Cheney Responds to Attacks

"Today, Trump attacked Cheney and others who investigated the events of January 6, 2021, as 'dishonest Thugs.'

Cheney responded: 'Donald, this is not the Soviet Union. You can’t change the truth and you cannot silence us. Remember all your lies about the voting machines, the election workers, your countless allegations of fraud that never happened? Many of your lawyers have been sanctioned, disciplined or disbarred, the courts ruled against you, and dozens of your own White House, administration, and campaign aides testified against you. Remember how you sent a mob to our Capitol and then watched the violence on television and refused for hours to instruct the mob to leave? Remember how your former Vice President prevented you from overturning our Republic? We remember. And now, as you take office again, the American people need to reject your latest malicious falsehoods and stand as the guardrails of our Constitutional Republic—to protect the America we love from you.'"

Letters from an American Historian

The Donald! What a turn of events. Liz was one of the bad guys a short time ago. Her dad is an unapologizing public enemy in the republican party's slide into torture and unaccountable police violence  and hostility to common sense gun controls over the last quarter century. And now Liz is one of the most direct and forceful voices of resistance to the kind of pol, above the law, targets his enemies with violent threats, her dad helped make possible. Not that I'm complaining. We need Never Trumpers, former republicans, rich people, anybody with some common sense and human compassion that will speak out against the lies and corruption. Diehard republicans might wish to counter that there's always lies and corruption in politics. Sure, but if you can't tell the difference you're not paying attention, or worse willing on the tyranny over truth. Dark speculation for the day: If looking back this period marks a significant turn away from democracy and public faith in the rule of law and legal justice the crucial date will be the SCOTUS decision last summer to "pardon" Grump for Jan 6. The miscarriage of justice in that decision is obvious already but we'll learn over the next four years how bad a miscalculation it was.  

Don't Overreact to Every Stupid Cruel Grump Shiny Object

"There’s no magic remedy or strategy for contending with how [G]rump operates. In some respects, simply a recognition of this fact is key to having the stamina to contend with him. But it probably means needing to be ready for different threats without running after them until they fully materialize."

Josh Marshall @ TPM 

Or why spazzing out about every stupid cruel threat Grump makes is probably not the best use of an effective opposition's time. He's always ran this successful hedge with his cult that he really would fix everything, as he is always promising, if it wasn't for the terrible dems and liberals getting in his way. This puts an opposition in a tricky place. Foremost, journalists need to investigate and expose his worst abuses, which will just as often not be the "shiny object" he's owning libs with on social media. Maybe Hegseth and Gabbard are distractions; it's the Project 2025 revanchist rightist technocrats, etc? Anyway, it's going to be an overwhelming "flood the zone with shit" for four years, minimum. And whatever Lusk's ground game really was will be expanded and more entrenched for '26 and '28. But, most important, the opposition needs to let Grump fuck up and have to own it. Keep close score of his economic record. Of course, everything that goes wrong he'll blame on the democrats, and Fox and friends, will amplify his conservative take. Like I said, it's tricky. Oppose the bad stuff he does when he does it but don't spend too much energy opposing every stupid cruel threat he makes. We're in this weird, scary, place, again, where we're waiting for him to blow up the economy or murderously bungle another national crisis event, another plague, war, climate change disaster, or follows through on his campaign promised threats to mass deportations and fascist violence against Americans identified as the "enemy within." To do the terrible thing again that will hopefully finally turn the electorate against him. In the meantime, it's whack-a-mole with every toxic bit of MAGA they infect into the government. First, trying to stop his worst appointments, please. Jayapal, Bernie, Warren, AOC, Jeffries, Schiff, Ferguson, etc. Thanks for your efforts.  

Two Weeks After Losing by 1.6% the Dem's Election Reckoning Urges Party Suicide

Okay, this week the post-mortem reckonings are down to the Dems are too woke. Breaking news: two people in the prison population have received the trans medical attention slandered in those Grump bigot ads all over prime time sports TV in the final run-up to the election. Also: the gov health care program providing this medical attention began under Grump, really. Meanwhile, his lying will go into overdrive now and the deference he will get from the media and low-info electorate will be painfully cringy. 

