Monday, March 18, 2024

"Hey, We Forgot the Whipped Cream!"

Remember that old episode of "The Brady Bunch" where Bobby enters an ice cream-eating contest on a local children's TV show and he and the other kids are about to start - but then the kiddie-show host stops everything to take away their spoons because spoons would make it too easy?  And then they're about to start again but the host stops them and has them put their hands behind their backs not only to make it harder to eat the ice cream but make it messier?  And then they're about to start again but the host stops them because . . . he forgot the whipped cream?  And he takes his time adding whipped cream to the ice cream bowls?  And then they finally start and there's a big mess?

The Trump criminal indictments are petty much going the same way.

The January 6 trial has been indefinitely postponed so the Supreme Court can hear an argument about presidential immunity that they hadn't wanted to hear when Jack Smith first brought it to them, and that doesn't happen until April 25 . . . and who knows when the decision will be handed down.   The documents case, which would be the easier case for Smith to win because the evidence is so overwhelming, is in neutral because Trump's lawyers have been stonewalling the prosecution repeatedly with a judge that seem to sympathize with the defense.   

Meanwhile, Fani Willis has been allowed to continue with the election interference case in Georgia in spite of her dalliance with fellow prosecutor Nathan Wade, and Wade has stepped down.  Hower, Judge Scott McAfee has chastened Willis for the "odor of mendacity" with regard to her relationship with Wade,  and that's a smell worse than Tea Rose perfume.  Willis might have to give up the case and hand it over someone else to appease those who doubt her own integrity.  And just when you thought that at least - at least - the hush money case in New York City would start on time, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, in light of the surfacing of documents from the Southern District of New York, has asked for a delay for a few weeks for the opportunity to go through those documents - documents that could have been made available earlier.  And when there's a hearing on March 25 - the day the trial was supposed to start - it could uncover a complication that could derail, not delay, the trial.  

It has become apparent that the judicial system in These States cannot handle in a timely matter a criminally indicted former President vying for a comeback.  Trump has taken advantage of the kinks in the justice system that affords so many rights to the defendant to delay the start of his trials, while all the prosecutors can do is grin and bear it while doing what they can to speed things up.  And even in the unlikely event that Trump is convicted before the election, he'll appeal his conviction(s) and delay things even further.

On the other hand, if he's President again, he ensure a speedy trial for Hillary Clinton when his Justice Department indicts Hillary Clinton for her e-mails.  He'll have her found guilty, then he can lock her up.  And he'll ensure a speedy trial for Joe Biden for the treasonous act of stealing the 2020 election. He'll have him found guilty, then he can . . . string him up.

In which case, Biden's last meal will include ice cream. 

With whipped cream on top.

Friday, March 15, 2024

Music Video Of the Week - March 15, 2024

"Dim" by Family (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.)

Thursday, March 14, 2024

Orbán Development

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is the one European leader not named Vladimir by his mother that Donald Trump has a good rapport with, and he proved it by hosting Orbán at Mar-a-Lago last weekend.  
At a celebration of  for his guest of honor, Trump praised Orbán as a leader who gets things done for the Hungarian people because he gives the orders and he makes sure they're carried out.  "He's the boss," Trump said.
Viktor Orbán is the boss of Hungary.  What he says goes.  And that's the problem.   he gets things done because he's run roughshod over Hungarian institutions that had previously upheld democracy in the Central European nation for over twenty years.  Orbán has emasculated the Hungarian courts, cracked down on the media, discriminated against gays, promoted white nationalism, and encouraged Hungarian newlyweds to have as many children as possible in an effort to preserve the Hungarian nation.  And oh yes, he's warned about migrants "replacing" Europeans just like white nationalists in America have blamed the Jews for "replacing" white people with people of color.  Orbán likes to say that he has founded an "illiberal" democracy in Hungary.  As contradictory as that sounds, Hungary technically is a democracy, with elections with multiple candidates, but Orbán's Fidesz Party is so dominant that it always wins.
Like, what sort of a system is that?  This is as bad as Florida!
Orbán, of course, must have found Trump's adopted home state very familiar in terms of its politics and its policies.
Oh yeah, Trump made his laudatory comments about Orbán in the Mar-a-Lago ballroom, where the entertainment for the night was a couple of performances from Beatles and Rolling Stones tribute bands - the bass player for the Beatles tribute band even playing a Hofner violin bass and sporting mop-top hair.  This is Trump's biggest contribution to our pop culture - associating classic rock with the villainy and inflexibility of white men while hip-hop becomes the voice of "the good guys."  Thanks a lot, Trump - thanks a whole lot!    

Monday, March 11, 2024

Illegal Language

President Biden's re-election campaign broke a fundraising record for one-hour periods during the first hour of his State of the Union address - and broke that record in the second hour with Katie Ledecky-style speed.  The campaign then set a record for a one-day fundraising period  - $10 million.  He then began a campaign tour of swing states, hitting the ground running.

Then he did something that may one day cause his campaign to hit the ground.

During his speech, President Biden referred to the migrant who killed Georgia nursing student Laken Riley as an "illegal" immigrant but a couple of days later apologized for calling the killer "illegal," saying he should have called him "undocumented" and that migrants deserve to be treated with dignity.

Excuse me?

This migrant who committed murder doesn't deserve dignity.  He deserves punishment.  I don't believe in capital punishment, but I hope this migrant gets thrown into jail for life and the key gets thrown away.  And yes, he should be called "illegal," because he entered the country illegally.  And the last time I checked, homicide is also illegal.

The President apologized - in an interview with MSNBC's Jonathan Capehart, who brought up the moment in his speech with a tone of disappointment and disapproval - for his choice of words primarily to mend fences with the progressive base of the Democratic Party that disapproves of the use of the word "illegal" to describe a foreigner who enters this country without permission from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement office, an office that progressives want to shut down.  But he also needs swing voters who don't identify with either base of the two major parties and who take a pretty dim view of anyone who dictates to them how to talk.  And these swing voters see immigrants coming into the country without permission or without papers as illegal because they entered . . . illegally!  And I speak as the grandson of an Italian immigrant who came to this country illegally a hundred years ago.  He worked on an Italian ship that docked in Texas and jumped ship at about the same time Congress passed a law restricting immigration to the Anglo-Saxon and Nordic countries.  My maternal grandfather was a decent and law-abiding man, and he did become a citizen eventually, but he was still an illegal immigrant.

I may be liberal on a lot of issues, but I happen to be pretty conservative when it comes to other things.  I am musically conservative, obviously, as my idea of music doesn't include hip-hop or electronica.  But I am also linguistically conservative, as I have became hostile to efforts to make the American English lexicon more sensitive and less offensive, as if words hurt even worse than sticks and stones.  And so Hispanics become Latinos and Latinos became Latinx (pronounced "Lat-tin-ex") in the interest of gender neutrality (except that the Spanish language is highly gender-sensitive, applying gender to inanimate objects), the poor become economically disadvantaged, the handicapped become physically challenged, the ghetto becomes the inner city (which doesn't make sense when you consider that some of the worst ghettoes in America are on the edges of city limits, like the Austin section of Chicago or the Vailsburg section of Newark, both bordering upper-middle-income suburbs), and blacks become African-Americans (or "black" must be capitalized, as in "Black," suggesting, as John Judis and Ruy Teixeira wrote, that "blacks were a national group similar to the 'French' and the 'Chinese'").  And, of course, "urban" is a synonym for "black" because it's accepted that white people don't live in cities anymore (not true, of course; majority-black Detroit even has a white mayor).

