Trump curse strikes again

Earlier this week Senator Jon Ossoff made a pretty innocuous comment about Trump's favorite executive assistant Natalie Harp. His comment was meant to be a critique of Cheetolini's lack of interest in doing his actual job: being President. Instead of focusing on important policy issues and maybe finding an off ramp for the clusterfuck he created in the Middle East, Orange Julius would rather talk about drapes for his version of Versailles or the imaginary vandals attacking the reflecting pool on the National Mall. Ossoff correctly noted that Trump preferred to travel with Natalie rather than do any real work.

The MAGAverse flipped out. The response was bizarre. The Reich wing immediately went into overdrive ranting about how Ossoff had trashed the Diaper Nurse by suggesting she and the orange cockwomble were fornicating. It's kind of cute that the MAGAts hold Cheetolini in such high esteem they think that decrepit geezer is capable of fucking anything. Do they see the suggestion of impropriety as proof of Mango Mussolini's manhood? After all, if he and his human security blanket are getting it on it's more proof that he really is the hypermasculine almost a superhero his Truth Social posts keep suggesting he is. 

Let's get real. There isn't enough Viagra on the planet to stiffen the mushroom hiding in Cheetolini's diapers. And if there was it would probably kill him -- Viagra and a bad heart (and Orange Julius is like a textbook illustration for Congestive Heart Failure in an elderly man) do not mix. Granted, it could mean an old dude gets to die happy, but would The Donald risk it? He's definitely sliding into full-blown dementia but he's also got strong survival skills -- and Cheetolini is scared shitless of dying. 

So why do I say "Trump curse strikes again?" Because this is typical inept messaging from Team Trump. If they had all just ignored it anything Ossoff said wouldn't have been news outside Georgia. Instead the rapid response team freaked out and went more than a tad overboard on two things: accusing Ossoff of trashing Natalie and denying vehemently any unseemly genitalia fondling was happening. End result? Instead of a brief mention in the AJC (Atlanta Journal Constitution) a nothing burger turned into a multi-course meal for the national press. And maybe international. I haven't checked Helsingfors Sanomat recently but when a news item is on the front page of every major U.S. paper that news item usally ends up in papers elsewhere. The Trump rapid response team did a great job of promoting a news story no one really knew or cared about before they highlighted it.

So what is the deal with Natalie? It seems likely she's exactly what it looks like: a human security blanket who keeps Orange Julius mellow by indulging his narcissism. She carries a portable printer everywhere so she can produce hard copies of flattering memes, articles, whatever at a moment's notice to placate Cheetolini's ego. She's the one who feeds The Donald's vanity by handing results of bogus polls claiming he's super popular or that the economy is doing great. She guarantees he almost never hears the truth about anything. She's been described by various observers as basically unhinged, so totally obsessed with Trump that she's viewed by security experts as a potential threat (obsessive fans tend to lash out at whoever they've obsessed about when things don't go as expected), but Orange Julius is too dense to realize the woman is a few fries short of a Happy Meal. He loves the flattery so is oblivious to the crazy. Given Natalie's superficial resemblance to Ivanka, it's possible the senile old coot doesn't have a clue who she really is. 

Voting

Our absentee ballots arrived a couple days ago. Michigan's primary is August 4. I suppose I should get the thing filled out and dropped off at the township clerk's office. There's a drop box to use when the office is closed (which is most of the time; rural township with part-time staffing) so no dealing with the post office and hoping the ballot doesn't end up re-routed through Chicago. Mail vanishes for years if it ends routed through Chicago.

I have not actually looked at what all is on the ballot this time. Michigan does an open primary so I have been toying with voting Republican simply because our current carpetbagging Congress critter actually has some opposition. It's not the usual pattern of the incumbent being guaranteed another shot at doing nothing for two years, which is good. One thing that always depresses me is seeing incumbents running unopposed. 

I have no idea just how deranged the person running against Jack Bergmann is -- for all I know he's even farther out in the right wing weeds than Bergmann -- but I figure just seeing that someone is running against Bergmann is a good sign. Even if Bergmann wins the primary I'm thinking it would be nice to make the carpetbagger nervous when he sees opponents got actual votes. 

Bergmann deserves the label of carpetbagger. As far as anyone can tell, he's never actually lived in Michigan. What he claims as his Michigan residence is a deer hunting camp near Watersmeet. Running (and unfortunately winning) offices in states where Republicans don't actually live seems to be a pattern. Mike Rogers, one of the Republicans running for Senate this year is rumored to be a Florida resident, and of course there's the classic Alabama case. Tommy Tuberville (current U.S. senator and candidate for Governor in Alabama) has been accused multiple times of not living in Alabama anymore. He did live in the state when he coached college football at Auburn, but that was decades ago.  

Mike Rogers, for what it's worth, was recently thoroughly mocked in social media when his campaign photo shopped his picture. They took a routine, totally normal shot of Rogers in an outdoor setting, probably from a public appearance of some sort, and decided it would be a good idea to do a bizarre turning an ordinary, slightly portly and definitely middle-aged dude into Conan the Barbarian or some other muscle-bound he-man. 6-pack abs, muscular biceps, the whole "I'm competing in body building contests in my spare time" look. It was bizarre. It drew laughs. 

On the other hand, Rogers can actually claim to have a connection with Michigan. He was born in the downer peninsula, graduated from Adrian College, and was a Michigan Congressman until he apparently got bored with politicking. He left Congress, picked up some gigs doing commentary on CNN and elsewhere, and got himself a comfortable retirement home in Florida. Starting a few years ago, he's been trying to get back into an elected office. He ran for U.S. Senate when Senator Stabenow retired; he lost to Elissa Slotkin. Now he's trying again to win the seat being vacated by Senator Peters.

There was a time when I would have agreed with the Wall Street Journal that Rogers belonged to the sane branch of the Republican Party. Unfortunately, once he started lusting after a Senate seat he decided to chug the Trump Kool Aid and went all in on election denial and other Mango Mussolini obsessions. At this point in time, I'm hoping that Abdul El-Sayed ends up as the Democratic nominee for Senate and goes on to destroy Rogers in the general election in November. I'm probably dreaming about El-Sayed -- he's been endorsed by Bernie Sanders so you know the Republicans are going to be screaming about godless communism -- but a girl can fantasize. 

There are way too many invertebrates out there

For years I've been hearing that the only effective way to deal with bullies is to stand up to them, call their bluff, dare them to do their worst, because as long as they keep getting their way the bullying will just get worse. Apparently way too many people in what one would assume are positions of power are actually spineless cowards because the number of people willing to stand up to the orange cockwomble is depressingly small. Cheeto Mussolini says "jump" and the cowards don't even bother to ask how high. They just comply. 

On the positive side, sort of, the high power law firm of Paul, Weiss is now enjoying a shit ton of condemnation from the legal community for caving in to the Human Yam's demands. Ditto Columbia University. And of course gutless Senator Schumer is getting to see his planned book tour cancelled because it was clear he was going to be greeted by jeering crowds anywhere he was dumb enough to go.

I am, to be honest, totally baffled why so many people who could actually do something are instead doing nothing, or worse. Nada. Zilch. Just a lot of baffled deer in the headlights body language and vague blathering on about the need to be civil and "work with" the Trump administration. Is there a polite way to say "fucking morons?"  

For sure I need to include our state's senior senator as a moron, the spineless idiot who is actually in a position to be confrontational -- he's announced he won't run again in 2026 so has nothing to lose by pissing off MAGAts or Cheeto Mussolini. Trump decided years ago to fuck over Michigan because he hates our Governor, Gretchen Whitmer, so Gary Peters could say or do anything and it wouldn't make things worse. 

