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A hopeful sign?

Friday, November 13, 2020

Maybe I’m engaging in a little wishful thinking, but this gives me reason to hope:

Sixteen U.S. Attorneys, all of whom were specifically assigned to monitor the 2020 election, have sent Bill Barr a letter confirming that there is no evidence of any election irregularities. In other words, all that Barr has done is to cause even more public officials to come out of the woodwork to confirm that Donald Trump’s election defeat was entirely legitimate. This was never going anywhere to begin with, but now it’s over.

This was in response to Barr’s announcement of a probe into election irregularities. Am I wrong to think that this was their way of telling Barr to shove it up his ass?

Trump often complains about the “deep state”, and he has a point. People within the federal government often resist violations of norms. Some of them want to do the job they were hired to do, rather than serve a political agenda or, in the case of Trump, sign on to a cult of personality.

It’s likely true that Barr did what he did mostly to satisfy Trump, and maybe to keep his hopes for a Fox gig alive. In any event, it seems clear his investigation is going nowhere, and we can thank these U.S. Attorneys for helping to make sure of that.

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But of course

Thursday, November 12, 2020

It is practically a law of nature. If Republicans accuse Democrats of some heinous activity, they are surely doing it themselves. This is funny, but also entirely what you would expect:

As ballots across the country continue to be counted, Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said he’s offering a $1 million reward for evidence of voter fraud.

Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman took up the Texas lieutenant governor’s offer on Twitter.

However, he didn’t want the reward in cash.

“Hey, Governor Patrick- it’s your counterpart in Pennsylvania,” Fetterman tweeted. I’d like to collect your handsome reward for reporting voter fraud. I got a dude in Forty Fort, PA who tried to have his dead mom vote for Trump.”

Rather than take the cash reward, Fetterman requested the reward be in Sheetz gift cards.

While the tweet was lighthearted, it was not without evidence.

Fetterman shared a story on his Twitter account from Luzerne County where a man was arrested for requesting an absentee ballot for his dead mother in order to vote for President Trump.

Original story at KDKA in Pittsburgh.

For the record, I don’t get the joke about Sheetz, but there must be one.

There’s no question in my mind, but that if you could somehow identify the very isolated instances of fraud, almost all of them would be the work of Republicans.

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A bit of history

Tuesday, November 10, 2020

I have never listened to the music of Hamilton, much less seen the Broadway show, but my reaction to what I heard about the play was always pretty much the same as that of Eric Loomis, over at Lawyers, Guns & Money. I was both mystified and irritated that anyone would portray Hamilton as some sort of hero of the people, when in fact he was a servant of the elite. If he’d had his way, we might have gotten a king along with the Constitution, and he certainly used all his influence to fashion a government that put a substantial buffer between the will of the people and the power structure in this country. His mistrust of democracy was never concealed, and his preference for monarchical or aristocratical rule was an open secret.

Apparently the play also portrays him as some sort of abolitionist, but while that’s hitherto been a subject of debate, it’s now more than subject to debate, as this New York Times article to which Loomis links establishes:

Some biographers have gingerly addressed the matter over the years, often in footnotes or passing references. But a new research paper released by the Schuyler Mansion State Historic Site in Albany, N.Y., offers the most ringing case yet.

In the paper, titled “‘As Odious and Immoral a Thing’: Alexander Hamilton’s Hidden History as an Enslaver,” Jessie Serfilippi, a historical interpreter at the mansion, examines letters, account books and other documents. Her conclusion — about Hamilton, and what she suggests is wishful thinking on the part of many of his modern-day admirers — is blunt.

“Not only did Alexander Hamilton enslave people, but his involvement in the institution of slavery was essential to his identity, both personally and professionally,” she writes.

“It is vital,” she adds, “that the myth of Hamilton as ‘the Abolitionist Founding Father’ end.”

The evidence cited in the paper, which was quietly published online last month, is not entirely new. But Ms. Serfilippi’s forceful case has caught the eye of historians, particularly those who have questioned what they see as his inflated antislavery credentials.

