being used for its natural purpose.

He certainly doesn’t have any serious policy differences with Trumpniks, and Trump himself is pushing for his speakership. But all the pundits cackling over the House defiance of Trump’s dictate fail to realize (as with his endorsement of COVID vaccine) that his influence is entirely negative. Trump just gave a role model to a party base that was already driven by oppositional defiant disorder. When Trump, in his own long-term interest, decides to support the structure rather than tear it down, suddenly the brats don’t listen to him. I mean when you let them get drunk every night, they’re not going to like it when you tell them to switch to milk.

Which is why Matt “Morrissey Called, He Wants His Hairstyle Back” Gaetz admitted when called out by McCarthy that he didn’t care if Hakeem Jeffries ended up getting the speakership, and why Gaetz was seen on the House floor in conversations with people like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who in her previous terms was one of the people who thought Nancy Pelosi wasn’t leftist enough.

What it is is that these guys want all the freedom to be bomb throwers and all the privileges of being in the establishment. They want all the rights and none of the responsibilities. They want to have it both ways. In short, they’re Republicans.

Anti-McCarthy Trumpnik Lauren Boebert engaged in a semi-serious discussion with Stephanie Ruhle on MSDNC, the same week she had a discussion with Sean Hannity that was actually more combative, and you know, give Boebert points for showing up, given that most Republicans don’t see going on MSDNC as being worth the effort, and most of that network’s hosts agree. But one of the points she was trying to make is that for years, no one in the House leadership, in either party, really cared about conservative concerns like balancing the budget, and the only way for that to happen was for the “radicals” to use their leverage.

Reason Magazine had at least one web article this week taking this premise at face value, mocking Mainstream Media for saying these guys only care about personal power when they actually have real procedural concerns, or that they are only serving Trump when the leaders (including Boebert) have specifically gone against him to oppose McCarthy. “None of Mr. McCarthy’s opponents reversed course after receiving calls from Mr. Trump encouraging them to do so,” Lerer and Epstein note. If they are not in it for him, the Times suggests, they must be in it for themselves, because they cannot possibly be trying to accomplish what they say they are trying to accomplish—a proposition so absurd that it is not even worth considering.”

Yes, Charlie Brown, and this time I’ll keep the football on the ground FOR SURE.

The fact that Republicans – and a lot of non-Republicans – had serious questions about how Democrats were running things didn’t mean Republicans had a better idea in 2016. What is absurd is thinking that “conservatives” are any more concerned with fiscal restraint and regular order than they were last year, or when Republicans were last in charge. What is absurd is watching Republican majorities balloon the deficit that much more than Democrats who actually advertise how much they tax and spend. The last time a Republican Speaker seriously tried to change things was Newt Gingrich with the Contract With America, and we all know how that went. The reason the Mainstream Media are so quick to assume the rebels are more concerned with power and privilege than good government is because they have had years and years to watch this process, and know not to take any of these presentations in good faith, unlike Reason Magazine.

Taking the rebels seriously is to act under the assumption that these Republicans think that elected office is a public responsibility, when they think that the purpose of elected office is an opportunity to be the Christian conservative version of GG Allin. But then, given that Allin’s real legal name was Jesus Christ, the analogy may be that much more apt.

But the fact that a small minority is holding up the process underlies the point that the vast majority of House Republicans really do want McCarthy, or at least see him as the best of options. But because of their weak margin of superiority, without the holdouts, Republicans are actually outnumbered by the 212 Democrats voting consistently for Hakeem Jeffries. Nobody considers that if the Democrats are the known element and the Gaetz types are never going to vote McCarthy, the main Republicans actually have the power to make a decision. If they can’t get enough people to go McCarthy they can go outside the cycle and find a conservative that the Gaetz types do not hate, or, some Republicans, even just six, can vote for Jeffries, or Republicans can move for plurality vote, which would either lead to a Jeffries win or scare the radicals with that possibility and convince them to go with the main Republicans’ choice.

But that would mean taking a stand, even if it’s for somebody who is on paper more conservative than McCarthy, and the “normal” Republicans don’t want to alienate either McCarthy or the insurrectionists, just like McCarthy wants to be the leader of “normal” Republicans and also of the insurrectionists.

So they want all the freedom to be bomb throwers and all the privileges of being in the establishment. They want all the rights and none of the responsibilities. They want to have it both ways. In short, they’re Republicans.

And if this is the behavior you can expect from the sane and sensible Republicans, it’s no wonder the lunatics are running the asylum.

“So here are the conclusions that this year tells us:

The first, sad conclusion is that there were a lot of lies this year and it must stop.”

-Margarita Simonyan, Russia Today propagandist

There is still a pretty good chance that Donald Trump may again be the Viceroy for Russian North America, if only because the Republican Party isn’t motivated to stop him from being nominated as their candidate. Even though, weeks after announcing a presidential campaign, he really isn’t doing much with it. Early in December he blasted a “MAJOR ANNOUNCEMENT” that some people thought might actually be a major announcement relevant to his political strategy, assuming he had one. Which he doesn’t. Instead he did a video where the big announcement was a new line of NFT virtual trading cards featuring Trump in poses like superhero and astronaut (also, policeman, sailor, construction worker, cowboy, Indian chief…). For $99 each, with no guarantee which one you’d get. This was so ridiculous even Trumpworld felt the need to ridicule it. Steve Bannon, on his “War Room” podcast, said “I can’t do this anymore… We’re at war,” Bannon said. “They oughta be fired today.” Bannon’s guest, Sebastian Gorka, said, “Whoever wrote that pitch should be fired and should never be involved” – as if Gorka and Bannon both didn’t know that Trump isn’t going to do anything he doesn’t want to do.

Around the same time, a Trumpnik with the appropriate alias “Baked Alaska”, who got convicted on misdemeanor earlier this year for participating in the Capitol riot, told reporters, “I can’t believe I’m going to jail for an NFT salesman.”

Poor little Trumpniks. They actually thought he was serious. That he cared about something greater than himself.

They thought Trump was going to be their Hard Man. Their version of Vladimir Putin, or at least Rodrigo Duterte. They thought he was gonna kick ass and take names, and anybody who didn’t march in step was gonna be sent to the Gulag.

What they got was Liddle Donnie Clown Boy. What they got was the guy who sells Trump Vodka and Trump Steaks.

And given that Trump doesn’t drink alcohol, and eats steaks well-done with ketchup, they should have figured that he knows just as much about government as he does about liquor and cooking.

(It kind of raises the question of what Trump would do if he had a Food Network show. ‘Next the recipe calls for a tablespoon of kosher salt, which as everybody knows, is salt that only comes from the front part of the cow.’)

It also doesn’t help Trump’s case going towards the 2024 campaign that the Democrats in Congress finally got access to Trump’s tax returns, with just enough time to release them to the public before Republicans take over the House. Investigative journalist and longtime Trump hunter David Cay Johnston came up with his own take, saying “Trump’s Taxes Are the Best Case Yet for Putting Him in Prison” even as he also details why that hasn’t happened yet. As Johnston himself says, whatever tax reforms he would recommend are not going to do any good now because they haven’t been enacted yet, and they probably won’t be, because as he says, the people who benefit from the system as it is are also the donor class, and some of the politicians they sponsor in both parties. Of course most of them don’t have the capacity to appoint their own Treasury Secretary and IRS chief, as Trump did.