There are numerous reports of how unhappy even the hard core right wing nutjobs are with the path of destruction tRump has created, but none of them are willing to stand up to him either. Joni Ernst, the junior senator from Iowa, was making noises about voting against one of Trump's nominees but then she reportedly got some death threats -- and that's when her spine turned to jello. Ditto her colleagues. They all know just how willing the MAGAts are to engage in violence -- anyone who was in Congress on January 6, 2021, got a vivid demonstration of MAGA lunacy -- but if a few of them managed to find the guts to say, screw it, do your worst, most of the MAGAts would just crawl back under their rocks. There are some who are sufficiently brain dead to harass people, threaten them in various ways, maybe even attempt to shoot someone, but the number of MAGAts willing to put their own lives on the line when they're not part of mob is pretty small. MAGAts may be delusional but most aren't totally stupid. Talking big at the local watering hole is one thing; going and actually doing something is different. 

In any case, all it would take is a handful of people with the guts to be the first to tell the Human Yam to fuck off to inspire others to stop cowering and grow some cojones. I don't think it's likely to happen -- the Republican Party has operated under Newt Gingrich rules* for too long -- but I can dream. 

*Gingrich believes the only thing that counts is winning a majority for the party; whatever happens to the country is irrelevant as long as the other party loses.

Turkeys have really big feet

1874 turkey track quilt

I spotted the biggest bird tracks I'd ever seen in the snow recently. I was ambling up the driveway to the Woman Cave when I saw the largest prints I'd ever seen outside of a zoo. My first thought was, holy wah, do the new neighbors have emus? If I'd spotted huge bird foot prints in the summer I'd have thought "sandhill crane" because we have a pair that nest on the edge of our property every year, but in early March? It didn't hit me immediately that lately most of the turkeys I've seen have been single birds, not flocks. 

The turkey tracks were, in any case, a nice distraction from the flaming dumpster fire that is the tRump administration's incredibly chaotic approach to governance. How incompetent do you have to be to think that first telling remote workers that they have to return to an office and then turning around and cancelling the leases on the offices they're supposed to come back to is some sort of genius solution to eliminating waste and fraud? I can understand (sort of) the decision to cancel leases on some facilities, the part-time offices where maybe a representative from the IRS or Social Security visits once a week, but cancelling leases for a national park's headquarters? Which is what the DOGE geniuses did in Arkansas: cancelled the lease on the headquarters for Buffalo National River. I've been to BUFF's headquarters multiple times. 

The park occupied multiple rooms in their leased space in Harrison. All of that space was used, packed full of stuff. The park historian's space alone was crammed with files and books and enough material that it would take several large U-Haul's to empty just that one room -- which does beg the question, where is that material supposed to go? Is it saving any money when the park then ends up having to rent storage elsewhere? Where do the fifty-plus years of park administrative records go? The archeological artifacts collection? The employees who were not fired but no longer have an office to go to? No planning, no thought, just a bunch of mindless Musk acolytes crossing stuff off lists and then bragging about how much they're saving the country by causing chaos. 

I noticed the news item about BUFF because it was (and still is) one of my favorite parks but the Younger Daughter tells me DOGE also hit facilities in Fayetteville, although she wasn't sure exactly what. She's actually been paying more attention to Cheeto Mussolini's antics than I have. She is a federal employee and she does worry about just how safe anyone's job is now. It's easy to imagine tRump deciding entire job categories aren't necessary, like historian or writer. If something doesn't have an obvious immediate resale value, the orange cockwomble figures it's useless or should be trashed. 

Only 202 weeks left to go, assuming we all survive.  

Jackie Sue was right

 

We're fucked. 

I've been watching Cheeto Mussolini and his minions in action since the inauguration. Every time I think they've done the dumbest thing ever they manage to do something even dumber. Planes are falling out of the sky? Not a problem. Just blame it on a nonissue (committing the sin of hiring people who aren't white or male) and say it's all Biden's or Obama's or maybe even Carter's fault. Claiming you're going to eliminate waste in government spending? Solution: fire every low level employee unlucky enough to still be on probation and ignore all the GS-15 dead weight, the various managers and supervisors who have been Retired on Active Duty (ROAD) or Retired in Place (RIP) for years. 

Anyone who's ever had a government job knows about the RIPs.  I think most agencies have slots where the people who fill them are the codgers (geezettes?) who are already eligible for retirement but want to keep getting a full paycheck for a few more years. When I worked for the National Park Service I swear there were a couple parks where the superintendents were already mentally on their bass boat. They were useless as managers. They'd found a geographic location they liked, they had the government move them (the higher in the food chain a position is, the more generous Transfer of Station funds become), help with the purchase of a house (their retirement cabin on the river or on a hillside with a great mountain view), and be bitched about by park staff for the next two, three, or four years. I doubt if any of that dead weight got noticed by the Musk's DOGE tech bros. 

But talking about RIP personnel is a bit of a digression. I'm more intrigued by Musk deciding he needed to re-invent the wheel, and do a piss poor job in the process. Some of us geezers still remember the 1990s and Clinton-Gore. Clinton et al. decided the Vice President should have more to do than attend funerals in foreign countries. Al Gore got tasked with reducing waste and redundancies in government. Spoiler alert: he actually did it. The task force cut the federal government's payroll by a significant amount, duplicate offices and agencies were eliminated. The one I always remember most clearly was in regulating coal mining. The Bureau of Mines vanished. My faith in the tRump administration to always fuck stuff up is so strong that I firmly believe the government will emerge from the DOGE purge with zero funds saved, gazillions being doled out to private contractors, and several new offices, task forces, agencies, etc., created to provide jobs to loyal suck-ups. They may even bring the Bureau of Mines back from the dead. No reason to, of course, but it could make some good sound bites for the orange cockwomble to brag about helping America's coal industry.

The way the Clinton administration's task force succeeded in shrinking government was, of course, to do it carefully. No blanket across the board reductions in force, just a meticulous examination of who was doing what and where. Had Musk possessed more brain cells than a gerbil (or had a shit ton less ego) he'd have followed similar methods. Less trauma, more good press, and for sure no internet memes speculating about the Muskrat's micro penis and/or botched dick enlargement surgery. (Those memes must be comforting to all the broke-ass dudes out there. If the richest man in the world can't buy himself a macro member then maybe being poor isn't so horrible after all.)

Low information voters

The S.O. and I have been trying to get our heads around the fact that the Human Yam managed to win the election despite being an incredibly vile human being and obviously sliding rapidly into full blown senile dementia. Given my usual cynicism I was leaning toward Americans in general being too stupid to recognize a grifter even when he tells people explicitly they're all dumb as rocks. 

My belief in Stupidity as an explanation met with confirmation recently. I was at an event where a group of people were chatting about contacting our U.S. Congressman- a carpetbagger named Jack Bergmann (he's from Louisiana but claims his primary residence is a deer camp here in the U.P.). It'd been less than 2 weeks since the election but a couple people had no idea who Bergmann is. He's been our Congress critter for 4 terms now. He's pretty useless in general but his staff is apparently competent at helping constituents, hence, the suggestion to contact his office. 

So my question is basically just how willfully ignorant do you have to be to not know who the local Congress critter is when the election just happened and we've been inundated with nonstop advertising for months? And if you don't know who the Congress critter is what are the odds you've got a Made in China red hat and think that immigrants are barbecuing cats?

Back a gazillion years ago I had acquaintances from inner city neighborhoods who referred to cats as "roof rabbits." That label always made me wonder about the ingredients in traditional Southern cuisine. You know, is the deep fried chicken really chicken? Made me resolve to stick with just cole slaw and fries if I ever got asked to dine in a local eatery on Chicago's Southside. But, as usual, I digress.

Bottom line is that Americans in general tend to be on the dumb side so the spectacle of them voting for the guy who 4 years ago had most of the country wondering if coffee filters would work as toilet paper wasn't a huge surprise. Disappointing, yes, but a total shock? Nope. 

