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The Republican Party, the eternally black pot

Thursday, March 18, 2021

If you want to know what crimes Republicans are committing, all you have to do is listen to what they are accusing others of doing:

Yet another case in point:

The former Florida state senator accused of masterminding and funding a sham candidate to manipulate voters last November is now facing charges of felony campaign finance crimes.

Frank Artiles was booked into Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center on Thursday, a day after his Palmetto Bay home was raided.

Shill candidate Alex Rodriguez was also booked Thursday morning.

Their charges (all third-degree felonies) include: ?>>Making or receiving campaign contributions over or in excess of limits??>>Conspiracy to make or receive two or more campaign contributions over or in excess of limits??>>False swearing in connection with voting or elections

According to a warrant obtained by Local 10 News, investigators say Artiles offered to pay Rodriguez $50,000 — half during the election and half afterward — for Rodriguez to enter November’s District 37 state senate race, where he shared a last name with the incumbent Democrat candidate Jose Javier Rodriguez.

Republican challenger Ileana Garcia ultimately defeated Jose Javier Rodriguez by just 32 votes for that seat. The plant candidate Alex Rodriguez, a deep-in-debt machinery rep who actually lived two counties away from the district, got over 6,000 votes despite not actually campaigning, nor having actual political aspirations.

In this particular case, the fraud was successful. No doubt the Republican “winner” will feel no compunction about keeping the seat that was stolen on her behalf.

It truly is a useful guide for prosecutors. If Republicans accuse others of crimes, you know just what to look for.

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Are the Democrats Learning?

Wednesday, March 17, 2021

It seems that, perhaps, the Democrats have learned some lessons from their experiences over the last 12 years. This is a remarkable phenomenon, since as recently as a year ago, Joe Biden seemed determined to learn nothing, as he predicted that the Republicans would have an epiphany should they lose the election in 2020. We’ve all seen how that worked out, but apparently Biden put that belief aside long before the moment when that epiphany was supposed to happen. Now we have a couple of other encouraging developments.

If you want to change your ways, it helps to admit your mistakes, and apparently the Democrats are coming to terms with one of the biggest mistakes they made:

As Democrats pushed this month to pass the $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package, they were eager to rebuke Republicans for opposing en masse a measure filled with aid to struggling Americans. But they had another target as well: the core policy of President Barack Obama’s first-term agenda.

Party leaders from President Biden on down are citing Mr. Obama’s strategy on his most urgent policy initiative — an $800 billion financial rescue plan in 2009 in the midst of a crippling recession — as too cautious and too deferential to Republicans, mistakes they were determined not to repeat.

It wasn’t just Obama. I can’t recall a single Senator questioning this strategy, though I may be wrong about that. Despite evidence that proved beyond a reasonable doubt that Republicans would obstruct and do nothing else, Democrats continued to pay lip service to the fairy tale that they could bargain in good faith with McConnell and his ilk. Even Susan Collins played them, trading an affirmative vote for neutering the bill by making it heavily skewed toward unnecessary tax breaks for…well, you know who for.

Besides acknowledging that there’s no use bargaining with Republicans, Democrats are also facing up to the fact that they can’t allow the Republicans to frustrate the Democratic agenda by using the filibuster. Dick Durbin’s recent speech can only be interpreted as the opening shot in a campaign to change the rules to render the filibuster fairly toothless. It also may mean that they have persuaded Manchin, Synema and Feinstein that they must get with the program, and pronounce themselves satisfied with whatever fig leaf they are given so they can claim that the filibuster survives.

Mitch McConnell wouldn’t be making threats about what he will do if back in power if the filibuster is destroyed, if he wasn’t afraid that the end is near, and those threats provide further proof that the Democrats have learned their lesson, since they have essentially responded that he would do those things anyway if he took power once again. The filibuster has never served the purposes of progressives; it has always been a weapon of the right. They want to use it now to make sure they can keep the federal government from interfering with the states that are trying to disenfranchise Democratic leaning population groups. If the Senate does not pass HR 1, we can pretty much kiss Democracy in America good-bye.

