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A transatlantic myth

Sunday, November 27, 2022

I ran across this article in my news feed today. It’s from the British newspaper, the Guardian. The title is what drew me to read it:

Competence, what competence? Tory chancellors like Jeremy Hunt always spell disaster

British politics are a lot like US Politics these days, with the Tory party becoming more and more the preserve of loonies, as the Republican Party has been for some time.

I gather from the article that in Britain, as here in the USA, the party of the right is credited with having a better ability to handle the economy than the party of the “left”. This is certainly a pervasive attitude here in this country, borne out by polls and much of the media. As the Guardian columnist proves, it’s not true in England, and it’s not true here. In short, it’s a myth that’s quite handy for the Republicans.

The Republican have decided to destroy the economy here, so that they can blame the Democrats, and there’s every reason to believe they will get away with it.The Tory’s don’t have the leeway that the Republicans do, because there’s no such thing as divided government there. It’s becoming more and more clear to the British people that the Tories are indeed incompetent and are interested only in benefitting the rich. It’s harder to assign responsibility here, since when the Republicans refuse to raise the debt limit and the economy crashes, they will blame the Democrats and the media will both sides the issue. That will be the case with everything else they do to tank the economy, and make no mistake they will tank it if it is to their political advantage.

But the myth will likely persist.

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A Republican with Principles! (An oxymoron, I know)

Tuesday, November 22, 2022

Who says that our fascist overlord wannabes have no principles? Well, I’ve probably said it, but look, there are definitely exceptions, and I firmly believe all the other election denial liars should follow this Arizona woman’s principled example:

Liz Harris, recently elected to represent Legislative District 13, issued a statement on her campaign website saying, in part, that “it has become obvious that we need to hold a new election immediately.”

“Although I stand to win my Legislative District race it has become obvious that we need to hold a new election immediately. There are clear signs of foul play from machine malfunctions, chain of custody issues and just blatant mathematical impossibilities,” she wrote. “How can a Republican State Treasurer receive more votes than a Republican Gubernatorial or Senate candidate?”

“I call on all state legislators to join me in demanding a new election,” she added. “I will now be withholding my vote on any bills in this session without this new election in protest to what is clearly a potential fraudulent election.”

I absolutely agree than any Fascist Republican elected official who lies about election theft should take the principled position that they will not vote in state legislatures, the Congress, or any other elected body until they get a do-over, something that doesn’t exist. Obviously it’s too much to ask that they turn down the paychecks they’ll get for doing no work for their constituents.

Also, just to answer her question: a Republican candidate for treasurer can get more votes than Republican candidates for governor or Senator if the Republican candidates for governor and Senator are total whackjobs, who are so whackjobby that they can’t even put one over on Arizonans.

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Looking ahead to a Republican House Majority

Sunday, November 20, 2022

I have read in multiple places that the Fascist Party has promised to spend the next two years avoiding doing anything that might benefit the citizenry, while engaging in fake investigations of Biden, his son Hunter, and even of Dr. Fauci. The hypocrisy is of course, mind-numbing, given that they will also shut down Congressional investigations of Trump, who attempted to overthrow the government, and have turned a blind eye to the corruption of Trump’s family. It is taken for granted that they will do nothing to deal with the economic problems that they squealed about during the election and will, in fact, obstruct any attempt by the Democrats to do anything that will actually alleviate those problems.

So, the obvious question is: will it work? The objective, one must assume, is a complete takeover of Congress, and a presidential victory, which, with the sanction of the Supreme Court, will allow them to complete the transition to fascism. Unfortunately for them, they weren’t able to elect the secretaries of state that would rig future elections for them, so we can assume that the 2024 election will be at least as honest as the 2022 election. If they do win in 2024 they will complete the transition to a system in which elections are mere formalities, with the outcomes pre-determined, with an opposition party retained purely for show. That process has been underway for years, with the ever more sophisticated gerrymandering that computers make possible. There is also, the probability that the Supreme Court will give Republican majority legislatures a license to steal elections.

To get back to the question, “will it work” we must consider two things that will be of central importance. How will the media cover the Republican shitshows, and will the public buy into the implied Republican argument that punishing Hunter Biden is more important than dealing with things like inflation, climate change, etc.