Prediction: It's going to be a lot of punching down against the weak and defenseless over the next four years. And liberals trying to stop them and his voters cheering him on and the gun crazies gunning for protesters and civil war.  

But, back to the post-mortems, get this, once the Dems have faced their wokeness problem, they urgently need, say top political analysts, to be cutting off the "radical left crazy liberal trans-communist pro-illegals" groups supporting them because they go too far with their crazy civil rights claims, forcing new gender pronouns on the public ("Harris is for they/them, Trump is for you"), Drag Queen Story Hours, and invasive threats to private property, stuff like that. 

Hopefully, cooler heads prevail in the DNC leadership and basic human rights for all are recognized as essential to the coalitional collective Dem governance ideal and whole party leadership deal. It's crooked billionaires & violent bigots against everybody else, all of us. Long live the resistance!

And now some of what interests me but I don't entirely get about the economics side of this. So the economy was very hard for working families in '21 and '22, the economic record shows. Groceries were going up fast. The price of eggs and steaks doubled. Rents were terrible. Health care unaffordable without Obamacare. Rising interest rates made buying a home or buying a new car unaffordable for the working classes. It's a political rule of democracies: inflationary shocks and rising costs of living for the many always goes against incumbents. It goes that way in democracies all around the world. 

Okay, but no matter what the context? I mean, Grump's failed coup on Jan 6, his fake elector scheme, asking Georgia to change the vote count for him, collusion with a hostile foreign dictator who has attacked our last three national elections, extorting our ally, Ukraine, for dirt on Biden, botching badly the public health crisis, stealing and refusing to give up top secret national security documents when he leaves office, you know, a few "abstract" matters of democracy or the rule of law, or just his general above the law Sopranos-like outlaw chic, or how he provokes and urges violence against anybody that opposes him, none of this gave his 77 million voters pause or stirred offsetting considerations to discussions of rents and price of gas and the rising costs of living at the kitchen table?!

Inflation was world wide. It's even common in history with big disruptions to global markets like pandemics and wars. The global economy crashed in 2020 and the shutdown lingered and starting production and trade connections backup wasn't a light switch. 

So bad, hard times, but you think Grump will make any of this better? Grump is a great business man, an entertaining hustler, maybe he can bring back the prices of 2017?! I know that sounds dumb but that is the caricature of the Grump voter that's being developed in the media since the election. 

He is in fact notorious for stiffing labor and financial fraud is basically his "Art of the Deal" economic model. His trade war with China his first time around cost American consumers. Biden, by contrast, was backing labor unions and reducing the costs of health care, and Harris committed to more of the same and additionally fighting price gouging and taxing the rich and making it easier to buy a home, but your cranky aunt figures Grump was easier on the pocketbook?! 

Anyway, I hope Grump takes seriously as a matter of pride his voters belief that he will lower prices and reduce the basic costs of living for them. I'm dubious but with Musk's special Tech Bro billionaire arrogance he just might think he can beat the economy and try to stabilize prices and interest rates for regular people. 

I hope they do because there is no way they deport millions of workers or impose a 20% tariff on all Chinese imports or lop off whole departments of government or fire millions of civil servants without devastating the economy. Big parts of agriculture and the building trades would face tremendous inflationary pressures. As I said, we already know the previous trade war with China cost American consumers. This one will cost them much more. Unemployed civil servants, unemployed anybody, depresses the consumer demand that sustains the economy. Their three year plan of shock therapy austerity and recovery is wildly punitive and unrealistic and if their Project 2025 plans are fulfilled will almost certainly blow up the economy. Maybe they can scale down their plans to a size and pace that isn't so disruptive economically, although I can't see Grump or Musk being very good judges of this question. 

