Every accusation is a confession

The Republican nominee for President is losing his shit over the fact that he hasn't been able to kill the legal proceedings against him and that the public is learning more about what he did while criming. Here's one of his latest rants from "Troth-Senchal," his failing social media platform:

The release of this falsehood-ridden, Unconstitutional, J6 brief immediately following Tim Walz’s disastrous Debate performance, and 33 days before the Most Important Election in the History of our Country, is another obvious attempt by the Harris-Biden regime to undermine and Weaponize American Democracy, and INTERFERE IN THE 2024 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION. Deranged Jack Smith, the hand picked [sic] Prosecutor of the Harris-Biden DOJ, and Washington, D.C. based Radical Left Democrats, are HELL BENT on continuing to Weaponize the Justice Department in an attempt to cling to power. “TRUMP” is dominating the Election cycle, leading in the Polls, and the Radical Democrats throughout the Deep State are totally “freaking out.” This entire case is a Partisan, Unconstitutional, Witch Hunt, that should be dismissed, entirely, just like the Florida case was dismissed!

There's one true nugget in that rant, though it is festooned with inappropriate capitalization: the upcoming election is, indeed, the most important presidential election in history (because if this clown wins it, America as we know it is over). Everything else is typical Trumpian horse excrement. But it does illustrate continuing patterns, including the projection of his own past and planned wrongdoings and criminality onto his opponents.

"Falsehood-ridden" is a kind term to describe nearly anything Donald Trump says in any context. Projection.

"Unconstitutional" is in some ways meaningless coming from him, as he had no idea what the Constitution says aside from a cherry-picked sentence here or there, but violating the Constitution is like breathing for Trump. He violated his oath to it countless times during his term in office. Projection.

I will agree that Governor Walz's debate performance was less than perfect, but he held his own, while VonClownstick's own debate performance was staggeringly awful. Projection.

The nearness to the election of the release of the legal brief he's talking about is his own fault, aided by the three Supreme Court Justices he installed. Trump and the super-majority of corrupt Justices caused the delays that brought things to basically a month from election day. Not quite projection, but certainly gaslighting.

Interfering in the 2024 election is and has always been his plan. Just listen to him tell people at his rallies that he doesn't need their votes, that he already has "plenty of votes." Why doesn't he need their votes? Because his plan is to ignore votes and cheat, and he has minions in swing states creating obstacles to voting and putting thumbs on the scales and introducing chaos to the proceedings for the purpose of making voting unreliable and suspect. Projection.

"Radical" Democrats? Please, this guy is an authoritarian fascist. Projection.

"Witch hunt" is a favorite term of his, used apparently without intended irony; investigations of his criminality are backed by mountains of evidence, but his own attempted takedowns of Joe Biden, Hunter Biden, Alvin Bragg, Anthony Fauci, and who knows how many others—even Mark Zuckerberg, of all people!—are based in nothing more than the whining grievances of a bully not permitted to bully with unchecked impunity. Projection.

Finally, weaponizing the Justice Department is one of Donald Trump's core policy planks. He's attempted it (both successfully and unsuccessfully) during his term in office and he promises to do it again, this time without pesky DOJ officials that tell him he can't do it. Massive projection.

On that last point, the New York Times—a publication that for some reason refuses to acknowledge the reality of Donald Trump's anti-American fascist dictator-worship—surveyed a number of former DOJ officials about Trump's plans for weaponization. I turn the analysis of that piece over to the great Craig Calcaterra:

The Times spoke with 50 former top officials from the Justice Department and the White House Counsel’s Office to try to game out how Donald Trump would, as he promises he will, use the FBI and the DOJ to go after his political enemies should he be elected. The upshot of these people’s opinion:

Forty-two of the 50 former officials said it was very likely or likely that a second Trump term would pose a significant threat to the norm of keeping criminal enforcement free of White House influence, a policy that has been in place since the Watergate scandal.

Thirty-nine of 50 said it was likely or very likely that Trump, if elected, would order the Justice Department to investigate a political adversary. (Six more said it was possible.) This, too, is something presidents don’t do.

The respondents were more split on how the Justice Department would respond. Twenty-seven of the 50 said it was very likely or likely that career prosecutors at the DOJ would follow orders and pursue the case. Thirteen said it was possible. Nine said it was unlikely or very unlikely.

Some of the people the Times spoke to blithely assert that Trump wouldn’t do this or that, even if they cannot point to formal mechanisms barring him from doing so. Indeed, they believe that people in the FBI and Justice Department would somehow do the right thing and stop Trump from doing what he says he wants to do. I cannot for the life of me understand how anyone who lived through Trump’s presidency can believe such nonsense but I suppose it’s pretty easy to be a Pollyanna about such things when you’re otherwise comfortable.

Personally, I prefer to believe what I see before my very eyes. And what I see is a man who has vowed to weaponize the Justice Department to go after his critics and enemies and has further vowed to use shock troops to round up minorities — including immigrants with legal status — and place them in concentration camps and subsequently deport them. A man who has promised to stretch the powers of the presidency in ways not seen in our lifetime. A man who, thanks to our corrupt Supreme Court, can now be confident that no one will be able to challenge his doing so. Again: this is not conjecture. He has openly and repeatedly promised this. He has promised to usher in what is, by any rational definition, authoritarianism and fascism.

This is not some conspiracy theory about a covert plot. It is not hidden. Donald Trump is saying it loud and clear. Most of the people who know how the system works believe he’ll do it. We had best listen.

I make it a point never to argue with Craig when he's right.

Tagged Politics, President VonClownstick, Craig Calcaterra   |   Posted on October 4, 2024 at 8:47pm   |   Permalink   |     |  

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The Veep Debate and Wild Card Playoffs

Left: Literal evil. Right: Metaphorical evil.

I really tried to watch the whole thing.

Well, "really tried?" I mean, I could have pushed through. I chose not to for the sake of my blood pressure and my downstairs neighbor, who was probably sick of my screaming "go to hell you lying son of a bitch/smarmy troll/piece of excrement" etc. every two minutes or so.