I, for one, am completely disgusted with efforts by so-called progressives to police the English language in These States.  I have noticed with brain-numbing regularity that pregnant women are referred to as "pregnant people."  Pregnant people?  As in pregnant men and women?  Someone please give me an example of a pregnant man - other  than fictional characters played in the movies by Arnold Schwarzenegger, Billy Crystal, and Marcello Mastroianni.  (The English-language title of the French-Italian movie in which Mastroianni starred, A Slightly Pregnant Man, was an obvious - and obviously biting - joke.  How can you be "slightly" pregnant?  No more than you could be a pregnant man.)  But then these are the same people who were so hell-bent on neutralizing gender in language that the wanted us to call those circular steel plates in the streets "personhole" covers and U.S. House of Representatives members "congresspersons" (even though they are in fact officially called "representatives")  And of course, the big kahuna - when the left decided that non-heterosexuals should be called LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisxeual, transsexual - oops, "transgender" - because "transseuxal" sounds dirty),  with the initials in that order for no apparent reason.  Then it was LGBTQ ("Q" for "questioning").  Then LGBTQ+ (what is this, an algebra formula?). Now it's LGBTQIA - sounds like an international intelligence agency.  ("You're in the LGBTQIA, they wouldn't have you in the Ma-fye-ay!")

Look, I understand that non-heteosexuals need an all-encompassing term to define what they are, as opposed to a term like "non-heterosexuals," which defines what they're not.  But until the PC Language Police comes up with an acronym I can actually pronounce, I am going to keep referring to "non-heterosexuals."

So what does this have to do with President Biden?  Simply this.  No one wants a President so beholden to his base that changing his lexicon is more important than changing his policy, especially when the change of lexicon softens and obfuscates a serious issue and turns off swing voters.  Immigration is still an Achilles heel (oh, did I just offend the Greeks?  No?  Okay!) for the Biden administration, and n amount of campaign cash is going to bring back any swing voters he loses because he appears to be so dismissive of immigration protocol and border enforcement by calling a killer illegally in this country "undocumented."  Remember, Trump won the White House in 2016 despite being outspent by the Democrats in part because people were tired of Democrats telling them how to talk.  But at least Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden wouldn't enforce linguistic rules punitively on their supporters.  If you're a MAGA Republican and don't call the January 6 convicts "hostages," you're blackballed from MAGA forever.
Oh yeah, the left doesn't want you to use words like "blackballed," because that's racially offensive. 😛 

Sunday, March 10, 2024

Take a Message to Congress

Thomas Jefferson, the third U.S. President, was known to be afflicted with a stammer and so feared public speaking that he became the first of 24 consecutive U.S. Presidents to deliver the annual presidential message to Congress - now known as the State of the Union address - as a printed text to the Capitol for a clerk to read.  Given Joe Biden's own stammer - and given his lifelong ability to say the wrong thing at the wrong time - he could have easily revived the tradition that Jefferson began.  In fact, many Democrats might have been more than happy with such a decision.

Democrats needn't have worried.  President Biden delivered a strong speech that was as powerful as Mario Cuomo's famous keynote address at the 1984 Democratic convention and roared out of the gate with strenuous defenses of the American democratic system and aid for Ukraine as well as a condemnation of the January 6 attack on the Capitol.  He doubled down on his record, citing the increases in infrastructure spending and the decrease in the unemployment rate and reminding Americans that COVID had gripped the country at the time of his inauguration and how all of these advances came once his administration got control of and helped end the pandemic.
Even better, he pushed for the immigration bill that Republicans had supported before Donald Trump told them not to, citing the bill's highlights and what it would accomplish with Senator James Lankford - the Oklahoma Republican who spearheaded the bill nodding and vocalizing his agreement.  President Biden even showed up Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), having an appreciative  laugh at her MAGA hat and red blazer as he entered the House chamber and later taking up her dare to mention the name of Laken Riley - the Georgia nursing student murdered by an illegal immigrant - in his support for the Republican immigration bill.  (A similar bill giving states more power to challenge federal immigration laws when wanting to deport illegal immigrants, named for Laken Riley, passed the House hours before.)  His mere energy got Republicans so angry when he proposed increased aid to education, improving literacy, working on reducing inflation further - the sort of issues no one could oppose - and they subsequently booed them.  Most importantly, he played up the assault on women's reproductive rights and addressed members of the Supreme Court in the second person - to their faces - in admonitory language and vowed that women were ready to reverse the Dobbs decision at the ballot box.  (Justice Alito, who actually wrote the Dobbs decision was nowhere to be found, as usual.)  
President Biden even address the age issue, noting that with age comes wisdom, and he reminded people that Trump - whom he referred to thirteen times as "my predecessor" - was almost as old as he was but his ideas - oligarchy, patriarchy, authoritarianism - were older.  But for all of his abilities to ad-lib and banter with Republicans like they were his sparring partners in a boxing ring, he did have a couple of missteps, coughing on occasion and stumbling over his words in talking about women's political power and saying that they had already helped Democrats in 2022 and "in 2020" when he meant to say "in 2022 and 2023."  Also, one speech does not a turnaround make, and a Make America Great Again PAC ad showing a compilation of Biden's verbal and physical slip-ups is now getting a good deal of attention.  (It also juxtaposes these scenes with a clip of Kamala Harris laughing, the better to remind MAGA voters that a Biden death in office would give us a female President who is half black and half South Asian and prefers Bootsy Collins to Phil Collins . . . and her husband's a Jew!) 
With Nikki Haley - who frequently raised the specter of "President Harris" to Republican presidential primary voters - now out of the presidential campaign (as is Dean Phillips on the Democratic side), President Biden needs to win of swing voters - some of whom supported Haley in the GOP primaries - and neutralize the inevitable MAGA mobilization.  He needs to keep up what he did this past Thursday.  Thankfully, he appears to be doing that; he's been on the campaign trail this weekend, as Biden-Trump Mark Two - the first general presidential election rematch since 1956 - begins in earnest.
I forgot about the Republican response to Biden's address from Katie Britt.  I sort of prefer to.

Friday, March 8, 2024

Music Video Of the Week - March 8, 2024

"Piano Man" by Billy Joel  (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.)

Tuesday, March 5, 2024

Super Doomsday

As I type this, it is Super Tuesday, March 5, eight months to the day before the 2024 general election - and my 59th birthday. And if the polls and the media analysis bear any weight, I have concluded that it is a better-than-even bet that Donald J. Trump will be elected to a second non-consecutive term as President of the United States.   

And then we will prepare to meet our doom. 

Once Trump is backing power on January 20, 2025 - Martin Luther King Day, ironically enough - he will invoke the Insurrection Act to crack down on protesters against him, declare martial law, terminate the Constitution, and have the Democratic Party closed down.  All fifty states will have Republican governors who will be even less answerable to their constituents than Pontius Pilate was to the people of Judea, and Congress and the state legislatures will be rubber-stamp assemblies in the style of the Supreme Soviet of the U.S.S.R.  We will still have elections, but they will have only one candidate per office.  The press will obey the government, and anti-Trump media outlets will be shut down.  Anyone accused of a crime will likely go to jail without a fair trial.  

