James Gillen

OK, so reviewing the Republican candidates’ debate on Fox Wednesday, let’s go back to the Republican Debate Bingo Card: “Pledge to Pardon Trump” – Yes, actually brought up by the debate hosts, and answers were kind of a blur. “Crooked Joe Biden” “Radical Left” “Two-Tiered Justice System” – not really brought up, though every time people were obliged to admit Trump tried to stop the election verification, they acted like it was Democrats’ fault for doing something about it. “Drag Queens” – not that I recall. “Hillary Clinton Mention” – they MUST have mentioned Hillary, but I can’t recall where. “Child Indoctrination” – yeah, that was DeSantis. “Prosecute Dr. Fauci” – Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said he’d fire Fauci. Even though he’s already resigned. “Biden Crime Family” – not that I recall. “Crime infested blue cities” – not in so many words, but they talked about crime a lot. “WOKE!” -Not specifically. “Climate ‘Hoax'” – actually, nobody other than Vivek Ramaswamy said climate change is a hoax (and he got BOOED), and he was basically taking the “Drill, Baby, Drill!” position. “Mainstream Media” – you had Ramaswamy telling Chris Christie that he was auditioning for a job at MSNBC. He also said Nikki Haley was going to take a nice corporate job after this campaign, which raises the question of what company will hire him once he has to bow out after Iowa. “Biden’s Age” – oh yeah. “Assault on [insert] Liberties” – not an issue for anybody here. These guys don’t believe in liberty, even for themselves. Their approach to liberty is basically the Catholic Church’s position on freedom: They only do what the authorities tell them to do because that’s what they were going to do anyway. “Election Integrity” – not in so many words. “Anti-Ukraine Sentiment” – mainly from DeSantis and Vivek Ramaswamy, which led to pushback from Nikki Haley in one of her better moments of the night, pointing out that on this very day Putin killed his own former henchman. “Hunter Biden!” “CRT” – that was DeSantis, mainly. “DeSantis Makes A Weird Face” – they’re ALL weird faces. “Referring to Insurrectionists as Patriots” – not really. “Soros Reference” – 49 minutes in! “Back the Blue” – not so much, but I did see a few people falling all over themselves to be the first one to invade Mexico to take out their drug networks. I’m sure they wouldn’t mind us violating their national sovereignty. After all, we do it all the time.

I kind of agree with the people who think that Tim Scott and Mike Pence, simply by not embarrassing themselves, did relatively well. And then you had Doug… lemme check… Doug Burgum. Every so often Bret Baier and Martha McCallum remembered he was on stage, and even more occasionally, so did he. And then you had the two mini-Trumps, DeSantis and Ramaswamy, and while Ramaswamy was kind of “cocaine energy” and sometimes just plain wrong, he was forthright and a good speaker. And then you had DeSantis. Baier told him crime was up in Miami. DeSantis responded that “crime is at a 50-year low in Florida.” Which didn’t exactly disprove the statement. (‘Sure I’ve got brain cancer, but my blood sugar is better than ever!’) The very first speech was DeSantis going “Our country is in decline.” Later Ramaswamy said “It is NOT morning in America.” So much for the Party of Reagan, eh?

Nikki Haley was formerly ambassador to the UN and conducted herself in such a manner, speaking very professionally. Haley said, correctly, that it was Republicans under the Trump Organization (where she served of course) that exploded the deficit. She admitted that is an issue everyone has to confront. She said that while she is pro-life, women should not be persecuted and prosecuted for being pregnant. She also said “what (the people) will tell you is, it is time for a new conservative leader… Trump is the most disliked politician in the country – and WE CAN’T WIN A GENERAL ELECTION THAT WAY.”

Asa Hutchinson, who was notably the only candidate who refused to raise a hand on the question of whether they would support Trump as the nominee, didn’t speak much, but he was very forthright on the point that Trump has disqualified himself, morally if not legally. Chris Christie said much the same thing, demurring on the point of whether he committed crimes but saying that character is an issue and the Party should not be supporting someone of such low character. He was basically saying the same thing Nikki Haley did, but took a lot more flak. At which point, he said the line of the night: “That’s the great thing about this country: Booing is allowed, but it doesn’t change the truth.”

And the response was generally, “SEZ YOU, COMMIE!”

Which is of course the issue in a nutshell. This was an audience that seriously believes that emotional partisanship can change the truth. The loudest cheers of the night, as with the question of who would support Trump as the nominee, were for “the elephant not in the room.” It was a decent debate in and of itself actually, mainly in the first hour, because you got these guys to talk about policy issues. And because you didn’t have Trump constantly talking over everybody, including the Fox hosts, to blather about himself. But the point is that policy doesn’t matter. About an hour in they had to bring up Trump and his legal issues, because Republican voters don’t care about policy issues, they want gladiatorial combat, and Fox knows that better than anybody. So since none of these guys have national reputations of their own, Fox got them to catfight over Trump. From their perspective it was the best of both worlds cause they got to bring him up without him being a liability to the event.

With the Republican Party, even the “adults in the room”, that is, the hosts, the network and most of the candidates, also believe that their emotions and wishes can change the truth of their situation, which is that this is not a party of conservatives but a Jonestown cult that would drink the Kool-Aid and belly up to the bar for seconds. They are of course still dominant in certain states mainly because they make the laws in those states, but everywhere else – including a lot of places where Democrats have no purchase – they’re losing the voters. Haley IS right – you can’t win nationally with the most despised person in the country. But try telling that to the cultists who think Trump is an invincible God-Emperor who’s gonna live forever and doesn’t have to worry about what happens when he’s gone. Not that he hasn’t lived an amazingly long time given his habits. But the adults in the room still think that what they do matters, on the impression that SOME day Trump’s not gonna be in the picture.