His usual weasely presentation has been that he did everything legally and he was just working the system and “that makes me smart” and all that. And that may indeed be true. But if so, it just raises the question, if he didn’t do anything wrong, why was he so desperate to hide what he did?

Well, Johnston’s article also points out: “Perhaps most glaring in the tax returns is that they include 26 Trump businesses—or imaginary businesses—with zero revenue and hundreds of thousands of dollars in tax deductions for expenses.

“Unless Trump can produce records showing the expenses are real and meet other standards to be deductible, that’s fraud. That Trump did it 26 times as a candidate and as president is powerful evidence that he qualifies for prosecution by the federal government and New York State for criminal tax fraud.”

But again, that assumes that someone’s actually going to enforce the law, and most of the reason things got to this point is that nobody does. When Trump wasn’t a politician, it wasn’t considered a priority to go after him, and even after he used his presidency to make himself a national security risk, for that reason, the political establishment now think he’s too big to fail.

This year, when Saturday Night Live again gave Dave Chappelle a host gig the weekend after an election, he said, among many other politically incorrect things, that Trump is very popular, even loved, among some people at least. Because Trump is “an honest liar.” As in, during his first debate, he said “this whole system is rigged!” And when the moderator asked him to demonstrate why, Trump said, “I know the system is rigged, because I USE it.” He said to Hillary Clinton (according to Chappelle), “if you want me to pay my taxes, change the tax code. But I know you won’t, because your friends and your donors enjoy the same tax breaks that I do.’ …And with that, my friends, a star was born.”

It really brings up the old phrase “Hypocrisy is the respect that vice pays to virtue.” Or as I said, a long time ago when this all started: “But when the virtue of honesty is conflated with the vice of rudeness – often by a political class who have good reason to fear honesty – the result is that anyone who wishes to sell rudeness can do so by calling it honesty. And thus a population deprived of the virtue will embrace the vice. It’s like living in the most antiseptic circumstances and then finally being exposed to filth, and your immune system has no experience with it.” We can see simply from the example of Hillary Clinton what hypocrisy leads us to. But if one objects to the vice underlying hypocrisy, obviously the solution is to challenge the vice, not openly embrace it. What we’re seeing is the open embrace of vice, and why it’s not an improvement on hypocrisy. Because when the ruling class can’t even bother to lie anymore, they have no reason to moderate their evil, because they know no one’s going to call them on it.

Much as all those professional Christians that Republicans nominated to the Supreme Court told the Democrats that Roe v. Wade was “settled law” (when it wasn’t), that simply ending Roe wasn’t going to undermine the right to abortion in states that still affirmed it (when it did) and the Dobbs decision didn’t set a precedent on civil rights cases like Obergefell v. Hodges (when it does). We have now reached the dangerous point where the powers that be still feel the need to lie, but can’t even bother to lie WELL.

There is still a need to lie because previous evidence to the contrary, there was still a fear that reactionary forces could have pushed the envelope too far. That maybe, hey, we can’t just admit we’re running an entire country only for the benefit of people who agree with us and fuck everybody else in it. Those other people might get MAD. And, previous evidence to the contrary, this election they actually DID.

The reason a liar continues to lie when lying would be unnecessary or impractical is because to lie is to set up a conflict between what wants to be true and what one knows to be true. Thus, self-deception is the root of any lie. But this means that there are only two ways to resolve the conflict: Either force everyone else to go along with the lie or to give up the lie. And the real problem occurs when the outside world makes it clear it will not be forced.

Ukraine is just a more visceral example. My quote at the beginning was from Margarita Simonyan, a “journalist” for Russia Today, the main media service of the Putin government. It was part of a year-end review of Russia’s performance, or lack thereof, in the “special military operation” against the “Nazi” government of Ukraine. Now, simply because one is a propagandist doesn’t mean one can’t tell the truth. Just because one might prefer to believe the Ukrainian government doesn’t mean they don’t engage in propaganda. But it comes down to the fact that you don’t have to “believe” anything but the facts. If Russia were winning in Ukraine, it would be a lot easier for them to say so. If they had actually managed to take the capital in three days, they could have filmed it. Russia and Ukraine can say anything they want about who’s winning, but I believe Ukraine is winning by simple virtue of the fact that they’re still around. We’ve heard that some people can make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, but that requires a sow’s ear. Russia doesn’t even have a sow’s ear to work with, which is why even their propaganda ministries are unable to point to victories that haven’t happened and instead point fingers everywhere except where the problem starts.

For a shill like Simonyan to truly stop the lies, she would have to start with the first obvious one: That Ukraine is just a “little Russia”, that it doesn’t really exist as its own nationality and that therefore Russia can just walk in and take it without anybody seriously trying to stop them. But by implication that would mean challenging the greater premise that supports it: That you can have faith in a ruthless leader whose decisions are more wise the more unaccountable he becomes. Ending that belief would challenge her whole world view, and she’s not going to do that. Likewise an American fascist like Steve Bannon might admit that his Leader is capable of error, but he’s going to go back to serving Trump, like he has in the past. Where else is he going to go? What else is he going to do? Be normal???

You cannot expect these people to just evolve or grow out of it. On an individual level, people who aren’t fully invested in the lie may realize it isn’t working out for them and quit supporting it, which is a big part of why Democratic candidates won in 2022, either because of Republicans voting for them or simply not voting at all. But the people who are most invested have the most to lose, and not just in terms of money. The best and brightest of the fascists might be capable of acknowledging the facts against them, but they are too emotional to grasp why the facts are against them, because that would challenge their whole view of reality.

We cannot assume that the bad guys will just see the error of their ways, or just die out. Trump and Putin may be old, but they’re not dying fast enough. And even if they died tomorrow, their proteges would be waiting in the wings, because they’ve been taught to think that bad behavior would be rewarded. The only thing that disincentivizes bad behavior is to quit rewarding it. And that means actively resisting it, either on the battlefield or the ballot box. That does not guarantee success, let alone some utopian future, but for quite some time – a little bit before Brexit and Trump, actually – it seemed as though the forces of regression had the upper hand, and were going to direct the world. This autumn the rest of the world showed they would, and could, fight back. And that might be a turning point, a beginning of the end for “post-liberal” lying and corruption.

That might actually be a Happy New Year.

“And so the first returns are in, and the Silly Party has taken Leicester! What do you think of that- Norman?”

“Well, yes, the election went much as I predicted, except that the Silly Party won.”

-“Election Night”, Monty Python’s Flying Circus

So now, finally, the 2022 midterms are over. In the Georgia runoff, incumbent Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock won – barely – against college football star and Trump friend Herschel Walker, who got a huge amount of Republican turnout despite or likely because being as dumb as an entire store full of left shoes and picked only because Trump wanted him and the rest of the Republicans thought this was the ideal Black candidate. If nothing else, we now know why it’s better to be a werewolf than a vampire: Warnock is an ordained minister, and Clerics can’t turn werewolves.