But I turned it off, "it" being the so-called debate between Vice-Presidential nominees Tim Walz and J.D. Vance. Had I kept on, I would have seen Walz be better; early on he was obviously nervous and appeared out of his depth, but I know from post-debate analysis and the slew of clips that made it around the Internet and cable news that he improved markedly in the second half. Had I kept on, I would also, however, continued to see Vance pour on the bullshit in such a slick, phony faith-healer way, with an abundance of the sort of charm you might find in a sociopathic used car dealer determined to have you drive this lemon off the lot and be happy you did it.

Vance is like a lot of modern-day Republicans in that he can seemingly get away with saying the vilest, most repugnant things so long as he says it in a calm, thoughtful-sounding tone. The film Vice captured this in its portrayal of Dick Cheney, but it's the same schtick you hear form Bill Barr, Kevin McCarthy, even Steve Bannon (though his weird triple-shirts get in the way of seeming sane). But there was Vance, claiming in a calm tone with as straight a face as he could muster that Donald Trump saved the Affordable Care Act (when he actually tried his damnedest to destroy it), peacefully left office (when he actually incited an insurrection to try to stay in power), and didn't crash the economy (when he in fact presided over a massive manufacturing recession, waged a trade war that cost taxpayers billions, and so botched a global health crisis that everything went into the tank not to mention cost hundreds of thousands of lives). The smarmy, lying, weasel. And there were the alleged journalists acting as "moderators," treating a 35-year-old misstatement on a matter of no importance by Governor Walz with the same heft and importance—greater heft, arguably—than the mountain of deceit, lies, gaslighting, and revisionist history being spouted by the opposing campaign on a daily, nay, hourly basis.

Fortunately, it seems the public saw through Vance's facade of crap and credit Walz with authenticity from the event. I admit to being a little surprised at that, given how easily manipulated 70+ million people were in the 2020 campaign. The stakes being what they are, it's no wonder Governor Walz was nervous stepping onto that stage and thank god/fate/whatever he was able to hold his own against Weasel McPantsonfire.

Anyway, I couldn't take it, so I switched over to baseball.

This is now the third year of the "Wild Card Series" in the Major League Baseball postseason and I remain against it. We did have, for the first time, one series go the distance of three games, with the New York Mets pulling out a come-from-behind win to move on earlier this evening; meaning in the 12 WC series to date, the team that did not advance was won one game and the team that lost the first game has advanced zero times. You might say the sample size is still too small, but I say that pretty much negates the argument some had been making about the previous one-and-done Wild Card game setup being somehow less fair than a best-of-three, like we have now. And, illustrating another glaring flaw in the system, the division winners forced to play on the same level as the Wild Card teams were both ousted, meaning that now a division winner has been eliminated before the Division Series 2/3 of the time. (Not that I'm sad to see Houston lose, though. That's a silver lining this year.)

I've gone on at length before about how this is a dumb system that Commissioner Manfred has saddled us with and how it could be better, so I'll go on here only briefly. But it stinks for the fans in Milwaukee to see their team, which dominated its division all year long, bounced out in consecutive years by teams that won nothing in the regular season. Finishing first needs to actually matter. Advancing as a Wild Card team needs to be harder. Again, briefly, if we must have these stupid expanded playoffs, I want to see (for practical reasons only) four WC teams per league instead of three; all division winners skip the WC series; and no offdays for WC teams. Play the day after the regular season to winnow four WC teams to two, survivors play the next day to determine who gets the single WC berth in the Division Series, then straight in to the DS without any rest, meaning any WC team to advance to an LCS needs a deep starting rotation and a capable bench. Also, as a side benefit, this shortens the arguably-disadvantageous layoff for the "bye teams" (division winners) by three days. 

Too obvious?

Anyway, it is what it is this year, and we get an 8-team bracket of finalists with no obvious rooting interest for your's truly. Do I support Detroit as the upstart come-from-nowhere surprise club? The loaded lineup and battered pitching staff of the Dodgers? Cleveland's a possibility now that they've rebranded away from racism; rookie manager Steven Vogt and star power in José Ramírez and Steven Kwan are certainly appealing. KC has Bobby Witt Jr. and a lot of moxie. I don't know, I guess it'll take shape in my head as the series get underway. But I do agree 100% with Michael Schur of The Poscast: No matter how "appropriate" it may seem for the World Series to feature two megastars against each other in Shohei Ohtani (Dodgers) and Aaron Judge (Yankees), there is no universe in which the Yankees deserve another pennant, not for decades to come.

Tagged Politics, Baseball   |   Posted on October 4, 2024 at 2:25am   |   Permalink   |     |  

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Demolition derby

I had umpiring to do last night, so it wasn't until the wee hours of this morning that I finished watching last night's debate between VP Kamala Harris and convicted felon F*%face VonClownstick. It wasn't perfect, there were things I was disappointed not to see, and of course I spent too much energy yelling at the TV when the man in the swirly combover was spewing bullshit at us. (So much so that about ten minutes in I got a text message from my neighbor downstairs asking, "catching up on the debate?" followed by a screaming emoji. I toned it down after that because she's one of these freakish morning people who goes to bed early.)

Although I don't think it started out strong for anyone, by maybe 20 minutes into it I was starting to feel like this was going to be a game-changer in a good way. The vice-president brought the goods and delivered some effective smackdowns while also elucidating sound policy on a number of topics, all the while getting so far under the convicted felon's skin that by the end he was almost screaming into his mic in a barely-contained rage.

I'm anxious to see new polling in a week or so to see how this will change the state of the campaign. But for now I'm pleased that the event generated quite a few potential video clips for use in ads, showed the viewership that Kamala Harris is a calm and collected person with plenty of smarts and savvy, and provided such a clear contrast between sane and small-d democratic vs. unhinged delusional nutjob.