Ha Ha Ha. They’ve been wishing that for years and it hasn’t happened yet. I mean nobody’s gonna care so much about this on Thursday evening. Cause of course that’s when Liddle Donnie Clown Boy is obliged to surrender himself at the jailhouse in Atlanta, AND get a mugshot like all his lieutenants did Wednesday. Of course on one of his social media posts he taunted the judges for making him post bond, like he’s supposed to be slipping off to “Russia Russia Russia” and crash with Putin for the rest of his life. That would NOT be a good idea for obvious reasons, foremost among them that his overwhelming lead in party polls means he IS going to be the Republican nominee, meaning there’s always a chance he could win the general election. Plus, he’d have to somehow ditch his Secret Service detail, whose job is kind of keeping an eye on him at all times. But you never know. Sometime tomorrow he could be commandeering a white Bronco and trying to get a plane to Venezuela or somewhere. I mean, that would be UNBELIEVABLY STUPID. One of those things where you go “Even Trump can’t be THAT STUPID!” Which is what makes it all the more likely. Trump is like the Homer Simpson of fascism: Every time you think, “he can’t get THAT stupid!” he always finds a way to top himself.

The other surprise factor – which frankly I consider LESS likely than Trump trying to make a break for it – would be if the Georgia authorities, backed up by feds, surrounded Trump in the jail and said, “Hey you know all these conditions we set to release you from detention? You remember where we said you weren’t allowed to defame or threaten anyone involved in the case including law enforcement or witnesses or other people in the trial? And you remember when you posted the bond you specifically agreed you “shall make no threat of any direct or indirect nature” including but “not limited to, posts on social media or reposts of posts made by another individual on social media”? And what did you do then, Donnie?”

“Here’s your cell, Donnie. That’s where you’re staying till the end of the trial.”

Of course that would cause the entire “conservative” media sphere to explode like Krakatoa, as would Trump trying to flee America, because then they’d have more egg on their faces than the co-star in a James Deen money shot. Either way, Trump is once again the only object of attention, and that’s all that matters, isn’t it?

This is another rant about Trump. But not entirely.

As we know, on August 1, Deranged Jack Smith (this is his first name now, apparently) released the federal charges against Donald Trump in regard to the January 6 case, and then the week after that Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis released state RICO charges against not only Trump but 18 co-conspirators including Rudy Guiliani and other insiders like John Eastman. Why does this matter compared to the other charges piling up on Trump? Because this is a state case, and a hypothetical President Trump or other Republican president cannot pardon state charges. Moreover pardons in Georgia are handled by panel, so the Republican Governor of Georgia cannot pardon Trump even if he were inclined to do so (which he is NOT). Moreover, the premise of a RICO case is that a criminal conspiracy existed. Unlike Smith’s federal cases, Willis does not need to entertain Trump’s bogus defense that he “really believed” he won and “didn’t think” he was doing anything wrong. All the State needs to do is establish that a conspiracy existed and that Trump was the focus of it.

Trump has been responding in his usual manner: with bullying and sleaze. He suggested that the former Lieutenant Governor in Georgia not testify against him, calling him a “nasty disaster” because he wouldn’t entertain Trump’s fantasy scenario that the election was stolen. He calls District Attorney Fani Willis a racist (remember, the world is run by Black people and they’re all trying to keep the Orange man down). On one of his weekend speeches, Trump decided to excrete this little story about how this certain DA had a case against a criminal in the past and ended up having an affair with him. Totally unproven, of course, but Trump’s fan club of not-so-closet racists ate it right up. Like caviar, or other Russian imports.

August 15, Trump posted on Truf Censhal saying “A Large, Complex, Detailed but Irrefutable REPORT on the Presidential Election Fraud which took place in Georgia is almost complete & will be presented by me at a major News Conference at 11:00 AM on Monday of next week in Bedminster, New Jersey. Based on the results of this CONCLUSIVE Report, all charges should be dropped against me & others – There will be a complete EXONERATION! They never went after those that Rigged the Election. They only went after those that fought to find the RIGGERS!”

Rigger, please.

‘Course, Mr. Alligator Mouth Hummingbird Ass ended up retracting all this last Thursday, saying “Rather than releasing the Report on the Rigged & Stolen Georgia 2020 Presidential Election on Monday, my lawyers would prefer putting this, I believe, Irrefutable & Overwhelming evidence of Election Fraud & Irregularities in formal Legal Filings as we fight to dismiss this disgraceful Indictment”. Yes, Donnie. Because that’s where cases are tried. In court. I’m sure your lawyers would prefer it that way, as, unlike you, they have training and qualifications and know what the fuck they’re doing.

The irony being that Trump clearly wants to pull an OJ and try this case in the media, but it would actually be easier to try it in court, because if Trump had competent lawyers (hypothetically) they could find all manner of technicalities to remove or mitigate charges, whereas the more he wants to turn it into a media spectacle, the more guilty and defensive he looks and the more likely it is he will turn off the people who he needs to vote for him. And since his transparent strategy has been to muck with things until the election in the hopes he will actually win, so he can declare himself God-Emperor and make Smith’s charges (at least) go away, that’s counterproductive.

But speaking of Trump being chickenshit, the other news this week is that Donnie decided not to attend the little debate of presidential candidates scheduled for Wednesday on Fox. Instead he’s releasing an interview he pre-recorded with Fox News exile and fellow professional racist Tucker Carlson.

In a New York Times article, the decision is framed largely from Trump’s perspective as a desire to get back at Fox for not uncritically reporting his positions 100 percent of the time, and because he seems to think they have it out for him. “Also, they purposely show the absolutely worst pictures of me, especially the big ‘orange’ one with my chin pulled way back. They think they are getting away with something, they’re not.” Spoiler Alert, Donnie: They’re ALL bad pictures. They’re ALL big orange pictures with a receding chin. Because you are an accident of Nature that never should have been, and you take a roller of orange paint and layer it on your face attempting to look younger. The end result just makes you look like a lobeless Ferengi with a Tribble toupee.

In truth, there are good reasons for Trump to avoid a debate, because it reduces his legal liability or chance of embarrassing himself if he goes “unscripted” with somebody like Chris Christie who might actually take advantage. Also: Trump has refused to sign the Republican National Committee requirement that anybody who participates in the debates has to pledge loyalty to whoever ends up being the nominee. (As Donnie’s wives could tell you, one word he can’t understand is ‘loyalty’) But given how most polls show Trump far ahead of not only Ron DeSantis but DeSantis and any two other candidates combined, it’s easy to believe the stated position that Trump’s not participating because his lead is so big he doesn’t need to compete.