As to the media, I think it’s instructive to recall the Clinton years, and how the media covered the Lewinsky affair. Keep in mind that nothing he was alleged to have done came anywhere near the criminality in which Trump engaged, which the media largely wrote off as Trump being Trump. My impression then was that the media pretty much assumed that the American people were too stupid to dismiss Clinton’s sexual escapades as being largely beside the point. It was assumed that there would be a massive wave of revulsion and a demand for his impeachment and conviction. That wave never materialized, but in no way was that because the media put the matter in proper perspective. We may get a repeat of the media performance this time around, though it’s possible it won’t be so extreme as during the Clinton years, as much of the media didn’t take the Benghazi hearings too seriously.

I personally like the guy, but I do hope they go after Fauci as well as Hunter, because that would be a massive error and lead to a tremendous amount of revulsion from much of the American public, and even some in the media would tell it like it is. Even without Fauci hearings I think it’s highly likely that the Republican escapades will not go over well with the public, and that while most Fox viewers have no problem with extreme hypocrisy, that is not the case with the people in the mythical “middle” whose votes they will need in order to complete the transition.

A lot depends, of course, on how the Democrats respond. I seem to recall that Harry Truman did well running against a do-nothing Congress. Biden and the Democrats should propose a raft of popular programs, all of which will be obstructed by the Republicans. Doing only that will do no good unless people are aware of what is happening, which means that the Democrats have to speak with one voice and pound away at their talking points. It’s also time for the Democrats to start working the media refs, because by doing exactly that the Republicans were able to get the media to adopt its current both siderism.

In the end, I’m somewhat guardedly optimistic that things may turn out okay, especially if Trump is the 2024 candidate. They won’t be in a position to cheat on a widespread enough basis to steal the election, and by 2024 Trump will be weighing them down. In fact, he already is. The Republican Party will be more accurately perceived for what it is, and the Democrats will, we can hope, take back the House and keep the presidency. A lot may depend, unfortunately, on how the upcoming election in Georgia pans out, since if Warnock loses, we will still be held hostage by Sinema and Manchin.

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Here we go again

Wednesday, November 16, 2022

I am in Vermont at the moment, looking out of window at a snow scene, wondering why we ever came up here in the first place, given that we knew this snow was coming. Featured in the view from here is an extremely muddy road, recently scraped by a snow plow and now being sopped by the rain. When we got here we experienced a rather inconvenient thing: no heat. The propane company actually sent someone out right away, so we’re warm enough now, but not quite ready to hazard a trip outside. I’ve no doubt we can get out of the driveway, but I’m not quite sure we can get back in.

All of which should give me some impetus to put something on this now only occasional blog. What else is there to do?

I understand that the very stable genius has announced his candidacy for president in 2024. Opinions differ about his reasons for doing so. It is, of course, entirely possible he thinks he can win, though the recent results have to cast a bit of a pall over such thinking, since all of the folks promising to steal elections who were running for Secretary of State lost.

Personally, I think one of his motivations is his belief that announcing his candidacy somehow exempts him from being criminally charged for fomenting an insurrection and/or for stealing state secrets. It would not occur to him that such a dodge would be available to any criminal, which is why it’s unlikely to be a winner, lest the DOJ chooses to bring charges in Aileen Cannon’s court.

If he does manage to escape prison, my guess is that he’ll get the nomination, unless the Republican establishment (what’s left of it) can somehow jigger the system to eliminate primaries. Here in Connecticut we just experienced a textbook example of the influence of the whackjobs in primaries. Turnout was low in the Republican primary in August, but those who did turn out voted for Leora Levy, who was promptly crushed by Richard Blumenthal. Blumenthal would likely have beaten the endorsed candidate, but not by as much. Levy was hardly an outlier, Trumpists had a fairly high mortality rate in the recent election, though, alas, some broke through.

If Trump doesn’t get the Republican nomination, and isn’t in jail in 2024, I can easily see him running as a third party candidate. It’s not a scenario I’ve seen elsewhere, but I think it’s plausible. He’ll want to get his revenge on whoever is the nominee. We must always bear in mind that he really has no principles, so it’s all the same to him who’s president, if it isn’t him. That turn of events is probably the one that would be best for the Democrats, as he would siphon off enough voter to guarantee a Democratic victory.