These are my two favorite bits from the event. The first is VP Harris forcefully rebutting the absurd claim that "everybody wanted" Roe v. Wade overturned:

 

 

And this is Harris schooling her opponent on Ukraine and NATO:

 

 

What I wished for and didn't get—and for which there was a teed-up opportunity, a hanging "hit me" curve taken for a strike—was for someone, either a moderator or Harris, to either ask Trump how tariffs work or simply point out that even after being president for four years and enacting several, Trump has no understanding of what tariffs are. He seems to genuinely believe that imposing a 20% tariff on, say, Chinese goods means that China pays a fee equal to 20% of what they sell to American companies. Even though when he had his little "trade war" with China no such money was collected because THAT'S NOT HOW TARIFFS WORK. I want someone, somewhere, on camera, to corner this idiot into explaining how he thinks tariffs work. He's basing his entire economic policy, such as it is, on massive tariffs on imported goods and he doesn't understand what that means. The topic did come up, but it was the vice-president that raised it and called it a proposed "Trump sales tax," which is what it would effectively be; when Mango Mussolini responded it was just to spout his idiocy that "other countries will pay" and he wasn't challenged on it before things moved on.

Just for clarification to any who need it: A tariff is a fee imposed on AMERICAN BUSINESSES that import whatever product the tariff is targeting, and those businesses pass the fee along to the end consumer in the form of raised retail pricing. The intention is to discourage the purchase of foreign goods when the government would prefer similar American-made goods have greater market share, so American manufacturing is boosted and American labor is used for those specific goods Americans purchase. The foreign option is still available, it's just more expensive TO AMERICANS as a deterrent. (In practice, American manufacturers sometimes raise their own prices to match, thus defeating the purpose.) The foreign manufacturer may be hurt by decreased export sales—or not, if they make up the sales by exporting elsewhere—but they pay NOTHING to the United States. If a tariff is placed on a type of product that doesn't have a similar American-made analogue, or products that American manufacturing can't scale to, it amounts to nothing more than self-generated inflation. 

Another thing I wanted to hear more about was Trump's call for deportation camps, but I get why that wasn't a focus; immigration was Trump's go-to whenever he felt like he needed to change the subject, which was often, so no need to give it more oxygen.

Anyway, it was a good night for the campaign and I eagerly await evidence in the coming weeks of how/if it moved the needle for the electorate. I mean, how this even remotely a close race I can't fathom.

Tagged Politics, President VonClownstick, Kamala Harris   |   Posted on September 11, 2024 at 6:27pm   |   Permalink   |     |  

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Gun culture

There was a school shooting yesterday. Again. Four dead.

There was a dude firing a gun along Interstate 5 and wounding six people, at least one critically.

Four people were shot dead on a Chicago El train.

Five people were shot at a parade in Brooklyn.

A guy broke into a Birmingham, Alabama, apartment and shot four people playing cards, killing one.

Someone opened fire in a parking lot outside a bar in Nashville and wounded several people.

Two mass shootings in Ohio on the same day, one in Cleveland and one in Dayton.

All this since September first. A span of four days.

And yet nothing will be done about it.

Oh, suspects will be arrested, victims will be treated or eulogized, families will grieve. That stuff will "be done" about it. But nothing will happen to address the causes of this uniquely American problem of gun violence.

I know nothing will be done because nothing has been done. We've been living with this situation for decades—correction, most of us have been living with it, some very much not—and all we get from the people empowered to take action are meaningless "thoughts and prayers" and completely nonsensical, idiotic comments like this one, from Georgia governor Brian Kemp after yesterday's murders: "Today is not the day for politics or policy." Screw you, BK, this is precisely the day for policy. That's, you know, your actual job.

Some people in leadership positions want to do something. Assault weapon bans, stricter background checks, restricting access to firearms in various ways, these have been proposed in legislation but never with any real chance of passage because (a) Republicans, and (b) ingrained gun culture.

We have a real chance at getting something passed in the nearish future if we elect enough Democrats in November and can then bypass (a). So those of us who survive the inevitable shootings to come in the next couple of years or so might see progress. But I'm concerned about (b) being an insurmountable problem, at least for the foreseeable future.

Gun culture is everywhere in this country. It's in our historical touchstones, it's in our entertainment, it's in our language. It's in so many idioms we don't even notice it. We're basically inured to the idea of guns whether we want to be or not.

Just last night, while I was umpiring, I used the phrase "bang-bang play," which is baseball-speak for a super-close safe/out situation or split-second call made by an umpire. I'd never really considered the origins of the phrase until that exchange, which went like this:

Me (umpire): OUT!

Player: I don't know, man, are you sure?

Me: It was bang-bang, they got him.

It was the joining of "got him" with "bang-bang" that clicked it for me, this is a gun metaphor. I know, should have been obvious, but having heard it so many times in the context of a play on the bases it wasn't.

When estimating a timeframe, we say we're "shooting for" a date. We "shoot from the hip" or "shoot our mouths off" or "shoot ourselves in the foot." The passenger seat in a car is for "riding shotgun." We use "bullet points" in memos. If we're confident about the outcome of something, it's a "surefire bet." Someone who's extra gregarious might be called "a real pistol." We implore recipients of bad news, "don't shoot the messenger." If someone is criticized, they've "come under fire." A quickly-fading fad is a "flash in the pan." If we're on a tight deadline we're "under the gun." If you put off a decision or act cautiously in a dilemma, you might be "keeping your powder dry." If you change your expectations or goals you might be "raising/lowering your sights."

And those are just off the top of my head (an idiom which, so far as I know, has no firearm connotations). Even when there are no guns around, there are guns everywhere. I don't know how we get past that.

Of course, making the real guns a whole hell of a lot harder to come by would be a great first step.

Regarding the latest school shooting in Georgia, I leave it to Jeff Tiedrich to lambast the political "leadership" from that state and their useless "thoughts and prayers."