Now, given that even before this, Democrats had managed to keep 50 seats in the Senate and held the House Republicans to a five-seat majority (who probably aren’t in consensus about their leadership) the conventional wisdom from everyone was that Donald Trump was to blame for pushing a whole bunch of election-liar candidates who wanted to skew state governments to make sure no one could elect Democrats again. That and, the Alito Court’s decision to strike down Roe v. Wade attracted a surprising amount of anger. Well, it surprised Republicans, anyway. Hey, Mr. Alito, it turns out that women had the right to choose after all. Maybe while you were obviating the 14^th Amendment and completely ignoring the Ninth, you could have used your magical legal bullshit to eliminate the 19^th Amendment and take away women’s right to vote. It would have made things so much easier for your Party.

Usually in a midterm election, voters kick out the party in power. Except, people perceived, not just because of the Dobbs decision, that the party in power isn’t so much the Biden Democrats as the Trump Republicans. Supposedly even before the election, Trump told insiders that creating a pro-life supermajority on the Supreme Court wasn’t going to help him politically, and it’s another one of the factors that pin the blame on him for Republican performance.

That’s one of the reasons why Republicans supposedly begged the former Russian Viceroy to hold off on announcing a re-election campaign until after the election, but just one week afterward, November 15, he made this big presentation at Mar-a-Lago and announced he was running to stay out of prison for President of the United States. Those who actually bothered to watch said it was a great example of what Trump used to call “low energy.” Such that the press caught some people trying to leave the room.

Anyway, somewhere inside a speech that was so wandering and tedious that even Laura Ingraham cut away from it, Trump said he was going to “make America great and glorious again.”

MAGAGA!

Isn’t that Lady Gaga’s final form?

But the problem with paying any attention to this at all is that I simply don’t have time to. In the time between the general election, the Trump announcement and the Georgia runoff, Trump actually managed to get himself involved in multiple fuckups. On the way to Make America Gross And Ghetto Again, Trump decided to host Kanye West at Mar-a-Lago. Kanye West, who now legally goes by “Ye.” (I assume this is supposed to be ‘yay’ as in the last syllable, but I pronounce it ‘yee’ as in Ye Gads.) He has recently been accompanied everywhere by “traditional Catholic” and white supremacist Nick Fuentes, acting as Ye’s wannabe Salacious Crumb. If you don’t know who Fuentes is, congratulations, you have a life. If you actually want to know, just do a Google search on the phrase WHERE THE FUCK IS YOUR CHIN? Anyway, Kanye has been erratic for quite some time, as anybody who follows hip-hop could tell you, but he really started acting crazy – by Kanye standards – when he twitted that he was going to go “death con 3 on JEWISH PEOPLE”. Except DEFCON is an abbreviation and he actually spelled it ‘death’. You would think a black man would know how to spell DEF. Whatever. It got to where Ye and Fuentes appeared on Alex Jones’ show (with Ye wearing full-body clothing and a full mask with zip holes for the eyes, apparently to keep TheJews from injecting him with nanotech) and everyone thought, “Wow, I hope Alex Jones can talk some sense into this guy.”

Ye, like Trump, was also supported by Elon Musk at Twitter at least until Ye said he would allow the banned Alex Jones to post from his account, posted a swastika inside a Star of David, and when threatened by Musk, posted his “final tweet” as a picture of Musk getting hosed down at the beach. (‘I love free speech so much, I’m letting Q people and racists back!’ ‘Hey boss, Kanye posted a pic of you looking whiter than a night light.’ ‘Ban his ass.’) Not that Elon gave up on trying to help Trump: This last week he made an arrangement with Gonzo journalist Matt Taibbi to release “The Twitter Files” – on Twitter – being a set of internal communications where Twitter staff debated whether to release emails from Hunter Biden’s pilfered laptop three weeks before the 2020 election. They eventually decided against doing so, but without consulting then-head and Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, who now calls their decision a mistake. The staff had also consulted left-wing free speech advocate Congressman Ro Khanna (D.-California) who recommended against killing the story.
And you know where this is going. In order to Make America Goonish And Garish Again, Trump committed his compound fuckup. Posting on his Truf Censhal platform, he said, “So, with the revelation of MASSIVE & WIDESPREAD FRAUD & DECEPTION in working closely with Big Tech Companies, the DNC, & the Democrat Party, do you throw the Presidential Election Results of 2020 OUT and declare the RIGHTFUL WINNER, or do you have a NEW ELECTION? A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution. Our great ‘Founders’ did not want, and would not condone, False & Fraudulent Elections!”

This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.

But here is the crux of the issue that lit the fuse on Trump’s tampon: “The Biden campaign asked Twitter to review five tweets, which were later deleted. Taibbi did not disclose the content of the Biden campaign requests, presenting only their URLs; …four tweets contained nude photos and videos of Hunter Biden, which violate Twitter policy and California law as revenge porn.” Again, the joke to me is that Twitter HAS a policy. Based on history, especially now, I thought anybody could post snuff films and prolapse porn and it’s all good.

But apparently Hunter Biden’s penis doesn’t impress most Americans as much as it impresses Republicans. Especially when the main story of this became not an alleged collusion to keep the Biden family from being smeared, but the owner of the Republican Party demanding to terminate the Constitution, in so doing violating his previous oath and creating incriminating evidence in any case against him for the January 6 riot.

Now, the fact that a lot of this mishegoss involved James Baker, a Twitter legal counsel who was also part of James Comey’s FBI investigation into Trump caused a lot of the Right to think, “Oh, praise Jesus, we’ve finally got something on these Demonrats.” But Tuesday the Trump Organization tax fraud trial in New York returned 17 charges as 17 guilty verdicts. And while Trump himself was not personally indicted, suddenly Hunter Biden and his Dad didn’t seem so crooked and evil anymore.

All of which – and it’s a lot, even for this guy – have caused the political-media complex to think that Trump is at his weakest moment, and that if there was ever a time for the Republican Party to get rid of him, it’s now.

HaHaHa.

No.

Sure the smart Republicans are saying they should get rid of Trump. The smart people have known that Trump is bad news for years. The smart people aren’t the ones running the Republican Party. The Party isn’t run by heartless manipulators like Mitch McConnell and Rupert Murdoch. It isn’t run by functionaries like Paul Ryan or Kevin McCarthy. It’s run by people like Lauren “Bubblehead” Boebert and Matt “Morrissey Called, He Wants His Hairstyle Back” Gaetz. People who either are as dumb and venal as they seem or are putting on an act to appeal to voters who are even worse.

They dismiss the critiques of liberals, “liberal” apparently being anybody who thinks that a mob coup is illegal. They say it all comes down to “Orange Man Bad.” Well, YES. Orange Man Bad. Also: White slavery bad. Leprosy bad. Cancer bad. Why are we debating the given? The problem is not Orange Man Bad, the problem is that the modern Republican Party could defend and support cancer as long as cancer helped them ban abortion.

Trump’s sorta like Hitler. Except Hitler liked dogs. And he served in the military. And he didn’t cheat on his girlfriend.
Now you may be going, “No, No. Stop. Why are you acting like Trump is worse than Hitler? Hitler was Hitler.” Exactly. I’m saying, if the Trumpniks want to sell my country to some idiot clownboy who’s not even AS good as Hitler, maybe we should cut the Germans some slack.

Maybe we should quit thinking America is “exceptional” and admit we were just lucky.

Maybe, just as people of Russian and Chinese and German ethnicity can move to this country and adopt that can-do, optimistic, individualist American spirit, so it is possible for Americans to adopt the sullen, collectivist, Sklavmoral mindset of Russians or Nazi-era Germans, if the local culture changes enough.