And while I've said this before, I will say it again with as much clarity as possible: Trump will make opposition to his regime a capital offense. Those who cross Trump with lesser offenses will be sent to labor camps., though those who voice opposition will likely also be worked to exhaustion in said camps, and then, when they are all worked to exhaustion, they will be executed.  And I, as a blogger who has been speaking out against Trump for the past nine years, will not be immune to such punishment.  The Justice Department will find me and other bloggers by simply finding our IP addresses, and they will use the United States Secret Police - currently known as the Oath Keepers, and who will likely be known colloquially as the "Gestrumpo" - to arrest us once they track us down.

And once again - I cannot repeat this warning enough! - don't make plans to leave the country once Trump is back in power  . Anyone who plans to leave the U.S. will learn that Trump will not allow anyone to leave to avoid losing human capital and to avoid the humiliation of anyone leaving a country he claims to have made great again. The border patrol, who will likely be under the control of Stephen Miller, will "shoot to kill" anyone who tries to cross the border. And if you're caught alive. . . .you'll wish you had been shot to death first.

While I turn 59 on Election Day, I do not, at this moment, expect to live to see my sixtieth birthday.  If I do, I will likely be in a labor camp with my execution scheduled shortly thereafter, likely by hanging, although Trump has suggested using guillotines for executing capital offenders.

But I think this song from Led Zeppelin - a band Karen Hunter ridiculed Paul Ryan for still listening to in 2012 - better illustrates what we can expect a year hence. 


As does this song from Styx, a band Stephanie Ruhle ridiculed a Republican operative for still going to see in concert in 2018. 

This blog post is gallows humor . . . without the humor part. 😬

Monday, March 4, 2024

Sick Home Alabama

So let me see if I follow this correctly . . .

The Alabama Supreme Court ruled that a frozen embryo, having been stored in the deep freeze for future intentions to fertilize for impregnation, is a child.  Therefore, if you take a test tube and try to produce a child through in-vitro fertilization, and if something goes wrong in the process and the embryo does not survive, the parents can be . . . held liable for murder?  

Wha?

So, if this ruling means that eggs are people . . . 

Therefore . . .
And then when Republicans announce that they're for IVF after having insisted they were against it, they get the chance to pass a pro-IVF bill in CONgress, and they balk at it and then kill it altogether.
Just to give you an idea of how far behind Alabama is behind the country and indeed the world, I ought to remind you that the first IVF child, Louise Brown, was conceived and born in 1978, which, in science, is a lifetime (weell, at least Louise Brown's lifetime, and she's now 45 years old, but let that pass).  This breakthrough took place in Great Britain, not the U.S., as the British have been far more accommodating of science than many people in AMerica (especially Alabama), and IVF was in fact developed both in Britain and Australia, where hte religious teachings of the Anglican Church (what we call Episcopalians) is dominant. The Anglican Church, the Web site IVF WOrldwide reports, is "more liberal on the use of IVF/ET and allows semen collection by masturbation (!) for artificial insemination by the husband for IVF . . .."
Really!
Oh yeah, by the way, France just did something today that the U.S. will never do - it made abortion a constitutional right.
If you're a Frenchwoman, you go, femme.  If you're an American woman . . . oh, well, c'est la vie

Sunday, March 3, 2024

The Ghost of Hillary Clinton - 2024 Edition

Back in January 2017, I insinuated in a blog post that the Democrats - who at the point completely ceased to matter - had thrown away the previous year's presidential election by doing a number of things wrong - mainly by nominating Hillary Clinton, for starters.
Among the other things I accused them of were doing little or nothing to prevent a breach in the Democratic National Committee's computer and blaming the Russians for hacking it, as well as Hillary calling half of Donald Trump's supporters "deplorables."  Given how deplorable many of Trump's supporters have proven to be, and given that the Russians really were intervening in the 2016 presidential campaign with memes and bogus stories about Hillary, you might think I have regret and remorse for what I wrote over seven years ago.
Actually, none whatsoever.  I've been reading John Judis' and Ruy Teixeira's 2023 book "Where Have All the Democrats Gone?," a dissection of the Democratic Party's failures over the past few decades, and their commentary on Hillary's presidential campaign only reminded me of what a lousy campaign she ran and what a lousy candidate she was.  As Judis and  Teixeira explain, Hillary largely ran on an agenda aimed at pleasing the coastal white-collar professionals that had sustained the Democratic Party since her husband was elected President in 1992 and discounted - indeed, disparaged - the deindustrialized areas of the interior Northeast and the Great Lakes region that had suffered from Democratic policies toward trade agreements and toward the banking sector.  She forgot that the backbone of the Democratic Party was - or, more accurately, had been - the working class that built this country and were now wasting away in blue-collar communities that had lost all of those good manufacturing jobs that sustained their towns and regions.  She took a condescending approach to these populations, lecturing them like a schoolmarm for not appreciating how good they would have it under her presidential administration.  "Clinton was heard correctly," Judis and Teixeira wrote, "to be voicing the snobbery of the postindustrial metro areas toward the victims of deindustrialization."
And when it came to race and ethnicity, Judis and Teixeira noted that Hillary only proved how clueless she really was.  Many of those same working-class voters she disparaged were black men; Republicans have actually made incremental gains among black male voters since 2016.  She dismissed the concerns over border security as being anti-Hispanic; in fact, Mexican-American voters in southern Texas have been strong proponents, not opponents, of border security.  Trump actually increased his support among Hispanics (and not just Americans of Cuban or Venezuelan origin) in 2020.  In a rush to berate Trump supporters over stereotyping racial minorities, Hillary never stopped to think that maybe, just maybe, you should not assume that a black or brown person is going to back you just because you're a Democrat.
As noted earlier, it is true that the Russians  were meddling in the 2016 presidential election, and it is also true that many of Trump's supporters were and still are deplorable.  But a smart presidential campaign that reached out to blue-collar voters and made a serious effort to earn votes Democrats had long taken for granted could have easily neutralized Putin's meddling.  And while Hillary did say that only half of Trump's supporters were deplorable and the other half were simply concerned voters who felt that the "new" American economy hadn't worked for them (the latter part of her quote was forgotten), many Trump supporters who were not deplorable and planned to support Trump despite their personal dislike for his bigotry and arrogance felt compelled to wonder if someone like them was who Hillary was talking about when she called half of Trump supporters deplorable.  And was it really half of them?  Maybe more like 30 to 35 percent of them, as polls of the MAGA movement have generally suggested, but 50 percent?  But even Hillary admitted that she was being "grossly generalistic" in her cursory census of how many Trump supporters were god-awful bigots.  Judis and Teixeira discovered in their own research that people who supported Trump in 2016 "were not so much voting for him so much as voting against the elites who were trying to dictate how they talked about race, gender, immigration and a host of other subjects."
Oh yeah, and a lot of people who voted for Trump in 2016 had voted for Obama twice.   
Nowhere was this more apparent than in Ohio, where, at her campaign rally in Cleveland, Hillary was joined by Beyoncé (who performed at the rally) and her husband, Mr. Shawn Carter, in an effort to appeal to the cool, hip voters in Ohio without trying to appeal to the machinists, steelworkers and autoworkers who were more likely to listen to Quiet Riot (a heavy-metal band long out of style) on their CD players (because they made too little money to stream and had to rely on obsolete technology).  Many of those same blue-collar guys weren't machinists, steelworkers or autoworkers; they had been, but their factories closed down and they were underemployed at the local 7-Eleven . . . and their hometowns ended up looking like this!
For the record, this is an abandoned plant in Mansfield, Ohio, along East Fifth Street on the outskirts of town.   
Hillary Clinton's onetime supporters - who continued to revere her for proving that a woman could be a nominee for President of the United States, even though she, umm, lost - continue today to Bernie Sanders (who spoke to those same working-class voters the way Trump did), James Comey, Vladimir Putin and Julian Assange for where Trump is today, but they particularly blame the voters themselves.  These are the same Hillbots who echoed her dismissals of calls for banking reform ("Yeah, we don't need Glass-Steagall reinstated!"), parroted her basic description of herself as as true liberal ("Yeah, she's a progressive, and she wants to use her power as President to get things done!") and laughed off a certain 2016 Democratic presidential contender who was not named Bernard by his parents ("Martin O'Malley?  Ha ha ha ha!"). And they're blaming us for refusing to support a candidate who couldn't connect to the very voters she needed?  Who hosted two hip-hop stars in a state where folks still listened to heavy metal?  Who never visited a steel mill or a car factory?  Who refused Debbie Dingell's pleas to campaign for the Presidency in Michigan, a state she lost along with Ohio?  Go home, Hillbots, you're stoned.
Joe Biden, the most working-class-friendly President we've had since Harry Truman, has made great strides as President so far in trying to repair the damage that the Clintons - and let's be honest, Obama too - have wrought to the Democratic coalition with their pro-banking, pro-business, neoliberal economic politics.  But he's only been able to go so far with his support for building new factories, his support for transportation infrastructure, the Chips Act, and his pro-union stance.  That's why he's still struggling against Trump in the polls and why those of us who have publicly opposed Trump could be a year away from either being locked up or strung up for our opposition.  And a second Trump administration would undo, not continue, the progress President Biden has made with rebuilding the working class.  Yes, the ghost of Hillary Clinton's political career is still at work.

