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MAGA support crumbling

Tuesday, March 17, 2026

I should start by saying that the following assumes we will have somewhat fair elections in November. I am by no means predicting that will actually be the case.

Given that assumption, it appears that Trump’s decision to go to war for no reason whatsoever is causing his, and by extension Republican, support to crumble. It’s very disappointing for the genius, because he actually thought starting an unnecessary war would cause his approval to skyrocket. For various reasons his bigoted supporters can’t stomach his war. As per usual, they have come to this conclusion for all the wrong reasons, but they have still done so. To a great extent it’s the fact that they are anti-Semites, such as Trump’s former Top Counterterrorism Official, Joe Kent, who has now resigned because he believes Israel pressured Trump to start the war. There is a grain of truth there, I suppose. I’m sure Bibi encouraged Trump, but it’s not foreign involvement to which Kent objects, he just hates Jews. And in any event, Bibi doesn’t have the clout to “pressure” Trump into doing anything, he can merely encourage him to do something he is already inclined to do.

Another example is Stewart Rhodes, the reprehensible head of the Oath Keepers, who is even willing to forego the pardon he was going to ask for because, like Kent he’s an anti-Semite, something about which he’s totally upfront:

“We can’t shut our eyes to the obvious role of the influence of Zionism in our government, of the Israeli people, intelligence services, Mossad, and others in our government,” he began. “So that’s why I no longer call myself MAGA. I am an America-only patriot. I’m a Christian nationalist, an American Christian nationalist. I have to open my eyes to the reality in front of my face, and it’s caused a division inside of MAGA, and it’s caused a division on the political right. But so be it.”

He’s a horrible human being, but he’s right that there’s a division on the political right, with the anti-Semites and others who have supported Trump drifting away from him, and, by extension, the Republican Party. I’m by no means arguing that these people will come out and vote for Democrats. They will either not vote at all or they will vote for a more extreme right wing party that might spring up. It would certainly be nice to see such a third party spring up and steal the majority from the Republicans. A bit of payback for what Ralph Nader did to the Democrats in 2000, something which led directly to the fascist state we have become.

Filed in Politics, Right Wing Idiots, The Very Stable Genius | | Comments (0)

Was she really a judge?

Saturday, March 14, 2026

Apparently she was, according to Wikipedia. I refer to Jeanine Pirro, currently serving as the US attorney for the District of Columbia. One has to wonder if she was as ignorant then as she is now, or is she just pretending?

It’s always good to see one of our courts standing up to the fascists, and always doubly satisfying when the court, in this case Judge James Boasberg, tells it exactly as it is. Jeanine isn’t interested in going after criminals, since then she’d have to indict every member of the cabinet, not to mention herself. She is, however, very interested in kissing the ass of the man currently living in the White House, or what’s left of it. So recently she tried to bring criminal charges against Fed Chair Jerome Powell. She had no evidence, of course, but the pretext was that somehow he had committed crimes connected to construction work on the Fed Building.

Boasberg wrote in a court filing that “the Government has produced essentially zero evidence to suspect Chair Powell of a crime; indeed, its justifications are so thin and unsubstantiated that the Court can only conclude that they are pretextual.”

Pirro couldn’t understand the judge’s ruling!

“This is the antithesis of American justice,” she said. “Exonerating anyone without any records, without an investigation or question, is not how our criminal justice system works.”

I only handled a few criminal cases when I practiced, though I did participate in the criminal clinic in law school. And I was never a judge. But even I knew that you can’t subpoena someone unless you have probable cause for a reasonable person to believe that that the person in question has committed a crime. It’s even in the constitution, the fourth amendment. This judge simply called it as it was, as I assume Pirro is aware on some level. You can’t simply make up a crime that you claim they committed, despite having no evidence, and then commence an investigation, particularly one that includes a search or seizure.