Trump might be a loathsome mass of all potential human vices, congealed into something resembling a humanoid form, but if one were to judge from his positions prior to getting into politics, you could see why some made the case that he could be a good leader. He didn’t always agree with Republican orthodoxy and he clearly didn’t care about following the party’s internal political correctness. Unfortunately what seemed like pragmatism was simply not having a moral core beyond “anything that gets me what I want is good”.

Even more unfortunately, that description also fits most of the people who worship Trump, including all the Good Christians (TM) who were amazingly eager to discard their decorum and moralism as long as government trampled over all that procedural stuff that conservatives used to favor. Like, the Constitution.

For all the huffing and handwringing in the media and the Republican Party about Trump palling around with terrorists and wanting to get rid of the Constitution, they really shouldn’t be acting so surprised. And both the Republican establishment and the liberal media should quit acting like this is gonna make a difference. You notice that for the last six years, Trump has always been pushing it. The “good” Republicans and establishment people (including people in his own inner circle) have always tried to pull him back towards respectability. That never works. He always pulls them further and further into the slime. Because he’s been betting that they need him more than he needs them, and so far, that bluff has not been called.

Because if it is, Trump can always take his ball and go home, that “ball” being his voter base. And for both moral and long-term practical reasons, the Republican Party really should cut him off and make it clear that they don’t want to have the kind of people that Trump encourages in the Party. But the implication there is that without those people, they won’t even be as competitive in national elections as they are now, cause this is the base they’ve been cultivating for years before him. He simply said the sort of stuff they were saying to themselves and wouldn’t admit cause that would make them unpopular with the rest of the country. Trump showed them they didn’t have to care about that. He gave the base the freedom to be their worst selves. He gave the base the freedom to be … base.

As I say, it’s horrible enough that these guys emulate the Nazis, but the problem is they’re so BAD at it.

Not even the original Nazis. I mean, back in the ’70s, the ACLU took flak because they defended the right of Illinois Nazis to protest in a Jewish neighborhood in Skokie. Hey, remember when that sort of thing WASN’T tolerated by an establishment political party? But this is them:

Look at these guys. Clean-cut, uniformed, capable of marching in formation, and I can’t see from here, but the slogans they’re carrying are probably grammatically correct.

Now think of the guys who stormed the Capitol. Fat, slovenly, unshaven and just bringing whatever odd gear they had to the riot like it was a BYOB (Bring Your Own Bombs).

I’m just saying, our standards for fascism have really gone downhill.

I mean, if Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union and their tanks had the little metal testicles dangling off the back, that would be the Republican Party right now.

Again, Trump IS the base and the base IS Trump. Who in the Republican political class is more like the Republican Party than Trump? Even if they trained to walk with their knuckles at waist level and learned how to talk English gooder, they wouldn’t mean it. And the more civilized Republicans are no longer able to cover for them, because the agenda has been laid bare. And Democrats have been stewing over all those Supreme Court appointees mouthing “settled law” so many times, even they might have figured out they should quit trusting conservatives.

So why NOT keep supporting Trump? The alternative would be to… actually come up with common-sense, centrist and right-wing ideas that would appeal to the general public. But then they’d have to admit the general public into the movement, and then they would no longer have the freedom to be their worst selves. If they could appeal to the wider public, they wouldn’t be who they are.

So for the next two years (at least) they’re going to keep goosestepping behind Trump so he can Make America Gallant And Goofus Again. Reagan would not have recognized this party, but Barry Goldwater would have. He was the one who said “Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the party, and they’re sure trying to do so, it’s going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can’t and won’t compromise. I know, I’ve tried to deal with them.” But in a lesser-known quote on similar lines, he said: “Those who seek absolute power, even though they seek it to do what they regard as good, are simply demanding the right to enforce their own version of heaven on earth. And let me remind you, they are the very ones who always create the most hellish tyrannies. Absolute power does corrupt, and those who seek it must be suspect and must be opposed. Their mistaken course stems from false notions of equality, ladies and gentlemen. Equality, rightly understood, as our founding fathers understood it, leads to liberty and to the emancipation of creative differences. Wrongly understood, as it has been so tragically in our time, it leads first to conformity and then to despotism. Fellow Republicans, it is the cause of Republicanism to resist concentrations of power, private or public, which enforce such conformity and inflict such despotism. It is the cause of Republicanism to ensure that power remains in the hands of the people.”

But this party seems to think that’s commie wokeness or whatever their influencers have told them to hate this week.

It continues to marginalize conservatives and libertarians like myself, who stupidly believed that the Right was about creating a limited constitutional republic and free-market economy, as opposed to trolling the libs and giving more power to the already privileged because one identifies with them as opposed to your fellow working stiffs. Cause apparently the toadies and trolls are more numerous than the liberty caucus, or at least more motivated.

Unfortunately for them, the last election, which should have been the best opportunity for Republicans to make gains against a flawed and unpopular Biden Administration, demonstrated that this approach isn’t going to work with the voting public, even with all the state and federal rules in their favor. The only route left is another coup. In which case, they have to hope that their militia are not as incompetent as their lawyers and legislators have proven to be. But you know what they say: “A failed coup that isn’t punished isn’t a failure, it’s just a rehearsal.”

So step up, Republicans, it’s time to Make America Greedy And Gullible Again!
Or is that Make America Gluttonous And Grabby Again?

We’re still working this out.

From the First Book of Samuel, Chapter 8 (King James Version):

And it came to pass, when Samuel was old, that he made his sons judges over Israel.

² Now the name of his firstborn was Joel; and the name of his second, Abiah: they were judges in Beersheba.

³ And his sons walked not in his ways, but turned aside after lucre, and took bribes, and perverted judgment.

⁴ Then all the elders of Israel gathered themselves together, and came to Samuel unto Ramah,

⁵ And said unto him, Behold, thou art old, and thy sons walk not in thy ways: now make us a king to judge us like all the nations.

⁶ But the thing displeased Samuel, when they said, Give us a king to judge us. And Samuel prayed unto the Lord.

⁷ And the Lord said unto Samuel, Hearken unto the voice of the people in all that they say unto thee: for they have not rejected thee, but they have rejected me, that I should not reign over them.

⁸ According to all the works which they have done since the day that I brought them up out of Egypt even unto this day, wherewith they have forsaken me, and served other gods, so do they also unto thee.

⁹ Now therefore hearken unto their voice: howbeit yet protest solemnly unto them, and shew them the manner of the king that shall reign over them.

¹⁰ And Samuel told all the words of the Lord unto the people that asked of him a king.

¹¹ And he said, This will be the manner of the king that shall reign over you: He will take your sons, and appoint them for himself, for his chariots, and to be his horsemen; and some shall run before his chariots.

¹² And he will appoint him captains over thousands, and captains over fifties; and will set them to ear his ground, and to reap his harvest, and to make his instruments of war, and instruments of his chariots.

¹³ And he will take your daughters to be confectionaries, and to be cooks, and to be bakers.

¹⁴ And he will take your fields, and your vineyards, and your oliveyards, even the best of them, and give them to his servants.

¹⁵ And he will take the tenth of your seed, and of your vineyards, and give to his officers, and to his servants.