Saturday, March 2, 2024

Supreme Disaster - 2024 Edition

Just when we thought it was safe to turn MSNBC back on, because it looked like Donald Trump was finally going to face justice courtesy of special prosecutor Jack Smith in the January 6 election interference case, the Supreme Court has decided to hear Trump's appeal to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals' decision that a former President has no immunity from prosecution. 

As the Eagles once sang, lay down your law books now, they're no damn good.

Some legal experts have suggested that the Supreme Court feels the need to re-affirm the idea that no ex-President should be immune from prosecution to head off possible challenges to indictments in the classified-documents case and the two state cases, while others suggest that the election interference case involves actions Trump may have done that were not germane to his duties as President, as the President does not preside over election and therefore the rules have presidential conduct have to be clarified.  Yeah, so why didn't the Supreme Court take this case ahead of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, which Smith wanted them to do?      

There is no reason why the Supreme Court should accept this case - except for the possibility that the zealots in the conservative majority want to tip the scales in Trump's favor.  Though oral arguments will take place on April 22, the Court doesn't have to decide the case as soon as April 30 - it could wait until the end of June to decide, which would cause the trial to begin either just before Election Day or some time in late autumn.  

And if Trump wins back the White House on November 5, he, once he's sworn in again, can make the case disappear.

That's not all he's going to make disappear.  Ever hear of what happened under the 1976-1983 military dictatorship in Argentina?

Give it up, fellow anti-Trumpers.  The courts are not going to save the Republic.  If you don't want the United States Secret Police - currently known as the Oath Keepers - to arrest you in the middle of the night for the crime of disliking Trump after January 20, 2025, if you don't want to be sent to a labor camp and worked until exhaustion for said crime, and you if you don't, so as to take your mind off your utter exhaustion, want to be executed, you'll not only vote for Joe Biden on Election Day, you'll do what you can in the weeks and months leading up to Election Day to make sure Biden wins.  

It's do . . . or die.

I rest my case. 

Friday, March 1, 2024

Music Video Of the Week - March 1, 2024

"Won't Get Fooled Again" by the Who  (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.) 

Thursday, February 29, 2024

Leap Thursday

Leap Day falls on a Thursday this year for the first time since 1996.

I remember 1996.  It was a year when you didn't have to worry about climate change so much, when a blizzard in January happened not because of climate change but because it was January.  And even though it was the year that a Christian nationalist named Eric Rudolph bombed a park in Atlanta, you didn't have the President of the United States say he was a fine person for the other side of the cultural debate.

I also remember when you were just as likely to hear Rush on FM radio as you were to hear Rush Limbaugh on AM radio, because even though the Telecommunications Act passed that year eventually ruined radio, you didn't need to get satellite radio to hear rock music because it was still available on terrestrial radio.  In fact, we didn't even have satellite radio in 1996.

And the fact that you could still hear rock on terrestrial radio meant that you could avoid the Macarena.

I have some personal memories of 1996.  I remember getting my first 9-to-5 full-time office job since graduating from college.  ("But Steve," you say, you graduated from college in 1988!"  I know . . ..)  My mother and I got our kitchen redone for the first time since we moved in.  I visited the Winterthur gardens in Delaware for the first time.  And I drove to Cleveland to see the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, which had just opened a year before.  On my way home, I drove through northern Pennsylvania on scenic U.S. Route 6.
Given that's happened with the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame since, I remember the trip home on Route 6 more fondly.  Probably because I stopped at Presque Isle State Park on Lake Erie in Pennsylvania along the way.  No, I think it was because the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame started inducting pop, non-rock acts soon after.  Well, I still liked Presque Isle State Park.

Also, we didn't have social media, which mean that I couldn't meet any top fashion models, but it also meant that a foreign adversary couldn't meddle in our elections.  We did have "Seinfeld," and it's damn hard for me to find any sitcom as funny as that today.  But at least I can find old TV favorites on YouTube, which also didn't exist in 1996.

Mmm . . . You know, on balance, I think 1996 was a better year.  And I don't expect to look back fondly on 2024 if I'm still around for the next Leap Thursday in 2052.  

Wednesday, February 28, 2024

Madonald

What's the difference between Madonna and Donald Trump?

One of them is a professional celebrity who emerged in the early 1980s with only a talent for shameless self-promotion and did irreparable damage to American civilization, while the other is . . .  I lied, there is no difference. 

I know this post will please no one.  Progressives who revere Madonna for her badass attitude and her guerilla war against white-male-dominated classic rock will hate me for insisting that she isn't a true musical talent.  MAGA Republicans will hate me for implying that Donald Trump is not the savvy businessman and devoted patriot he pretends to be.  Go ahead and hate me; I'm not here for you to love.
But for those who still have a brain in your heads . . . you're gonna love this. 