If the Democrats want to maintain control of the House and Senate (while hopefully expanding their majorities) they have to prove to the people of this country that they can deliver. Republicans don’t need to do that; all they have to do is feed the base red meat, suppress the vote where possible (with the help of the right wing judiciary), and convince a slice of the electorate that there’s no use voting. They do the latter by harping on the theme that the Democrats have failed to deliver on promises. It was exactly that strategy that they used against Obama after he agreed to the weak tea that was the stimulus bill of 2009.

It appears that the Democratic establishment may have learned what has been obvious to us dirty hippies all along. Here’s hoping they pull it off.

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Maybe you can’t be wrong all the time

Saturday, March 13, 2021

I’ve mentioned before that my wife and I helped found a chapter of Drinking Liberally which has (hopefully) survived to this day, as we are very much hoping to leave the confines of Zoom and meet in person soon, and actually drink, albeit not all that liberally.

One of the regulars has been faithfully attending since the first meeting, many a year ago. I won’t mention his name, as I don’t want to needlessly embarrass him given the revelations I’ll be making about him. I’ll just call him “Mr. S”.

Now, you would think that when a bunch of liberals get together to talk politics they would agree about just about everything, but when it comes to Mr. S and me, that’s simply not the case. We disagree all the time. In fact, it is a provable fact that he’s always wrong, a fact demonstrated by the fact that he insists that I’m always wrong, which of course is totally absurd. It doesn’t bother me that he insists I’m always wrong, because since he’s always wrong, it follows logically that I must, in fact, always be right.

That conclusion certainly seemed to follow logically, based on all the evidence, but lately, I’ve come to the conclusion that he may actually have been right about something fairly recently! It therefore follows that on at least one occasion I may have been wrong!

You see, he backed Joe Biden right from the start, while I had to force myself to get enthusiastic about the man once it was clear I had no choice.

I now am coming around to the view that for a number of reasons, Biden was the best choice available. In an ideal world, either Bernie or Elizabeth would have made better presidents, but it may come as a shock to some that this is not an ideal world. So, here are some of the reasons Biden may have been the best choice:

First, he was eminently electable, as it never looked like they’d be able to make the Hunter stuff stick. Second, he has actually, so far, been reasonably progressive. For this, I think, we have the likes of Bernie and Elizabeth to thank, for pushing him in that direction. Third, it appears he listens to reason, for he clearly came to realize that the Republicans were not going to have the come to Jesus moment he once predicted they would have if they lost the election. He made no attempt to attract Republican support for his program, did not allow any of them to hold it hostage, and did not neuter it in order to get a meaningless vote or two. Finally, it is likely the case that if either Bernie or Elizabeth had been elected, and they had proposed the same $1.9 Trillion dollar rescue package, upwards of fifty Congressional Democrats would have considered it their solemn duty to water it down in order to show that they didn’t share the President’s wild eyed socialism. Those same Congress members were perfectly happy to vote in favor of such a bill with Biden’s moderate image tacked onto it. Politics is the art of the possible, and it’s just possible that it would only have been possible to pass that bill with Biden in the White House. If that bill works as well as folks like Krugman expect, it just may enable the Democrats to maintain their majority in the House, and expand it in the Senate.

So Mr. S was right(!), though I can take comfort from the fact that though he may have been right, he was, surely, right for all the wrong reasons. I say this even though he never told me his reasons. Also, even though he may have been right this once (after all, even a stopped clock…), he was still wrong all those other times, as history has shown. I can also take comfort from the fact that it is a certainty that he will go back to always being wrong, and this one time that he got it right will recede into the dim and distant past. So, I look forward to our next in person DL, when I can lift a glass to him and greet him in our time honored fashion by proclaiming emphatically: “You’re wrong!”

AFTERWORD: As I’ve mentioned in the past, the comments aren’t working on this site, and I still haven’t gotten them fixed. So, if Mr. S happens to read this, and feels he must defend his honor by making some pathetic attempt to prove that he’s not always wrong, he can send me an email and I promise to post it, even though it will be completely wrong, as usual, as will be obvious to anyone who reads it.