Annette Gordon-Reed, a professor of history and law at Harvard and the author of “The Hemingses of Monticello,” called the paper “fascinating” and the argument plausible. “It just shows that the founders were nearly all implicated in slavery in some way,” she said.

Joanne Freeman, a professor of history at Yale and editor of the Library of America edition of Hamilton’s writings, said that the detailed evidence remained to be fully weighed. But she said the paper was part of a welcome reconsideration of what she called “the Hero Hamilton” narrative.

Hamilton married into the elite Schuyler family, and many of his papers are preserved at their mansion where they had many “servants”, their code word for slaves.

Aaron Burr is usually portrayed as the bad guy, as if Hamilton wasn’t perfectly willing to kill Burr if it had worked out that way. But between the two, Burr would have been the better choice if one had to choose. Burr was really anti-slavery, and he was even an advocate for woman’s rights.

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You know, the constitution isn’t really all it’s cracked up to be

Tuesday, November 10, 2020

I know I should still be celebrating Biden’s victory, but, along with John Fogarty, I see a bad moon rising.

Kurt Gödel, he of the incompleteness theorem, came to this country from Germany in the thirties, to Princeton, where he was pals with Albert Einstein. When he became a citizen he was anxious to explain to the magistrate taking his oath that he had found a contradiction in the Constitution that left the country vulnerable to a dictatorship. Einstein and others counseled him to keep his mouth shut and just take his citizenship oath, and we still don’t know precisely what Gödel meant, but there’s no doubt that his basic point is valid: the constitution contains the seeds of its own destruction, which seeds have now taken root.

Krugman deals with the immediate prospects here, in a column well worth reading, as opposed to the David Brooks column of the same date, which I am still waiting for Driftglass to deconstruct. And here’s yet another, where Krugman very delicately points out that our problem is with stupid uneducated people who believe everything they see on Fox News or hear from Rush Limbaugh.

One of the many ironies about the Constitution’s flaws is that we were taught, and to the extent anyone teaches social studies anymore, kids are probably still taught, that those very flaws were master strokes of compromise by those fonts of wisdom, the sainted Founding Fathers.

The worst still relevantcompromise is often, at least around here, known as the Connecticut Compromise, for it was allegedly Roger Sherman’s bright idea to give each state equal representation in the Senate. I was taught to believe this was an incredible act of statecraft whose wisdom could not be overstated. Yet…We now have a situation in which California, the most populous state, has 2 blue Senators representing a population likely equal to the combined population of 8 or 9 red states, which would therefore have a total of 16 or 18 senators. A person from Wyoming has something like 20 times the representation of a Californian. The situation is the same if you take a look at the generally blue states vs. the red states. Our population is greatly underrepresented in the Senate, and will continue to be even if lightning strikes in Georgia.

The wise men of Philadelphia then went on to compound the problem by creating the electoral college which is deeply infected by the lopsided representation in the Senate. Presidents were supposed to be chosen by the wisest among us, who would be members of the electoral college. It hasn’t quite worked out that way, and it is an historical fact that when the popular vote has disagreed with the electoral college, it has been the choice of the majority that was the superior candidate. Imagine an America that had not had to live through eight years of W and four of the orange one, and imagine further that the Senate was a truly representative body during those periods instead of the plaything of Moscow Mitch.

To cap it off, the wise Founding Fathers made it virtually impossible to meaningfully change the constitution without having a civil war first, since a) any changes that would meaningfully rectify the issues I’ve identified above would reduce the power of the sparsely populated states, and 2) the sparsely populated states have more power to block a constitutional amendment than they do to block meaningful Senate action. This was part and parcel of their concessions to the slave states, whose slave owners, in essence, got extra representation due to their human property.

If we succumb to fascism, which we may have only temporarily done, it is because our sainted Founders did this to us. A truly representative system would be vastly different than what we have. Besides ducking fascism, we’d likely have national healthcare, systemic racism would not be quite so systemic, and we’d be doing something about climate change, to mention just a few things that come to mind.