When Madge - that's what I'll call her from here on - first emerged in 1983 with his first hit record,  she was clearly no singer.  Her voice was weak, high-pitched, and as annoying as fingers on a blackboard.  Her songwriting was simplistic and gimmicky, and the songs she chose from other composers weren't all that much better.  Her arrangements relied so much on warmed-over disco and electronic noise that to call it "music" would be too charitable.  Compared to her peers - Annie Lennox, Cyndi Lauper, Alison Moyet - she was pitiful.  Her only schtick was a novelty-act sexpot image that deliberately contradicted her given name.  Pop fans who'd grown up on the rock and soul of the sixties and seventies had every right to dismiss her and predict that she'd come and go as quickly as A Taste of Honey (who, inexplicably, won the 1979 Best New Artist Grammy over the Cars and Elvis Costello).  
But Madge proved that P.T. Barnum was right.  She was able to make herself an enduring icon largely through her promotional videos, which promoted her more than her records and made her a star on MTV, leading to a string of hit singles and platinum records that stretched through the 1980s and beyond, along with irreverent and churlish publicity stunts designed to keep impressionable teenage girls - her main audience - buying her records and coming back for more.  And the press happily went along with Madge's charade because, well, she was so damn interesting and entertaining to write about.  And so her misandric comments on male heterosexuals ("they ought to be slapped around") and her incoherent explanation of the right to free speech in defending one of her promotional videos after MTV banned it went unchallenged and uncritiqued.  Among other things.   
But hey, Madge was indeed more interesting than bands like Foreigner and Night Ranger, whose frontmen - Lou Gramm and Jack Blades, respectably - weren't going to sell magazines if either one of them were on the cover of Rolling Stone.   By becoming a performer who was taken seriously as an artist in spite of - nay, because of - her shallow, self-promotional stunts, Madge helped turn popular music in to a burlesque, where style is more important than substance.  And she's helped popularize hip-hop by incorporating it into her own records.  Today pop-tart "singing" stars like Madge are more likely to appear on the cover of Vogue than the cover of Rolling Stone, while Rolling Stone puts people like Kim Kardashian (talk about a professional celebrity) on its cover.  And Madge's 2024 tour is, alas, likely to be yet another fantastic success.
And Trump?  To be fair, Trump, as a real estate developer, has actually created things of substance.  But they're all either ugly skyscrapers in New York and Chicago or uglier casino-hotels in Atlantic City.  What Trump is really interested in is creating an image of a successful businessman, an image that has been severely compromised by the successful civil suit against him in New York State for inflating the value of his properties to defraud lenders.  But he's so good at Barnumesque self-promotion that he' recast that verdict as yet another attempt by the "Deep State" to destroy his political power, endearing himself more to his supporters.  
Quite frankly, I don't understand why his reputation as a successful businessman hadn't been severely compromised before.  As I just stated, Trump is best known as a real estate developer.  He is not known as a vodka distiller, necktie designer, meatpacking distributor, educator, football-team franchisee casino operator, beauty-pageant owner, footwear designer, or hotelier, all trades in he's dabbled - disastrously.   Nor is he known as a mathematical genius, which explains why he's gone bankrupt six times.  Even his career in his primary profession - real estate - is a scam, given his awful deals and history of stiffing contractors.  And yet, as with Madge, the media have remained fascinated with him and generations of Americans admire the appearance of a legitimate business acumen, because, well, he's just so damn interesting!
And so, despite his loss to Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election after one term in the White House, he's not only the favorite for the Republican presidential nomination over Nikki Haley, he's the early favorite in the inevitable November matchup with Joe Biden.  Meanwhile, his threat to dismantle the Affordable Care Act and his incoherent utterances ("We are an institute in a powerful death penalty") have gone largely unchallenged and uncritiqued.
Madge once told Dick Clark she wanted to rule the world.  And she did.  And so did Trump, four years . . . and he may be back to rule it even longer.
And don't get me started on Madge's and Trump's fans.  You say one unkind word about either one of them, their fans will attack you verbally online and possibly physically in person.  Madge's fans are the Islamic State of pop-star fandom, and Trump supporters are the Islamic State of political fandom.  You do not want to cross either fan base.  
But there is one key distinction between these two charlatans.   You can avoid Madge.  True, her records are compatible with most of the few remaining music formats that are on terrestrial radio these days, but you can always get satellite radio, where oldies, rock and jazz channels can still be found, and there's always your own record collection.  But if Trump becomes President, no one will be able to escape him.  The worst Madge's fans can do to you is physically assault you if you insult their idol (as Guy Ritchie found out when his marriage to Madge failed and he took all the blame for it).   But if Trump is President again . . .  

Monday, February 26, 2024

What a Country!

The gentleman at the center of the picture below is Alexander Smirnov, a vital informant in the impeachment case against President Biden and his business connections to his surviving son, leaving the federal courthouse on an uncharacteristically rainy day in Los Angeles.  And no, he is not shielding his face because of the rain, and his two companions, it would appear, do not have COVID.  

So let's get a few things straight.  Hunter Biden is not the sort of fellow a woman would want to take home to Mother, unless of course her mother is Wilma McClatchie.  You wouldn't want Hunter Biden to teach a course in business ethics any more than you'd want Alina Habba to teach law.  And, he's a bad painter. But while Democrats have insisted that he and his father have no business ties with each other, the impeachment inquiry authorized by the Republican House of Representatives has produced little a bit of evidence to suggest otherwise, like Smirnov's damning testimony.  And that's why he appeared in court in LA recently.

Except for one thing: He appeared in court because he was arrested (and freed and arrested again) for providing the inquiry committee members with information that is totally fake!  

Made up.  Fictitious.  A story less credible than the legend of Atlantis.  Smirnov, an Israeli national, is an agent for the Russian government who was trying to make enough mischief to embarrass the Bidens.  All he did was embarrass . . . well, I was going to say the Republicans, but that isn't true, as the two rhymes-with-glass-pole House committee chairmen named Jim - Oversight Committee chairman Comer of Kentucky and Judiciary Committee Chairman Jordan of Ohio - weren't embarrassed at all.  In fact, they doubled down on their accusations against the Bidens, saying that Smirnov's lies don't change the underlying basis of the need for the inquiry.

Except for one thing: Smirnov's lies are the underlying basis of the need for the inquiry.

Comer and Jordan plan to continue to push for impeaching President Biden, convinced that the mere appearance of a business connection between him and his son Hunter requires an impeachment inquiry as long as special prosecutor David Weiss continues his investigation of Hunter.

Except for one thing: David Weiss was the one who had Smirnov arrested.   

What a country!

Sunday, February 25, 2024

Nikki Nullified

South Carolina Republicans have fallen out of love with their former governor, Nikki Haley.

She lost the state's Republican primary to Donald Trump by twenty percentage points.  She didn't lose by as much as the polls had predicted, and some pundits will find some way to spin it as being a revealing look at Trump's disadvantages and weaknesses in a general-election matchup with Joe Biden, but it's still a crushing loss.  The one-on-one knock-out, drag-down fight that people had been hoping for between Trump and an anti-Trump has finally happened, but it's Haley who is getting knocked out and dragged down.