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Republicans being Republicans

Thursday, March 11, 2021

I ran across this article today, in which we learn that Senator Rick Scott (Felon-Florida) is urging state governors to return any money the Feds give them as a result of the COVID-19 relief measure the Democrats just passed.

The equally corrupt governor of Florida, meanwhile, has not only said he won’t take Scott’s advice, but he’s also criticizing Scott for not following Lisa Murkowski’s lead: pushing for an amendment to get more funds for your state, then voting against the bill.

Scott’s bloviating is emblematic of the current Republican approach to “governing”: Unless you are in a position to shovel money toward the rich, simply engage in moral scolding, knowing full well, as in this instance, that the folks you’re scolding will ignore you, but that it will play well with the folks at Fox and the brainwashed base. Actually doing anything for their constituents is the last thing on their minds. The first thing on their minds is propagandizing the sheep into believing that the government shouldn’t do anything for them, because if the government is doing it, all the best stuff always goes to those nasty brown and black people.

I have a very young granddaughter, and when she gets old enough to understand, I suppose I’ll be boring her with stories about how when I was her age, there were actually Republicans, with whom I could disagree, but who I could still respect as people who cared about their country and their constituents. Republicans who actually wanted to do the right thing. She probably won’t believe me. She’ll simply see it as a sign of dementia.

Afterthought: On a somewhat related note, it appears that the Republicans have known all along that the American Recovery Act would work, and have now settled on a line of attack to propagandize against it:

After failing to stop the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell now hopes no one will notice when it helps stimulate the struggling economy.

“The economy’s coming back. People are getting vaccine. We’re on the way out of this. We’re about to have a boom,” McConnell (R-KY) told reporters on Wednesday. “And if we do have a boom, it will have absolutely nothing to do with this $1.9 trillion.”

You might think that’s far too transparently absurd, but this is America in 2021. The boom will, of course, have everything to do with the $1.9 trillion, but Fox will pick up the baton, and the brain dead will believe it even as they cash their checks and get their rent relief. Much to my surprise, however, it appears that Biden is fully aware of the strategy, and for once, the Democrats are prepared to beat the drums on their own behalf.

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Republicans being Republicans

Thursday, March 11, 2021

I ran across this article today, in which we learn that Senator Rick Scott (Felon-Florida) is urging state governors to return any money the Feds give them as a result of the COVID-19 relief measure the Democrats just passed.

The equally corrupt governor of Florida, meanwhile, has not only said he won’t take Scott’s advice, but he’s also criticizing Scott for not following Lisa Murkowski’s lead: pushing for an amendment to get more funds for your state, then voting against the bill.

Scott’s bloviating is emblematic of the current Republican approach to “governing”: Unless you are in a position to shovel money toward the rich, simply engage in moral scolding, knowing full well, as in this instance, that the folks you’re scolding will ignore you, but that it will play well with the folks at Fox and the brainwashed base. Actually doing anything for their constituents is the last thing on their minds. The first thing on their minds is propagandizing the sheep into believing that the government shouldn’t do anything for them, because if the government is doing it, all the best stuff always goes to those nasty brown and black people.

I have a very young granddaughter, and when she gets old enough to understand, I suppose I’ll be boring her with stories about how when I was her age, there were actually Republicans, with whom I could disagree, but who I could still respect as people who cared about their country and their constituents. Republicans who actually wanted to do the right thing. She probably won’t believe me. She’ll simply see it as a sign of dementia.

Afterthought: On a somewhat related note, it appears that the Republicans have known all along that the American Recovery Act would work, and have now settled on a line of attack to propagandize against it:

After failing to stop the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell now hopes no one will notice when it helps stimulate the struggling economy.

“The economy’s coming back. People are getting vaccine. We’re on the way out of this. We’re about to have a boom,” McConnell (R-KY) told reporters on Wednesday. “And if we do have a boom, it will have absolutely nothing to do with this $1.9 trillion.”