Tagged Politics, Society, Guns   |   Posted on September 5, 2024 at 7:27pm   |   Permalink   |     |  

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Internet-fame adjacent

Bob Cesca does entertaining political and sometimes nerdy podcasts thrice a week, four times if you pay him

Because I sent him a couple of my Harris/Walz bumper stickers in the mail (and because he liked them, presumably), podcaster extraordinaire Bob Cesca gave me a shoutout on the subscriber-only portion (aka "Shadow Docket") of today's (9/5/24) podcast. Thanks, Bob! He also mentioned my business URL and this site, so hello to anyone visiting because Bob said "starshiptim.com" on mic. There are political posts herein, but fair warning, there is also talk of baseball, which I imagine most Bob Cesca Show listeners don't much care about. (Maybe I'm wrong—if you're a listener and also follow the pennant races in general or my hometown Seattle Mariners in particular, then bonus for you.) Also nerdly things, which probably has more crossover appeal. Anyway, glad you popped by. Let me know if you would also like a bumper sticker. 

Bob did not mention my Presidential Primer project, which may have been because co-host David interrupted him mid-sentence, but for anyone inclined to assist—especially if you are a campaign volunteer/staffer for a Democratic candidate or otherwise know an avenue of distribution that would help—I put this booklet together back in April to educate the less-politically-engaged on the history of Democratic and Republican Presidential administrations. Since then I have endeavored to get it to folks who might be able to put it to use around the country, but haven't had a lot of success in doing so. Please download and share widely. If printing was not such an expense, I would suggest taking copies when door-knocking in swing states, but I know there's likely not a budget for that. Still, have a look and at least spread around the download URL: https://bit.ly/presidentialprimer.

Tagged Politics, Podcasts   |   Posted on September 5, 2024 at 6:12pm   |   Permalink   |     |  

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More journalistic malpractice

Thursday afternoon, ex-President VonClownstick held a "press conference" at his tacky golf motel/stolen document storage facility. The reporters in attendance were treated to exactly what anyone who's been paying attention would have expected: a standard-issue Trump Grievance Whine campaign rally rant, with questions from the "press" that went unanswered and un-followed-up on. But the worst thing about it was not the candidate, it was the collective cowardice/incompetence of the reporters.

Shameful.

It's not a new phenomenon. Reporters have been treating this clown in much the same manner for almost a decade. But what is new, at least to me, is to see a fellow journalist take these worthless reporters down on national TV. That's what Lawrence O'Donnell did on his MSNBC show Thursday night.

Worth a look. It's about 15 minutes long, and then segues into Tim Walz introducing Kamala Harris at a speech to the UAW that, unlike the inane Trump presser, was not carried live on television.

 

Tagged Politics, Journalism, Lawrence O'Donnell   |   Posted on August 10, 2024 at 5:18pm   |   Permalink   |     |  

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We're Not Going Back

I designed the above as a bumper sticker and ordered a couple dozen of them. If you want one, let me know.

I did this because I'm psyched. Like I said before, I did not expect Joe Biden dropping out of the race to result in a non-chaos nightmare, but boy am I glad to be wrong on that one.

Kamalamentom is a real thing, it seems, and I absolutely love the choice of Tim Walz as her running mate. Walz is a relatable guy, military background as well as Congressional and statewide executive experience, and maybe best of all, a public school teacher. As Rachel Maddow put it the other day (paraphrasing), knowing how to handle a high school cafeteria food fight will be a useful skill when dealing with Republicans in Congress.

The pair of them are inspiring, and they have ex-President VonClownstick flailing and melting down. It's got me feeling more optimistic than ever that we'll avoid the headlong dive into authoritarian dictatorship that, though it remains a real possibility, seems more remote.

I heard about the video below—a PSA for a new Minnesota law a few years back restricting cell phone usage while driving—when listening to a recent episode of the Bob Cesca Show, so I went and looked for it on YouTube. I enjoyed it a lot, I think it shows so much of Tim Walz's humor and midwestern charm and "America's Dad" personality that will be a delight on the campaign trail. Please to enjoy.

 

 

Tagged Politics, Kamala Harris, Tim Walz   |   Posted on August 10, 2024 at 12:50am   |   Permalink   |     |  

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Now what?

Well, I didn't see that coming.

Really. I did not think I was wrong when I said Joe Biden isn't going anywhere. But clearly I was, because just before I left for my umpiring shift today he ended his campaign for reelection.

Not much news has broken yet, just the official statement of his withdrawal from the race and an endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris as the nominee. Plus word that several Democratic leaders have also endorsed Harris.

What made Joe change his mind? We may learn that at some point, we may not. I mean, we'll get a rationale sometime this week, I imagine, but I wonder if it will be real or just sanitized for public consumption. Was the president truly convinced this was the best move, or was he essentially forced into it by moneyed interests? Was it just due to polling? If it was simply polling data, then shame on the Democratic Party; the polling is janky and incomplete to say the least, and is more an indictment of the party apparatus' failure to break through the noise and bullshit in what passes for news media these days.

I hope, and I suspect, that President Biden made it a condition of his agreeing to step aside that all the party mucketymucks get behind Harris, that the alternative candidate possibilities that have been thrown around—Gavin Newsom, Gretchen Whitmer, House and Senate leaders—promise not to run and fuck things up. That the condition for his agreeing to not run is the infighting stops. NOW.

It was not so much the president's debate performance that killed his candidacy as it was the subsequent freakout and colossally irresponsible corporate press obsessing over the freakout and ignoring the Republican promises to turn this country into an autocratic despotism. The people freaking out and the press seem to want chaos, as infighting sells newspapers (or their digital equivalents) and generates ratings on cable news, and the last thing we need now is chaos at next month's Democratic Convention. Assuming the decision was not, in fact, based on a legitimate and specific health issue, I have to imagine that President Biden is pretty pissed off right now.

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez posted a lengthy video on Friday warning against pushing Biden aside because of the logistics, the fact that the primary is over, and the fact that Republicans will exploit any chaos that results not just politically but legally, possibly finding ways for critical state ballot decisions to make their way to the six corrupt apostates on the Roberts Supreme Court. Her arguments are basically the same as the ones I've tried to make, and are why I am now freaking out when I wasn't before.

If there is chaos, we're in serious trouble. If it is a smooth, conflict-free (relatively; I mean, we are Democrats) transition to Vice President Harris atop the ticket, then things might start to look good again. But until the convention is over in a few weeks I will be metaphorically biting my nails and spastically twitching now and again in anticipation of a supreme self-inflicted fuckup that ends the country.