There are now eight “qualified” candidates for the debate, not including Trump, and I’m pretty sure it’s going to help the moderation if they don’t have to keep cutting Trump’s mic when it’s not his turn, going MommeeMommeeMommeeLookitmeLookitmeLookitmeLOOK AT ME YOU GODDAMN BITCH, but it’s going to be another one of those points to raise the question as to why any of these guys are even there.

But if any of this legal folderol actually undermines Trump’s performance in primaries, it means the debate matters because it raises the question of whether there even is any such thing as a Republican Party outside of Trump. And so far, all signs point to No.

Most institutions operate on a premise of “monkey see, monkey do”, especially the Republican Party, which is owned by the biggest howler monkey in the world. Which is why you see the more ambitious Republicans trying to out-Trump Trump because they perceive that’s where the Party is going.

Take entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, who’s been getting a lot of press recently. Ramaswamy had an interview with conservative Hugh Hewitt and said that once we develop our own semiconductor supply, China can have Taiwan: “they have unfinished nationalistic business dating back to their civil war in 1949,” he added. “And if that’s the sole basis for Xi Jinping going after Taiwan after we have semiconductor independence, then you know what? I am not going to send our sons and daughters to die over that conflict. And that’s consistent with my position on Ukraine as well.” In that regard, Ramaswamy told CNN’s Jim Acosta “I would freeze the current lines of control and that would leave parts of the Donbas region with Russia, I would also further make a commitment that NATO would not admit Ukraine to NATO.” Acosta told the presidential hopeful “that sounds like a win for Putin,” which Ramaswamy countered, “Our goal should not be for Putin to lose, our goal should be for America to win.”

May I ask, in what world does America not lose if Putin is winning?

The logical answer is, only a world where America is a partner of Putin and not a balance against him. And given Putin’s absolutism, this necessarily means an unequal partnership where America is subservient to Putin.

And given that Putin has had to make himself largely subservient to Xi Jinping just to keep running his war, that would make China the greatest partner in the triumvirate. In any event, we could no longer say we were leading the “free world.”

And then of course, you have DeSantis, who has all along based his politics on following Trump’s lead and now wonders why nobody thinks he’d be a better leader. But apparently he’s gonna keep doing that. In a now well-publicized leak that is not likely to improve his polls, DeSantis’ debate advisers told him “Defend Trump when Chris Christie attacks him” and “Attack Joe Biden and the media 3-5 times.” I mean usually when somebody leaks your strategy you adapt and try something else that the enemy hasn’t prepared for, but DeSantis hasn’t been that flexible so far.

No surprise though that he and other candidates still want to defend Trump when the whole premise of the debate is that one of them is for some reason unexplained supposed to be a better choice. Especially when Mike Pence’s whole position is, “Look, Donald Trump tried to stop the proceeding of an election process and tried to have me lynched but I don’t think he did anything illegal.” And of course most of these guys are pledging to pardon Trump if he’s found guilty, if they get elected, which really begs the question, why do you think your chances of beating Trump to the nomination, let alone beating Biden, are greater than Trump’s chances of beating the rap?

Not to mention that the nominally better choices like Tim Scott, Nikki Haley and Chris Christie, while certainly preferable to Trump and his mini-Trumps, are still part of the same Republican Party that has its own issues with credibility, especially Christie, who was a problematic Governor of New Jersey and a former Trump enabler. I mean, better that he turns back to the side of reason rather than riding the toilet rim all the way down like the other cultists, but objectively speaking there’s not much to vote for if you’re an independent, let alone a liberal.

As for where the Republican Party’s collective mindset is and what they have to offer the country at large, let’s prep with one of the several bingo cards being offered on social media:

In this, I keep going back to a quote I’ve used before that really explains how the Right went where it did. There was an article in Reason Magazine, March 2017, after Trump got in the White House, and they were having an interview with Congressman Thomas Massie (BR.-Kentucky) who at the time was described as “libertarian-leaning.” And they were talking about how Trump was attacking the Freedom Caucus and the various other small-l libertarian, “ideological” people, and the question was: “As a person like you, a congressman like you, when you are in the Freedom Caucus, when you’re lined up ideologically, and you have a president that is like this, what is it like for governing, and what is your hope like for the future?”
And Massie said: “Well, I’m still hopeful, okay? There are moments when populism lines up with libertarianism. But let me tell you about a realization that I came to when I was in Iowa campaigning for Senator Rand Paul to be president.

“You see in 2012, his dad did very well in Iowa, got like a quarter of the vote and a quarter of the vote in New Hampshire, and did very well in Nevada. I ran in 2012 on the same sort of libertarian ideas. Senator Rand Paul had blown a hole through the establishment Republican Party in Kentucky in 2010 on libertarian/republican ideas, and so I thought the libertarian ideology within the Republican party was really catching on, that it was popular. But then when I went to Iowa I saw that the same people that had voted for Ron Paul weren’t voting for Rand Paul, they were voting for Donald Trump. And the same thing happened in Kentucky, the people who were my voters ended up voting for Donald Trump in the primary. And so I was in a funk because how could these people let us down? How could they go from being libertarian ideologues to voting for Donald Trump? And then I realized what it was: They weren’t voting for the libertarian in the race, they were voting for the craziest son of a bitch in the race when they voted for me and Rand and Ron earlier. So Trump just won, you know, that category, but dumped the ideological baggage.”

I should think, especially if the left-socialist political philosophy becomes dominant simply for lack of a serious alternative, that people will once again start examining the potential of a limited constitutional government that acts as a referee in private affairs and not as an interested party. But this is clearly not cool even in the actual Libertarian Party, let alone the larger Right political spectrum. In the short term, “conservatives” don’t want a serious political philosophy that can get the public behind it and change the government long-term. They want the craziest son of a bitch in the race. This is especially clear given how Massie, and the Freedom Caucus collectively, went from being a libertarian counter on Trumpnik populism to yet another extension of it.

If these guys had anything to offer other than being not “woke”, and if their actual policies on issues like abortion were not so deeply unpopular and counterproductive, they might be competitive without Trump. As it is, all they can offer is being the craziest son of a bitch in the race. And nobody can do that better than Trump. So in the unlikely event that Trump can’t make it to the finish line, this debate is significant only in that it confirms the real problem. The problem is not Trump per se. The problem is a voter base that seriously thinks Trump is the best choice.