It’s depressing that the Department of Justice is engaging in this sort of stuff, but it’s a somewhat hopeful sign that most of the lower court judges (we can exclude Aileen Cannon from this list) have stood up to the fascists. My own guess is that if Jeanine decides to appeal this to the “Supreme” Court, they will simply refuse to take the case, not because they are trying to stop the fascists, but because the billionaires that have been bribing so many of them would likely prefer to have Powell in there, rather than someone who will do whatever Trump wants at any given time.

Filed in Creeping Totalitarianism, Lawyer stuff, Trump Crimes | | Comments (0)

About that Dog Killer

Friday, March 6, 2026

One of the reasons put forward by the Republicans and the press for Trump shoving Noem (the dog killer) aside is his statement to the effect that she lied about the 200 and some odd million dollar anti-immigrant ad campaign she has waged, with, I would guess, a lot of those funds going to people whose names shall not be divulged. She claimed in recent testimony that Trump had approved of the ads, and he claimed he knew nothing about them, which of course would, as has been pointed out by some, mean that she committed perjury when so testifying. As Digby points out here, (the quote is from a Rolling Stone article) she made the same sort of statement a year ago without Trump taking issue with it:

Noem said that Trump instructed that he didn’t want to be in the ads himself, telling her: “I want you in the ads, and I want your face in the ads … but I want the first ad, I want you to thank me. I want you to thank me for closing the border.” She recalled: “I said, ‘Yes, sir, I will thank you for closing the border.’ So if you notice, in that ad, we thanked him for closing the border.”

Far be it from me to say that Noem has never committed perjury, though she does tend to avoid doing so by simply refusing to answer questions. For instance, is she having sex with Corey Lewandoski, who she hired as highly paid aide? When asked if she was in fact having an affair with him, which raises obvious ethical questions, she responded:

Mr. Chairman, I am shocked that we are going down and peddling tabloid garbage in this committee today,” she replied.

She delivered similar responses to follow up questions.

But, even if the Democrats take over completely in 2028 (no way Pam Bondi will bring charges, after all) I would hesitate to bring perjury charges against her for claiming that Trump knew about the ad campaign. Can you imagine the field day her lawyer would have if the prosecution relied, as it would have to do, on Trump’s testimony to the effect that he knew nothing about it? I suppose that after he was confronted with several thousand of his own lies the judge might have to call a stop to it, and just dismiss the case. Not only would they fail to prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt, they couldn’t even prove it by a preponderance of the evidence (the civil standard) or establish probable cause (the even lower standard for bringing a case in the first place). In fact, assuming we’re talking about a post Trump era, the case would likely never get to trial, as it would be dismissed early on if the only evidence the prosecution had was the testimony of a constant liar.

But, then again, Noem wouldn’t get off scot free. She’s committed perjury on other occasions, and also broke a lot of other laws in the course of establishing a fascist state in this country.

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An obvious point

Saturday, February 21, 2026

Yesterday the Supreme Court issued a 6-3 ruling holding Trump’s tariffs unconstitutional. There is, of course, a fact about this that the mainstream press will not report, or only hint at.

There was no question about the unconstitutionality of Trumps tariffs. The constitution is clear. Yet 3 justices ignored the obvious in order to support a would be dictator. It should be noted widely that had Biden did the exact same thing, the decision would have been 9-0, with the three fascist enablers no doubt leading the charge against him.

Nothing could make the need for some sort of Supreme Court reform more clear. The lower courts (Aileen Cannon and her ilk excepted) have actually done a good job trying to stop the march of fascism, only, so often, to have those attempts frustrated by a Supreme Court, with the other three part time fascist enablers joining in, which stays the lower court decisions for all time, pending a decision that never comes, or, which upholds patently unconstitutional or illegal behavior. Term limits would appear to be one solution. Packing the court is another, but that risks having it packed again should the fascists return to power.

If Congress passes the so called SAVE act, which will disenfranchise millions of American citizens, the current Supreme Court will most likely uphold it, though it, as well, is clearly unconstitutional. Oddly enough, they may never get the chance, as Mitch McConnell, of all people, is standing in the way. One of those ironies, that the man most responsible for the current make up of the court is, in effect, preventing it from doing the harm that anyone with a brain could have predicted it would do.