This is a loss that Haley richly deserves.  Some pundits have actually applauded her for finding her voice and lashing out at Trump at long last, but the truth of the matter is that she's merely changing her message to appeal to the anti-Trump faction in the GOP after treating Trump with kid gloves didn't work out.  But then bashing Trump for his numerous deficiencies was something Chris Christie had done in his 2024 presidential campaign since day one, and he didn't get any credit for finding his voice. What he got was an early exit from the campaign when he tried to gain traction but ended up in traction.  Haley only bashes Trump with the knowledge that she has nothing left to lose, so why not go full tilt boogie in being the anti-Trump when no one gives a twit?

But I'll be happy to see her continue her campaign long enough to drive Trump crazy. 😉 

Haley vows to stay in the presidential campaign for as long as she has the money.  She could theoretically stay until the bitter end.  But Chris Christie knows better than to plan to vote for Haley in the last-in-the-nation New Jersey presidential primary in June, because Trump will have long before won all the delegates needed for the Republican presidential nomination.  

Saturday, February 24, 2024

Pulling the SEAT Out From Under Europe

As you can gather from the fact that I spelled "seat" entirely in capital letters, I'm not talking about Trump's plans for dealing with NATO allies.
Volkswagen AG, which has owned Spanish automaker SEAT since 1990, announced a few months ago that the SEAT brand is being retired once the life cycle of its current models ends.  The marque - one step up from the entry-level Škoda brand and one step below the Volkswagen brand itself in the Volkswagen Group's European-market hierarchy - was the nineteenth bestselling brand in Europe for the first half of 2023, selling 155,355 units in that six-month time frame - up 13 percent from the first half of 2022.  Pretty decent numbers, until you notice that the Cupra brand - a SEAT spinoff based on the SEAT León Cupra sport compact, sort of a Spanish equivalent to the Golf GTI - sold 111,829 units in the first half of 2023, up by 47 percent from the first half of 2022.  What's more, Cupra offers cars much more pricey than SEAT cars, thus offering bigger profit margins for Volkswagen AG, while SEAT had been losing money.  Also, SEAT's most recent all-new model is the Golf-based fourth-generation León, which debuted in January 2020.  "The success of the Cupra Formentor," automotive analyst Felipe Munoz reported, "was the key element to take this decision" to retire SEAT.
This is the Cupra Formentor.
Damn sport utility vehicles!
"It had been a debate to try and reinvigorate SEAT," Thomas Schafer, the CEO of Volkswagen Passenger Cars, told Autocar magazine, "but the brand had a history of making losses, and ultimately Cupra’s earning potential, cemented the decision."
I'm just glad that Carl Hahn, who died in January 2023, didn't live to see this.  Hahn, as Volkswagen AG chairman in the 1980s, had gone into a partnership with SEAT in 1986 when Spain was still endeavoring to make the transition from fascist state to constitutional monarchy  (and the experiment in Spanish democracy was almost stifled in 1981 when the Spanish army staged an unsuccessful coup d'etat by occupying the Parliament building in Madrid).  The deal allowed SEAT to make more Volkswagens for the European market to meet demand, and Hahn bought the company outright four years later, expanding Volkswagen's dominance in Europe while creating new economic opportunities in Spain.  Hahn had, by all accounts, saved a storied auto marque that is as beloved in Spain as Chevrolet is in the United States. And, as I noted in my obituary for Hahn, he took an orphaned state-owned industrial enterprise, as Volkswagen itself had once been, and turned it into a reputable, solid car make, combining a romantic vision with an opportunistically capitalist one.  The current VW leadership has no sense of romance or heritage, preferring to sacrifice a subsidiary company with a history going back seven decades for the almighty euro.  But then, maybe I'm getting too romantic.  This wouldn't be the first time a storied European brand has died what was likely an inevitable death, as fans of the old NSU brand from Germany would attest.
SEAT is likely to remain in business with its current and final crop of cars until 2030.  Cupra could come to North America, though that's probably more wishful thinking than anything else.   

Friday, February 23, 2024

Music Video Of the Week - February 23, 2024

"The Streak" by Ray Stevens  (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.) 

Thursday, February 22, 2024

Step It Up, Joe

The sudden disasters affecting Donald Trump, which I covered in my post before last, have certainly helped President Joe Biden in his efforts to win a second term and keep Trump out of the White House, but it's hardly going to be enough.  Biden faces headwinds within his own base, with young people, Muslims and Arab-Americans - who make up a large part of the Democratic electorate in the crucial state of Michigan - angry over his Israel-Gaza policy, as well as with blacks and Hispanics, and he may face more serious headwinds from progressives if he tries to add additional security to the southern border by executive order without the guarantee of a payoff in the form of getting Ukraine any aid.  And so many Democrats are getting dispirited with Biden even as Trump's base remains committed to their cult leader that the only wind at Biden's back, so far, is his own.

That stinks. 

David Ignatius of the Washington Post has a column out suggesting that President Biden take whatever action he can on Israel, Ukraine and the border - that is, respectively, stand up to Benjamin Netanyahu on his prosecution of the war against Hamas, find a way with House Democrats to circumvent House Speaker Mike Johnson and get aid to Ukraine, and issue executive orders to crack down on migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, the Squad be damned.

Some of Ignatius's column must have gotten through to the White House.  CNN reports that the United States is promoting a new United Nations draft resolution to call for a temporary cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas war and is also planning to warn the Israelis against aground incursion into Rafah, where displaced Palestinians are now staying.  President Biden, still undecided as to what he can do, if anything, to shame Speaker Johnson into allowing a vote on aid to Ukraine, is announcing tomorrow sanctions against Russian President Vladimir Putin for being responsible for the death of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny.   Navalny (below) was the brightest hope for a permanently democratic Russia (as opposed to the temporarily democratic Russia that Boris Yeltsin led in the 1990s), and his death has caused that hope to fade rapidly.  Biden's proposed additional sanctions would be in concert with the condemnation of Navalny's murder that has come from every major world figure.

Except for Donald Trump, who compared Navalny's torture and murder to his own legal indictments.

There are other issues Ignatius overlooked.  Biden has to find another way to promote his domestic successes, like cheaper insulin, even as he has to stop promoting economic successes that not enough voters feel ("Bidenomics" is the worst one-word slogan conceived since "Fahrvergnügen").  He also needs to remind voters that he ended the COVID pandemic in this country with his wise, prudent approach to the disease.  He should also point out that he successfully pushed through legislation to allow Medicare to negotiate lower drug prices with pharmaceutical companies.  And there are other issues I could mention as well, like, oh, I don't know, infrastructure projects?

One of the biggest issues working in his favor is abortion, yet Biden, the second Catholic U.S. President, is reportedly uncomfortable talking about it.  He'd better start getting comfortable about it.  More Roman Catholic voters actually favor Trump over Biden than the other way around, so even as Biden shouldn't be afraid of offending conservative Catholics whose votes he doesn't have a prayer - literally - of getting anyway (like all of the Catholics on the Supreme Court not named Sonia by their mothers), he, as a Catholic, should be able to espouse a pro-legal-abortion stance as a medical issue so no one gets the idea that all Catholics are, well, the bad guys.

And we'd hate for that to happen.