I am, of course, amused by the MAGAts who think that Donny Convict is going to lower gas prices. Given that his pick to head the Department of Energy is head of a fracking company does anyone seriously believe a fossil fuels executive is going to push for cheaper gas? Right now gas is going for about $3 per gallon. When the price doubles next year you know they'll blame Biden. Or Obama. Anyone but the fools who voted for Trump.

Dipping into the Golden Oldies vault?

I see by recent headlines that Trump has decided to return to one of his favorite themes: Hillary bashing. Or accusing. And maybe I shouldn't just label it as a Trump obsession. For reasons not discernible by rational beings, the right wing in general keeps viewing Hillary Rodham Clinton as being the embodiment of everything that is wrong in their world. When reality turns too stark and actual facts are unpalatable it becomes time to once again Blame Hillary. You name the crime, she has apparently committed it. Nonetheless, she's still walking around free.

I've said it before. I want her superpowers. She is obviously the most powerful person on the planet or its most cunning criminal mastermind, which kind of begs the question of Why did she lose? It's a mystery. 

The love of using Hillary as the grand unifying theory of everything violates a long standing norm Presidential blaming: if things are screwed up now, it's always the former guy's fault. You know, when George W. Bush was in office, if there were issues with anything it was always Bill Clinton's fault, not his wife's. When Obama was in office, the left blamed aWol for anything that wasn't going quite right. So then Trump got elected, and, yes, there were definitely Republicans who blamed Obama for various woes, but there were a lot more people on the right who blamed Hillary. And they're still blaming her for everything and indulging in lock her up fantasies. It's an odd deviation from the standard pattern.

Of course, the truly bizarre part is Trump spent a fair amount of time on the campaign trail back in 2015 and 2016 encouraging the Lock Her Up chants. Then he got elected and did absolutely nothing for four solid years. If there had been a reason to lock her up, it seems like she'd be wearing orange jumpsuits now. But, nope, despite being President for a full term the Donald never quite got around to punishing Hillary for anything. Now he's simply the Former Guy who's busy worrying about how to continue sucking money out of MAGAt bank accounts while dodging process servers. The Congressional committee investigating the January 6 riot at the Capitol, the U. S. Attorney for the southern district of New York, and the New York state attorney general are all getting closer to making Trump's life thoroughly unpleasant so what does he do? Circle back to blaming Hillary. Doesn't make his own situation any better, but it keeps his fan base happy.

I'm going to take this as a sign that he's actually worried about acquiring attire that matches his skin tone. A girl can dream, but she won't hold her breath.

Calm down.

In the past few days I've had a number of friends express concern about the high numbers of Trump loyalists in the population. The usual handwringing is along the lines of "half the people in this country" support Trump, usually accompanied by suggestions that everyone in the mythical "half" would have been part of the mob at the Capitol last week if they could. Everyone knows at least one person who supported The Donald; now they're wondering if that relative or acquaintance is busy building pipe bombs in their basement and planning to assassinate the governor. (If you do know your neighbor is that nuts, call the FBI and let them deal with it.) 

I can understand why some friends are stressed. That huge ideological divide is, after all, the line the punditry keeps peddling, the fretting over the dramatic split right down the middle in the country, the split that doesn't actually exist. Yes, there is some fairly melodramatic posturing from the extremists at the fringes of the political spectrum, but just how reflective of the real world is it? Short answer: not very.

There are two ways to look at it. First, look at absolute numbers. There are an approximately 330 million people in the United States now. (For ease of discussion, I'm rounding numbers to closest millions.) Of those 330 million, less than half actually voted in the 2020 election: 81 million voted for Biden, 74 million voted for Trump, and about 2.5 million voted for various third party candidates. Why did less than half the populace vote? Well, some U.S. residents were too young (about a fourth of the population is under the age of 18), some were too old, some were resident aliens (not citizens), and some were simply not interested. 

Even though the number of eligible voters in the U.S. is somewhere around 227 million, only about two-thirds of those eligible voters bothered to vote -- and this was the best turnout in something like 100 years. Hard as it can be to believe for those of us who get riled up about politics, quite a few of our fellow citizens are thoroughly apathetic. Not everyone has a C-SPAN addiction, listens to talk radio, or always has a news channel on the television. Some have even taken the time to figure out how to set up their feeds on Facebook so all they ever see are bad puns (sorry about the redundancy) and pictures of cats or cows. It doesn't take much work to make sure you never see another post from CNN or Fox again. Quite a few people are content to just coast along, binge watching "Chopped" and figuring things will work out in the long run. 

Anyway, back to the numbers. 330  million yields 74 million Trump voters, or slightly over 22 percent of the total population. Of that 74 million, various polls show that a significant number have doubts about the election results. How significant? Anywhere from 40 percent to a little over 50 percent depending on the poll and when it was done. So if we go for the high side and say 50 percent that means 37 million or so. Of that 37 million, how many are, as mafia films put it, willing to go to the mattresses? You know, just how many are willing to go from griping about the results, calling their state's governor and other officials names on Facebook, and actually get on a bus or join a rally? 

That's when the commas in the numbers move, and move a lot. When women held a rally in 2017 to demonstrate their unhappiness with the election of Donald Trump an estimated million people showed up. When Trumpers held their rally meant to keep their hero in the White House, the resulting crowd was estimated at 7 to 10 thousand. Even most of the people who think there were shenanigans involved with the ballot counting in some states can't get fired up enough about it to bother getting on a bus. Like their hero, the typical Trumper can be real big on talking a lot but isn't particularly good at actually doing anything. The jokes about the insurrectionists at the riot at the Capitol that labeled the participants as cosplaying or being escapees from a Renaissance faire were a good critique: most of the people involved obviously live in some sort of bizarre alternative reality from the rest of us. 

Look at Bison Boy, the cosplaying QAnon shaman who is now sitting in jail: he's a 32 year old loser who lived with his mother and is now complaining that the federal detention center he's in doesn't serve organic food. There were others who were shocked, shocked, I tell you, that the police maced them or handled them roughly. My favorite was the blonde who was crying because police kept her from "storming the Capitol and starting the revolution." You know, please don't hurt me. I'm just here to overthrow the government. Obviously, the phrase "Kent State" has never entered their consciousness.  

In any case, everyone can stop worrying that every other person they see is secretly pining for a second term by Donald Trump. Even in deeply red parts of the country, it's more like maybe one out of ten, and even those people are going to keep their mouths shut most of the time. No one wants to talk politics at Dollar General. 

Then, if we use a different perspective and remove labels, it turns out that poll after poll has found the United States is a remarkably progressive country, which is why (and this is a subject for a different post) I think the political strategists who keep harping on about not going to far left on anything are dead wrong. Most people are remarkably progressive; they just don't realize it. The issues people care about, the things that actually impact their lives, are also things  the majority of us agree about. Most people want better health care, lower drug prices, higher wages, better schools, improved infrastructure, gun regulation, you name it. 

When researchers pose questions in a label-free way, i.e., no identification with a particular political party, the population shows a remarkable degree of consensus. Label something as an idea proposed by a Democrat, however, and suddenly people who thought it was a great idea before are now screaming No Socialism! Label something as proposed by a Republican and the same thing happens, except instead it will be called a gift to the rich or welfare for billionaires. 

The absolutely classic recent example of this is, of course, the Affordable Care and Patient Protection Act (aka Obama Care). The underlying basis for it was a proposal from the conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation. The Heritage Foundation came up with a plan as a counter argument to a single-payer government-run plan proposed by the Clinton administration. Neither idea went anywhere in the U.S. Congress, but the State of Massachusetts introduced a plan similar to the Heritage Foundation plan. At the time, Mitt Romney, a Republican, was Governor. By all accounts, Romney Care worked (and still works) reasonably well.