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A glimmer of hope

Wednesday, February 11, 2026

Let me start by saying that I completely understand that the Republicans intend to try to steal the upcoming mid term elections. This post will assume that they will not be successful in doing so. I know that’s not exactly a safe assumption, but bear with me.

The special elections that have been held since the genius took charge have, by and large, shown a fairly massive shift in voter sentiment. Democrats have won in districts that could fairly be characterized as having been deep red just a year ago. Not only have they won, but they have won by large margins, or lost by smaller margins than would have been the case before the genius came back.

The Republican game plan was, until recently, very effective. They did what they could to benefit their billionaire backers while getting the votes of the people they were screwing by attacking various groups, none of which were causing those people any real harm. They had to attack black folks by implication, rather than directly, but they still got the message across. They had gay folks for a while but that sort of lost its effectiveness when a lot of people came to realize that they knew and liked a lot of gay people. They have since switched to trans folks, but except for the die hard MAGA types, that really doesn’t sell very well. And of course they are attacking immigrants, but in a way that has a) lost them the large portion of the Hispanic vote that had for some reason gone over to them in 2024, and b) lost them a large portion of people who sort of draw the line at government agents murdering people on the streets. It has gained them no votes, because the people who support these Gestapo tactics were already voting for them.

But there’s another thing going on. They are now openly screwing people, rather than doing it in such a way that those people don’t realize it’s happening. A good example is their decision to openly and blatantly deprive millions of people of the subsidies they needed to get health insurance in this, the only advanced nation in the world that does not have free health care for its citizens. There is no way that all of those people voted for Democrats, although they all should have. Had you, in 2024, told those that voted for Trump that he would take away their health care they would no doubt have refused to believe it. Depriving people of health care loses them a lot of votes but gains none. Anyone who favors depriving people of health care is already voting for Republicans.

You can see the same thing happening in issues both big and small. One quite small example is Trump’s recent threat to prevent a bridge connecting Canada and Michigan. It’s an absurd thing to do without doubt, and it gains exactly no votes for Republicans while driving away people who had an interest in seeing that bridge opened. (Found out after the first draft of this post that there’s a billionaire who was behind all this.) Sure, it’s in Michigan, and it’s a blue state, but there are Republican politicians in Michigan and they will lose votes as a result of this sort of thing. Here’s another, and this in a red state (which may be tending blue, at least in spots). The FAA announced that it would close El Paso’s airport for 10 days for “special security reasons”. Bullshit of course, and it backed down quickly. But it’s the sort of thing that pisses off their own voters for no particular reason. They just keep piling this sort of stuff on.

There’s no reason to think any of this will stop. It is merely to be hoped that the Democrats will learn how to take advantage of it, and to pressure the press to report it each time the Republicans choose to screw their base.

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My State Senator loves her some ICE

Thursday, February 5, 2026

This from the Hartford Courant:

Several Connecticut Republican senators called Tuesday for the resignation of Connecticut Education Association President Kate Dias following a statement she posted on the teacher’s union website. The post, in response to the shootings of two civilians in Minneapolis, refers to ICE agents “operating in and around schools, disrupting learning, shattering a sense of safety, and filling families and staff with anxiety.”

“The statement is 100% false, wrong, irresponsible and blatant fear-mongering,” said Republican Sens. Eric Berthel, Heather Somers, Rob Sampson, Henri Martin, Paul Cicarella and Ryan Fazio in a release.

Well, of course, the statement is actually 100% true, responsible and blatant truth telling. But there’s nothing new about Republicans lying and vilifying people for actually telling the truth.

One of these Senators, Heather Somers, is the Senator from the district in which I live. She gets elected mostly because the district is weirdly drawn, as she tends to lose down here where she actually lives. The district extends from here at the shore almost to the northern border.