You might think that’s far too transparently absurd, but this is America in 2021. The boom will, of course, have everything to do with the $1.9 trillion, but Fox will pick up the baton, and the brain dead will believe it even as they cash their checks and get their rent relief. Much to my surprise, however, it appears that Biden is fully aware of the strategy, and for once, the Democrats are prepared to beat the drums on their own behalf.

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Republicans being Republicans

Thursday, March 11, 2021

I ran across this article today, in which we learn that Senator Rick Scott (Felon-Florida) is urging state governors to return any money the Feds give them as a result of the COVID-19 relief measure the Democrats just passed.

The equally corrupt governor of Florida, meanwhile, has not only said he won’t take Scott’s advice, but he’s also criticizing Scott for not following Lisa Murkowski’s lead: pushing for an amendment to get more funds for your state, then voting against the bill.

Scott’s bloviating is emblematic of the current Republican approach to “governing”: Unless you are in a position to shovel money toward the rich, simply engage in moral scolding, knowing full well, as in this instance, that the folks you’re scolding will ignore you, but that it will play well with the folks at Fox and the brainwashed base. Actually doing anything for their constituents is the last thing on their minds. The first thing on their minds is propagandizing the sheep into believing that the government shouldn’t do anything for them, because if the government is doing it, all the best stuff always goes to those nasty brown and black people.

I have a very young granddaughter, and when she gets old enough to understand, I suppose I’ll be boring her with stories about how when I was her age, there were actually Republicans, with whom I could disagree, but who I could still respect as people who cared about their country and their constituents. Republicans who actually wanted to do the right thing. She probably won’t believe me. She’ll simply see it as a sign of dementia.

Afterthought: On a somewhat related note, it appears that the Republicans have known all along that the American Recovery Act would work, and have now settled on a line of attack to propagandize against it:

After failing to stop the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell now hopes no one will notice when it helps stimulate the struggling economy.

“The economy’s coming back. People are getting vaccine. We’re on the way out of this. We’re about to have a boom,” McConnell (R-KY) told reporters on Wednesday. “And if we do have a boom, it will have absolutely nothing to do with this $1.9 trillion.”

You might think that’s far too transparently absurd, but this is America in 2021. The boom will, of course, have everything to do with the $1.9 trillion, but Fox will pick up the baton, and the brain dead will believe it even as they cash their checks and get their rent relief. Much to my surprise, however, it appears that Biden is fully aware of the strategy, and for once, the Democrats are prepared to beat the drums on their own behalf.

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An under the radar development

Sunday, March 7, 2021

There are always things going on under the radar whose effects sneak up on us when it’s too late to do much about them, or at least when it’s too late to prevent the harm they cause. This one is likely among those that may cause quite a bit of harm before it can be unwound:

The private consortium that oversees the model building codes for much of the United States and parts of the Caribbean and Latin America on Thursday stripped local governments of their right to vote on future energy-efficiency codes. 

The decision came more than a year after the construction and gas industry groups that wield heavy influence at the International Code Council objected to aggressive new energy codes for which government officials voted. 

The change, though technical and wonky, marks what environmental advocates say is one of the most consequential roadblocks to decarbonizing the U.S. economy. It also illustrates the limits of both the new Biden administration’s powers and the causes for which activists can mobilize public support. Local governments, members of Congress, environmentalists and architects overwhelmingly opposed the proposal.

Under the new system, the building codes that govern energy systems and insulation ? once subject to a vote by the city and state governments tasked with implementing them ? will instead fall under a separate “standards” process that, despite soliciting input from local officials, will give industry more control over the outcome. 

I had a number of cases involving building codes. It’s a technical subject, and there’s no doubt that there are good reasons to have uniformity in our codes. I was dimly aware of the existence of the Code Council, or an entity like it, but never really had to get into the weeds of how it was organized or the process by which it made it’s recommendations.