Well now, on the first day of August 2023 we finally had Mr. Smith’s federal indictment of ex-Viceroy Donald Trump on charges related his attempted coup on January 6, 2021. Trump is the sole defendant, although the text mentions six un-named co-conspirators who are currently unindicted, probably to speed up the process of trial proceedings. Defendant Trump is under four charges. Count One is 18 U.S.C. 371 – Conspiracy to Defraud the United States. Notably, even before the actual Election Day 2020, Trump spread rumors about the legitimacy of the ballot verification and the results. He keeps stating that his efforts are supposed to “Stop The Steal” and stop “election fraud.”

The indictment lays out: “From on our about November 14, 2020 through on or about January 6, 2021, in the District of Columbia and elsewhere, the Defendant (Trump) did knowingly combine, conspire, confederate and agree with co-conspirators… The Defendant and co-conspirators used knowingly false claims of election fraud to get state legislators and election officials to subvert the legitimate results and change electoral votes from the Defendant’s opponent, Joseph R. Biden Jr., to electoral votes for the Defendant. … The Defendant and co-conspirators organized fraudulent slates of electors in seven targeted states (listed), attempting to mimic the procedures that the legitimate electors were supposed to follow under the Constitution and other federal and state laws. …The Defendant and co-conspirators attempted to enlist the Vice President to use his ceremonial role at the January 6 certification proceeding to fraudulently alter the election results … After it became public on the afternoon of January 6 that the Vice President would not alter the election results, a large and angry crowd – including many individuals whom the Defendant had deceived into believing the Vice President could and might alter the election results – violently attacked the Capitol and halted the proceeding. As violence ensued, the Defendant and co-conspirators exploited the disruption by redoubling efforts to lay false claims of election fraud and convince Members of Congress to further delay the certification base on those claims.”

In other words: ELECTION FRAUD.

One of these indictment counts, action against the citizen’s right to vote, (18 U.S.C. 241) is called ‘the Ku Klux Klan’ act, which given Trump’s family history, has gotta sting.

And yet the Fuehrer of Failure is still acting like HE’S the victim. Even before August 1, Trump responded to his metastasizing list of indictments by speaking to his fan club on June 26: “I’m being indicted for you,” Trump said, “and I believe the ‘you’ is more than 200 million people that love our country that are out there, and they love our country.”

Yes. Because the first three words we all think of when we think of Donald Trump are “self sacrificing altruist”.

Yet, the Church of Trump, who seem to think the actual Jesus is a woke pussy, still eat it up. While a majority of independents think Trump should drop out of the race, NPR says over 80 percent of Republicans want him to stay in the race and over 60 percent think he should be the nominee. In the previous indictment (for Mar-a-Lago) “Kevin McCarthy, the House speaker, lamented “a dark day for the United States of America” and said: “It is unconscionable for a president to indict the leading candidate opposing him.” Ron DeSantis, apparently forgetting he’s supposed to be running AGAINST Trump, said: “The weaponisation of federal law enforcement represents a mortal threat to a free society. We have for years witnessed an uneven application of the law depending upon political affiliation.” One headline in The Hill said: “Trump indictment fuels GOP anger over DOJ ‘weaponization’“.

Oh, the Trumpniks are angry that their sweet little boy MIGHT actually get punished for being naughty? Have they ever considered the rage and hate that the REST of us feel that he used fraud and force to try and override our votes? Have they ever considered the rage and hate that the rest of the country feels at this stupid little brat who clearly doesn’t know what he’s doing, but insists on always being the center of attention and will never go away? Have they ever considered the rage and hate that the rest of the country feels about a political party that enables him every chance they get, and will not let us get rid of him, no matter how much damage he does to them??

This is what’s so infuriating about these people. They’re “gaslighting”, but they’re not even gaslighting. Gaslighting, to borrow from the original source, means a serious organized effort to alter perceptions and information to convince a target of untrue things. Contrary to what liberals say, what Trumpniks do isn’t gaslighting, it’s “don’t piss on my head and tell me it’s raining.” Like when Trump’s latest lawyer, John Lauro, did the tour of Sunday chat shows and made the proposal that because Trump couldn’t get a fair trial in DC (where the events of the charges occurred), they should move the venue to West Virginia, where the jury would be more “racially diverse.” As opposed to, say, Maine or Idaho?

Jesus H. Christ on a Popsicle stick, that is such screaming bullshit that not even a Democratic Senator would fall for it. (Well, maybe Dianne Feinstein.) But this is the Trumpniks’ entire approach to policy.

Serious question: WHY? Why do we put up with these people? They don’t take anything seriously, they don’t know how to run a government, they can’t even LIE right.

To go with what I’ve said on several other occasions: If you don’t have a better idea than your opponent, and you don’t have reason, and you don’t have negotiation, the only way you can get your agenda effected is with force. And force ultimately comes down to who has the biggest (or at least best armed) gang. By definition, you’re never going to be better armed than the government. Even in THIS country. And as for being the biggest gang, the existential terror of the Trumpniks is their subconscious realization that they are not the biggest gang, and at their current rate of popularity, never will be again.

So if a confrontation is ultimately not going to favor them, how do they keep getting over? Intimidation: the fear of what could happen if we don’t go along with them. Consider Trump’s role model, Daddy Vlad Putin. Every week or so, Putin and his state media stooges threaten to nuke everybody in the West if we don’t be nice to them and let them walk into Ukraine and kill everybody there. And the only reason NATO hasn’t already walked in and taken names like we did in the former Yugoslavia is because Putin does have nukes, and even with slipshod Russian engineering, some of them might go off as intended. Any strategic exchange would favor us, but Russia would do some damage- we just don’t know how much.

“Always remember the first rule of power tactics: Power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have.”

As with Russia, this only really works if the government’s bullshit is a fait accompli that the people have to accept regardless of how stupid it is cause the government not only has the monopoly on force, they have the presumption of authority. But unlike Russia, one side has not clearly won control of the government. We don’t HAVE to put up with this bullshit “just because” Republicans are the authorities, even if THEY seem to think so.

Which is why I waited until after August 8 to comment on all this, because that’s when a state initiative was put up for vote, and the result of it is a good measure of how the public at large is reacting to the Party of Trump and its machinations.