Fast forward 16 years to the Obama presidency. President Obama's administration puts together a proposal for a plan that would increase access to health care by helping people obtain private health insurance. It is clearly modeled on the Heritage Foundation and Romney care plans; it's roundly criticized by progressives as being a massive giveaway to the insurance companies. Despite it being at its heart a thoroughly conservative Republican plan, it is coming from a Democratic administration. Therefore, anyone who calls him or her self a Republican must hate it. Thus, the Republicans have spent the past 8 years trying to get rid of Obama Care, which they have learned to their horror many of their constituents actually love, except most of them never think of it as Obama Care. One of the more amusing things in watching ordinary people being interviewed is seeing just how many love the Affordable Care Act ("it saved my son's life!!") but are convinced Obama Care is the work of the devil. 

Bottom line: We're actually all a lot more alike than we realize. George Lakoff is right. Framing is everything. 

Is he gone yet?

Barely two weeks to go and Trump will be consigned to the dust bin of history. Or so one hopes. I am so tired of reading or hearing about his latest set of rage tweets. It is my sincere desire (and no doubt the desire of many other people) that on January 20 when the clock hits 12:01 p.m. Eastern Time that Jack Dorsey pulls the plug on Cheetolini's Twitter account. Let him go wandering off to do his delusional ranting on Parler and other sites populated only by the fringe, spaces where no matter what bizarre thing he spouts he'll get the applause he so desperately craves. 

In an effort to thoroughly punish myself in recent weeks, I've been reading Bob Woodward's Fear. It's been my bathroom book, the reading material I dip into for just a page or two at a time. It has literally been depressing the shit out of me. 

I am, however, rather glad I didn't read the book when it first came out. Knowing what I now know and having to live through a couple more years of a Trump presidency would have been way too stressful. Hearing the stuff that is in the book come out in dribbles on the news, like when various figures got asked by the media if they really had said Trump was stupid, refused to listen to anyone, and was so unpredictable it frightened them, was bad enough.

I know Fear sold fairly well when it released. I also know Bob Woodward took a lot of shit for it (as well he should have) just like he did when his more recent book, Rage, came out. I know I kept muttering as I read the book. Woodward was hearing all this stuff about how totally inept and borderline crazy Trump was but he had to be feeding Trump's ego just as much as any of the various other sycophants surrounding the Human Yam just to ensure he still had access to the White House. It's pretty clear he prioritized gathering material for his book a lot more than he prioritized doing any whistle blowing or trying to sound a warning. 

Then again, after witnessing the way Trump's minions complained behind the man's back about how flaming nuts the dude was but kept right on enabling him in face-to-face conversations, no doubt he was resigned to the probability we were stuck with Trump until The Donald either choked on some KFC chicken or his term ended (as it will on January 20). 

Anyway, so what have been the take-aways from Fear? First, Steven Bannon is a genius. He is a total master of the fine art of polishing a turd, because that's definitely what he did with Donald Trump. He took a potential candidate that a whole lot of ultra-wealthy conservatives had serious doubts about and managed to turn that candidate into the Great White Hope the Mercers, Kochs, and others had been fantasizing about since the Reagan administration. Bannon sold a product that should have been unsellable. And why did Bannon do it? He saw Trump as somebody that could manipulated into making real a smorgasbord of extreme right wing fantasies: anti-immigrant, anti-United Nations, anti anyone who isn't white, you name it and Bannon figured he could use Trump to further that agenda. 

One of the ironies, naturally, turns out to be that while Bannon was viewing Trump as a tool for conning other people, Trump was conning him. Bannon fell for the rolling in money billionaire image that Trump worked hard at selling. It's not until the campaign was close to the finish line and Jared told Bannon that Trump didn't have enough in liquid assets to do the ad buys they needed that it sank in with Bannon that Trump wasn't mega-wealthy after all. It was all a front. 

Second, Trump really is completely incompetent. When people talk about him being totally focused on himself, they're indulging in understatement. Trump's approach to the world has never changed: it doesn't matter what the issue is, the only thing he cares about is how it affects him. Will it hurt his ratings? Couple that with complete ignorance about how government works and it is pretty much amazing things aren't a bigger mess now than they are currently. 

As for Trump's current unwillingness to give up, to admit that he really did lose the election, this shouldn't be a surprise to anyone who's observed the man at all. The one consistent fact about Trump is that once he's decided on what is real and what is not, there isn't a person on the planet that can get him to change his mind. He might do some spectacular flip-flops on his own -- one thing that drove his advisers and staff crazy and contributed to the high turnover in the administration was Trump being 100 percent for something one day and 24 hours later deciding he actually meant the exact opposite -- but it has to come from his own musings. People pushing, even when it's someone he supposedly listens to like Ivanka, have no effect. 

Back when Trump won in 2016 I wasn't happy. I thought the man was boor, a egoistic ass, but I figured then he'd at least be smart enough to surround himself with staff who were both reasonably competent and could help The Donald from fucking things up too badly. I was wrong. Trump's ego got in the way. A good leader always tries to have a few people around him who are willing to tell the boss when he or she is screwing up or make it clear why something will not work. Trump did the opposite. He made it clear really fast that it was his way or the proverbial highway. The people working for Trump learned to work around him -- his attention span can be notoriously short if it's not something that affects his ego directly -- and to suck up big time to his face and in public. He never wanted advisers; he wanted acolytes.

Oh well. The end is in sight, even though some Republicans are intent on making that end as messy as possible. Personally, I'd love to see them all nailed for sedition but realize that won't happen. Which is a shame, because it would be really nice to shoot down the presidential ambitions of weasels like Cruz and Hawley. Technically, if an elected official violates their oath to support the Constitution by trying to overturn a legitimate election they can be removed from office. I doubt if McConnell or anyone else in the Senate has enough of  a spine to punish the delusional loons  malcontents but one can dream. 

Dear Trumpers: Please stop sending him money

I see The Donald held his first large rally since losing to Biden a month ago. The rally was being touted earlier this week as a campaign event to support the Republican candidates in the run-off election that could flip the Senate (sort of) and wrest the Majority Leader title away from Moscow Mitch, an outcome the Party of Trump does not want. In short, Trump's job in Georgia yesterday was to promote David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler and not himself. Could he rise to the occasion?

We all know the answer. The rally meant to help the incumbent Republicans cling to their seats turned into the usual Trump "It's all about me" self-aggrandizing monologue. It was apparently one long pity party on the part of the lame duck President. He just can't let go. I'm kind of hoping he included a lot of rhetoric about rigged systems and fraud and don't bother voting because the Democrats are going to cheat and your vote won't count. If he wants to discourage Republicans from voting that's fine with me. I do, nonetheless, still wish he'd just shut up and get back to packing for the trip home to his Florida golf course. 

Please, Trumpers, stop sending him money. He's lost. He might be psychologically incapable of ever admitting in a public forum that he lost, but he lost. The states he's yelled about fraud the loudest in are all states that have Republican controlled legislatures. Those legislatures have certified the election results. They agree Joe Biden won. No fraud, no mystery suitcases full of ballots, no weirdness. Trying to read fraud into a system that functioned exactly as it is designed to do is an exercise in futility. But as long as the e-mails and tweets keep the money flowing in, he's not going to shut up and go away. 

At this point, Trump knows full well he's not going to manage to bully the courts or state legislatures or anyone else into letting him linger in the White House one second past noon on January 20. He's admitted privately that he lost. He's unhappy, depressed, definitely in a bad mood because he's gotten used to the perks of being President. I mean, what are the odds anyone at Fox & Friends is going to take an on-air call from him a few weeks from now? He's also likely about to get booted off Twitter. He'll be stuck posting on Parler and nattering on at Newsmax or One America. And, yes, he'll still have an audience, but he's going to know it's just the tinfoil hat crowd, the rubes he despises because they fall for his cons.   