¹⁶ And he will take your menservants, and your maidservants, and your goodliest young men, and your asses, and put them to his work.

¹⁷ He will take the tenth of your sheep: and ye shall be his servants.

¹⁸ And ye shall cry out in that day because of your king which ye shall have chosen you; and the Lord will not hear you in that day.

¹⁹ Nevertheless the people refused to obey the voice of Samuel; and they said, Nay; but we will have a king over us;

²⁰ That we also may be like all the nations; and that our king may judge us, and go out before us, and fight our battles.

²¹ And Samuel heard all the words of the people, and he rehearsed them in the ears of the Lord.

²² And the Lord said to Samuel, Hearken unto their voice, and make them a king. And Samuel said unto the men of Israel, Go ye every man unto his city.

The Word of the Lord.

And like I said, why should I believe this stuff when clearly you don’t?

Karma Police, arrest this man,

He talks in math, he buzzes like a fridge

He’s like a detuned radio

Karma Police, arrest this girl

Her Hitler hairdo is makin’ me feel ill

And we have crashed her party

-Radiohead, “Karma Police”

This is where we are after Election Day Tuesday.

In the House, several races, mainly in California, have yet to be called, yet because of Florida (see below) and surprisingly, New York, Republicans have made enough gains that they will probably get the chamber. But they probably won’t have a double-digit margin and might not get a net gain at all.

In the Senate:

Georgia has to be set aside for the moment because even though incumbent Democrat Rev. Raphael Warnock is leading, he has less than 50 percent of the vote, and so the race is going to a runoff by Georgia state rules, just like Warnock had the last time. And yeah, liberals, let’s boo the Libertarian candidate for even existing, but you would have had a similar result if he wasn’t there. The real problem is that anybody would vote for Herschel Walker in the first place.

Ron Johnson has just won his race in Wisconsin, so the Senate is back to 48-48.

The Alaska race is ranked-choice, but the two leading candidates are both Republican, being, Trumpnik Kelly Tshibaka and the incumbent (relatively moderate) Lisa Murkowski. So the Senate is still at least 49 seats Republican, it’s just a question of how much of a Trumpnik the Alaska Senator is.

So now it comes down to- Arizona and Nevada. Where they’ve already said it’s going to take several days because of the way everything is counted. But this is how the Church of Trump can make a case that everything is Rigged and Stolen. Professional liars know how to conceal their poison in a coating of truth, and the reason they can say the system is rigged is because some election systems really are complicated and obscure. Right now in Nevada at least we’re waiting on a bunch of mail-in votes, some of which legally cannot be counted until Saturday, and that’s the only hope that incumbent Senator Catherine Cortez Masto has against Adam Laxalt.

Republicans now need both Arizona and Nevada to secure a majority. The most likely result at the moment is that Cortez Masto loses to Laxalt (fuck) and incumbent Senator Mark Kelly holds out against Trumpnik Blake Masters. That then makes it Democrats 49, Republicans 50. If Warnock then wins the Georgia runoff it goes back to a tie, which is where we were, and Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris means Democrats keep control of the Senate. If Democrats keep both those seats, it’s a Democratic majority whether Warnock wins or not, and if he does win, it’s Democrats with 51 seats. (Of course, the phrase ‘Senator Herschel Walker’ is the worst-case scenario in any event.)

So, basically back to a draw in the Senate and the preponderance of votes will probably give Republicans the House. So why is everyone in the Democratic Party so (unusually) cheerful?

Because the President’s party usually does a lot, lot worse in the midterms. 2022 was the best performance by the President’s party in midterms since 1950. The Michigan state legislature went Democrat for the first time in 40 years. Here’s a bit from the right-leaning Washington Examiner: “Things generally went well where the Republican was perceived as competent and not a servant to Trump — otherwise, not so much,” said one GOP operative speaking on the condition of anonymity in order to reflect candidly on the results. “The GOP should’ve become the party of Brian Kemp and Ron DeSantis yesterday, but it damn well better become it today.”

“Trump endorsed over 330 candidates, held 30 rallies, and raised millions of dollars over the course of the midterm elections. The former president intended to use Tuesday’s results to strengthen his position within the party by delivering wins for the candidates he endorsed. But with the party’s underperformance, there appears to be growing frustration at the former president for endorsing what many see as a “slate of bad candidates.”

“It’s time for Trump to step aside. Many of these races should have been easy wins for Republicans with record inflation and President Joe Biden’s sagging approval ratings. Instead, last night was an absolute nightmare scenario,” said an adviser to a Republican senator, who did not want to be identified. “I personally do not know of one person who still feels confident in his leadership after last night.“

All that leads me to one conclusion, Republicans, and the conclusion is this: You suck. GAD, you suck SO hard. The Republican Party sucks harder than Alina Lopez at an all-Black gangbang.

I guess Mitch McConnell was right when he said candidate “quality” would probably stop his team from getting the Senate back. Who knows where Republicans would be if their political standard wasn’t “Arabic numerals are a Muslim conspiracy against Roman letters, and the heliocentric theory is a Communist subversion they teach our kids at Drag Queen Story Hour”?

I believe that the results confirm both of my initial impressions before Election Day. One, that the pollsters and other media were creating reasons to make the Republican candidates more competitive than they arguably should have been on their merits, and two, regardless of how much people hate the Democrats, they know they can’t trust the Republicans. Americans are tired of this shit. We are tired of the “circus.” We are tired of the designated conservative party being like the Nazis, only crazy and racist. We are tired of every aspect of public life being about our perfect little boy who is the center of the universe. We are tired of this spoiled little brat who poisons the air with his malice and lies, who constantly whines and hollers for attention, and maybe little boy should shut his fucking yap and GO TO FUCKING BED.

If there was any place where Republicans met and exceeded expectations, it was Florida, where Val Demmings seemed competitive against incumbent Republican Senator Marco Rubio but ended up losing by almost 10 points. Republican Governor Ron DeSantis beat Charlie Crist almost 60-40. And perhaps ironically, it’s all because of Hispanics. But then, liberals should have learned by now that Hispanics are not all the same group and do not all act alike any more than Irish and Canadians and Scots and English and Americans all act alike just cause they speak (something like) the same language. Still, I can understand how Florida Cubans and Venezuelan refugees would hate a Democratic party that is, rightly or not, identified with socialists. What I can’t understand is how “anti-socialists” can vote for a party that wants a one-party regime, built around a cult of personality where the Leader tells everyone what they can say, and what they can believe, and punishes business for not obeying his version of political correctness. And this time, I’m not talking about Trump, I’m talking about DeSantis.

So that’s what the setup is going forward. Prior to Tuesday, if DeSantis got re-elected (a damn-near certainty) and Trumpnik candidates did not win across the board (which seemed less likely before Tuesday) that strengthens DeSantis’ position against Trump, when, NOT if, Trump chooses to run for re-election as President. Trumpniks winning more seats would have helped Trump’s case. As it is, Trump has been teasing the press about some “very big announcement” around November 14^th, or maybe the 15^th, and the fact is, while announcing for President would require campaign finance restrictions that would restrict Trump’s ability to grift, Trump has to run for president again if he wants to stay out of jail. Either that or he gets a suitcase and crashes on Vladimir Putin’s couch, and most of the border traffic for Russia is going in the other direction. Plus which, they don’t really have a McDonald’s anymore.