Of course, the above only scratches the surface. Alexander Hamilton (about whom more in my next post) and his ilk were determined to make sure that the people had as little say in their government as possible. The point was to preserve the position of the elites and the excuse was that if the majority ruled, that majority would get captured by dangerous demagogues. It has worked to a certain extent; the people don’t have that much say, but oddly enough, the elites have learned to retain their power by harnessing the power of demagoguery to get the overpowered minority to vote against their own self interest. They hadn’t predicted that, but then they couldn’t anticipate our forms of mass communication.

Gödel’s conclusion was right, though we will never know his reasoning. The constitution’s flaws will bring us down, sooner or later, and some of those flaws will make it impossible to do anything about it.

We can only hope that when that time comes, we can peacefully agree to break up the union, and the sane states can band together to form a more rational system.

End of rant.

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An easy prediction

Saturday, November 7, 2020

I’ve mentioned before that The Palmer Report is a guilty pleasure of mine. They usually get their facts right, though the conclusions they draw from those facts are often subject to doubt, though I will say that they their analysis of the election results has been right on. But I must take issue with this piece of reporting:

In the end, Attorney General Bill Barr turned out to be as much of a paper tiger as Palmer Report had come to suspect he was. After he tried and failed to meddle in the Flynn, Stone, Cohen, Lev, Igor, and Bannon cases, he spent the final several weeks of the election cycle simply hiding.

…

This means, along with everyone else in this wretched administration, Bill Barr is now out of a job, as of January. The question now is whether Donald Trump fires him immediately out of frustration, or if Trump reluctantly keeps Barr around to try to help him with endgame pardon antics and such. But either way, Barr is a goner along with Trump before much longer

Would that the second quoted paragraph were true (Credit where due: they turned out to be right about the stuff in the first paragraph). But my guess is that come shortly after January 20, 2021 we’ll be seeing Bill Barr pulling down big bucks on Fox telling us that Joe Biden is abusing the powers of the presidency and that Biden’s attorney general, whoever that may be, is politicizing what should be a non-political position. Not an eyebrow will be raised. I put the odds of this at about 90%, with the odds of his also getting a CNN gig at 70%.

Caveat: In my last post I said I was working on a downer post that I’m putting off completing to leave time for celebration. This is not that downer post. This is just an observation. I’m still celebrating.

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A four years wait is over, sort of

Saturday, November 7, 2020

The networks have finally called the election, and while it’s absolutely clear they would have called it two days ago had the situation been reversed, we can still feel good about things. In fact, I’ve decided to put a downer post that I’m writing on hold for a while, though rest assured, it will go up in the next few days.

I have to admit that I didn’t sleep well on election night after the polls closed. I was a checker at my local polling station. Probably 50 to 55% of the residents of this district had already voted. Most of the people who passed through looked relatively sane, though we did have to tell some very young Trumpers to take their MAGA hats off while in the polling place. Still, I expected when we called out the numbers at the end of the night that they’d be pretty lopsided. In fact, out of about 1200 votes cast in person, his lead was less than 100. I found out later that it was far more lopsided among the mail in voters, which was apparently true nationwide. Anyway, that, plus the red mirage kept me awake most of the night, even though I knew the bad numbers in states like Wisconsin were likely to flip.

Now we can celebrate. Call me an optimist, but I think given the total lack of evidentiary support for all the claims they’re making, that even this Supreme Court will respect the results.

I have a fantasy, something I’ve been mulling over for four years now. I live about three quarters of the way down Fort Hill here in Groton. I once heard, though I’ve no idea if it’s true, that the ascent up Fort Hill is the steepest climb the entire length of Route 1 from Florida to Maine. I have to take that climb almost every time I take a bike ride, and at the very top of the ascent, for four long years, I have had to see a Trump flag waving, which lately has been on a flag pole directly under an American flag, which flag is literally in tatters. Somewhat symbolic, that. Anyway, today I would really like to park a car across the street from that flag (which is still flying) and play Beethoven’s Ode to Joy on a loudspeaker directed at that house. Alas, only a fantasy.