So why doesn't he simply concede? Why keep pushing his legal team to pursue unwinnable cases? Well, for a start, as soon as he concedes he's admitted the election wasn't rigged. If there was no fraud, no dirty tricks, no shenanigans worth mentioning then he has no rationale for begging his die-hard fans to keep sending money. And, boy, have they been sending money. Trump's base has been believing his bullshit for over 4 years now. They've pinned all their hopes and dreams and bizarre fantasies on the Donald. In their minds, if they just send him a few more dollars, all will be well. The last I heard, he's managed to raise over $400 million with his "help me fight the fraud" pleas. A public concession means cutting off the money flow. 

Oh well. At some point the small dollar donors will be tapped out, and the richer ones will realize they're getting suckered. One millionaire donor has already filed suit to get his $2.5 million donation back because the Trump team's efforts to prove fraud are failing. Once it gets to where the fund-raising efforts are costing more than they're collecting, Trump may not concede but he should at least go silent. One can hope. 

A minor side note: one of the funnier things I've seen in comment threads on social media is the belief on the part of some Trumpers that because the Donald has not publicly conceded that he lost he can stay in the White House as long as he wants. The stupid, it burns and amuses. 

Republicans did it to themselves

The S.O. and I were watching "Real Time" last night. It had been quite a few months since we'd seen either Maher or the show, but I was curious. Maher has a knack for annoying the hell out of me.* I was, however, curious to hear what he had to say about The Donald being stuck in the denial stage of grief. 

Turned out his interview guest was a youngish woman, a blonde (of course) and a lawyer who works for the Trump campaign. She was like a human parrot. She had one talking point nailed down and did not want to let go of it: legal votes. Only the legal votes matter. And of course the Trump campaign is going to be vindicated in court. Maher kept pointing out they'd lost every challenge they'd made, had basically been laughed at or reprimanded by judges, but she was like a broken record. I really hope she's gotten paid (Trump is notorious for stiffing the help) because she earned her rubles. She was unshakeable. Legal votes, got to count all the legal votes.

Bad news for Trump, of course. So far the number of "illegal" votes found, the apparently incredibly rare  invalid ballots, can be basically counted on one hand. In Pennsylvania the Trump team had hyperventilated about a postal worker saying that the postmarks on some absentee ballots had been altered to make them look like they'd been postmarked by November 3. When investigators  spoke with the man he admitted he lied, and in any event the incident would have affected two ballots. You got it. Two. As in "one, two, buckle my shoe." Biden carried the state by something like 50,000 votes. Even if those two ballots had been tossed out, I don't think he was in any danger of losing the state. 

In Nevada the Republicans produced a list of people who were not physically living in the state but voted absentee. The Trumpers screamed fraud. Turned out the list was mostly members of the military whose permanent residence is in Nevada but who are currently stationed elsewhere. So basically Trump's minions were attempting to nullify votes cast by members of the armed services. Kind of an interesting way to thank men and women for their service -- cancel their votes -- but not surprising given the heavy whiff of desperation reeking out of the White House at the moment. 

In Georgia the Republicans tried to claim dead people had voted and provided an example of a man who died a number of years ago. Turned out that once again they were sloppy in their research. The person who voted was the man's widow, a lady in her 90s who is sufficiently old fashioned that she is registered to vote as "Mrs. James. . ." That's what on her ID, and it's how she signed her ballot because the law is clear that the signatures need to match. An interesting side note was the video clip: this elderly white woman made it clear that she didn't vote for Biden; she voted against "the other one." Apparently even some elderly white Southerners have relegated Trump into the category of he-who-must-not-be-named. 

I could go on, but as usual I've done a long intro to a slightly different subject. Totally predictable consequences. Beginning quite awhile ago, the Republicans started beating the drum about voter fraud and people voting who weren't legally eligible to vote: noncitizens mostly. They pushed hard to get voter ID laws passed, and, along with the ID requirements, started making it as difficult as possible to get the paperwork required to get an acceptable ID card. 

When this first began happening, various outraged activists made a lot of noise protesting the suppression tactics. They complained loud and long. They pursued litigation. Eventually, however, some commonsense penetrated. They continued to talk loud and long about voter suppression, but they figured out that if they wanted everyone to be able to vote they had to work inside the rules. So they began helping potential voters navigate the system, get the ID they needed, and get registered to vote. They organized shuttle services to get people to the polls on election day, they went door to door working on educating people about how the system worked. A couple years ago, Brian Kemp was able to manipulate the results of the Georgia governor's election by doing a purge of the voter rolls. This year activists were proactive -- they made sure potential voters would be safe from a repeat purge. I saw enough reminders on social media that I know similar efforts were happening nationwide. 

End result? The Republican party spent 20 years working on making it difficult for people to vote. They made it  close to impossible for anyone who was not a legal voter (e.g., not a citizen) to cast a ballot. Their assumption, obviously, was they'd eliminate the riff raff and only the right type of voter would vote, i.e, white people. 

This year their efforts to guarantee the voting system was secure came back to bite them. Having put a ton of roadblocks in the way -- picture IDs at the polls, only certain types of IDs accepted, really tight inspection of absentee ballots, etc. -- they wound up with an election where voters were prepared with the right type of IDs, complied with the rules for registering to vote, and had made sure they did everything required for either submitting an absentee ballot or voting in person. End result? An election that an obscure office within the Department of Homeland Security (Election Infrastructure Government Coordinating Council ) has declared was the cleanest, least problematic election in U.S. history. No fraud, no hacking, no weirdness. Republicans wanted a secure, safe election system. They got one. Good work, dudes. Too bad the populace didn't vote the way you wanted them to. 

*Last night was no exception. I did spend a fair amount of energy yelling at the television and calling Maher an idiot for his buy-in on the corporatist/centrist line that Americans won't vote for progressives. 

Life goes on

 I went into town recently to put in a few hours at the museum cheerfully communing with PastPerfect, The current cataloguing task is to inventory and scan the gazillion photos stashed in a decent sized Rubbermaid tote. Not sure how many photos there are total, but it's a lot. There's everything from turn of the century (as in the beginning of the 20th, not the end) cabinet cards to fairly recent color snapshots. 

Most, of course, have no labels whatsoever. No dates, no names, no information on where the photo came from. And, of course, there are a lot of snapshots taken by people who were apparently the world's worst amateur photographers: out of focus or so poorly composed (groups of people where all you see are their backs, for example) that they're worthless. The trash can is filling fast. 

On the positive side, every photo that hits the trash is one less to scan. The scanner is not noted for its speed. 

I do know why some of the photos have no labels. At the time they were donated, the museum still had members who knew exactly who everyone was and where the pictures were taken. They forgot no one lives forever so almost none of that information got written down. End result 20 or 30 years later? Stuff gets tossed. Not everything, of course, even if it is unlabeled. Street scenes where the location is obvious, like parades in L'Anse or Baraga, even if the date isn't known because we can come up with approximations based on what businesses are where or figuring out the model years for any vehicles that are included. Now when there are parades they don't allow on street parking but that wasn't always true.  

There was one photo in the stash that intrigued me. Wasn't exactly sure at first glance where the building was, but the year is obvious: 1964. Struck me as an interesting coincidence that as we're hearing about one candidate losing I stumbled across a photo for another. 

I wasn't old enough to vote yet so don't remember much about that election year. The only politics that interested me in 1964 were purely local: a referendum on consolidating two school districts. The district I was in lost: the result was based on total votes in favor regardless of how the individual district's totals added up. The Saxon district was small and rural and overwhelmingly rejected consolidation; Hurley was an actual small city with a lot more warm bodies and for some reason favored it. Not sure why -- a friend who was on the school board in the early '80s told me Hurley was still stuck paying Saxon's debts for the bond issued for a new gymnasium in about 1960. In any case, I went from being one student in a class of nine to being one student in a class of (I think) 131. It was. . . interesting. 

As for Goldwater, his run for the Presidency briefly interrupted his Senate career. He'd served two terms, could not run for the Senate again while also being on the ballot for President, so wound up taking a 4-year break. He then went back to the Senate for three more terms. By today's Republican party standards, his positions would be anathema: he supported abortion rights, thought gays should be allowed to serve in the military, and firmly believed religion had no place in politics.  