Now of course, Trump may have competition. And while DeSantis is getting some backing for a presidential run because various right-wingers are also getting tired of Edward Babyhands, I don’t like Ron’s chances.

I mean, I don’t want to favor Trump in any comparison, but he actually has a sense of humor. Granted, this is the sadistic, gloating humor you would expect from a Bond villain who has Daniel Craig strapped to a chair, but it’s something like a sense of humor. Whereas DeSantis always acts like he’s sucking on a lemon, and that’s on his good days. He’s no fun. And most Republicans want to have fun while they’re punishing minorities and pregnant women.

Plus which, if we can confirm that most of the success that Republicans did have this year was despite Trump, as with the re-election of Trump heretics Brian Kemp as Georgia Governor and Brad Raffensberger as Secretary of State, it may be that in some races people actually care more about who would do a better job with the state than all the culture war stuff. I am frankly not sure if DeSantis has done anything to deserve his local popularity besides lean on all the culture war stuff. And if that’s all he has, he really can’t compete with Trump, who wasn’t competition for him before simply because Trump wasn’t going to run for Florida Governor.

And if that’s all Republicans have, Tuesday proved that it’s just not enough, even with a lot of states ginning the rules to favor them. Kemp and DeSantis did prove that local voters can support Republicans who aren’t Trumpniks. But they still need the national party to win the White House, and the question in the next two years is whether the national party wants to get rid of Trump. My guess is they don’t. My guess is that they keep whipping up their suckers for cash by playing the victims, and any Republican Congress will try to stage show trials against whatever Emmanuel Goldstein Trump wants them to go after that week, and put their reality TV show on the House committee floor in the afternoon so they can go on Fox News in the evening and brag about what a good job they did. It’s a lot more fun (and a lot more lucrative) than actually running a government, which they would know if they ever tried it.

Rick Wilson was right. Everything Trump touches dies. But he didn’t specify that everything Trump touches dies slowly and painfully. I’m okay with the slow part, as long as he and his enablers suffer as much pain as possible in the process. It’s only what they deserve.

So, knowing all the things that could still go wrong before January, let me just seize the moment to say the following:

FUCK YOU TRUMP.

Fuck You, you Russky traitor bitch.

FUCK.
YOU.
UP.
THE.
ASS.

This is what you get

This is what you get

This is what you get-

When you mess with us….

Next month in November, it’s another election, which may actually be important in that the midterms and the 2024 presidential race will determine whether our votes will ever matter again.

To skip, there is no point in me going over the partisan races (Republican vs. Democrat) because I’m voting Democrat in all of them. This is not because I went whole hog liberal Democratic partisan, it’s because I am a single issue voter. Some people’s single issue is abortion (on one side or the other). Some people’s single issue is more gun control. My single issue is: FUCK TRUMP and everybody who enables him. Which at this point is the entire Republican Party. Yes, even the reasonable ones. Because at this point, the reasonable ones are just the Republicans who still remember how to play both sides of the street. They hold to reasonable (or at least non-whacko) positions during the general election and then as soon as they’re elected they goosestep in line with the whackjobs because once they’re in office their loyalty is to the whackjobs who own the Party, not the general public.

And I can hear the cult chanting now: “Trump Derangement Syndrome.” Let’s go back over definitions: Bush Derangement Syndrome was when liberals only believed the worst about George W. Bush. Obama Derangement Syndrome was when conservatives only believed the worst about Barack Obama. Trump Derangement Syndrome is when anybody believes anything that sack of shit says.

It should be obvious, just from looking back at the Helsinki press conference with Putin, that Trump has given more aid and comfort to the enemy than Jane Fonda ever did. If you still can’t figure out why, just read THIS, and then READ IT AGAIN, and keep reading it until you get it.

You want to know why I’m against that? Look at Russia and what that “post-liberal” agenda has done to that country. To its pride. To its military readiness against its neighbors. To its peoples’ survival.

That’s why.

And Putin, unlike Trump, is not a titanium hammerhead who has to stare at the can of orange juice for five minutes cause it says “CONCENTRATE”.

Even without Trump, these “conservatives”, and the Alito Supreme Court, are on track to create a legal system that would make the Islamic Republic of Iran look as libertarian as Burning Man.

So if that’s what you “patriots” want to turn MY country into, why don’t you just move to Asia and get a job doing this:

Right now, I have only one position in any partisan race. That position is:
FUCK.

TRUMP.

UP.

THE.

ASS.

Now to the ballot initiatives for Nevada, and this election there only seem to be three of them.

Question 1 is an initiative to ban all discrimination “on account of race, color, creed, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, disability, ancestry or national origin.”

While equal rights amendments are part of some other state constitutions, they normally haven’t included sexual orientation or gender identity. In principle, I have no problem with doing this. In practice, the definitions of non-standard gender identity are still sufficiently vague that I wonder what protections would mean and how they would be implemented. In its ballot initiative analysis, Reason Magazine stated: “A more fundamental question surrounding the proclaimed need for an equal rights amendment is whether the protections they would offer are already accomplished by the Equal Protection Clause within the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Adopted following the American Civil War, the Fourteenth Amendment states, in part: “No state shall…deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

Yes, but as we’ve seen, the Supreme Court can look at the Fourteenth Amendment Equal Protection Clause and decide it doesn’t apply if they don’t feel like it.

Accordingly, even with my reservations, I support YES on Question 1.

Question 2 is an initiative to raise Nevada’s state minimum wage to $12 an hour. I have already stated my position on this issue: All minimum wage means is, if it were legal for the company to pay you less than that, they would. Because the cost of training your replacement would be worth that much to the company, or less. Especially since COVID, the demand for jobs has gotten to the point where gas stations and other shit jobs will actually pay more than $12 starting out now. Meanwhile the federal minimum wage is still $7.25 an hour, but then Congress is run by Southern “conservatives” who are that much more stingy than heartless capitalists. Believe it or not, the marketplace does correct itself, and often it does a better job than government. (Again, I’m not a liberal, I’m a Democrat Just To Fuck Trump.) I support NO on Question 2.

Question 3 concerns whether to convert Nevada to an “open primary” state. I have also already stated my opinion in favor of this initiative.

In theory, the two-party system could correct itself with one of the current “third” parties taking over for the weaker of the two ruling factions, as the Republicans ended up replacing the Whigs. But the duopoly has calcified even as it gets worse. Few people who still are partisans see any need to try alternatives to their registered party. With Democrats, they think any “third” party candidates are spoilers who are just going to increase the chances of a Republican getting elected, and Republicans are all theocratic fascists. Of course, that’s what they’ve been saying since at least 1964, but as of 2015, they’re actually correct. Meanwhile Republicans won’t consider any alternatives to their party because they think politics is a spiritual battle of Good vs. Evil, and the Democrat Party are all gay Muslim Communists who hate the Little Baby Jesus and want to send him to jail. And by Little Baby Jesus, I mean Trump, cause most of the Republican “base” won’t admit there’s a difference.

The alternative among people who have real lives and don’t think politics is like following House of the Dragon (except less plausibly scripted) is to quit being partisan. This really means that those people don’t have a vote in party primaries, which in many places is the real vote. Which makes the public at large that much more alienated from politics in general and reduces the voter pool to make it even more devoted to ideologues. To many in the duopoly, that is a feature and not a bug.