 

 

Tagged Politics, President Biden, Democrats, Kamala Harris, AOC   |   Posted on July 21, 2024 at 8:03pm   |   Permalink   |     |  

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Panic never leads to good decisions

It's been two weeks since the horrible, awful, no-good debate performance from President Biden. In that two weeks, the press—most notably the New York Times, but plenty of other outlets as well—has been stunningly irresponsible in perpetuating the panic within the Democratic party. A panic brought on by the two big events the president appeared at after his multiple trips to Europe last month: a fundraiser in Los Angeles and the so-called "debate" in Atlanta. The president was not at his best, to say the least, at either event, appearing tired and softspoken and failing to deliver the kind of tactical rhetoric that would effectively wound Donald Trump. Some Democrats have extrapolated from this that President Biden is too frail, too diminished, to continue running for reelection, and the Times and other media have jumped on it like flies swarming over fresh manure.

We've had two weeks of this and that two weeks of panic has done more damage to the campaign than the events themselves ever could have.

I get that people are scared. Hell, I'm scared. But what we're scared of is not Joe Biden.

Not one person outside of the MAGA cult lemmings, not even the cult's leaders, is afraid of what might happen if Joe Biden wins reelection. No one outside the cult lemmings fears a serious crisis befalling the nation if Joe Biden remains president because we know that Joe Biden is decency personified. Because we know that his vice-president, his cabinet, and his staff are supremely competent people committed to upholding the Constitution and American values and ethical behavior. Because we understand that if it should happen that Joe Biden became unable to continue his second term as president due to declining faculties, those competent people would step in, and should they be unable to convince the president he wasn't able to continue they would put country first and employ the 25th Amendment.

The only people that fear a second Joe Biden victory are the grossly uninformed, the rubes that swallow right-wing propaganda whole, and the racists/misogynists who can't abide a woman minority possibly succeeding to the presidency (and no one should give those people the time of day).

As I've said before, what we fear are stupid people. We fear the tens of millions of voters who behave like Level Seven Susceptibles, mindlessly absorbing Republican misinformation and fearmongering. Most of whom don't really have evil intent; only a relative few of these millions are actually pro-fascism, actually want to see their neighbors rounded up and sent to concentration camps, actually want the courts to continue shredding the Constitution, actually want to see American military troops stationed all over major U.S. cities enforcing a police state. They've just been conned.

That's who is causing the gigantic and potentially suicidal freakout within the Democratic party.

Let's just keep that in mind as we pore over yet more coverage of said freakout and see the freakout spread to our own circles.

I have had three conversations in the last week with friends who are in the Biden-needs-to-drop-out camp. I think they are very much wrong, but I understand why they feel the way they do. Winning this election is critical, and because the news media as a whole has proven itself unwilling to stand on the side of democracy and law and truth, the perception keeps growing that Biden Is A Problem That Can't Be Surmounted.

But here's the thing: it's too late to change candidates. If there were really and truly worries within the party about Biden's cognitive faculties and ability to do his job—real, thought-through evaluations and real rationally-arrived at concern—it would have surfaced when the primary campaign began and the push would have been made then to nominate someone else. But that didn't happen, and now the primaries are over, and the delegates and campaign funds and infrastructure belong to Joe Biden. The only—repeat, only—possible alternative candidate at this point is Vice President Harris, as hers is the only other name on the ticket and she is the only other person allowed to use those funds. (Not to mention the fact that Biden is beloved by the African American community and should he decide not to continue, bypassing his VP would be a slap in their collective face.)

But would switching to Harris actually make the race more winnable?

I've heard arguments that such a switch would galvanize young voters, that it would bring more people of color into the fold, that it would give a fresh sense of "youth" to the race. All of which is pure, unadulterated speculation conjured from an imaginary universe. Might it be true? Sure, maybe. Might it not? Sure, maybe. Those first two arguments in particular I think are specious; younger voters are by far the least reliable constituency year after year, and as mentioned, you risk alienating POC just as much if not more than attracting them by dumping Biden.

It's a matter of the devil you know versus the devil you don't. The potential for utter catastrophe is, in my view, far greater, enormously greater with the devil we don't. Incumbents challenged from within their party always lose. A challenge at the convention would invite chaos. Republicans would have a field day exploiting such chaos.

There is almost nothing I would want to emulate from the modern Republican Party—they are led as mindless drones by exploitative, greedy, power-hungry, fascistic liars with the ethical standards of Pol Pot—but they have illustrated something about the American public that the rest of us should take note of:

No matter how unfit and disastrous for the country they know most of the electorate would find their candidates, they close ranks and fight for him (it's usually a him, Marjorie Sporkfoot notwithstanding), and as often as not, it works.

Richard Nixon won thanks in large part to Democratic chaos in 1968. Ronald Reagan won in large part because Ted Kennedy primaried incumbent Jimmy Carter in 1980. George W. Bush won—or came close enough that it didn't matter—in 2000 and 2004 despite being demonstrably stupid. And Trump won in 2016 despite his litany of crimes and crassness and obvious colossal ignorance. All of these Republicans championed policies that were profoundly detrimental to a large majority of Americans and all of them committed crimes in office (and, to this point at least, got away with them). Except for Reagan—who was able to use his Hollywood charisma to fool people into thinking he was a good guy and, for his reelect, to mask his Alzheimer's—they were also terrible candidates, but the GOP nevertheless closed ranks and pushed them through. (Please see and share my capsule history of the presidency.)

I'm not suggesting that Democrats now employ Republican tactics of lying to voters and conning them into thinking their guy isn't who their guy really is. Not only is that despicable, there's no need for it. Our guy really is a good guy fighting for all citizens, Americans and global citizens as well. He's just old.

No, I'm suggesting Democrats quit fighting amongst ourselves and back the President. Strongly, without reservation, without fretting about age or how loudly he speaks or how tiring the job of President is. Yes, by all means, coach him on better rhetoric to use when campaigning, get him in front of the public and on TV frequently to not only tout his phenomenal record but show the uninformed how dangerous the Republican plan to destroy the country really is. (We also need to remind people how awful the Trump Administration was and that Trump 1.0 was only that disastrous because there were patriotic Americans in government to stop him from taking even more ruinous actions, and Trump 2.0 would have no such patriots to get in his way. But I suspect that's a job for ads and surrogates more than for the president himself.)