I'm sure they'll get friendly pricing from Big Oil, we're already hearing about this prospect, and some slack from the corporate price gougers in '21 and '22. That'll help with the partisan polling perspective on the economy. But it can't stop the shock therapy devastation of mass deportations or trade war tariffs or a big rise in unemployment and exploding poverty. 

And when/if the public does turn on their economic record they won't take it well, no better than a global pandemic. We know this. This is why currently my cosplay optimism is a hope Grump and Musk actually do take their promise to stop inflation and reduce the basic costs of living for the working classes seriously. They know how to win public support they bluster proudly. No sweat. Because if they really want to stop inflation and reduce the cost of living for workers they can't do the other crazy fascist, isolationist, violent stuff they have planned, or much less of it anyway. 

David Wallace-Wells is too damn centrist but at least he reports stuff and doesn't sound like he's on the corporate payroll. I still get his columns by email but can't seem to access them at the NY Times. But if you can get to it his "Thirteen things to keep in mind when talking about the election" is a good summary of the last two weeks of Dem handwringing. 

"I didn't think [Grump] would do the unhinged things he said he's do. What the heck?"

 "Whoa, whoa, whoa. Hold on a minute. President-elect [Grump] has started appointing screwballs for important government positions, making plans for immigrant detention camps and leaning, authoritarian-style, on Republicans in Congress to obliterate check and balances?

Are you telling me the man who said he was going to do all these crazy things is actually going to do all these crazy things? What the heck?

I was told by many [G]rump supporters that he’s a showman who talks tough, but when he gets into office again he’ll govern like a sensible conservative, just like he didn’t do the first time around."

Rex Huppke @ USA Today

Maybe even greater threat to democracy than Grump's threats is the fact that 77 million Americans, second highest vote total for POTUS ever, democratically voted for this sadistic shit show. Including much of my, thankfully, distant relatives. Already bragging about how Harris was too "stupid," by reports. Recalls that Nazi line from Goebbels, "It will always remain one of democracy's best jokes that it provided its deadly enemies with the means by which it was destroyed." And we're stuck here now it would appear until the billionaires and demagogued low-info bigots change their minds. An unforced error and hilarious if not for its staggering real world significance.  

Did A Billionaire Tech Bro Buy And/Or Hack the Election?

 And scary takes on where the denial of reality leads-- 

From the 1500s: Pieter Bruegel’s famed Tower of Babel, depicting societies driven apart when they lost a shared language to describe reality. In the Biblical version, it was an angered God who left human beings in destructive confusion, as his punishment. Now similarly divisive work is underway, engineered by earthly creatures driven by power, vengeance, and greed. (Getty Images.)

"In essence, “news” is everything you don’t see or experience yourself. And with each passing year, a growing share of the “news” on which people base their sense of reality has come neither from personal experience; nor from “regular” news organizations, flawed as they may be; but instead from the surrounding climate of social media and other sources that have been skewed in a nihilistic, suspicious-and-hostile direction. A large part of that skewing is intentional—a supercharged version of Fox News.... Part of it just comes with the technology. And evidence suggests that in 2024 this mattered more than anything the official news media did." -James Fallows

"Words whose purpose is to portray life as it actually is: That’s a rare and even radical act in a time where so much of the language that’s thrown at us is trying to sell us something--a product, a lifestyle, a political agenda.  Language whose sole purpose is to mislead and distort, to numb us out and dumb us down--or to put it another way, the language of advertising…

What do you suppose our prospects are for living long and happy lives… if our world-view is based on lies, delusions, and fantasies?  Or take it to the macro level: What do you suppose is the life expectancy of a country that’s lost its grip on reality?  Whose national consciousness is based on lies, delusions, and fantasies? ..Without the tools for seeing and describing things as they truly are?" -Ben Fountain 

"After the election, as I started watching the blame game unfold, I received clarity from a despondent Biden staffer. He asked, ‘How do you spend a billion dollars and not win?’ The staffer missed that one of Trump's new supporters spent 44 times that much to buy Twitter and control the narrative. We have to observe that it worked." -Josh Carter 