Remember, the whole premise of America’s party system, and the perceived need of the duopoly to limit competition as much as possible, was to serve as gatekeepers, to make sure that political movements were still capable of moderation and compromise and did not allow radical ideas to become part of mainstream political thought. But in our civics illiteracy, we lost sight of that and confused the mechanism for the goal. Now in at least one case the party institution is itself the vehicle for radical, un-American ideas. Ideas like, “democracy’ just means we impose our will on everybody else and if we can’t win an election with a minority of voters, it just means we didn’t use enough fraud and force.”

An open primary system would remove this emphasis which in turn would mean less focus on a politician’s brand identity.

Because no matter what I said earlier about voting down the line for Democrats, it may not matter cause gas prices are skyrocketing – for SOME reason – hurricane season is screwing the infrastructure network and Democratic candidates are in increased trouble. Adam Laxalt is totally on board with a nationwide ban on abortion, and he’s leading Catherine Cortez Masto in the Nevada US Senate race. In Georgia, Senator Raphael Warnock is up against Herschel Walker, who is basically Trump, only more belligerent and inarticulate, and there’s at least an even chance that Walker could win.

Further proof that we could present objective evidence that electing Republicans would send this country to literal Hell (or, in 2020, COVID Hell), and Americans would look at Hell, then look at the Democrats, and say, “Fuck it, let’s see what Hell is like.”

Changing states to open primary would be one way out of this trap. You are still going to have people running as Democrats and Republicans, but the channelling mechanism would be who among the general population gets the most voters, not who can win the party primary by being the most mindless political robot. That in turn would mean politics is less dictated by issues where no one will agree (like abortion) and more in terms of which individuals would do the best job running the government.

What a concept.

I support YES on Question 3.

The most maddening bit about The Church of Trump’s main article of faith, that their Lord and Savior didn’t lose an election fair and square and Joe Biden is not the legitimate president, is that by the time they will be in position to do anything about it, Joe Biden’s first term will be over. But that doesn’t change the fact that Trumpniks who deny the 2020 election are running in crucial states and if they take over state legislatures or Secretary of State positions, they may be in position to just throw out any election results they don’t like for the presidential race in 2024. And at the rate things are going, Trump IS going to be the Republican presidential nominee. I mean, guys like Ron DeSantis are certainly in competition to see who can be the most gratuitous dickweed, but Ron still seems to have enough grasp of reality to know how many fingers he has on his hands. That’s a liability with his voter base. No, Republicans want somebody who’s just as whiny, stupid and delusional as they are, and no one fills that role like Trump. Nothing will stop Trump. Why? How can he get impeached, TWICE, and not be convicted? Why can he commit crimes that anybody else would have gotten arrested for years ago and nothing happens to him? How can he survive into his mid-70s exercising as little as possible and eating food that would have given anybody else heart disease and Type II diabetes?

Why? Because God is real, and He hates us all. That’s why.

Still, it seems that even a Supreme Being can only do so much to cover for His Divine Instrument’s cosmic-level incompetence and stupidity.

Up to this point, Trump’s biggest liability was the Department of Justice investigation of his resort at Mar-a-Lago – or as Michael Cohen calls it, Mar-a-Lardo – where they found out the estate still held documents after Trump’s attorney said they’d turned over all the documents he had. But in his appeals through the judicial system, Trump managed to get his case to Southern District of Florida Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee who’d only been confirmed by the Senate after the 2020 election. She decided to grant the Trump legal team’s request to appoint a special master to review which documents the government had a right to, in the process completely blocking the DOJ use of the materials. This was a decision so obviously biased and lacking in grounding that Trump’s own Attorney General Bill Barr said it was “deeply flawed in a number of ways.” (Barr being the main expert opinion on twisting the law to make sure Donald Trump is immune to it.)

But the Department of Justice decided to humor the charade for a bit and acceded to one of the proposed choices for special master, Raymond Dearie, a Reagan-appointed judge who is currently serving in the District Court for the Eastern District of New York. And on Tuesday September 20, things didn’t start off well for Trump when the lawyers came to see Dearie in New York and based their case on the idea that they don’t HAVE to tell him, the special master, which documents Trump has a right to and which he does not, which documents are declassified and which are not. Now, if one takes the premise of a special master seriously, the officer would have cause to separate out documents which are attorney-client communications, personal messages, things of that nature. If you are to have a special master, he must be able to make the distinction. But Trump’s team refused to cooperate. There is of course a reason for this, one that the attorneys may have deduced only after taking the case. If they assert that documents have not been declassified, they have no case because the government has ownership. If they assert the documents have been declassified by Trump, then he retroactively did so after leaving office (i.e., he did not declassify anything) and he admits to holding sensitive documents which remain government property whether they are declassified or not. Ergo, the Trump lawyers must present the documents as being in this eternally nebulous state where their legal status must be undetermined but in effect favoring Trump’s case. As some of us called it, “Schrodinger’s Legal Defense.”

Dearie seemed to perceive this right off the bat, because again, the matter in question is, one, why does the former President have possession of documents that he has no legal right to hold? And two, why does the classification status matter if these are still government documents?

“The judge, a veteran of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, expressed puzzlement about what his role would be if the government says certain documents are classified and Trump’s side disagrees but doesn’t offer proof to challenge that.

”What am I looking for?….As far as I am concerned, that’s the end of it,” Dearie said. “What business is it of the court?”

James Trusty, one of Trump’s attorneys, called it “premature” for Dearie to consider that issue right now. “It’s going a little beyond what Judge Cannon contemplated in the first instance,” he said.

In one of several moments of palpable tension with the Trump team, Dearie replied: “I was taken aback by your comment that I’m going beyond what Judge Cannon instructed me to do. … I think I’m doing what I’m told.”

In other words, our boss has a pet judge, and she appointed you, so that makes you our pet judge, too.

That’s a great legal strategy, isn’t it? I wonder if they teach that in law school? Maybe David E. Kelley would come up with that, but he writes legal comedies. Even Denny Crane would think that was cuckoo.

And then this week, New York’s Attorney General Leticia James announced a lawsuit over Donald Trump and the Trump Organization misrepresenting their assets by billions of dollars, and seeking $250 million in damages. Assuming he’s good for it.

And, on the same day (Wednesday) the DOJ’s appeal to the 11^th Circuit was reviewed by 3 of the 11 judges, and that panel determined to remove the restriction against the government review of Trump’s documents. “The court also pointedly noted that Trump had presented no evidence that he had declassified the sensitive records, as he has repeatedly maintained, and rejected the possibility that Trump could have an “individual interest in or need for” the roughly 100 documents marked as classified.” (Y’know, other than ‘MineMineMineMineMINE!!!!’)

Contrary to Trump’s publicly stated opinion to Sean Hannity that he can declassify documents “by thinking about it”, The Son of Man cannot just wave his hand over documents like a priest consecrating the Host and decree, “I declassify thee, this stuff is mine now.” And even if he could, the government has stated, repeatedly, that classification status has no bearing on the government’s ownership and does not answer the question of why Trump has more right to the documents than they do.