Living in interesting times

 

A second morning of waking up and learning that the dumpster fire is still burning, the shit show continues, and legions of lawyers are going to be shopping for Lamborghinis and Bentleys in 2021*. No doubt the Russians and Chinese along with the rest of the world are cheerfully laughing their collective asses off. They say karma can be a bitch. The United States has spent the decades since World War II ended going around the planet lecturing everyone on the right type of government and touting the benefits of democracy, and yet here we are. . . with a wannabe dictator, an aspiring Pinochet or Franco, refusing to follow the rules while busily inciting his acolytes to disrupt normal democratic (as in democracy in action, not the political party) procedures. 

The Donald is pissed that the results of counting absentee ballots are not going in his favor so he's got to cast doubt on the whole procedure. Once again, instead of behaving like a statesman and trying to unite the country he's doing his spoiled 8-year-old throwing a tantrum routine. (A slight digression. I think that's the worst thing about Trump. He doesn't just behave like a spoiled 8 year old, he encourages his followers to behave the same way:  loud, obnoxious, and generally like little kids who are upset no one's telling them how special they are.) 

For anyone who's spent much time observing The Donald in action this is no surprise. We all knew it was coming. He's been using melodrama and chicanery to sustain his businesses and his image his entire adult life. He's always been, as the saying goes, all hat and no cattle. Why so many people bought the snake oil he peddled has always baffled me. Multiple bankruptcies, including having casinos go bankrupt? The man is supposedly a billionaire but he couldn't make money running a casino? 

The S.O. likes to tell the story of how back in the '80s when he was on a traveling crew with Lockheed Support Systems (they did modifications and inspections of military aircraft, both fixed wing and helicopters) he spent several weeks working at the airport near Newburgh, New York. The Donald stored his private jet there. The airport authority impounded Trump's plane because he didn't pay the hanger fees. The man was supposedly a successful incredibly wealthy man but he couldn't afford to pay the rent where he stashed his plane. Think about it. If you scale it down to the level of the ordinary working person, it's like having your car booted because you were short a couple nickels for the parking meter. 

Then when you look at his litigation record -- the quite literally thousands of lawsuits generated because Trump refused to pay his bills. Either he'd try to weasel out of a debt by filing suit claiming work was done improperly or never completed or contractors would sue him trying to get paid for construction work. Instead of simply figuring out how to pay his bills, he spent inordinate amounts of time trying to figure out how to screw people over. 

Trump was pretty successful at selling the image, though. I've been reading Fear, a book that looks at the 2016 campaign and first year or so of the Trump administration. Trump had made a big deal in speeches about not needing outside money, he'd totally finance his run for President himself. Turned out to be total bullshit, but the Republican party insiders bought it. Even Steve Bannon fell for the con. Then when they actually had to ask Trump for money for advertising he stalled and stalled and finally Jared Kushner admitted to Bannon that the Donald didn't actually have much access to ready cash. The supposed multi-billionaire couldn't afford to cough up $10 million for last minute ads. Bottom line: if the media hadn't given Trump a zillion dollars of free advertising with their nonstop fawning over him, his whole campaign would have crashed and burned early in the game. Just like everyone else, the news media got suckered by the entertainment value.

The S.O. has been muttering a lot lately about not understanding how anyone could still be a Trump supporter. Well, it's not a mystery to me. Most people are what pundits like to call "low information voters." The American populace used to be fairly well informed. As a people, we read a lot. Books, magazines, you name it. It was a rare household where no one at least read a daily newspaper. There were multiple publications for men, women, children, you name it. There were multiple news magazines, general interest publications, specialized magazines, etc. And then we as a people got seduced by electronic diversions and decided we'd rather be entertained than actually know anything. So when we saw a scripted "reality" show we believed Trump knew what he was doing instead of realizing the producers laid out the story line. According to the show's creator, Trump's only role was to look successful - he had no actual input into how the contestants were evaluated. He may have gotten to say "You're fired" but he didn't decide who he said it to. It was a role, not reality. Nonetheless, the image of the successful billionaire was thoroughly burnt into America's collective consciousness.  

Although, to be honest, I think the American educational system can take a big chunk of the blame for how easily we can be conned. It spends years training kids to be sheep (shut up and do what authority figures tell you to do) and then we wonder why they're so gullible and willing to believe any weird piece of garbage a friend shares with them on social media. Critical thinking isn't emphasized a whole lot. I have encountered teachers who do actively encourage curiosity and questioning, but not many. In terms of classroom management it's a lot easier to do memorize and puke it back than spend much time on discussion and thinking. 

Anyway, circling back to the subject of ballot counting, just heard a Republican cheerfully lying his ass off about the ballot counting in Michigan. The Trump representatives are claiming that their poll watchers were positioned too far away from the ballots being counted to be able to observe what was on the ballot, implying the ballots were being individually read and tallied by the election workers. You know, the worker would look at the ballot, see what was marked, and then tally that. Total bullshit. The ballots are opscan sheets. The poll workers took the ballots, unfolded them, and slid them into a scanning machine. Any tallies were done totally by machine, not humans, so it doesn't matter at all where the watchers were standing. That type of line is total b.s. intended just to throw doubt on the process. The assumption the Republican spokesperson is makng is that most people won't realize what a Michigan absentee ballot looks like (it's the exact same ballot as the one you get handed at the polls if you voted in person) or how they're counted (the same way the regular ones are). 

And, just like everyone with two brain cells to rub together predicted, in Arizona where the vote is now really close and Biden's lead has narrowed, Trump is demanding loudly that every vote get counted but in Pennsylvania where things are leaning more toward Biden he's screaming there's fraud and shut the count down now. I am so tired of the melodrama, but I just heard the depressing news that Pennsylvania might take another 3 or 4 days to resolve. 

On that note, I'm going to step away from the computer and go hide in the Woman Cave for the rest of the day. 

*At least the ones working for Biden will be able to car shop. Anyone representing Trump had better get their fees in advance or look forward to spending years in court trying to collect from him.

Waco Mammoth National Monument

Waco Mammoth National Monument is one of the newer additions to the National Parks system. Obama signed the enabling legislation in 2016. I'm reasonably sure he wasn't too thrilled about it. Waco Mammoth is an interesting park but would it have risen to the level of national park status without some pressure from Texas Congress critters? I doubt it.

I'm going to be honest. If Waco Mammoth is of national significance, so are Ashfall Fossils State Park in Nebraska and Mastodon State Historic Site in Missouri (and no doubt a plethora of other local and state parks and historic sites across the country). In fact, from what I've seen and read both of those parks are more significant in terms of species diversity and regional history. Ashfall preserves what can only be described as a shitload of mammal fossils, the whole range of animals wandering the Great Plains during the Ice Age. I haven't been there (yet), but the descriptions are pretty amazing. Mastodon also has variety, although the major focus is on mastodons because that was the most dramatic find. Mastodon also has human history --  mastodon and other bones date from a fairly recent time period, a mere 11,000 or so years ago, so the site includes evidence of human hunting activity.

You can't really tell from this photo but that irregular dirt below the viewing platform contains bones from multiple mammoths, including a huge mature male. Painting on wall shows size of an adult male mammoth. 

So what does Waco have? Mammoths. Lots of mammoths, granted, but that's basically it. A nursery herd of mammoths, one lonely camel, one as yet unidentified mammal, and a fragment of a young saber tooth tiger's tooth. Not that the nursery herd is actually on site. Researchers from Baylor University excavated sixteen female and juvenile Columbian mammoths about 40 years ago. The bones are now in storage. What is under the roof of the dig shelter are bones from several mammoths found in the process of preparing to backfill the original dig, including a humongous male who apparently died 30 or 40,000 years after the nursery herd got wiped out.