I’m a bit surprised that she signed onto this statement. Not because I’m surprised because she would lie or attack people in this fashion. No, it’s because Heather normally practices a type of speech in which she carefully avoids actually saying anything of substance or anything that she can’t later say was misconstrued. I.e, she follows another widespread Republican practice of addressing issues by steering away from the actual subject at hand to talk about something else. She has artfully made the MAGA types feel that she’s in their corner while saying nothing to alienate the folks who still think the Republican Party is not the Nazi Party reborn. During her various campaigns for the State Senate she has consistently maintained that she need not give an opinion about federal issues, since she’s running for a state office and federal issues are irrelevant. Total bullshit, of course, but she’s gotten away with it. So, it is surprising that she has decided to weigh in on a federal issue, particularly this issue. Does she really think that anyone but the hardcore MAGA’s are ICE fans? We have a great candidate opposing her this year, and I think it’s a year when she, along with the other Republicans listed above, will be vulnerable. Joe DelaCruz, a former state representative from this district has thrown his hat in the ring. He’s got an amazing talent for reaching people of all political persuasions without retreating into the type of evasions of which Heather is a master.

After writing most of this I came across this article, also from the Courant, about Lamont’s speech in which he told ICE to stay out of Connecticut. Heather isn’t the only one who is supporting ICE, but this is even crazier. This is State Representative Cara Pavalock-D’Amato, of Bristol, attending the speech:

It’s one thing to attack folks who criticize ICE by claiming they’ve done no harm (here), but it’s taking it up a notch if you’re inviting them in. I just hope the Democrats in Bristol have a good candidate to go after her.

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In Defense of Trump (to a limited extent)

Monday, February 2, 2026

At first I got a kick out of this article at Crooks & Liars, in which we read the following:

Donald Trump feigned ignorance to the media over a special election in a red Texas district, he publicized and endorsed after his candidate got shellacked.

Continuing the trend of Democrats beating Republicans, even in red districts, in elections leading up to the 2026 midterms, Democrat and machinist union leader Taylor Rehmet won in a stunning upset over conservative activist Leigh Wambsganss.

Here is Trump’s Truth Social post offering huge support for Wambsganss.

Cut to Trump today, he sounded like a man confused and dumbfounded when asked about the loss in a district he had won by seventeen points in 2024.

“Somebody ran, where?” Trump asked as if he didn’t know Sunday’s date.

Trump knew all about yesterday’s special election as made clear by his TS post.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m happy about the results in Texas. But as I thought about it, it occurred to me that there’s plenty of reasons to think that Trump didn’t know about the election in Texas. I mean, give the guy a break.

First, he’s clearly suffering from dementia, so even if someone told him about the election, he probably forgot about it within minutes.

But wait, you say. What about his post on his propaganda platform? Well, I’ve been watching a lot of Hercule Poirot videos lately, and I’ve picked up on some detective techniques. Now, Trump is surrounded by people who are actually running the show. For instance, no one in their right mind could deny that it’s Stephen Miller that’s behind what we can still refer to as Trump’s Gestapo. Anyway, as Hercule would do I noticed the little clue that gave away the fact that someone else wrote that post, for it included a graphic that Trump would not have had the ability to insert into a post. He’s just not capable enough to do something like that, which requires so much time and effort. It seems fairly obvious that a lot of the posts that go out over his name are, let us say, ghost written by others. It’s not hard to copy his writing style. So, I think Trump is totally innocent of the charge that he was feigning ignorance. He was ignorant, though he might have been told that the thing was being posted. He would have forgotten all about it in no time, which would have rendered him ignorant.

I believe I have satisfied my burden of proof, and have proven that Trump is even more demented than the writer at Crooks & Liars would have you believe. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Filed in The Very Stable Genius | | Comments (0)

Tiny bits of hope

Wednesday, January 28, 2026

As Tom Paine, a huge influence on me in my younger years, once said, “Now are the times that try men’s souls”. I actually think if he had thought about it a bit, he might have included women, as he was far ahead of his time. Anyway, nowadays everyone’s souls are being tried. But we all need balm for those souls once in a while, so this post will make a few comments about some recent, perhaps, hopeful signs.