The Republicans, of course, could have avoided all this by voting to convict him in the second impeachment. It was the obvious thing to do, but they didn’t do it, and it’s now coming back to haunt them.

At least we have to hope it will be haunting them.

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Election Reflections

Wednesday, November 9, 2022

I still haven’t totally unwound from my pre-election fetal position, as I still can’t bring myself to look at my blogs and other news sources to see how things are going in detail, though my general sense is that the march toward fascism has been somewhat slowed, but certainly not averted.

I spent Election Day as a poll worker, registering voters, as Election Day registration is allowed here in Connecticut. My job was to hand people a ballot and explain how to put it into an envelope for future processing, as the registrations all take place in a room next to the registrar’s office, and the new voters vote there, each given a ballot for their particular voting district.

I played a little game with myself, trying to predict what party, if any, with which they would affiliate themselves. I think I batted way above .500, because it’s really not that hard to spot a sure fire Republican, though not quite that easy to spot a potential Democrat. What did surprise and depress me was the number of young people, particularly young men, who registered as Republicans. It was my understanding that the party is aging, so it is double depressing to think that any new blood is entering.

When I was assigned to help with the registration process, I figured I’d be sitting idly most of the day, but that wasn’t the case. We had a steady stream of registrants, 166 in all. That may not sound like many, but each has to be processed, which is fairly time consuming. For instance, if the person had been registered somewhere else in Connecticut, an attempt had to be made to determine whether they had already voted there. We were hampered somewhat because for reasons that the Groton tech guy could not fathom, the computers set up for us refused to log in to the state voters website, and one decided that it simply didn’t care to work with its internal hard drive anymore. But he persisted, and after several hours he was able to get all three up and running. Based on what I observed, it was a significant achievement of which he should be proud. While he was doing that, we made do with computers in the registrar’s main office.

I was there from 5:00 AM until 8:30 PM, with one short 15 minute break. I could have taken more time off but didn’t really feel like it. After I got home, I avoided any opportunity to find out how things were going nationally. I’m still in that mode as I write this, though some things are filtering through. It looks like we have another tough two years ahead of us, as even if we manage to hold the House, which seems unlikely, we’ll still be held hostage in the Senate by Manchin and Sinema, assuming we also hold that august institution.

I think I’ve mentioned before that when the noted mathematician, Kurt Gödel, became a citizen, he was dissuaded by Einstein from telling the authorities that the constitution has a fatal flaw. We don’t know what flaw he had in mind, but it’s now plain as day that the constitution has a number of fatal flaws, one being the overrepresentation in the Senate of nutjobs from underpopulated states, and another being the ability of entrenched politicians to create the American equivalent of British pocket boroughs. Add a hyper-politicized Supreme Court to the mix, and you have a recipe for destruction of true representative government.

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The Supreme Court: “See, we’re impartial!”

Wednesday, November 2, 2022

It’s entirely possible that I’m repeating something I’ve written before, but Driftglass, one of my favorite bloggers, does that all the time, so I will proceed.

It came as no surprise to me that the Supreme Court told Lindsay Graham to pound sand when he asked them to protect him from testifying in Georgia about his attempts to undermine the 2020 election. (Though they did leave Lindsay a bit of an out, as he can drag things out be interposing bullshit objections to specific questions. )His legal theory was, of course, preposterous, but that it and of itself means nothing to the current court.

Roberts, et. al., are concerned, you see, about the court’s credibility. They have what they want at the moment, a secure fascist majority intent on rubbing out the constitutional rights they don’t like, while inventing new ones to assist Republicans generally. But you have to do these things, as the Wicked Witch said, “Delicately”. That means trying to maintain a facade of impartiality while taking a wrecking ball to the Republic.

One way of doing that is by refusing to bail out folks like Lindsay, the January 6th rioters, and ultimately, most likely, Donald Trump. They don’t need these guys anymore, as they’ve got what they want, a lifetime appointment to a court that increasingly sees itself as the final authority on all things. And they don’t really have to worry if the folks that got them there end up in jail, as they’re busy making sure that folks whose politics align with theirs will be “elected” in the future, to replace any poor sap who has to go to jail in order to assure the public that the court is entirely non-partisan and totally objective. They are about, for instance, to rule that Republican dominated state legislatures are free to overrule the will of the people in their states if those people, already gerrymandered out of a chance to have a representative state legislature, should dare to vote for a Democrat for a statewide or federal office.