Look, Pope John Paul II found out the hard way that freeing Poland and Lithuania from communism wasn't going to convince everyone that he was a good guy, so Joe Biden, knowing that he can't please everyone, should just come out and declare his personal opposition to abortion while expressing point-blank his even greater opposition to imposing his personal beliefs on others.  Many Catholics won't like that.  Some pro-choice non-Catholics may be even more hostile to that message, as Catholic politicians who adhere to their faith in their personal lives even as they may contradict it in their political lives get no brownie points from the Vatican's critics outside the Church.  But the vast majority of voters would be pleased to find a Catholic President who is broadminded enough to accommodate other points of view on the topic of abortion, and it would go a long way toward defusing the growing anti-Catholicism I see in this country; I mean, how is it that some of the most vocal critics of Islamophobia have no problem dismissing Catholics offended by assaults on their own faith as a bunch of intolerant fools, when Islam is just as patriarchal and socially conservative as Catholicism, if not more so?
As for the need for Biden to get out and engage with the voters, I don't fear that he won't do so.  Remember, the only reason he didn't engage with the voters so much in 2020 was because of that crazy little thing called COVID.  But when he does get out, President Biden needs something he can engage voters with.  This blog, and David Ignatius's column, offer constructive suggestions on what Biden can bring to the campaign trail.  

Tuesday, February 20, 2024

City Car Apocalypse

I never thought I'd live to see the day that small cars would start disappearing from European showrooms and, ultimately, European streets.
Numerous European auto companies have been discontinuing small cars commonly seen in postcard photos on Paris, Rome and Munich, such as the Volkswagen up!, the Fiat Punto (above) and the Citroën Picasso, and even the Ford Fiesta - one of the most popular cars in Britain in the past half century - has been discontinued.  (Ford ended production of the Fiesta in 2023, four years after discontinuing it in North America.) 
European automakers blame the shrinking city-car market segment on, of all things, emissions regulations.  They insist that European emissions standards regulating carbon dioxide are getting so tight that small cars can't possibly meet them, and they also point to the growing investment in electric cars that, they say, make small gasoline-powered and diesel-powered cars less necessary.  Yet, demand for small internal-combustion-engine cars is still strong in Europe, even as it continues to wane big time in the New World (the Mitsubishi Mirage, a car no one liked, not even subcompact fans, was discontinued in North America after 2023.)  So what is the average European car buyer to do, with so many city cars disappearing from the market?
But a compact SUV.
Writing for Euractiv.com, Julia Poliscanova, senior director for vehicles and electric mobility at the environmental non-governmental organization Transport & Environment, notes that her organization has tracked new-car sales in the Old Country and found that someone who would have once bought a Fiat Punto or a Ford Fiesta is opting for a compact SUV that is positioned in the same European Union market segment. The bestselling European car in Europe in 2023, the Dacia Sandero, a traditional SUBV from Romania, was the second-bestselling vehicle in Europe overall in 2023 - behind the Tesla Model Y.  The third-bestselling car last year in Europe, predictably was a Volkswagen.  Unpredictably, it was not the Golf but the T-Roc sport utility vehicle (below).  The Golf came in seventh.
Poliscanova finds the argument about how small cars have to be sacrificed in order to meet tougher emissions standards to be spurious at best, cynical at worst.  Compliance with regulations, she writes, is "averaged across all sales, not per car.  So, while selling only [gasoline] and diesel cars will land you fines, selling smaller combustion models (that emit comparatively less CO₂) will mean less electric cars need to be sold to balance emissions.  The smaller, lighter vehicles also lead to more significant economies all around, given the growing raw material and energy costs."
The real reason for a shift to larger cars in Europe, Poliscanova argues is simple - profit.  Automakers can make more money with higher profit margins on bigger vehicles, hence the switch to SUVs.  (Sound familiar?)  Also, the European carmakers are concentrating more on high-end models and brands, trying to make more money by selling fewer vehicles - at a time when the cost of living is going up in Europe and people need cars that are less expensive as well as more fuel-efficient.  Poliscanova also reports that the average weight of a European car has increased by 100 kilograms - that's 220 pounds, folks! - and the dimensions of the average European car has increased by 6 percent between 2012 and 2022, and with the price of a sport utility vehicle 60 percent higher than a car, companies such as BMW, Volkswagen and Stellantis  enjoyed a 15 to 30 percent growth in profits in 2021, even with the delta corona and supply-chain issues getting in the way.   
And Poliscanova says that getting rid of small cars in favor of this, er, American-style business model is bad for just about everyone. "[E]xiting smaller car segments is not good news for the environment, drivers or the European industry," she wrote. "Larger cars put more pressure on the planet as they need more material to be built and more energy, be it oil or electricity.  Four Tesla Model 3s (standard range) can be made from the 200-kWh battery pack of a GMC Hummer EV.  For drivers, this means more expensive models and higher running costs, especially at a time of high energy prices.  Large cars, rather than electric, are expensive: a one-tonne (2,205-lb) electric model costs around €20,000 (US$21,532), whereas a two-tonne (4,409-lb) one comes with a price tag of €45,000-60,000 (US$48,445 to 64,593). . ..  Ultimately, Western carmakers might come to regret this.  While they can make more profit on every SUV sold, the small-car segment is where the volume is."
And who in Europe is ready to satisfy that demand?   The Chinese.  A few Chinese brands and some European brands owned by Chinese companies are ready to pounce and deliver cars for the small-car segment to the detriment of Volkswagen or Renault just as the Japanese ability to respond to a sudden demanded from small cars in the U.S. was to the detriment of Detroit in the early seventies.
Poliscanova makes a couple of points I've been making all along, most notably that bigger vehicles - even electric ones - are more harmful to the environment because of the extra materials and energy involved, but in their quest to make more euros, European automakers have proven to be just as shortsighted as Detroit.  Either give the people what they want or give the people what they think they want.
Meanwhile, I think I can say goodbye to the idea of renting one of those cute, cool little city cars if I ever get to Europe - and I actually have the opportunity to go as early as next year (unless Trump gets back in power and doesn't allow anyone to leave the country).  Ultimately, if I do make it abroad, if I want to get around the Old Country, I'll probably be better off taking the train.
Hey, I got no problem with that! 

Monday, February 19, 2024

Trump Was The Week That Was

If Joe Biden wins the presidential election in November, history will record that is his comeback began this past week , when Donald Trump seemed to stumble from one disaster to the next.

At a campaign rally about a week ago in Conway, South Carolina, Trump said that he "saved" the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) by getting more countries to pay their fair share on defense, telling an obviously false story of how the leader of a "big country,"  at a NATO conference during Trump's occupation of the White House, asked Trump if the United States will still come to the aid of a NATO country that was invaded by an enemy nation if said NATO member hadn't spent 2 percent of its gross domestic product on defense - which Trump conflated with paying dues.  Not only would Trump refuse t help, he said, he'd encourage the enemy nation to "do whatever the hell they want" with the invaded country, giving Vladimir Putin license to go after the Baltic States (or, as Michael Moore once called them, "Nazi collaborators"). 