First, one of the Democrats who voted to fund ICE got a lot of negative feedback from constituents and has now apologized, saying he had “failed”. This is a result of the recent murder and the fact that people are not satisfied with half measures. The hopeful sign has nothing to do with the Democrat himself, Tom Suozzi, but has everything to do with the fact that he felt enough pressure from his constituents to make what he at least pretended to be a heartfelt apology. So many of us have been frustrated with the response to the oncoming fascism from establishment Democrats, so many of whom seem to be stuck somewhere in the 1970s when there were still some Republicans who were not fascists or willing fascist enablers.

In addition, some Republicans are distancing themselves from Trump’s Gestapo. As the headline at Crooks and Liars reads: Even Ted Cruz is Forced To Be A Voice of Reason:

“Ted Cruz of Texas said the administration is taking the wrong tone in the aftermath of the shootings in Minnesota.

“Immediately when an incident like this happens, they come out guns blazing. That that we took out a violent terrorist. Hooray! And the problem is, particularly for someone not paying attention, if you’re being told this is a mom of three and there’s no indication, you know, she’s not waving an ISIS flag or doesn’t have a suicide vest around her.

“Yeah, escalating the rhetoric doesn’t help, and it actually loses credibility. And so I would encourage the administration to be more measured, to recognize the tragedy and to say, we don’t want anyone, anyone’s lives to be lost. and the politicians who are pouring gasoline on the fire need to stop.”

More at the link. I don’t necessarily believe he cares about the murders, but he does recognize that it’s not playing well, and he still wants to be president. More and more of them are going to realize that they now have a choice. They must cater to the die hard Trumpers, or, in any district not deep red, turn against Trump’s Gestapo and some of his other deeply unpopular acts. Of course, being Republicans they will do everything they can to exempt Trump himself from any direct criticism, but we may see increasing criticism of Bondi and Noem, and it’s not unlikely that like so many others that kissed Trump’s ass and did his dirty work, they will be jettisoned when it serves his purposes.

All this being said, it doesn’t pay to be too optimistic. We’ll soon know whether Senate Democrats realize that shutting down the government to stop the Gestapo is worth doing, and whether any Republicans join them in doing so. We’ll also soon know whether the Supreme Court will follow the law and stop Trump’s ridiculous impositions of tariffs, something he has no constitutional or statutory right to do, not to mention stopping him from sending occupation forces into cities where the sole need to do so is to punish Democrats.

I’m not a betting man, but if I were, I wouldn’t risk much money on any of the above taking place in any meaningful fashion.

Some more good news:

I recognize that there are performers out there that geezers like me know nothing about, so it’s possible that there are plenty of protest songs out there of which I’m unaware. But it’s great that Springsteen has piled on:

Where’s Bob Dylan when you need him?

Filed in Creeping Totalitarianism | | Comments (0)

Storm is coming

Saturday, January 24, 2026

A few thoughts while waiting for the coming storm, any damage from which and any failure on the part of FEMA to respond appropriately will obviously be the fault of Joe BIden, for according to members of a certain political party everything that goes wrong is Biden’s fault.

I’ve been doing this blog now for over 20 years, as if I recall correctly, I started it sometime in January of either 2004 or 2005. I originally posted on a MAC platform which no longer exists, so the oldest posts are no longer available, but this site goes back to 2007. Of course back in those olden days I posted almost every day. Back then, even when writing about the worst things that happened, you could take a somewhat optimistic view of things, and it wasn’t hard to find something to write about where you could persuade yourself that what you were saying had some element of originality. Why, back then, even Republicans were not open and proud Nazis and they felt at least some obligation to pretend they weren’t racists. Of course, even until just recently they kept up the pretense, and they even had to abandon the anti-gay stuff and start picking on trans folks. Those days are gone now, of course. Open racism is making a comeback,so the trans folk may catch a break pretty soon.