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Book report

Saturday, October 29, 2022

A couple of weeks ago my wife and I accompanied my brother to Hartford to attend the induction ceremonies for the Hartford Public High School Hall of Fame. Needless to say, I was not being inducted, but my brother, the best swimmer HPHS ever saw, was. I can claim credit only for having started the family tradition of engaging in competitive swimming and also for having gotten my brother into the Hall by contacting the folks running it.

But this post isn’t about my brother.

Everyone attending had an assigned table at the Chowder Pot. We were assigned to a table with members of the family of Les Payne. Mr Payne is deceased, so he was represented by his wife, son, and daughter. From what I gathered, he was a reasonably good athlete, but what put him over the top was his career in journalism, which included a Pulitzer Prize for reporting, and, most recently and posthumously, a Pulitzer Prize for The Dead Are Arising, The Life of Malcolm X. His daughter Tamara assisted him in the 18 years of research that went into the book. The family told us about the book, and I, in turn, told them about my son’s book. I downloaded their book and they ordered my son’s at the same time.

I’ve just finished it, and I highly recommend it. As I mentioned earlier the Paynes, father and daughter, researched it for 18 years, and the fruits of that research are evident. They tracked down and interviewed people that interacted with Malcolm X from back when he was just a child and throughout the rest of his life, as well as combing through official records. Indeed, some of their sources were people who confessed on their death beds to things they’d denied or hidden for years.

The book is by no means a hagiography. Malcolm’s warts are fully exposed, as is the origin of the Nation of Islam, which like so many of our home grown religions (see Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Christian Scientists, and I’m sure there’s more) was founded by a charlatan and grifter and which became, in many respects, particularly after Malcolm left it, a criminal enterprise.

The book also gives, so far as I am aware (and I’m no expert) the most exhaustive and detailed description of Malcolm’s murder, which was planned and executed by the Black Muslims, while the FBI and local police, fully aware of their intentions, stood by and did nothing to stop it. Two men who were innocent of the murder served years in prison for the murder, while two of those actually responsible never served a day and were never charged with anything. No honest attempt was ever made to find those responsible. That’s the way things were in J. Edgar Hoover’s America.

As an old Hartford boy, I enjoyed the chapter on Malcolm’s speech at the Bushnell, which Mr. Payne attended with his white college roommate. It was apparently an eye opening experience for him, for as his daughter relates in the introduction, he said that he went in as a “Negro” and came out as a proud black man. I was personally unaware that Malcolm spent a lot of time in Hartford helping to establish the local Black Muslim chapter, but then, I guess I would have been. I was a kid at the time, and I doubt that he was covered extensively, or at all, in the white media. I’m also guessing that Payne chose to emphasize Malcolm’s Hartford experiences given his connection to the city and access to some of the Hartford folks who worked alongside Malcolm.

The book is a great biography, but more than that, at least for a white reader, it is an excellent and thorough elucidation of the experience of black people in the time periods that it covers. So for all those reasons, plus the fact that it was written by an HPHS alum (“HPHS! Say it louder, we’re the best”) I highly recommend it.

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Is anyone qualified to sit on a Trump jury?

Tuesday, October 25, 2022

I was not surprised at all to learn that they’re having a bit of trouble picking a jury  for the civil case against the Trump Organization. It seems that a lot of people have preconceived notions about Donald Trump, and although he’s technically not a party, it just might affect their judgment. What a surprise!

I’ve written about this before, and it looks like it’s happening pretty much as I expected. The anti-Trumpers, who are mostly honest, are outing themselves, but you can bet the Trumpers will swear up and down that they’ll be totally fair and will certainly listen to all the evidence. They exist even in New York, so I think we can expect a jury that is predisposed to rule for Trump. Another thing to think about, especially if Trump himself ever goes on trial, is, that to the extent you can get a fair minded jury, those people have to be protected somehow from the inevitable death threats should they convict him. You have to hope that any presiding judge would be aware of the danger and take steps to protect their identities, even going so far as not letting anyone see them physically.