James Fallows @ Breaking the News

"Why did people persist in thinking that Harris was short on policy; that Trump’s programs would boost the American economy, despite a widely broadcast consensus from sixteen Nobel Prize-winning economists to the contrary; or that he would lower taxes for working people, though the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy calculated that he would increase them? Even many of Trump’s critics think his first term marked a high point for border patrol, though more unauthorized migrants have been forced to leave under Biden. (Why was Biden’s Presidency widely dismissed as desultory, when, in fact, as my colleague Nicholas Lemann recently put it, “he has passed more new domestic programs than any Democratic President since Lyndon Johnson—maybe even since Franklin Roosevelt”?) How did so many perceptions disprovable with ten seconds of Googling become fixed in the voting public’s mind? And why, even as misapprehensions were corrected, did those beliefs prevail?"

Nathan Heller on the Ambience of Information @ NY-er

The claims for hacking remain obscure but sound credible enough to me that you gotta hope some Dem officials are checking this out seriously asap. 

Duty to Warn Letter to VP Harris

Is Grump a foreign policy dove? If only

"In fact, I have lost count of the number of leftists who have told me in recent months: “Trump didn’t start any new wars.” Sorry, what? Trump spent his four years in the White House escalating every single conflict that he inherited from Barack Obama. Many have forgotten that Trump bombed the Assad government in Syria twice; dropped the “mother of all bombs” on Afghanistan; illegally assassinated Iranian general Qasem Soleimani on Iraqi soil; armed Saudi Arabia’s genocide in Yemen; and made John Bolton his national security adviser. Few are even aware that Trump launched more drone strikes in his first two years in office than Obama, dubbed “the drone president”, did across eight years in office.

But this time, we were told, it would be different. This time Trump meant it. No more war!"

Mehdi Hassan @ The Guardian

Besides, just check the partisan inference in these so-called "leftists" comments, Grump didn't start any "new wars," as if Biden, or Obama, or Dems have and are starting "new wars" all the time. In fact, Biden did not start the war in Ukraine or the Middle East, and hasn't entangled US troops in either, and ended a war that has lasted for nearly two decades, the longest running armed conflict in US history, that was one of the last "new wars," like Iraq, both started by Republicans.   

I don't know if it's social media, A.I., or what, but it's like the "leftists" are getting dumber just as the right is getting more desperate and violent. Not good. 

Who is really to Blame here? SCOTUS and Robert's Court

"In fact, the warning signs for where this could all end up — where the country finds itself now — were clear by late 2021, less than a year into Biden’s term. The public reporting at the time indicated (correctly, we now know) that there was no real Justice Department investigation into [G]rump and his inner circle at that point, even though the outlines of a criminal case against [G]rump — including some of the charges themselves that were eventually brought nearly two years later — were already apparent."

Blaming Biden, Garland, McConnell, and SCOTUS @ Politico for letting Grump get away with it. I still can't hear all the blame being heaped on Harris or Biden. I'm a little more sympathetic to attacks on Dem elites for being too pandering to corporations and conservatives but I still think these are secondary causes at most. Grump and Republicans did this; they are the perps, bad actors. But the principle cause of our current predicament is the Robert's Court. The country, Constitution, rule of law, and democracy were attacked, and have been attacked repeatedly since 2016, and the legal system has not been up to the clear and present national security threat. In fact, SCOTUS facilitated the coup. I know, excepting perhaps the 1950s to the 1970s, the Warren Court, SCOTUS has been a bastion of rotten conservatism in American history forever, especially after the Civil War, but the Robert's Court, packed by McConnell, packed by Trump, has piled up a record over the last twenty years to end them all. SCOTUS, essentially, sanctioned the Jan 6 coup attempt, and until proven otherwise enables all the additional GOP criming going forward. 