In Ohio, the Republican-dominated state legislature foisted an “Issue 1” on the ballot for August 8, just months before an already planned Election Day vote to guarantee abortion rights and reproductive freedoms. Issue 1 nowhere mentions abortion in its text. What it does do is say any citizen ballot initiative would have to go from simple majority (51%) to 60 percent vote to succeed. It would have also required petitioners to get signatures from all counties to proceed (as opposed to the current 50 percent) and would have removed a ten day provision to correct erroneous signatures on the petition. “Issue 1 was proposed by State Representative Stewart and the state’s top election official, Secretary of State Frank LaRose. According to Stewart, Issue 1 is intended to stop “far-left ballot proposals” and “ballot campaigns [featuring] destructive policies that [liberal groups] could never get through a state legislature”, while according to LaRose, Issue 1 is “100% about keeping a radical pro-abortion amendment out of our constitution”. LaRose later claimed that his statement was taken out of context and generally called the issue a “good government” move that blocks influence from out-of-state special interests.” The arbitrary and expedient nature of this scheduling was made clear in that House Bill 458, passed just months earlier, eliminated the August special election except in cases of fiscal emergency, “the stated rationale for this provision, given by Secretary of State Frank LaRose and others at the time, was the consistently low turnout seen in historical August elections.” Emphasis mine. In other words, break your own rules, so you can break the rules again. It’s almost like rules don’t matter, and laws don’t matter, and we’re “Fuck You and obey orders, cause we’re the government and you’re not.”

There was a good article in The Bulwark demonstrating exactly why this didn’t work in an otherwise ruby-red state: The author interviewed an art teacher in Cleveland, saying “(She) acknowledged she was concerned about the abortion factor in all this, but made it quite clear that abortion wasn’t the major reason she was voting no. Rather, she was mad about what she called Republicans “overstepping their bounds,” about their having “no respect for anything or anybody” and being willing to stomp on the rights of others “to get what they want.”

“It’s not that I expect them to act all nice and friendly while they are attempting to stab people in the back,” she told me. “But in this case, the feeling I am getting is that they thought most people were too dumb to figure out anything and that they could just walk all over all of us as if that is just how this world of politics works.”

Robert Alexander, a political scientist at Ohio Northern University came to this conclusion: “What the voters said to the Republican party in this election—and I’m talking about voters who voted both for Biden and Trump—is ‘Don’t try to treat us like fools.’”

This maneuver demonstrated both shamelessness and utter contempt for all voters, including (or especially) Republicans. Even if you are anti-abortion, even if you are in general on board with the Republican Party agenda, the premise of voting “Yes” on Issue 1 was: use the power of your vote so that in the future your vote will count for less. And on issues having nothing to do with abortion. But that is simply of a piece with what has been established. Donald Trump WILL BE the Republican presidential nominee. The Republican National Committee still has not enacted a party platform since 2016. The closest thing they had was an announcement at the 2020 RNC that “the Republican Party has and will continuously support the Presidents America-first agenda” – in other words, the only purpose of the Party is whatever Donald Trump says it is. Not only does he not acknowledge he lost the election, none of his attorneys will admit he lost the election, his entire legal defense in his case is that he “really believed” he won the election, and 2020 Republicans like Kari Lake in Arizona are still running around insisting “I WON.” For Trump, elections don’t count unless he wins. For an increasing number of Republicans, elections don’t count unless they win. That being the case it begs the question of why Trump and his Fan Club are even running for office when they won’t accept the results unless they win. If you’re voting for that Party in 2024, you’re voting to make sure that your vote will never matter again.

The irony being that this measure was put down by a substantial margin, but not by 60 percent or more – thus proving the need for the No vote. If you need 60 percent to get anything done, in this country you’ll never get anything done, and apparently that’s the way the 43 percent want it.

Which just goes to show that while the Party of Trump will never be a majority – especially at the rate things are going – they will always be in a position to undermine the country, at least as long as the system “works” the way it does.

It works the way it does because the federal system of our Constitution was specifically made to be counter-majoritarian with a whole bunch of choke points, and in many ways that’s justified but in retrospect just seems to be a case of the Founders out-thinking themselves. In particular, with the Electoral College, “A small number of persons, selected by their fellow-citizens from the general mass, will be most likely to possess the information and discernment requisite to such complicated investigations. …Nothing was more to be desired than that every practicable obstacle should be opposed to cabal, intrigue, and corruption. These most deadly adversaries of republican government might naturally have been expected to make their approaches from more than one quarter, but chiefly from the desire in foreign powers to gain an improper ascendant in our councils. How could they better gratify this, than by raising a creature of their own to the chief magistracy of the Union?” It was assumed that leaving the final choice for president to a general majority vote would elevate a candidate with “Talents for low intrigue, and the little arts of popularity” but a considered panel of electors from each state would be able to confirm a reasonable choice.

Well, as it turns out, while the American people collectively may be dumb enough to require a warning on cardboard sunscreens reading “DO NOT DRIVE WHILE SCREEN IS IN PLACE” the simple majority has never been dumb enough to say that a four-time bankrupt Jersey casino boss and “reality” TV star should get access to our national secrets and nuclear weapons codes. That takes a determined plurality in just enough states to force its will on a gross majority. And it was thus that the mechanism that the Founders intended to stop a creature of “foreign powers” from gaining ascendancy was the only mechanism by which that result could have occurred. And even then, that particular result only happened once.

Likewise the idea that a president or other official requires a majority vote to impeach in the House but a two-thirds vote in the Senate was considered an appropriate bar because any offense that could justify impeachment would have to be sufficiently grave that the need for conviction was obvious. But The Federalist Papers were written on the premise that the legislature, executive and judiciary were separate, even competing branches of government, and the Senate was an objective body to judge. That’s the Rules As Written. In the game as played, the three branches of government are the Democrats, the Republicans and the judiciary, and the last is selected by the dominant party of the other two. Accordingly, no impeachment vote is going to get the required threshold for conviction, because the Senate does not think of itself as a competing branch with the White House. One party thinks of the President as competition and the other party thinks he’s their boss. And you’re always going to have at least one-third of the Senate that will not vote against their boss. Which is why every time the Lamestream Media gives Trump the epithet “twice-impeached” they may think they’re attaching shame, but they’re merely making it clear what a joke the setup is. Impeachment should only be needed ONCE.