On Thursday and Friday, Trump advisor Michael Roman's effort to aid Trump (and, coincidentally, himself) by trying to get Fani Willis off the Georgia election interference and racketeering case (in which both he and Trump were indicted) backfired when Willis herself took the stand at the hearing for her own conduct review.  Willis had been accused of dating her assistant prosecutor, Nathan Wade, since before the 2020 election and favoring him by giving him a plum assignment on the investigation in the election case.  None of those who testified against Willis were able to pin a relationship in progress at the time the investigation began, indicating that they had begun a relationship after the investigation started, and Willis' preference for paying for goods and services in cash had been a lifelong practice due to subtle racism against blacks who try to purchase anything on credit.  Her father, also known for carrying cash, backed her up.  Roman's case suddenly looked less likely to torpedo Willis and the prosecution of her case against Trump than it did before the hearing started.   

With the start date of the January 6 election interference trial in Washington still uncertain, the election interference case involving the payment of hush money to a porn star Trump had an affair with was set for March 25 - on time, and no schedule.  Trump accounted for the hush money by, allegedly, falsifying his company's records, which is a criminal offense.  Trump's attorneys sought to delay the trial to allow their client more time for . . . the presidential campaign.  

Finally, Trump was fined over $453 million (including interest) for committing fraud by inflating the values of his properties and then enriching himself by applying for loans based on the inflated values of said properties, adding to the $83 million he already has to pay to Elizabeth Jean Carroll for defaming her.  Trump can't do business in New York for three years, which is likely to influence voters wondering whether or not to let him run the country for four years. 

Also, Donald Trump, Jr. and his brother Eric cannot run any business in New York for two years.  Judge Arthur Engoron didn't have much nice to say about their sister Ivanka, either: "She consistently denied recalling the contents of documentary evidence that confirmed that she actively participated in events, even after she was confronted with the evidence," he declared. "The Court found her inconsistent recall, depending on whether she was questioned by [New York State Attorney General Letitia James's office]  or the defense, suspect. In any event, what Ms. Trump cannot recall is memorialized in contemporaneous emails and documents; in the absence of her memory, the documents speak for themselves."

But Ivanka obviously doesn't care abut that, as the truth can be whatever other people think it is.

Truth isn't truth.

"So, Steve," you're saying," which of these developments convinced you the most that Biden will win the presidential election in November?"

No, no . . . remember, I said, "If!" 

And anyone who can sell out gold-plated shoes for $400 like Trump did this past weekend knows how to win elections.

Oh, dem golden sneakers! 😮

Sunday, February 18, 2024

Putin It On the Line

Even though the Senate passed a military aid package for Ukraine that also includes military aid for Israel and the Indo-Pacific region, and humanitarian aid for the Palestinians, Mike Johnson refuses to let the aid come up for a vote in the House until President Biden and congressional Democrats address the southern border.  They did that already, and Mike Johnson wouldn't let that come to a vote either.  Why?  Ask Mike Johnson.  I would love to hear his answer, because I know it won't include the sentence "Trump told me not to."  Even though that's the actual answer.

Meanwhile, the Republicans are letting Vladimir Putin become the most powerful leader in the Eastern Hemisphere.  And Trump will let him become the most powerful leader in the world if he himself gets back in power as a result of this year's U.S. presidential election.  But, that's probably going to happen . . . because Americans only care about the economy and think Trump will do a better job on the economy than Joe Biden by twenty points. 

House Democrats hope to get enough pro-Ukraine Republicans to sign a discharge petition to allow the Senate bill to come to a vote in the House, but pundits say the odds are against that.  How many GOP votes do the Democrats need to pass a discharge petition?

Five.

Five.  Only five.

And that's a long shot? 

And by the way, progressive Democrats, especially a certain bird from the Bronx (I won't mention her name, but her initials are A-O-C) also might oppose the bill because it gives military aid to the Israelis.  And oh yeah, I didn't want to bring it up, but the left famously ignored the struggle against Communism in Poland in the 1980s because they couldn't conceive the possibility that you could support Solidarity in Poland and the fight against apartheid in South Africa at the same time.  Or maybe they just didn't care about the Poles.

Gosh darn it, Putin is planning to put a weapon in space that can destroy American satellites!  And Alexei Navalny, the Russian opposition leader, just got killed while living in a penal colony north of the Arctic Circle.  And President Biden can't get the support of House Republicans to help Ukraine?  How is he going to get aid to the Ukrainians?  We need a way to funnel aid to Ukraine under the table without anyone, not even the President, aware of it.

Dammit, we need Oliver North!

It's a thought.

Saturday, February 17, 2024

Suozzi Land

(Okay, Swaziland is called Eswatini now, but what the heck . . .)

Democrat Tom Suozzi won the special election on Long Island to fill the U.S. House seat vacated by George Santos, the same seat Suozzi himself vacated to run (unsuccessfully, of course) for governor of New York.   
Suozzi, the son of an Italian immigrant, campaigned on immigration issues and stressed his support for the border security bill that House Speaker Mike Johnson wouldn't allow for a vote because it didn't go far enough - I mean, because Donald Trump didn't want it to pass.  Democratic Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut said that Democrats running for Congress should use Suozzi's success as an example of how to run in the general election this November. 
Not so fast.  Part of the reason Suozzi won is because he's a known quantity; he had represented the district in question, New York's Third U.S. House District, for six years prior to stepping down to run for higher office.  Also, Suozzi is a moderate Democrat.  As Speaker Johnson himself noted, Suozzi, when talking about immigration, sounded like a Republican.  Most Democrats don't.  That bill Suozzi said he supported had nothing for allowing children brought over the border by their parents as undocumented immigrants to become citizens, and it offered no paths to citizenship for any other migrants.  A couple of districts over in the Bronx, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez certainly wouldn't agree with Tom Suozzi on the border bill, and she would say also that, in another country, she wouldn't even be in the same party with Tom Suozzi.  And there are more progressive Democrats who would side with her, not Suozzi or Chris Murphy. 
Also, this was a special election to replace George Santos, a special person.  The circumstances of any special election are different from a regular general election, especially a regular general election in which presidential candidates are on the ballot, but for this special election that goes double. 
There was one silver lining in the form of literal storm clouds.  It snowed big time in the Greater New York area, and though there was less snow on Long Island than there was in northern New Jersey, there was still plenty of snow out that there.  Yet Democrats came out to vote, as did many independents.  For so, so long, Republicans have been famous for going out in any weather, no matter how inclement, to vote; they'd go out to vote in a hurricane.  Democrats, being wusses, would stay home in a nagging drizzle.  That's changing now, thanks to Donald Trump.  Trump has become so toxic for many Democrats that they're not going to let a little snow get in their way to vote for one of their own.  If Speaker Johnson was right about the weather affecting turnout on Long Island, that means it was Republicans who saw the winter storm alerts and decided to stay home.
And Joe Scarborough made another point - Long Island voters saw how House Republicans fumbled on the immigration issue and how they tried to weaponize the issue against the Democrats after rejecting a bipartisan Senate border security bill, and they punished the Republicans by awarding Tom Suozzi, the Democrat.  If the Republicans keep acting like this, they could make the polls showing a Trump victory in November irrelevant.
Actually, Suozzi made the polls in his district irrelevant.  Polls showed him winning this past Tuesday's special election narrowly; he won it by eight points.