 "We now know that Russian operatives helped Trump’s campaign in 2016 in part because of what Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort knew as the Mariupol Plan, which called for Trump to look the other way as Putin installed puppets in the oblasts of eastern Ukraine, permitting him to take through political manipulations the land that he ended up in February 2022 trying to take by force."-- Heather Cox Richardson

Trump/Vance's Bigot Troll Ad Campaign and Harris/Walz For The People

In these times in contrast with Trump's hateful intolerance even Liz Cheney is for the people, for crying out loud. 

They're rolling out a Trump ad in Seattle and, reportedly, around the swing states: 

Harris as "Border Czar" is letting in drug dealers, rapists, and murderous foreign born scary looking gangbangers, enabling "illegals" (to GOP all POC are "illegals," see Springfield, OH) immigrants to escape justice. And then adding insult to injury, when these violent criminals are finally captured by our men in blue and put in jail Harris is helping them get sex change operations. Crazy liberals! Harris-- says the violent fascists targeting and smearing immigrants and Trans people in the scary alarmist video-- is for "They/Them" and "Grump is for you." 

True Trumpers, "you," screams the ad like Howard Beale in Network (1976), would rather watch Trump round up all of the immigrants, POC, Trans, LGBTQ+, and crazy liberals and force them into concentration camps and deport them, if not shoot them for target practice. Even if he probably can't totally get away with any or all of this, this is his basic campaign plea. And it's a message, apparently, popular with a sizable segment of the macho bigot population. 

(And in "a lie travels around the world before the truth can put her boots on" sweepstakes the NY Times now reports Under Trump, US Prisons Offered Gender-Affirming Care, most notably couching the hateful slander as the GOP's own humane gesture.) 

Trump, of course, didn't invent fake news, what the Russians call "political technology," but he is the first in US to take over a political party with it, weaponized against women, immigrants, sexual minorities, whatever is agitating and galvanizing the hateful bigots most on social media. 

The punching down cruelty in MAGA isn't entirely new in American history, either. Historian Richard Hofstadter chronicles the paranoid style, racist anti-communist wacko conservatism in American politics, all the way back to the Civil War. But it'd be curious what he'd make of MAGA? In the early 1960s, in his essay The Paranoid Style in American Politics, Hofstadter argued a solid middle of the American democratic electorate, established, security conscious, resistant willy-nilly change, a centrist majority, always rejects the violent bigot extremes in American politics, like Goldwater in 1964 (who thought Eisenhower was a communist and wanted to Nuke the Chinese in Korea). And like MAGA's violent fascism, presumably. 

But over sixty years later violent bigot extremes have taken over the Republican party and have already attempted one failed coup attempt to overthrow democracy and the rule of law. And propose in Project 2025 a second admin committed to purging immigrants and civil servants and anyone that opposes them. But Trumpers are sure, they do their research (Fox or worse), that it's poor TDS maligned Trump who gets the raw deal. Stop the Steal! When the most salient feature of the Trump era is nearly all the 'stealing' and fake news emanates from Trump and his MAGA movement. Presented as a dramatic TV series prior to 2016 this stuff would be dismissed by critics as hysterical and over the top. Unbelievable. 

But, in fact, MAGA regularly threatens violence against immigrants and the police and judges and public health officials and election workers or liberals or anybody who opposes them. They attacked congress, violently, on the day the legislative body of of the government was formally recognizing the peaceful transfer of power as a fundamental traditional hallmark of democracy and the rule of law.  Trump skipped the inauguration, denies Biden won the election, and MAGA republicans in power, SCOTUS, radical anti-democratic federal and state legislators insist on giving the felon reprobate another chance to steal an election and American democracy. Violent threats are the crypto currency of MAGA.