I think these cases pose some interesting legal issues that have, perhaps, never arisen to the extent they have in the Trump related cases. At first blush it would seem only fair that any juror who expresses doubt about the honesty of any party during voir dire should be disqualified. But, one must ask, doesn’t there come a time when a potential juror is allowed to rely on common knowledge when responding to questions. Assume for the moment that a trial involved a flat-earther and a juror was asked if he or she had any preconceived notions about whether the earth was flat or round? Should that juror be disqualified if he or she said that they were of a fairly firm opinion that the earth was round? The fact that Trump is a congenital liar is something that he has proven over and over during his entire lifetime, and it is as incontestable as the shape of the earth. It really isn’t rational to exclude a person from a jury because he or she is unwilling to deny an obvious fact.

As a practical matter, no sentient American citizen (and I’m even conceding for purposes of this post that Trumpers are sentient) has no preconceived notions about Donald Trump. You either worship him despite his lies, or you recognize that he is a liar. If we hold a potential juror to a “no preconceptions” standard, then only liars will be seated as jurors.

Different rules apply in libel and slander cases involving public figures, for a reason. For folks like Trump, justice might be served by crafting standards for jury selection that permit a juror with a preconceived notion about a public figure’s honesty to qualify, so long, for instance, as he or she asserts that they will make their findings based on the evidence presented in the court. At present, the system is such that it is biased toward jurors who will lie their way onto the jury in order to rule in favor of a liar.

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More stuff you couldn’t make up

Thursday, October 20, 2022

I remember a time when you would not expect this sort of thing even from the folks down in Texas:

TODAY is reporting that Texas is sending DNA kits to families to identify their children “in case of an emergency.”

Harking back to the title of this post, would anyone really believe a work of fiction to be credible if it posited that the response to school massacres of an allegedly civilized state would be, and would only be, making sure they can identify the dead. And it should be noted here that the need to identify the bodies using DNA only proves how devastating the weapons are that these same people insist should be freely available. Back in the day when our sainted Founding Fathers passed the Second Amendment, which really was only a way of legalizing slave catching, it would have taken some serious work with a musket to render a body unidentifiable by simple facial recognition. Nowadays, it’s practically a given that the bodies will be unidentifiable masses of tissues.

Yet more proof that we don’t have two political parties in this country. We have one political party and one cult.

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Trump’s subpoena

Friday, October 14, 2022

I spent part of Thursday afternoon watching the January 6th hearings. One of the pundits on PBS felt that it was a bad move on the committee’s part to subpoena the genius, because-guess what- the Trumpers will criticize them. I think it may work out well in some ways, though I doubt that Trump will ever testify.

If I understand the procedure correctly, the next step will be a vote in the House about whether to hold Trump in contempt. I assume that the vote can be scheduled prior to the election. If not, the subpoena becomes a bit of empty theater. If a vote can be scheduled, it puts some, though not all, of the Republicans in Congress in a difficult position. If they vote against the contempt citation, they risk alienating the ever shrinking pool of rational people (well, somewhat rational) who have still not faced the reality that the Republican Party has completely gone over to the dark side. Voting for a finding of contempt risks pissing off the nutjobs without whom they can’t win anywhere.

My guess is that the committee members, even the two Republicans (both of whom will soon be ex-Congresspersons) have something along those lines in mind. They’d all like the committee to continue in existence, which means they all (though Kinzinger and Cheney can’t say this out loud) would like to see the Dems keep control of Congress.

Here in my state senatorial district we have a Republican incumbent senator who is so afraid of speaking about national issues that she refused to debate and talked the sponsoring chamber of commerce into blackballing any questions (which were all pre-screened) about national issues. I think she’s symptomatic of what a lot of Republican politicians would like to do: avoid talking about stuff like voter suppression and insurrectionists while throwing red meat to the insurrectionists while nobody is looking.

If there is a vote before Election Day I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of the Republicans find a reason not to cast a vote at all. Quite likely they’ll settle on some sort of talking point like “the subpoena is just the Democrats playing politics”. I’m sure Fox has already come up with something.

I could be wrong about this, that’s for sure. It may very well be that the Republicans will be loud and proud about backing the crime boss that is now their leader. And it could be that a majority of people in this country are too (is stupid the right word?) to see where the Republicans are taking us.

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