As the linked article demonstrates, the Council has essentially been taken over by the industries that building codes regulate or affect, i.e., the construction and energy industries. Naturally, the Council is now spinning the changes it made as a net gain for energy efficient construction, but that position is belied by the identities of the groups that support and oppose the changes. Basically, it’s environmentalists and governmental planners on one side, and energy interests and home builder interests on the other.

Ultimately, the Commission can make recommendations only. It’s up to localities to actually adopt its recommendations, which most have done simply because they lack the resources and expertise to draft them themselves and because there’s merit in having uniform standards. It looks like there’s a movement to create an alternative, which would probably be the best solution. It is, after all, about time that we mandate energy conserving measures in new construction, such as solar panels, etc. The Council’s action demonstrates once again the almost inevitable result of privatizing governmental functions.

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Religion Lesson

Wednesday, March 3, 2021

As I have mentioned in previous posts, I have an advanced degree in theology, courtesy of eight years of intensive religious instruction at Our Lady of Sorrows (real name) Grammar School in Hartford. Sorrowfully, Our Lady of Sorrows is no more, so generations of Hartford kids will go without the instruction that resulted in my high level of expertise.

Today, I will bring my gifts to bear on the latest atrocity brought to you by the Catholic Church:

The Catholic Archdiocese of New Orleans urged Catholics on Friday against taking a vaccine for COVID-19 manufactured by Johnson & Johnson because the vaccine is developed from stem cells obtained from two abortions.

In a statement on the archdiocese’s website, the organization argued that Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine was “morally compromised.”

“The archdiocese must instruct Catholics that the latest vaccine from Janssen/Johnson & Johnson is morally compromised as it uses the abortion-derived cell line in development and production of the vaccine as well as the testing,” the statement read.

I have brought my theological skills to bear on this issue, and I’m happy to announce that the good Catholics of New Orleans can take the J&J vaccine with no problem, so long as they do a bit of advance planning and follow some simple recommendations.

Now, some might argue that you should do as the Diocese directs (and is this only the rule in New Orleans?), and if you happen to die of COVID, you will get an automatic ticket to heaven, because that makes you a martyr. I think that’s a theologically dubious proposition, one you might have a tough time getting by Saint Peter at the pearly gates. Anyway, it’s pretty inconvenient.

I recommend ditching the martyrdom route and following another course. It’s really quite simple. Take the vaccine. Immediately thereafter say an act of contrition. This is a stop gap measure in case you die before you can follow the next step. This will not, by the way, diminish the vaccine’s effectiveness. That’s science, a subject the rest of this post will avoid.

After you’ve said your act of contrition, head over to the nearest Catholic Church when confessions are in session, confess your sins, professing contrition throughout, say the prescribed number of Hail Mary’s set forth by the priest, and there you are. Vaccinated and absolutely washed clean!

Now, some might argue that if you plan all this in advance, you can’t possibly be sincerely contrite (an alleged requirement) at the appropriate times. This is really a laughable objection, because Catholics have been getting their sins absolved for years without being sincerely contrite. If the priest mumbles the magic words, and if you say the prescribed prayers, that automatically and retroactively renders your contrition sincere. After all, the priest waved his magic wand, and what he “loose[s] on earth will be loosed in heaven”, no questions asked. It’s up to the priest to refuse to “loose” you by catching your insincerity, and if he doesn’t, and absolves you (which he always does), you’re home free. Take it from me, I’m an expert. So, if you’re not sincerely contrite when you walk in the booth, just fake it. It works. Ask any Republican politician or televangelist, not to mention the Catholic Church’s spokespeople who apologize for predatory priests. They all fake sincerity, and it works for them.

Now, if you still think this is a loophole much too narrow to squeeze through, consider this: who says it’s a sin in the first place? So far, it’s only a sin in New Orleans, and I assure you that even my nuns would have been hard put to explain localized sins, though now that I think of it, back when you could punch your ticket to Hell by eating meat on Friday, it was fine to eat meat as long as you were in Spain, because the Spaniards got an emergency exemption in 1492 for some reason probably connected to the Inquisition, and the Pope just sort of forgot to rescind it for the next 400 and some odd years.