As I've argued before Trump is a real-life Frankenstein caricature of the 1980s neoliberal economic model, as if scripted for an over-the-top apocalyptic remake of Robo Cop. His ridiculously self-dealing monopoly capitalism, his cultish branding and celebrity popularity economics, and his big-government-is-the-problem austerity economics are like a cartoon caricature drawn by Grover Norquist. And, ultimately, it's a loser project, kicked to the curb statistically over and over by mainstream economic measures, pushing the environment to brink, but thrives as zombie economics boosted by "greed is good" free marketeers right and left. Their prescription is tired and doomy: More tax cuts for the rich (which they turn into stock buy backs and stiff workers), burn baby burn, and trash Big Government, public infrastructure, public goods as wasteful deficit spending, and then proving disastrously the ineffectiveness of government whenever in office.

(Mainstream economists scoff at Stephanie Kelton, the economics professor who wrote The Deficit Myth, but there is a simple observation in her work that is undeniable: why do both parties compete to outspend each other on the military, never calling such spending deficit spending, even though it is quite obviously every bit as much deficit spending as any social spending on health care, public education, environmental protections, etc? So that even Dems fret about how we can pay for essential public infrastructure and Repugs relentlessly condemn it as reckless, wasteful deficit spending? This is the austerity economics of neolib corporate rule. The rich and corporations will not pay taxes sufficient to support basic public infrastructure (housing, health care, public education, public safety, food safety, environmental protections, roads and bridges, etc) that makes possible their wealth accumulation, so public infrastructure crumbles and they blame government waste. Sure, the caring economy, the public goods that support community welfare, and sustainable energy production are a lot but probably some very manageable progressive tax margins would cover it but the rich have resisted these kinds of democratic reform, relentlessly, and frequently manipulatively and violently since the Roman Republic. It's fundamental orientation of political economy in my readings of world history, the rich insisting on profit margins that enrich them and squeeze and impoverish labor.) 

Trump's candidacy, as the first felon, the most litigated in American history, is a disgraceful travesty and miscarriage of justice that has played out in plain sight on TV and in the mainstream media. And his craven effort to buy the election in the name of his violent bigot fascism and crypto market capitalism is a terrifying prospect but Elon Musk and his Billionaire friends, with their stranglehold on the biggest media platforms, are on the case. It's so preposterously bad it's impossible to describe without sounding hysterical. But they do a slightly more benign version of something like this in Seattle all the time; i.e., local corporate interests buying elections. So, I dunno. It could happen here! It did happen here in 2016. They're trying to do it again and of course it'll only be worse. 

Trump should have been disqualified from ever holding any kind of elective office, along with all his co-conspirators, for Jan 6 alone and many times over for a variety of other high crimes and misdemeanors; treason, election interference, financial fraud, promoting violence, sexually harassing women, etc. The MAGA movement is an ongoing crime spree. And yet the polling experts tell us the election is tossup and NY Times/WaPo scratch their chins over whether Harris or Trump would be better for the economy. 

We know Trump is a terrible business man, just a puffed up celebrity hustler and financial fraudster. We know his incompetent self-dealing leadership endangered public health during a global pandemic. We know his packed court ended women's basic individual rights, basic reproductive rights, and we know his election would only expand those restrictions on women's rights. We know SCOTUS aided and abetted his failed coup attempt on Jan 6 and we know his election would exonerate the violent insurrectionists who stormed the capitol that day to try to overthrow the election. We know he stole top secret national security documents, that scores of national security professionals tell us endangers America and Americans. And we know he promotes violence against anybody or anything that gets in his way. 

Make no mistake, ratification of or a slam-dunk rejection of all this violent fake news fascism is on the ballot. Whatever shortcomings of the Dems, that we will continue to peacefully protest after the election, a vote for the Dems is a vote for democracy, civil rights, workers, and a sustainable and democratic future, and a vote for Trump, or any repug on the ballot, is a vote for dictatorship, corruption, violence, environmental destruction, and stupid bigotry. 

And, shamefully, Big Tech Bros and their Billionaire friends, are sponsoring his candidacy and fake news about pet-eating immigrants and other anti-immigrant/LGBTQ rage porn on social media and the internet and now in commercials on local TV broadcasts around Seattle. Remember this. 