Finally, let me share this, which was sent to me by a high school friend who is now something of a bigwig at C-Span, who also informed me that Trump was roundly booed by the revelers dancing in the streets around the White House.

Sort of a postscript. Only Donald Trump could make Joe Biden into a bit of a cult figure.

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Mutual Aid Society

Thursday, October 29, 2020

While reading this article, which relates Susan Collins’ firmly held belief that Roe v Wade is absolutely secure, it brought to mind a theory that I’ve been mulling over.

Lisa Murkowski voted for Barrett, despite the fact that, if anything, she makes Kavanaugh, who Murkowski opposed, look like a liberal legal titan in comparison. Collins voted for Kavanaugh.

Both want to be perceived as pro-choice “moderates”, but neither wants to actually stand in the way of a right wing takeover of the courts. It’s important, therefore, that any vote they cast against the Republican mainstream be symbolic only. Lisa got to go first, and oppose Kavaugh. I think it would be well founded speculation if one were to wonder whether this time around the two of them agreed that it was Susan’s turn, seeing as once again it would make no difference, and Susan is running for re-election while Lisa is not.

It’s all reminiscent of the catch and release policy the Republicans employed to keep “moderates” like our former Congressman, Rob Simmons, in line. They were allowed to cast moderate votes so long as the right wing outcome was secure; otherwise, they were expected to toe the line.

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Which is it? Stupidity or criminal arrogance.?

Thursday, October 29, 2020

Stories like this merely make me curl further into a fetal position as November 3rd approaches.

Jared Kushner, the son-in-law and senior adviser of President Donald Trump, privately bragged to journalist Bob Woodward in April about the president’s decision to shun the advice and opinions of health experts, just as the death rate from the coronavirus pandemic in the U.S. was reaching peak levels.

“It was almost like Trump getting the country back from the doctors. Right?” Kushner said in recorded conversations with Woodward. “In the sense that what he now did was, you know, he’s going to own the open-up.”

“Trump’s now back in charge,” Kushner also said. “It’s not the doctors.”

Kushner claimed that the U.S. was moving through the “panic” and “pain” phases of the pandemic, and experiencing the “beginning of the comeback phase” by reopening — a direction that was widely criticized at the time.

As Kushner made these comments, the seven-day average of daily deaths related to COVID-19 was above 2,200 per day. There were 754,037 coronavirus cases documented at the time, a figure that would double a month later and triple by mid-June.

Sure, this should just make us laugh at what a clown he is for letting Woodward tape him saying that stuff, but think about it.

Let’s start by bearing in mind that Kushner knew 1) he was being taped by Woodward, which meant he couldn’t deny his statements to anyone but Foxaholics; 2) presumably knew, or should have known, that his comments would likely become public prior to the election; and 3) knew, or at least should have known how unlikely they were to be helpful in any honestly decided election.

There are only two possible explanations for his actions.

The first is that he’s a monumentally stupid person who actually didn’t understand the potential political implications for such a statement. Despite his Harvard degree (I won’t libel Harvard by saying he had a Harvard education) he may in fact be that stupid. But in any ordinary election this would have been a very stupid thing to say, so we should not bet on this explanation.

In light of my conclusion above, the second explanation is more likely. That is, that Kushner, being the arrogant son of a bitch that he is, knew very well that in any normal time in this nation’s history, it was the last thing he should have said, but he was secure in the knowledge that the Republicans could steal the election no matter what the now almost overwhelming number of people in this country may think, want, or for which they may actually vote. We have already seen that Kavanaugh is absolutely willing to do what must be done to throw the election to Trump, and we mustn’t be fooled by Barrett’s recusal from a recent case; she is merely holding her fire.