Trump might have gotten his pet judge to stymie the DOJ’s investigation of him, but he forgot that the DOJ aren’t the only people investigating him, and there are multiple levels of the legal system that prosecution can appeal to just as well as he can. He’s not behind a shield, he’s behind a very leaky dike, and he doesn’t have enough fingers to plug it. Besides, those fingers are pretty stubby.

The other issue is that Trump simply CANNOT tell the truth. The truth is not in him. He fears the truth like Dracula fears the cross. Even when a truthful presentation would serve him better than lying, he has to lie. At the very least he has to spin some big-fish story that gets further and further out of control.

Like, if someone accuses him of rape, Trump could just look up where the crime was supposed to have occurred, trace his whereabouts, create an alibi for what he was doing, get someone to corroborate that, and that would be the defense. But more likely, Trump would say something like, “I NEVER touched that woman, and this is why. Because I have NEVER had sex. Everyone knows this. Never. Like, you know all those kids I got? How many kids do I have now, five? Four? I got four kids. So yeah, I got four kids. And they are all immaculate conceptions. Believe me. That I can tell you. Like, with Melania, one afternoon, Melania was in her bedroom, and suddenly, a ray of light came through the window, and The Angel of The Lord appeared to her in his glory, and he says to Melania, ‘hey, congratulations, yer knocked up.”

I had once made a comparison of the Trump movement to The Picture of Dorian Gray, except I said that the man was to his cult what Dorian Gray was to his portrait. Trump could move from scandal to scandal and remain unmarred, but the Republican Party became that much more visibly decayed and corrupt the more it assumed his spirit and the more it covered for his evil. Which may be why some Republicans in the 2022 midterms are starting to think it may not be such a good idea to campaign with Trump. I mean, why should they, if he’s going to give a “support” speech and make it all about him while humiliating them in the process?

But it occurs to me that the Dorian Gray analogy might apply in a different way. There is of course another strongman who has possibly had more malicious impact on the world than Donald Trump and been subject to even less legal challenge or restriction. That would be Vladimir Putin, the Russian Federation’s apparent president for life.

It may take quite some time and retrospective historical analysis to truly assess how much damage Putin has done to the world, but we’re learning more and more. It was recently revealed that Russian “troll factories” united to undermine the 2017 Women’s March campaign immediately after Trump was inaugurated president, by targeting the controversial Linda Sarsour. (I am NOT a fan of Sarsour’s politics, but she wasn’t the only person involved in the March, and that movement was not invalidated simply because she was involved.)

As in the Trump campaign, Putin’s Russia directly and indirectly aided “countercultural” political efforts in several other countries, including support for Serbia’s President Aleksandr Vucic, and Marie Le Pen in France. The most famous of these mini-Vlads is the Hungarian President Viktor Orban, even if he started being less overtly supportive of Russia in the wake of the Ukraine invasion. These declared heirs to conservatism (and media supporters like Tucker Carlson) say they are advocates of a “post-liberal” world order; post-liberal, like postmodernism, meaning a philosophy of cutesy sophistry and bad taste. I have gone over the connections between Putin and the Trump Organization to such extent that I don’t need to elaborate again.

We can speculate all day as to what Putin has “got” on Trump, but it’s not like he needs anything. The Occam’s Razor explanation for Trump’s slavish loyalty to Daddy Vlad is (I think) that Putin is to Trump what Trump is to the fan club that used to be a serious American political party. Those guys see their Leader acting like an inflamed asshole and making everything around him worse and suffering absolutely no repercussions, and think they should be able to do that too. To Republicans, Trump is the role model, and to Trump, Putin is the role model. He’s what Trump wants to be when he grows up and becomes a real dictator. Of course it seems to surprise Trump (and his fan club) when he actually does suffer consequences for his actions, and it seems to be a new experience for Putin, too.

Up to a point, Putin had had the world over a barrel (so to speak) because he was grinding down the resistance to his Ukraine invasion and is in position to cut off fuel and heating oil supplies to Europe when this year’s winter is expected to be especially bitter. He had reason to believe that if he just kept going as he was he could wear down European Union resistance to his military campaign and make the West go along with his land grab, even knowing it will just encourage him to consolidate and take more people’s territory later.

Of course he could not keep going as he was. In a military offensive that will itself be the subject of later history (and that I have some ideas about that I want to explore at a later time), Ukraine’s military attacked at several points along the fronts with Russia. Telegraphing an intent to retake the southern city of Kherson, they apparently got Russia to concentrate its best forces there while the main offensive went due north east of Kharkiv city, taking key cities and eventually rolling up most of Kharkiv Oblast up to the pre-war Russian border, recapturing almost 2500 square kilometers in less than two weeks.

This was such a clusterfuck for the Russian side that even Russian state media hosts on the Fox News-style debate shows had to admit they were losing. It was that much harder to deny, given how much intact equipment Ukraine captured after Russian soldiers cut and ran.

This all makes Putin seem a little less threatening. He has exactly three tools against Ukraine and the West: nukes (a bluff he can only call once), the military, and fuel exports, and now that his military has proven to be that much more hollow than we thought, the West has a lot less reason to fear long-term fuel boycotts, because there’s less reason to think Putin can win this thing.

So this Wednesday Daddy Vlad had his personal parliament pass new legislation not only authorizing a limited mobilization of Russia but increasing the penalties for avoiding service. Supposedly the reserve pool is 300,000, consisting of those who already have military experience, but that pool includes both sexes up to an age of 60. It remains to be seen how well Russia will meet its new recruitment goals, but the announcement did great business for Russian airlines. So great in fact, that Russian airlines are now prohibited from selling tickets to men between ages 18 and 65. Like apparently the country is in that much danger of running out!

Not like increasing the draft pool will even work in military or strategic terms, precisely because the problem with Russian military performance was that the government couldn’t properly train and equip the people it had (especially pilots, with the Russian Air Force nearly missing in action the whole war). It’s going to be that much harder for Putin to equip the new people now. BECAUSE Ukraine captured so much of his stuff.

Like I said, Vladimir Putin, President for Life. Let’s see how long that is.

Dorian Gray was apparently immortal as long as he kept his portrait, but when he destroyed it, he suddenly died. Once the false appearance of perfection was destroyed, reality reasserted itself. It may simply be coincidence, or just irony, but as Putin weakens himself with his irrational mistakes, the “post-liberal” proteges he has done so much to help are weakening too.

For instance, one of Putin’s other supplicants, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, is in danger of losing re-election. Bolsonaro is the guy for conservatives who think “I like Trump, but he’s not macho and stupid enough.” His leftist opponent is Luiz Inacio “Lula” da Silva, formerly the biggest politician in the country. He is a popular, populist leader with his own personality cult who got convicted several years ago on money laundering charges and later had his charges and conviction reversed on grounds of bias and improper prosecution. Basically, this guy actually IS what Republicans have accused Democrats of being for years. Even so, while Bolsonaro’s polling is picking up, Lula is still almost 10 points ahead. Why? Maybe because Bolsonaro was just as lackadaisical about coronavirus in Brazil as the Trump Organization was in the US. Or maybe because Bolsonaro is that much more corrupt than Lula.

And who would’ve thought, all it took was fighting back. Having a military that resists naked aggression. Having a legal system that asserts a universal standard of law. And having citizens who vote against parties that are destructive and unpopular.

If Ukrainians can go to war and get shot at to stop fascism, the least you can do is come out and vote.