It is an interesting exhibit, and I have no doubt it is an important site in terms of paleontology. According to the interpretive ranger, the nursery herd is the only one ever found. What exactly killed sixteen mammoths simultaneously -- flash flood? mud slide? -- isn't known, but it certainly gave paleontologists a lot of material to work with. The fact more bones were found of animals that died thousands of years later suggests this particular location may have been periodically rather treacherous, which in turn suggests that if the dig is continued more bones will surface. A paleontologist has been added to the NPS staff so excavations will continue at the usual snail's pace -- trowels, small brushes, and lots and lots of patience make a dig in progress an excruciatingly boring process to observe -- and more good stuff may be found.

Waco Mammoth is, incidentally, one of those places that illustrates why when a member of the public approaches an expert and says "I don't know what this is but it might be important" it pays to look at the mystery object. The original discovery was made by two male teenagers hunting for arrowheads along the bank of a creek that feeds into the Brazos River. They spotted an unusually large bone sticking out of the dirt, knew it wasn't from a cow, and took it to Baylor. The university set up a dig. Sixteen mammoths later they thought they were done. They were also running out of storage space.

Exterior view of the Dig Shelter

When the backfill revealed yet another dead mammoth, they decided to preserve it in situ, first with a temporary tent and then with a permanent structure. The land's owner donated the property to the city of Waco, a nonprofit foundation leapt into action, millions were raised to construct the permanent dig shelter, and the rest is history. The park has sufficient acreage to allow for short hikes, for picnicking, and for the ever popular dog-walking. Some of the most popular (going by the head counts of visitors) parks have high visitation not because the park is intrinsically interesting but because it exists on the edge of a suburb where good places to walk Fido are scarce -- I think there were more dogs at Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield the day we were there than there were humans. But I'm wandering off topic, as usual. Waco Mammoth is a nice little park. Plenty of parking, even for RVs, friendly and knowledgeable staff, and interesting enough that stopping there didn't feel like a waste of time.

I hate fake surveys

As if listening to the impeachment hearing yesterday wasn't depressing enough, this morning the first item in my email was a thinly disguised fund-raising plea from the Democratic National Committee. It was masquerading as a poll and asked if the most hated woman in American (aka Hillary Clinton) should jump into the Presidential race. Unfortunately, none of the choices listed included "No Fucking Way!!"

I know Putin is scared silly by her and she would be a lot better than the Current Occupant, but I also know she ran a horrible campaign last time, neither she or her minions want to admit she ran a horrible campaign, and if past performance is any indicator of future results. . . Everyone on her team was so imbued with the belief that it was her turn that they either totally ignored or took for granted states and groups they really needed to pay attention to, like Michigan and Wisconsin and people of faith. I wonder how many religious voters even knew Hillary is a Methodist and is personally pretty devout? I'd guess zero to none.

In any case, from the discussions I've read and interview clips I've seen, she still hasn't figured out that it wasn't just Russian meddling that caused her to lose. She needs to look in the mirror more.

I wonder if she's working on becoming the Harold Stassen of the 21st century?

Weirdest defense I've heard in a long time

I was listening to the impeachment hearings off and on yesterday. Admittedly, I didn't hear the entire thing, but as far as I could tell the Republican defense of President Trump's behavior comes down to:

• 1. Yes, there was an attempt to do something sleazy, but it didn't work so the attempt doesn't count;
• 2. Yes, President Trump would like to get some dirt on the Bidens but so far all he's got are rumors so it doesn't count; and
• 3. It's all Obama's fault.

Holy wah. Odds are because the Senate has a Republican majority it doesn't matter much what the House hearings decide, i.e., just how many counts of impeachable offenses they come up with, because Moscow Mitch will make sure none of them stick. Nonetheless, is this the image they really want to project going into 2020 -- the President tried to commit a crime (extortion) but because he's an incompetent doofus it doesn't count? Vote for Trump, the man who's too stupid to know what he's doing?

I do find myself wondering just how many counts the Democrats will decide to pursue. People in general don't seem to realize it, but Trump manages to do something that's technically an impeachable offense on almost a daily basis. You know, despite the phrasing about "high crimes and misdemeanors," an impeachable offense doesn't have to be criminal. It just has to be something that demonstrates you're unfit to hold office.

Abusing the power of the presidency for personal gain, for example, might not qualify as a crime in the same way encouraging a burglary did back in the days of Watergate, but openly promoting your son's book so he'll sell more copies is certainly an abuse of power. Encouraging people to patronize his resorts is an abuse of power. Inciting his supporters to commit violent acts is both an abuse of power and possibly criminal. Trump has such a bad habit of opening his mouth, babbling incoherently, and then inserting his foot that if the Democrats really want to they can come up with a list of counts that will run longer than a typical CVS drugstore receipt. Keep in mind that one reason (9 counts worth) that Andrew Johnson wound up impeached was he fired a cabinet secretary Congress thought he should keep. Not a crime, but it pissed enough Congress critters off that Johnson almost wound up out of office.

Heck, Trump doesn't even have to open his mouth. All he has to do is continue tweeting out stupid stuff while in the john in the wee hours of the morning.

But, circling back to the three approaches the Republicans seem to be taking (extortion attempt failed, Trump's so dumb he shouldn't be held accountable, and it's the Obama administration's fault), the last one amused me the most. That's the fallback for every Trump supporter, just like it is for Trump himself. The only thing missing was an explicit reference to Hillary's emails.

I hadn't planned to listen to much of the hearings, but after listening to Daniel Goldman's skillful questioning compared with the poor sap (Steve Castor) laboring for the Republicans I may have changed my mind.  Goldman is good; he was a prosecutor targeting mobsters and Wall Street cheats. He knows how to craft questions. Castor, on the other hand, had obviously been instructed by his Republican bosses to hammer the talking points (Biden, Biden, Biden), which is why I was a bit surprised we weren't treated to Hillary's private server. Poor bastard. Just how many times can you claim the Democrats did something nefarious in the 2016 election when the Democrats lost?

There is actually a distinct contradiction there, the usual cognitive dissonance from the right that we've all come to expect: Trump's bad behavior a few months ago doesn't count because it didn't work, but it's real important to investigate something that might have happened three years ago and failed. How do they manage to push two mutually exclusive ideas without their heads exploding?

In any case, I got the impression that between them Daniel Goldman and Adam Schiff have come close to putting some of the dumber Republicans through the rhetorical equivalent of a wood chipper. And this was just the first day.

Times have changed

For some bizarre reason I woke up thinking about politics, a topic I've been studiously avoiding in the interest of preserving my sanity. I'm going to blame the book about John F. Kennedy I've been slowly reading for the past couple of months. The book, An Unfinished Life by Robert Dallek, goes into excruciating detail about JFK on both the personal and political levels. Which is why it's been slow going. I love trivia as much as the next person, but I tend to zone out pretty fast when it comes down to describing Cabinet meetings down to the level of one step away from details like the design of Schlesinger's tie or what type of shoes Bobby Kennedy favored.

Nonetheless, overkill on minutiae notwithstanding, it is an interesting book. At this point the author has gotten Kennedy et al. up to early in 1962 and the political calculations involved in trying to ensure the right type of Democrats end up elected to the House and Senate. Kennedy wants more allies in Congress so he can get the legislation he wants passed actually passed. Democrats did enjoy a majority in both houses at the time, but that didn't meant they automatically approved everything the President wanted. A number of things Kennedy pushed for (Medicare, stronger civil rights legislation) did not in fact get passed until after his death.

But that's not what I was thinking about this morning. Nope, what was on my mind was the current slowly shrinking crop of potential presidential candidates. I have no problem with the large pool of wannabes. I was pretty happy to see that most of them are not old enough to be on Medicare and actually enjoy a strong chance of staying healthy through a presidential term and not drifting into senile dementia like the Current Occupant of the White House. It does annoy the bejesus out of me that the media want to stay focused on the frelling geezers -- shouldn't Bernie's cardiac event and emergency stent insertion be a huge red flag that it's not a good idea to back candidates who are so old they no longer buy green bananas? Let's face it. The top three candidates in terms of media hype are all ancient.