All of us have known older people. Some frailer than others, some mentally sharper than others. We all (or mostly all) have the firsthand experience of knowing that only some senior citizens are incapable of rational decision-making, which is what the job of President boils down to. My grandfather lived to be 92, and sure, after he hit 80 he wasn't getting around as easily and his voice lost some of its timbre, but he never lost his faculties. He was sharp at 90, conversing about novels and relating stories of his aviation career and marveling over Vladimir Guerrero's ability to hit terrible pitches. He just spoke with less vocal strength. He had a friend, a fellow ex-pilot, who at 80 or maybe late-70s had physically declined so much he could hardly communicate. For whatever reasons, some people fare better than others, and physical decline from age does not necessarily bring cognitive failures with it. This shouldn't be hard to grasp.

Joe is over 80. Trump is a sociopathic criminal bent on tyranny. Joe has, like all but one president before him, shown obvious signs of age beyond the norm from the stress of being president. When Trump was president, he of course never actually worked enough to stress himself beyond the levels of his previous life of crime and grift, so his aging seemed "normal." Joe can get tripped up by his stutter and his over- or mis-preparation for appearances getting in the way of extemporaneous speaking. Trump will occasionally say something truthful by accident while spewing a torrent of bullshit. Joe is comparatively robust for a man in his 80s in a phenomenally stressful job. Trump is essentially a few Big Macs away from cardiac failure and is lazy as fuck.

This is not only a winnable race, it's a rout waiting to happen if the Democratic Party will just quit rending its garments and panicking over what the stupids might do if they think Joe Biden is an old man.

Focus. Get behind your guy, because he's not going away. Champion him, campaign your asses off, and make it clear to anyone who will listen that Biden's disembodied brain in a jar Futurama-style would still be infinitely more desirable than Donald Trump at any age.

Tagged Politics, President Biden, Democrats   |   Posted on July 11, 2024 at 3:27am   |   Permalink   |     |  

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Court crisis

The six most dangerous people in the United States right now

The Supreme Court has been issuing incredibly bad rulings for two-plus years, but today's was the worst of the worst and has sent me into a fit of anger/frustration/(non-clinical) depression/outrage/terror/anxiety.

I was going to write a big screed about the indefensible and clearly unconstitutional "immunity" ruling but I find I can't focus my outrage into a coherent narrative in the time I have before I have to leave for umpiring. So instead I am going to quote Mary Trump, niece of the criminal ex-POTUS, who rightly is focused on preventing things from getting even worse.

The justices who are trying to make my uncle a king are traitors, equal to the traitors who attempted a coup against our nation and who have been spreading the Big Lie in order to undermine the American people’s faith in free and fair elections. With this immunity decision, they have launched an attack on our most important ideals. It’s a continuation of the 2021 coup attempt, and it’s the start of the next one, not just a rubber stamp for my uncle’s worst impulses and abuses but an open invitation for more .... This was an unjust and anti-democratic decision from a Court that no longer has any credibility and, apparently, no longer believes in its mission to uphold the Constitution. 

Six unelected people have stripped basic human rights from millions of women, destroyed the federal government, and made it almost impossible to hold Donald accountable while coming very close to granting him the powers of a king. It’s time for tens of millions of us to rise up and vote in unprecedented numbers. That’s how we tell the New York Times editorial board to fuck off. It’s how we increase the likelihood that Donald goes to prison or, at the very least, never gets near the levers of power again. And it’s how we start to take back our country from the corrupt traitors on the Supreme Court. 

This [SCOTUS] decision is the end of something and we have a choice: we can be demoralized and stop fighting, or we can use these horrific decisions as a rallying cry—because if we do nothing, the consequences will be swift and unthinkable. If we do nothing, Donald will win and that will be the end of the American experiment.  

So let’s get it together. If we want to save our country and our future and our children’s futures, we have to elect Democrats no matter what. 

This has all been worse than we thought it would be, but we now know it will absolutely get so much worse than we can imagine unless we own the fact that making sure American democracy survives is down to us and no one else.

This is DEFCON 1. SCOTUS is already doing what they can to implement Project 2025, just making shit up so violations of law and the very US Constitution—but only by the "right" people—is permissible.

The Roberts Court has stripped away reproductive rights from American women, stripped away regulatory authority from governing experts in any field, and declared Presidents are above the law so long as they can call their crimes "official." Not mentioned in Mary's great post is that the Court recently also legalized bribery of government officials, so long as the bribe comes after the favor as a "gratuity"; made it easier for frauds to be perpetrated on the Securities and Exchange Commission; stripped away portions of the Clean Air Act, thus allowing even greater pollution from corporate entities; allowed municipalities to criminalize homelessness; eliminated a ban on so-called "bump stocks" that convert guns into machine guns; and said states can gerrymander their Congressional districts as much as they like.

And that's just what I have off the top of my head.

The six justices appointed by Trump and by the Bushes are completely out of control, not even pretending anymore that they are not a subsidiary of the Republican Party, a Republican Party that has thrown its lot in with autocratic anti-American criminals. If we had a Congress without so many Republican enablers of this traitorous behavior, two of those justices—Alito and Thomas—would be impeached on monetary corruption grounds and a third—Chief Justice Roberts—for negligence as well as aiding and abetting criminality in several instances, not the least of which was the impeachment trials of Donald Trump which he presided over and completely abdicated his duties in. The other three are illegitimate based on (a) perjury in their confirmation hearings, and (b) their appointment by a criminal president.

The sooner any and all of these six people are removed from the Court the better. The sooner Congress and President Biden can expand the Court to match the number of circuit courts again the better.

Until then we're in big trouble.