It’s getting harder to think of things to write about because everything is so obvious that one feels there’s no need to point stuff out. For instance, does anyone really need to be told that there’s no distinction between Stephen Miller’s ICE and Hitler’s Gestapo? Okay, Miller hasn’t opened up gas chambers yet, but Hitler hadn’t either in the early days and there’s still time. Does anyone need to be told that Trump is rapidly slipping into severe dementia or that despite that obvious fact the major media, with precious few exceptions, pretends it isn’t happening? Does anyone need to be told that the anti-immigrant talk is, for most of the GOP, simply a way to distract Americans from the fact that their government, while totally controlled by said Republicans, is doing nothing for them, unless they are in the top .0001%. After all, that’s been the whole point of anti-immigrant rhetoric since the days of the Know Nothings. Does anyone need to be told that the current “Supreme” court is the worst in American history, with the possible exception of John Taney’s court and that the constitution no longer means what it says, but it means whatever John Roberts and his fellow Nazi enablers want it to mean. Does anyone even need to be told that any word coming out of the mouth of the current president, vice president, cabinet members, Trump appointed bureaucrats, Republican elected officials, or media enablers is presumptively a lie, and it’s only news when one of them accidentally lets slip the truth. Does anyone need to be told that the Democratic establishment (looking at you, Chuck Schumer) fails to understand that it’s not 1980 anymore, when there were still a few principled Republicans in elected positions.

Okay, some people do have to be told these things, but doing so will do no good, since those are the very people who believe everything they hear on Fox News, or, to be more honest about it, pretend to believe everything they hear on Fox News, as it all reinforces their bigotry and their entrenched belief that all their financial troubles, such as lack of health care, low pay, high housing costs, etc., are somehow caused not by the billionaires and their Republican enablers but by people who are worse off than they are. To bring Dylan’s lyrics up to date, they totally respond to the argument that they have “More than the [insert favorite hate target here], don’t complain”. Anyway, those people wouldn’t be reading this blog.

Back in olden times I posted a YouTube music video every week. It occurred to me that this song speaks to what’s going on today. I chose this version because I think Rhiannon Giddens is a great singer. You’ll need to sit through Paul Simon’s long introduction, but it’s worth it.

Filed in American Life, Music, Ramblings | | Comments (0)

Republicans bow down once again

Tuesday, January 13, 2026

A short while ago Trump vetoed two bills, both of which had passed the House by unanimous consent. One returned land to a Florida Native American tribe, and the other involved a pipeline project that would bring safe drinking water to rural Colorado.

There was no secret about the reasons for the vetoes, which, of course, had nothing to do with the actual merits of the bills.

The first bill was vetoed because the tribe in question had joined in a lawsuit agains the detention facility in Florida known as Alligator Alcatraz. The bill was sponsored by a Florida Republican. The other bill was vetoed because it benefited the district “represented” by Lauren Boebert, who has incurred the displeasure of our clearly not a pedophile president by supporting the release of the Epstein files. (On a side note, no one in their right mind needs much proof about Trump’s participation in Epstein’s sexual escapades. It is totally consistent with his life history.)

When he vetoed the bills it was obvious that this would be a test of the extent of any Republican resistance to Trump’s excesses, excesses that have put a lot of their seats at risk. Had each Republican that voted for the bills in the first place voted for them again, his vetoes would have been easily overridden.

As one of the linked articles notes, some Republicans actually voted to override, but of course there were not nearly enough. Given the fact that a lot of people are getting turned off by the Trump administration (for instance, some people don’t approve of ICE agents murdering people on the streets) perhaps the Democrats ought to pound away at the fact that their opponents are not standing up for the people and are treating Trump precisely the way he and folks like Hitler want to be treated: unquestioning obedience.

It goes without saying, of course, that the media will and has pretty much ignored the fact that Trump is using the veto power in order to pursue personal vendettas, rather than for policy reasons. Once again, Trump being Trump and not news. Why should the American people be told about such things and they should certainly not become major news events like they would be if Joe Biden had done them.

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