It’s worth remembering, too, that this is hardly the only time that a Trump administration official has said something extraordinarily stupid, particularly about COVID. Just this past Sunday Mulvaney allowed, on national television, that they were just going to let it run its course. They have given up even pretending to care about their own supporters, never mind the American people. How else to explain the Pence spokesperson’s statement that it was okay if he held superspreader events because he himself has good doctors.

In any other year, in any other political time, given the current state of the polls and the improbability of any significant change in those polls, I would be avidly looking forward to November 3rd. As it is, I look forward with a strange mix of optimism and dread. Part of me can’t believe this nation’s judiciary has sunk so low that it would allow Trump to steal this election (which will take more fancy and transparently ludicrous jurisprudential footwork than Bush v. Gore), but the history buff in me sees the signs of decline too clearly. We should be ashamed as a nation that someone as mediocre as Donald Trump (no Julius Caesar he) and his hangers on may be the source of the Republic’s destruction, but there it is.

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He shares my angst

Saturday, October 24, 2020

I’ve mentioned before that I read the Boston Globe, primarily because my eldest works for them. They also have relatively decent comics, including Bill Griffith’s Zippy, of which I am a big fan. Griffith lives in East Haddam now, by the way, and often features local landmarks in his strip.

Lately Griffith has been sharing his pre-election angst with his readers, and it has definitely struck a chord so far as I’m concerned. He speaks to the legions of folks who are hoping for the best but dreading the worst. Here’s his latest.

More here.

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I’m with Biden on this one

Saturday, October 24, 2020

I was not a Biden fan during primary season, and I continue to believe that several of the other candidates would make better presidents than him, inasmuch as I think they are more aware of what this country needs to recover from not just four years of fascism, but years and years of Republican misrule, a misrule hardly interrupted by the Obama years.

Still, credit where credit is due. I think he’s run a smart campaign, and it seems fairly apparent that not only has he sought advice from the right people but he has taken that advice. Case in point, the “court packing issue”.

Some have accused Biden of punting on this issue, but if you want to call it that, then punting was what the issue required.

The media and punditocracy was hot to go after Biden on this issue, as a way of both siding the court issue. After all, if the Republicans have packed the court for years and years without a whisper of objection from the pundits, isn’t it reprehensible if the Democrats do the same? Shades of Franklin Roosevelt! Had Biden come out for court packing in its raw form we would not hear the end of it from now until the election, and there would be no recognition whatsoever that it is fully justified given recent history, not to mention the harm that a right wing court will do to the country if it continues to exist as a republic, something this court may be at pains to assure does not happen.

The pundits, just to be clear, are desperate to both sides the candidates; to come up with a whatabout that they can throw around about Biden to balance the multiple atrocities committed by the genius. They started beating on the court packing drum before Biden made his announcement, but so far as I can see, they’ve shut up since.

Biden is saying he would appoint a bipartisan commission to see what should be done about the courts, particularly the Supreme Court. I would agree with anyone who claimed that it’s a terrible idea because anything such a commission proposed by way of reforming the courts or the appointment process would promptly be declared unconstitutional by the very courts it was trying to reform. Sadly, for the most part, the courts would be right. The court system is set up in the constitution, and there’s not much you can do about it. There’s an argument to be made that you could legislatively set terms for Supreme Court judges, but they would certainly be struck down as applied to the sitting justices, and likely to all justices. There’s a crying need to change the constitution to deal with this very undemocratic and increasingly partisan institution, but that will not happen in the lifetime of anyone currently living.

I don’t know whether Biden is serious about this, or he’s just using it as a way to deflect on the issue. Either way, the pundits will all be mollified by what is patently bullshit and we won’t be hearing any more about scary (when the Democrats do it) court packing. Serious or not, he’s deprived the pundits of a drum to beat on. Right now the election is the most important thing, and Biden’s court proposal- it’s bi-partisan! after all-, is just the thing to keep the punditocracy silent.

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