 

Tagged Politics, President VonClownstick, President Biden, SCOTUS   |   Posted on July 1, 2024 at 5:49pm   |   Permalink   |     |  

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Debate debacle

President Biden looks aghast at some of the many, many lies told by Donald Trump last night. We should all know by now that Trump brazenly bullshits about everything, so the startled face did the President no favors. He should have expected the spewing fountain of dishonesty and been ready to commandingly smack it down. While he did correctly call Trump a liar, the delivery was unconvincing.

So...that wasn't great.

Last night's presidential "debate" on CNN was profoundly disappointing and unsurprisingly has sent the pundit class into a state of panic. 

I had expectations going in, expectations that Donald Trump would be, well, himself, and thus provide myriad opportunities for President Biden to smack him down (metaphorically) and contrast the incredible successes of the Biden Administration to the disastrous incompetence that was the Trump Administration, thus illustrating how blindingly obvious voters' choice should be in November.

Those expectations were met. The problem was, Biden failed to capitalize on those opportunities and had the demeanor of an exhausted elderly grandpa. Which isn't to say he was terrible; what he had to say was substantively decent, if not completely on point, but it was delivered in a manner that was not easy to immediately understand and reinforced the Republican propaganda that unfairly paints him as a doddering old man.

All that was frustrating. It made me wonder what the hell all that debate prep time at Camp David was used for and why the campaign thought arming the president with statistics and lists of numbers was a good idea. Biden was at his best when he let his clearly-prepped answers drop and spoke from the heart. He became more energetic and feisty then. Feisty Joe was good. But the obvious struggle he was having with making sure he got the prepared numbers into his answers was just really bad form.

What was most frustrating, though, is the pitches Biden let go by. Big fat hanging curveballs right over the heart of the plate screaming "hit me" that he didn't even take a swing at.

I could make excuses. The president was clearly dealing with a head cold and may well have been on some sort of antihistamines or decongestant medicines that, as I well know, make you a little fuzzybrained for a while. If so, I again point to the campaign aides and say "WHY WOULD YOU SEND HIM OUT THERE LIKE THAT?" but maybe they didn't know. I could focus on the journalistic malpractice committed by the alleged moderators of the debate, who didn't moderate anything and allowed countless egregious, blatant lies to spew from Trump's bulbous head completely unchallenged.

But in the end, Joe Biden had an opportunity to crush a grand slam homer and instead struck out on three meatball pitches basically served up on a tee. It is, to say the least, dispiriting.

The immediate reaction from pretty much everyone that watched it was to freak out. Now you've got a lot of people within the Democratic party talking about trying to nominate someone else. Which is not going to happen and the more time spent talking about the idea is, as California Governor Gavin Newsom put it, "unhelpful."

Presidential debates—which have only existed since 1960—are structured to emphasize the most surface-level elements of a candidate, and every cycle I wonder about their usefulness. Some are better than others, the "town hall" type that we've seen here and there since the ’90s actually give some opportunity to get into something unscripted and revealing. But generally they favor optics over substance, largely because of format.

(Some years ago I read a novel by the late newsman Jim Lehrer called "The Last Debate." I'm not recalling the details clearly now, but it told the story of a small group of journalists who contrived for themselves to moderate a presidential debate in a race where one candidate was profoundly dangerous and unfit to serve. The journalists made a choice to risk their careers by using the debate to crush the campaign of the dangerous candidate. They held his feet to the fire, as it were, on all of his misdeeds and completely abandoned the "rules" of the event by turning it into an airing of behavior that would appall a great majority of voters. I was really wishing for something even vaguely reminiscent of that kind of courage from last night's moderators and, of course, got bupkis.)

Joe Biden has been and continues to be an excellent President of the United States. The record is tremendously impressive. He has staffed his administration with quality, intelligent, capable, and supremely competent people who know what they're doing and work hard to advance an agenda that is in support of the American population as a whole. There is no reason on the merits to even entertain the idea of nominating someone else. 

But the freak out is real, and it's based entirely on fear.

Fear of stupid people.

I get it. I, too, am terrified of stupid people in massive groups. The Republicans have been maddeningly deft in their efforts to manipulate and con the rubes of America, tens of millions of whom voted for the fascist last time without realizing he's a fascist. Republican politics have long been based in scaring the bejeezus out of their voters, but in the age of Trump they've abandoned all subtlety in their fearmongering, relying—apparently successfully!—on entirely made-up fantasies of nonexistent caravans of murdering migrant hordes, entirely made-up fantasies of mothers killing their infant children for the sake of convenience, entirely made-up fantasies of economics that even preschoolers on any Ferengi world would recognize as bullshit, and mountains of blatant racism and misogyny.

How many of those tens of millions of rubes believe the propaganda? I know there are plenty who don't believe it but still like it for the racism and sexism; those are the "baskets of deplorables" Hillary Clinton identified in the 2016 campaign. Those people aren't a new factor, we've always had them or people like them around. But the rubes. They scare us. And they are scaring people who should know better into calling for the President to walk away from this election.

President Biden held a rally today in North Carolina wherein he was far more energetic, far better in his demeanor, and was received with far more comfort from the masses. I've heard it postulated that the disaster of last night's debate might well spur the campaign into hyperdrive for the remainder of the summer and fall. Maybe. I do hope they learned from their mistakes, at least.

Joe Biden is 81 years old. President of the United States is a very stressful job. To those who worry about that, I say look at who he staffs his administration with. Kamala Harris is a brilliant vice president, and should the need for her to take over come to pass, we would all be in good hands. (I still maintain that a large part of the Republican-led opposition to Biden because of age is an unsubtle dog-whistle to the deplorables to be scared of the black lady taking over.) I am completely unbothered by Joe Biden's age because no matter how he performed at the debate or in any other forum, he does the job of President very, very well, and should he lose the ability to do that at some point, there will be capable people there to step in.

Besides, the other guys are running a con man. A convicted felon, serial fraudster, adjudicated rapist, wanna-be dictator who hates the very idea of American democracy and has no understanding of how anything works. Except, of course, how manipulating rubes works. That's his one skill. He has no others. (Except perhaps using blackmail to leverage otherwise-smart(ish) people into allying with him. Looking at the complement of dudes with an R by their names in the Senate seems to indicate he's had success with that.)