Even so, the Constitution’s Article II is not a universal standard in state and federal laws. But now that the problem with plurality supremacy is becoming clear to everyone, the Party of Trump wants to make it the standard and not an exception.

It’s the only way they can keep power.

I mean, they COULD try to do what Reagan and Buckley did and use positive philosophy to explain why the Right is superior to the liberal-left spectrum, but apparently that’s just being “woke” or something.

But now we are seeing exactly how the Trump Party’s anti-reality is going over with the rest of the country. Prior to Dobbs, Republicans could claim that it was Democrats who were trying to be extremists in removing all restrictions to abortion. Of course this was blanking out the point that Roe vs. Wade, which established the “quickening” or fetal viability standard, WAS the common-sense compromise on the abortion issue. And now that’s gone. And the same people who said the Supreme Court should not have made a unilateral ruling and the subject should have gone to the states are the same people trying to force abortion prohibition on states where it previously didn’t exist. And when you consider this radicalism in the wake of Trump, and then consider that Trump, the former New York socialite, has probably adapted more to his Party than the other way around, you see exactly how he achieved such identity fusion with the Evangelical cult that currently controls the Party: In retrospect, the Evangelicals are the only partner that Trump has never cheated or betrayed. He DID get the Israel embassy moved to Jerusalem, he DID get three Supreme Court Justices in one term and those three justices were the votes Alito and Thomas needed to kill Roe. Trump lost the Electoral College in 2020 before the Dobbs vs. Mississippi decision. And the rest of the country knows exactly who they have to thank for that decision.

So for all the polls I’m seeing showing Trump in parity with Joe Biden in the presidential race, I don’t think Trump’s chances in 2024 are any better than in 2020, when he had all the advantages of incumbency and was not saddled with all the scandals that came after that election. Not to say he can’t win – because God is real, and He hates us all – but as I’ve said, even the Supreme Being can only do so much to cover for his Meshuggah Messiah’s incompetence. It becomes that much more obvious when people in states where the Democratic Party has very little presence are still rejecting the Republican radical agenda.

So keep on treating voters like fools, Trumpniks. Next year, we’ll see who the real idiots are.

“Ignorance is an evil weed, which dictators may cultivate among their dupes, but which no democracy can afford among its citizens.”

― William Beveridge

On Thursday July 27, everyone in the mainstream media was waiting on the grand jury in Special Counsel Jack Smith’s investigation of the January 6 insurrection to make formal indictments on Once and Future Viceroy for Russian North America Donald Trump. That didn’t happen. What did happen is that in the Mar-a-Lago case, Smith suddenly released a “superseding indictment” meaning that it overrides the indictment previously released in June as it contains new information. The indictment previously detailed 37 counts against Trump and his aide Walt Nauta for withholding documents and obstructing justice in the government’s attempts to regain those documents. How many new counts are added in this week’s presentation? Five. And how many does that make added to 37?

42!

42! FORTY-TWO counts!
AH HA ha ha haha HA!!!

Specifically, the indictment now includes Mar-a-Lago employee Carlos de Olivera on charges including “Altering, Destroying, Mutilating or Concealing an Object”, by means including draining the pool in such a way that it just happened to flood the room that contained the servers holding the resort’s surveillance footage.

This is all just corroborating evidence on the point that the government’s case is intended to establish Trump’s ‘mens rea’ or consciousness of guilt. And kids, if you still think ‘white privilege’ is not a thing, consider that positions like “I had every right to take those documents”, “I didn’t do anything wrong” and “the election was rigged and stolen” are considered serious legal defenses that a prosecution must address before making a case. In this case, it’s more like ‘orange privilege’, because such defenses usually don’t get too far for people who aren’t Trump.

Hey Donnie… have you ever tried NOT doing crimes?

Guess not.

But again: Not like it matters. “A New York Times/Siena College poll released Monday sees Trump leading DeSantis by 37 points, 54% to 17%, among likely Republican primary voters. Those numbers come on the heels of a recent Fox News poll showing DeSantis trailing Trump by 40 points in the Iowa GOP presidential caucus.” No one besides Ron DeSantis even gets above 3 percent. Which raises the question of why these other people are even running. Especially why they’re even running when they don’t want to say anything bad about Trump. Not that it helps if you do. This weekend, Republican presidential candidate and former Texas Congressman Will Hurd (no, no one else has heard of him either) appeared at Iowa’s “Lincoln Day” dinner (where Trump was treated like the guest of honor) and was practically booed off the stage for saying what everybody knew: “Donald Trump is not running for president to represent people that voted for him in 2016 and 2020,” Hurd said. “Donald Trump is running to stay out of prison.”

(Seriously, that should be his campaign slogan: TRUMP 2024: P-P-P-PLEASE Re-Elect Me, I’m Too Pretty For Jail)

It’s been that way all year. At the Faith and Freedom conference on the weekend of June 24, Trump was the featured speaker on Sunday June 25, and the one presidential candidate who dared to criticize him, New Jersey’s Chris Christie, was openly booed and mocked.

During that event, there were conferences where Christians pointed out how Trump has delivered for them on social issues where other Republicans didn’t. “During one of the conference sessions, Republican communications consultant Alice Stewart drew loud applause when she said that “we may not like how he does things, but he has delivered on what we wanted.”

Stewart also said “I didn’t vote for him to be my pastor.”

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

Ahem.

So let’s review:

Fake hair, fake tan, fake suit – constantly surrounds himself with ostentatious displays of wealth – constantly brags about how much money he has but is constantly begging you for YOURS – always uses God as the ultimate appeal to authority – and when he gets caught doing crimes, you’re supposed to just forgive him, cause he’s against abortion? Or something?

Republicans… are you SURE you didn’t vote for a pastor?

Isn’t this exactly what we can expect when America’s designated not-liberal party is almost completely controlled by Evangelicals? Isn’t this the same celebrity televangelist worship that we’ve been seeing since at least Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart? The same dysfunctional, authoritarian leader who resembles Zeus more than Jesus? Isn’t this exactly the same kind of dysfunctional leadership culture that you think is proper for your spiritual communities?

You have the right to decide the organization of your own spiritual community, but you do NOT have the right to impose that model on the secular government when the rest of the country disagrees. That is the difference between faith and politics. Which you would know, if you KNEW the difference between faith and politics.