Okay, so Warren isn't quite as ancient as Bernie and Biden, but she's also Not Young. She's not even middle-aged. She's elderly. People hesitate to have grandparents who are in their late '60s babysit toddlers. Why would anyone want another geezer (geezette?) in the White House?

I was also thinking about how damn early this whole process started. The Human Yam had barely finished bitching about the vote count being wrong and that the crowd at his inauguration was so bigly there'd never been another that came close to being so bigly before potential nominees were out in Iowa kissing up to hog farmers and ethanol producers. I swear the jockeying for position for running in 2020 began before they'd even finished counting the votes in 2016. And then every other day (or so it seemed) for the past 2 years we've had another presidential wannabe crawling out from under obscure rocks around the country.

I have no complaints about the way the Democratic National Committee decided to structure the winnowing of the gazillion candidates in their attempt to figure out who the actual strongest contenders are except for one thing: Why the hell did it all start so early? 

By the time the actual election gets here. . . fuck, by the time the first primaries roll around. . . people are going to be so burnt out on hearing about the 2020 election that the only people going to the polls will be the True Believers, the fanatics, the fringes of both parties. The few sane Republicans running against Trump won't have a prayer, especially when they don't have a lot to recommend them to begin with. And the Democrats? I have a hunch the progressives who want Medicare for all are still going to be a lot more committed to voting than the ones who lean toward preserving the status quo (translation: Biden will be toast).

Which brings me back to JFK. He did some quiet exploratory stuff, mostly speaking engagements around the country, but dodged questions about presidential ambitions until the 1960 general election was less than a year away. Do you know when he formally announced his candidacy? The first week of January 1960, approximately ten months before the election. I repeat, ten months. 

Other potential candidates were equally quiet, with the possible exception of Adlai Stevenson. Stevenson, despite having been kicked to the curb twice by voters, cherished fantasies of being the nominee a third time. In retrospect it seems hard to believe anyone seriously considered giving him another shot at it but apparently a lot of people thought he could beat the obvious Republican choice, Eisenhower's vice president, Richard Nixon. I find myself thinking that would make an interesting alternate history novel. What if Stevenson had been the nominee? What if Nixon had won in 1960? When I have thoughts like that, I kind of wish I was either more creative or more ambitious -- the possibilities are intriguing.

But, as usual, I digress. Bottom line is campaigning for elections in this country now starts way too soon. We need to reform the whole system. Eliminate the electoral college, get rid of corrupt campaign financing, and shorten the lead time. If politicians want to network and maneuver for position behind the scenes, fine, but don't make the rest of us listen to them until the election is a whole lot closer than it is now. Is there some way to return to the infamous smoke-filled rooms while most of us get to live in blissful ignorance until the countdown to the election is measured in weeks instead of years? 

The circular firing squad is at it again

Part of me is thinking, holy wah, we really are carrying this whole everyone's a victim and we must listen to every woman and totally, totally validate whatever it is they're feeling thing much, much too far. Another part is going, oh, crap, there's a typo in that meme and do I have the ambition to try to redo it with a similar sentiment? (I think we all know the answer to that one.)

In any case, why, dear god, why when various supposed allies of the left like Trevor Noah -- who does a real good job of trashing Cheetolini on a regular basis -- talk about Biden and his penchant for invading personal space do they only focus on the women? There are a gazillion photos out there of Biden being an equal opportunity inside one's comfort zone offender. Let's face it -- Al Franken doesn't look real thrilled about Biden whispering sweet nothings in his ear. I know a lot of guys who would also feel totally creeped out or repulsed by someone being as much of a hugger/shoulder-patter/top of head kisser as some women say they were when Biden got touchy-feely with them. Why is the invasion of personal space only an issue for women? Isn't this an issue for all of us? Do dudes really want other dudes slithering up and giving them uninvited or oddly personal hugs?

In any case, it is definitely time for fellow liberals to stop piling on Biden as if he'd committed some truly heinous crime. Yes, he's been overly familiar with a gazillion people over the years, but so what? He hasn't been grabbing at boobs or playing grab ass; he's doing what even the women who say they felt uncomfortable classified as "nonsexual" and "not assault." They just didn't like having their space invaded. I know the feeling, but I also think it's really weird that no one bothered telling Uncle Joe they felt a bit creeped out at the time he did the stuff instead of many years later. What's the point other than to torpedo his possible plan to run for President? I mean, you don't punish a puppy for pissing on a rug a year after the event so what's Biden supposed to learn now? Were they hoping he'd get so distracted thinking back over the thousands of friendly hugs he's given and wondering which ones fall into the creepy category that he'd forget about presidential fantasies? Biden has a long and definitely mixed political history that combined with his age (ancient) makes him remarkably easy to derail as a candidate. Why bother to make him feel bad about the fact he's an unabashed extrovert who genuinely likes people?

I'm starting to think maybe it's time for us all to start emulating some other cultures that put a real premium on respecting personal space. Let's take a long hard look at Finland. Finns are known for their reticence, for their reluctance to become overly familiar too quickly. It's ingrained in the culture. The S.O. and I have been watching Finnish television programs and one thing we noticed is the way Finns build distance into even their work relationships. (Or maybe especially their work relations.) At the office when they ask about other colleagues it's never "Where's John" or "Where's Maria?" It's "Where's Nurmi?" "Where's Peltola?" It's surnames only. Built-in formality.

One for the Ol' Buzzard

How to ensure your political party dies

I did not watch the State of the Union address. It doesn't matter who the President happens to be, I never watch that speech because it's just pure political theater. It has, however, been interesting watching and listening to the after-the-fact responses.

Older Republican men seem to be especially flummoxed by the Democratic women. The amount of ignorance, sexism, and just plain out-of-touch-with-the-real-world bloviating has been a tad unreal. One dude was blathering on about, more or less, "what was with all that white? They looked like the KKK." Holy shit. The stupid, it burns*. Apparently that dude did not bother to listen to any of the women when in the days leading up to the State of the Union they explained  they were going to wear white to honor the history of the suffragettes who pushed for voting rights. No mystery, just a clear cut homage to the women in the past who made it possible for women to be in Congress and the Senate now.

Other male pundits and political establishment men didn't go quite that far into the depths of displaying their ignorance, but there has been an astounding amount of condescension and mockery. Lots and lots of thinly disguised "Oh, how cute. Look at the little girls playing at government." The news media is starting to call the middle-aged white dudes out on their cluelessness and rudeness, but the guys still don't get that they're digging their own political grave. A former Republican Congressman kept referring to Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez as a "barista," for example, and a reporter  chastised him for not treating Ocasio-Cortez with the respect any elected representative deserves. The Republican's response? He changed the subject. That type of clueless, belittling behavior emphasizes to anyone watching just how misogynistic the current Republican party is. And the more they do it, the more they sneer at women and belittle people like Ocasio-Cortez, Kamala Harris, and Ilhan Omar, the easier it becomes for activist groups like Emily's List to recruit more women to run for office.

One reason the Republicans did poorly at the polls in November 2018 is they're managing more and more to be see as the party of out-of-touch, stupid old white men. They used to be able to count on one group of women -- college educated whites -- but even they're jumping ship. If the GOP can't attract minorities of any color, and they're losing women, what's left? Sooner or later the supply of not-very-smart white guys is going to run out. Every so often someone in the GOP will point this out, but apparently the old dudes in office now figure it's not their problem: they're already guaranteed a pension and a cushy lobbying job if they're voted out, so why worry if the party as a whole goes the way of the Whigs?

*The dumbest remark at all may have come from Don jr who criticized Ocasio-Cortez for not wearing a flag lapel pin when, with the exception of the President, no one in the Trump family bothered to wear one either, including Don jr.