But the fact is you can search high and low in the Bible, and you can’t find the following: Thou shalt not be vaccinated with a substance developed using stem cells obtained through an abortion. Jesus never said a word about it, and even the mad god of the Old Testament had not a word to say about it. So, the weight of the evidence is to the effect that you don’t really have to be sincerely contrite or even fake contrite, since it’s not a sin in the first place. But still, take a tip from Pascal, who also saw nothing wrong with insincerity in the proper circumstances, and follow my advice. Just in case, get your slate wiped clean in the nearest confessional, and enjoy your escape from COVID.

Caveat: In the interest of full disclosure, I should add that while I normally got excellent grades at Our Lady of Sorrows, my grades in religion usually lagged a bit. I attribute this to my unfortunate habit of asking questions. Still, I completed the course, and like all OLS alums, I’m an acknowledged expert.

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We can’t let the French beat us!

Tuesday, March 2, 2021

The French have thrown down the gauntlet and we can’t refuse the challenge! Our country, this precious land of Freedom Fries was, is, and shall always be number one! We can’t let the French, who stupidly refused to get bogged down in an endless war in Iraq, one-up us, and yet look what they’ve done:

Former French president Nicolas Sarkozy was found guilty and sentenced to prison by a court in Paris on Monday on charges of corruption and influence peddling, only the second time in modern French history that a former president has been convicted of a crime.

We have to show them that they can’t get away with this. The stuff Sarkozy did was nickel and dime stuff compared to the crimes a certain self-styled genius committed while he was in office. We can’t let them do this to the genius. He’d be the first to tell you that not only were his crimes perfect, and way more numerous, but he was also way more guilty than Sarkozy ever was. Plus, if we do right by him and put him in the pen, he’d crush Sarkozy in the records department because he’d be the FIRST! former president of the US to be convicted of a crime, while Sarkozy is a pathetic number two. And sure, as the linked article says, Sarkozy was “conservative”, but that was by French standards, which puts him just shy of Antifa by our standards. Again, we have the French beat! Our conservative criminal was just shy of being an out and proud Nazi!

Well, maybe not that shy really.

It’s time for American prosecutors to step up and put the French in their place. When it comes to presidential criminality, we have to show that WE’RE NUMBER 1!

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More stuff you couldn’t make up

Saturday, February 27, 2021

I frequent a blog called Above the Law, which features articles about my former profession. I think it’s fair to say the site has a slightly leftward slant, but then one can say that about anyone who is rational these days.

I don’t know whether to laugh or cry about the posts here and here about a Trump loving lawyer who just lost his job as Associate General Counsel at Goosehead Insurance (yes, I duck-duck-goed it, there is such a company) after joining the insurrection on January 6th.

His name is Paul Davis, which doesn’t sound very Latino, but he has just brought a lawsuit seeking to overturn the election, actually the government, on behalf of Latinos for Trump. In the lawsuit, he has cited The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings in support of his argument that the court should declare the entire federal government essentially non-existent:

During the course of the epic trilogy, the rightful King of Gondor had abandoned the throne. Since only the rightful king could sit on the throne of Gondor, a steward was appointed to manage Gondor until the return of the King, known as “Aragorn,” occurred at the end of the story. This analogy is applicable since there is now in Washington, D.C., a group of individuals calling themselves the President, Vice President, and Congress who have no rightful claim to govern the American People. Accordingly, as set forth in the Proposed Temporary Restraining Order, as a remedy the Court should appoint a group of special masters (the “Stewards”) to provide a check [sic] the power of the illegitimate President until this Constitutional Crisis can be resolved through a peaceful legal process of a Preliminary Injunction Hearing and a jury trial on the merits.

There’s more craziness in the posts to which I’ve linked. Sidney Powell, Rudy Giuliani, and Lin Wood owe this guy big-time, inasmuch as he makes them look like legal scholars.

The laughing part comes easy, but you are tempted to cry when you consider that the legal profession is infested with people like this, and that over the course of the last few years, a number of them have become federal judges. (See my last post)

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