But then the whole point of “conservatism” these days is that nobody knows the difference between faith and politics and no one thinks there should be any.

If you want to know why the Founders made “Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of a religion, nor prohibiting the free exercise thereof” the First Amendment in the Bill of Rights, maybe you should look at contemporary Irish history. Or French history. Or German history. There was this thing called The Thirty Years War, which is a great example of what happens when you have a large area composed of several states with different Christian denominations and you insist on imposing a central dogma on all of them.

But, if facts were good enough for you, you wouldn’t be voting Trump. Which is just another example of identity fusion, because Trump has the same attitude that you can just bull through inconvenient facts and if you do it for long enough it won’t matter. He, and you, assume this because it actually worked once, in a 2016 election that is looking like that much more like a fluke as time goes on. Because the establishment candidate was so unacceptable to so many of us, you thought you could excrete the most redolent bowel movement you could strain out and call that a President. And the fact that you continue to support him despite his mounting liabilities really says a lot more about you than about him.

Even if Democrats and their economy remain unpopular, the rest of the country is not so personalist as you are, they are not as obsessed with “reality” TV and “woke” and culture wars as you are, and they know that’s all you have to offer. You support Trump not despite his flaws but specifically BECAUSE OF THEM. You identify with Trump in the same way that you identify with other “strong” (read: unethical) leaders, and because YOU are the bigger problem, you and your laws, your “Moms Against Liberty” and your court cases to change the laws against both the majority will and common sense, the more you identify with Liddle Donnie Clown Boy, the more I am going to make fun of him, because I know that hurts you. And frankly, who ever heard of you?

So I know how scared to death you are of Trump getting indicted this week, cause we all know Trump is scared to death of it. Because even if the Mar-a-Lago case is under Judge Cannon, and the Florida jury pool is Trump country, we’re still waiting on that indictment in Washington DC, where the jury pool might include relatives of some of the people the Trump mob killed. And then of course there’s the Georgia case where a judge just tossed out a Trump “lawyer” attempt to disqualify District Attorney Fani Willis from making a case against Trump (for trying to extort the state government to ‘find’ enough votes to ‘swing’ the state election), because “while being the subject (or even target) of a highly publicized criminal investigation is likely an unwelcome and unpleasant experience, no court ever has held that that status alone provides a basis for the courts to interfere with or halt the investigation”. In other words, that’s not how the law works, Donnie.

Plus which, this is a state case and not a federal election, so should Trump win in 2024, or in the even less likely event that some other Republican gets nominated and still chooses to serve as Trump’s gimp, said Republican could not use the presidential pardon to wipe out a conviction in the Georgia case.

It would be one thing if there were just one case and you could roll the dice on the jury or evidence going your way, but when you can’t stop doing crimes, the more likely it is the dice will land Trump on:

GO TO JAIL.

Go To Jail. Go directly to jail. Do not pass GO. Do not collect a presidential pension.

BUT THAT’S NOT ALL!

You have the knowledge that you’ve brought such shame and disgrace on your family name that Don Junior is thinking of changing HIS surname to Kushner! You don’t get a consolation prize! You don’t get a boxed supply of Rice-A-Roni, the San Francisco Treat! (TM) You don’t even get a copy of our home game! You’re a COMPLETE LOSER!!!

“We can’t have someone in the Oval Office who doesn’t understand the meaning of classified information.”

-Donald Trump, during the 2016 presidential campaign

Since June 8 was not only the day that Pat Robertson died, but the day Special Counsel Jack Smith finally announced federal charges against once-and-future Viceroy for Russian North America Donald Trump, it is that much more a day which will live in Schadenfreude.

That was Thursday. Friday was the day that Smith actually had the indictment unsealed for public release so we could get to see just how many spines are on the cactus that is going up Trump’s ass. When we first heard the news it was around seven charges. The current count is 37. I had heard it was 38. When you’ve got so many, it’s hard to keep track.

The whole series of revelations leading up to Friday systematically demolished all of Trump’s chimerical defenses, including the otherwise plausible defense that he was too stupid and ignorant to know what he was doing. It is perhaps for such reason that people gave his premise that he could declassify government documents “just by thinking about it” a lot more credibility than it deserved. At the very least, you couldn’t prove HE didn’t think that. Not anymore. The indictment says, among many, many other things, that Trump had shown a document referring to a military plan against “Country A”, and told his guests, “See, as president, I could have declassified it … Now, I can’t, you know, but this is still a secret.”

Documents were piled up in various locations at the estate, including a bathroom that had its own ceiling and wall chandeliers. (For the man who has everything.) At one point he had had documents taken with him to a vacation home in New Jersey just to make sure he had physical access to them. On at least two occasions he showed these documents to people without security clearances. The evidence trail indicates that Trump and his staff played an elaborate shell game with not only the National Archives and other government representatives (including the Department of Justice in their subpoena) but with at least one of Trump’s own lawyers, identified here as “Attorney A.” At one point in the subpoena request, Trump asked an attorney, “what happens if we just don’t respond at all or don’t play ball with them? Wouldn’t it be better if we just told them we don’t have anything here?”

According to one of the charges, “The classified documents TRUMP stored in his boxes included information regarding defense and weapons capabilities of both the United States and foreign countries; United States nuclear programs; potential vulnerabilities of the United States and its allies to military attack; and plans for possible retaliation in response to a foreign attack.”

Hey! Didn’t they kill the Rosenbergs for that?

If Trump were somehow convicted of multiple charges, the terms would be served concurrently, but the longest single term would be 20 years. Which is basically a life sentence if you’re over 70 and you eat more fast food than I do. Although as I say, my suspicion is that Trump will die of old age in the next few years anyway but linger on as a zombie for the rest of the century while he ties up his case in litigation with God.

This week was also noteworthy because of the death of Robert Hanssen, a seasoned FBI agent who turned out to have been a major source of intelligence for the Soviet Union. Hanssen served in the FBI from 1976 until 2001 when he was arrested after long-term investigation established he had been selling secrets to the Russians that among other things led to the exposure of undercover agents who were then executed by the KGB. Notably, Hanssen continued selling secrets to the Russian Federation after the fall of the Soviet Union. With the overwhelming evidence against him, to avoid the death penalty, Hanssen made a deal for life imprisonment in 2001, and died this June 5, apparently of natural causes.