 Bad debate or no, I don't think anything has changed here. The race is today what it was yesterday and was the day before. I wish the President had been quicker on his feet and hammered those juicy hanging curveballs last night—that might have made a significant difference in his favor—but there's still time to get some more at-bats. Meanwhile, the contrast between these two men remains monumental. In the words of Mary Trump, "President Biden had a cold and stumbled badly. Donald Trump is a traitor. The former should not in any way negate the latter.... I’ll take the decent guy with the sore throat who believes in democracy over the rapist insurrectionist monster every single time."

Tagged Politics, President VonClownstick, President Biden, CNN, Journalism   |   Posted on June 28, 2024 at 11:55pm   |   Permalink   |     |  

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The straw that stirs the drink

I did not watch the Rickwood Field game saluting the Negro Leagues between the Cardinals and the Giants last night as I was umpiring. But I have read the recaps and seen a couple of clips form the Fox (ugh) broadcast; the clip from the 5th inning when they went to a retro 1950s-style TV picture complete with no color, two or three camera angles only, and primitive on-screen graphics was pretty neat.

But the best writeup of the game comes from Craig Calcaterra, with special kudos for the section he wrote on Reggie Jackson's appearance in the broadcast booth. Rather than pick some pullquotes, I'll just share the whole section here.

Reggie Jackson brings the truth

 

Reggie Jackson joined the Fox MLB panel before the Cards-Giants game at Rickwood Field last night. During his appearance Jackson, who played 114 games for the Oakland Athletics’ Southern League affiliate in Birmingham in 1967, was asked by Alex Rodriguez about his feelings upon returning to Rickwood. Jackson did not lean into any feel-good sentiments that Major League Baseball or Fox likely wanted to hear from him. And he did not hold back.

"Coming back here is not easy," Jackson said. "The racism when I played here, the difficulty of going through different places where we traveled. Fortunately, I had a manager and I had players on the team that helped me get through it. But I wouldn't wish it on anybody." Jackson then described about how he would be called the n-word and would be denied service at restaurants and hotels.

Jackson then said, that if it wasn’t for his teammates and coaches with the Birmingham A’s, things would’ve gotten even worse:

"Fortunately, I had a manager, in Johnny McNamara, that . . . if I couldn't eat in the place, nobody would eat. We would get food to travel. If I couldn't stay in a hotel, they'd drive to the next hotel and find a place where I could stay. Had it not been for Rollie Fingers, Johnny McNamara, Dave Duncan, Joe and Sharon Rudi . . . I slept on their couch three, four nights a week for about a month and a half. Finally, they were threatened that they would burn our apartment complex down unless I got out."

Jackson said that without McNamara and his teammates, "I would've [gotten] killed here, because I would've beat someone's ass." Watch:

I embedded that video because it’s the only full-length, embeddable one I could find that focused on this part of his appearance, but it bleeps out the N-words Reggie used. They aired live on Fox, however and, given how prone baseball and baseball fans are to sanitize history and nostalgia, it was important that they did.

Listening to Jackson speak, I was struck by two thoughts.

First: though baseball didn’t put too fine a point on it, the game at Rickwood Field replaced the Field of Dreams Game in Iowa on the schedule as a special, small ballpark event. Though the reasons for skipping Iowa this year had more to do with business and logistics than anything else, kudos to Major League Baseball for moving away from the synthetic, sanitized version of history — if one can even call what was essentially a 1980s movie tribute version of baseball “history” — and embracing real history that actually matters.

Second: Jackson was not describing life in the Negro Leagues or during the heart of the Jim Crow era. What he described took place twenty years after baseball was integrated, over a decade after de jure segregation was outlawed, three years after the Civil Rights Act was passed, and two years after the Voting Rights Act was passed. It was a time when many who are reading these words were alive, some of whom were adults. Jackson himself was an active major leaguer into the late 1980s yet he faced the sort of bigotry and discrimination that many people in this country tend to casually assume was the stuff of ancient history if, indeed, they even acknowledge it ever happened.

And make no mistake, we’re at a point in American history where there are many people — including people in positions of power or who are seeking positions of power — who are actively trying to bring back the conditions Jackson described and who want to turn back the clock to before the Civil Rights Era began. Our Supreme Court has gutted the Voting Rights Act and multiple state legislatures have passed laws forbidding the teaching or even the discussion of racism, institutional or otherwise, in public schools and universities. Republican politicians and activists have their eyes set on eliminating anti-discrimination laws and have, as both a matter of policy and rhetoric, embraced the notion of returning Blacks and other minorities to the status of second class citizenship. And they have done so shamelessly.

Indeed, just two weeks ago, Byron Donalds, a sitting Republican Congressman who is actively seeking to become Donald Trump’s vice presidential candidate, argued that things were better for Black people during the Jim Crow era:

“You see, during Jim Crow, the Black family was together. During Jim Crow, more Black people were not just conservative — Black people have always been conservative-minded — but more Black people voted conservatively,” Donalds said. “And then HEW, Lyndon Johnson — you go down that road, and now we are where we are.”

Donalds didn’t get caught on a hot mic saying this. He said it before a crowd at a Trump campaign event in Philadelphia. And not a single Republican of consequence, let alone the man at the top of the Republican ticket, offered a word of criticism or pushback.

We’re living in a perilous time. A time when a large number of Americans want to erase the racial and social progress we have realized over the past 50-60 years. Those efforts cannot be stopped by our ignoring them. They must be actively fought, and the first step in doing so is by reminding people of what actually happened in those times and calling bullshit on those who wish to distort history.

In light of that, kudos to Reggie Jackson for not holding back on his account of his own personal history. Kudos to him for not contributing to the sanitization of history at large. It’s only through plain and straightforward words like his that we can keep others from dragging us back to the dark ages which so many fought and so many died to help us escape.

Craig's newsletter, "Cup of Coffee," is free once a week and subscription only for the other four days he publishes.

Tagged Politics, Baseball, Republicans   |   Posted on June 21, 2024 at 3:22pm   |   Permalink   |     |  

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