If we re-elect Donald Trump, that would be like electing Robert Hanssen president.

If we re-elect Donald Trump, knowing what we know now, we will not deserve to lead the free world, and very quickly thereafter we will NOT be leading it, because all the other nations in that sphere know which side Donald Trump is on.

We would also not be leading the free world because we would no longer be in it. We have seen what his followers want to do if they ever get back in charge. We have seen what he was willing to do to stay in power: Whether you like it or not, he went silent for hours while his followers, acting in his name, riled up by his speech on January 6 2021, the day the Electoral College vote was to be certified in Congress, stormed the Capitol to stop the proceedings, under the impression that Trump was coming there to lead them, beating and breaking and threatening. Well, he wasn’t totally silent. At 2:24 pm, he twitted, “Mike Pence didn’t the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution, giving States a chance to certify a corrected set of facts” – in other words, blaming Pence as Vice President because he would not certify the “alternate” Trumpnik electors versus the ones that had already been officially certified, which he did not have the constitutional authority to do. In other words: Hang Mike Pence. And he would not have been the last.

If Donald Trump is not incarcerated, he is going to turn the rest of America into a prison.

The main reason Trump got elected the first time is because of a unique set of circumstances that will not happen again. Mainly, Hillary Clinton was his opponent, and even the rest of us who hated Trump still hated her guts. Even people like Bernie Sanders who are more leftist than the rest of us still hated Hillary (for that very reason). And even then she might have won in 2016 if FBI director James Comey hadn’t re-opened an investigation on her just before November. And even THEN she might have pulled through if she hadn’t taken so many “firewall” states for granted.

The people who didn’t vote Democrat because they couldn’t trust that Party now know they can’t keep their guard down as long as Trump can come back. Which leads to the other point, the difference between then and now is that people used to think of Trump as the cocky guy on “reality” TV and Comedy Central roasts who almost had a sense of humor and hung out with all kinds of people. He seemed like the reasonable alternative to the Democrat establishment. (Unless, like me, you’d been following his civilian career long enough to deduce that he was going to do to the country what he did to Atlantic City.) Now we know he’s a megalomaniac child with a skull full of oatmeal.

But precisely for that reason, he appealed to that crowd that had become more and more the majority in the Republican Party, the people who jeered at politically active celebrities and an education system that produced what Rush Limbaugh called “young skulls full of mush” without realizing that they themselves were being conditioned by talk radio and 24-hour “news” to see journalism as emotional entertainment. There was always a divide between the Republican “base” and the people they voted for because they would want to ban abortion or affirmative action or something else, whereas the people they voted for actually knew how Washington worked and saw people who disagreed with them as professional colleagues and not as wartime enemies who had to be destroyed by any means necessary. Just as Christ is the bridge between God and Man, Trump is the bridge between his Party and the base, because he’s the only Republican who can credibly pose as both an elitist and a populist. He’s the only guy who can tell both groups, “I’m one of YOU.”

And that’s his angle. Trump’s going to pull an OJ and try his case in the media and not a court of law.

He’s going to put on the poor, pitiful victim act, and it’s going to work on his marks, like it always does, because they see themselves as poor pitiful victims of… something. The deep state. The globalists. The Lizard People. The Elders of Zion. And he is their “voice”, their “retribution”, certainly their role model. The fun in dysfunctional. The Salieri of secessionists.

And keep in mind, these guys are cornered, and they know they are. Despite all their attempts at jiggering the election system, they lost elections in ruby-red states like Arizona and Georgia. They’re on borrowed time. Their whole “great replacement” sense of the world is that people like them are an endangered species, and socially, if not racially, they are. Not necessarily racially, because even cishet whiteys like me are sick of their shit. But they have that general sense of the world already and now they see their spiritual role model, this guy who has shown them they can indulge their worst selves, finally being called to account and they think, rightly, that if it could happen to him it could happen to ANYbody. Which is the joke. It happens to anybody BUT him. Normally when anybody else commits a crime they get at least investigated, if not punished.

And quit with the “Trump Derangement Syndrome” whining. The same Trumpniks who think their innocent little child is the most persecuted man in history scream like scalded cats when somebody brings up Hunter Biden or other Biden family “scandals”. At the Trump rallies, they still chant “LOCK HER UP!” They don’t object to punishment, they just judge on identity, not facts. I judge by facts, not identity.

If homeboy could have just stayed in retirement like Nixon and let the grownups try to clean up his mess, I don’t think anybody, including me, would care if he got to spend the rest of his life at Mar-a-Lago eating well-done steaks and double scoops of chocolate ice cream every night. But no. Trump’s problem is that he just can’t stop doing crimes. He is compulsive. As I said, Trump commits crimes like other people breathe, which is to say, he does so on reflex, without thinking, and if he ever stopped himself, he might die. And we all know the reason for this. Because this is a little boy who never grew up. And that’s because this is a little boy who clearly never got his ass spanked for bad behavior as a child, because he keeps pushing the envelope because he knows he can. After all, no one has ever stopped him before. When he told Billy Bush “when you’re a star, they let you do it” for once he was telling his truth. When you’re a star, you can grab the Constitution by the pussy. Because you gave the fetus fetishists enough votes to kill Roe v. Wade, and because the heads of the networks think you’re an entertaining buffoon who’s great for ratings.

Since Liddle Donnie Clown Boy went down the escalator in 2015, everyone has acted like he’s the God or High Lord of this Star Trek Mirror Universe we’re living in now, and can’t be stopped by anything, but the fact is, he’s been defeated more than once. And now even people who might otherwise agree with him (like Mitch McConnell) ought to know what the stakes are. If you let a megalomaniac child with a skull full of mush have access to our military secrets again, you might as well not even HAVE a country.

Even if his pet judge tries to stymie the Department of Justice case against him, she’s got an 11^th Circuit Court of Appeals over her that has already demonstrated it has no time for her shit. And even if this case doesn’t work out, there’s still the 34 counts against Trump in New York. Not to mention the pending case in Atlanta where Trump is being investigated for ordering the Georgia Secretary of State to just “find” him enough votes to swing the state election.

Again, that’s what happens when you just can’t stop committing crimes.

As someone once said, the dildo of consequences rarely arrives lubed.