And this. “Trump has a habit of assuming other politicians act in the same way as he would,” Glenn Kessler wrote in WaPo. So he looked into why Trump would have accused Biden “of raiding the FEMA disaster fund to handle undocumented migrants. It turns out that’s because he did this.”   

In the middle of hurricane season in 2019, Kessler explains, Trump took $155 million from the FEMA disaster fund and redirected it to pay for detention space and temporary hearing locations for immigrants seeking asylum. “No, Biden didn’t take FEMA relief money to use on migrants,” the article title reads, “but Trump did.” 

Remember, they withheld PPE funding in the pandemic because they thought it would mostly be going to blue cities. I mean, really, you can't make up how bad this sick fuck was. His admin was pure kleptocracy and some people go for it because they like the Trump scenery-chewing spectacle of violence and abuse against their perceived enemies. 

Letters from an American Historian

"Rather than standing against slavery alone, those organizing in 1854 stood against an entire political system, opposing the small group of elite enslavers who had taken over the U.S. government in order to establish an oligarchy and were quite clear they rejected the self-evident truth in the Declaration of Independence that all men were created equal. Instead, they intended to rule over the nation’s majority, whose labor produced the capital that southern leaders believed only elites should control."

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal." Not equal in height or strength or wealth and intelligence but equal in "certain unalienable rights," individual rights, the essence of our personal freedoms, including "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." 

"Republican Abraham Lincoln articulated this worldview for his fledgling party in 1859 as it took a stand against oligarchs. Believing these principles accurately represented the aspirations of the nation’s founders, Lincoln called them “conservative.” People from all parties rallied to the party that promised to defend those principles."  

Kamala Harris in Wisconsin: “The president of the United States must not look at our country through the narrow lens of ideology or petty partisanship or self-interest,” Harris said today. “The president of the United States must not look at our country as an instrument for their own ambitions. Our nation is not some spoil to be won. The United States of America is the greatest idea humanity ever devised: the nation that inspired the world to believe in the possibility of a representative government. And so in the face of those who would endanger our magnificent experiment, people of every party must stand together.” 

"In this election, putting patriotism ahead of partisanship is not an aspiration. It is our duty,” Cheney said. “I ask all of you here and everyone listening across this great country to join us. I ask you to meet this moment. I ask you to stand in truth, to reject the depraved cruelty of Donald Trump." 

Letters from an American Historian

Yeah, but, as the saying goes, what if the "depraved cruelty" is the point? Along with owning the libs, ritual acts of violence, mass deportations, and state violence against targeted groups are more or less precisely what people who got off on Trump's first term and his immigrant family separation policy really want most, right? The Purge. Like some guy at a town meeting asking when he gets to start shooting liberals. 

And we, the people, the others, workers, labor, families, liberals, the 99%, we're hoping, wishing, preying, by contrast, an overwhelming majority of Americans, Us, will say No to more Trump lies and treason, No to more MAGA bigot hate and misogyny and gun violence, and Hell No to Billionaire crony capitalist rich-get-richer-poor-get-poorer economics.  

We're not communists. We're for free enterprise and opposed to wealth hoarding corporate rule and violent bigotry. It's not that difficult to figure out, and it's not pie in the sky. 

"Today the International Longshoremen’s Association suspended the strike after USMX agreed to wage increases of 62% over six years. The two sides agreed to extend the current contract until January 15 to address the issues of benefits and automation. Administration officials White House Chief of Staff Jeff Zients, top White House economic advisor Lael Brainard, Acting Secretary of Labor Julie Su, and Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg helped broker the temporary agreement." 

Trump won't grow the economy. And he won't help make life more affordable for workers and regular families. And, most preposterously, he won't make America stronger in the world or safer at home. Trump will grow violence and corruption and insecurity at home and around the world. We know this. Unless you only watch Fox News, we all saw it on TV 2017 to 2020. And we don't want to watch the rerun. It'll only be worse. 

Sex, Lies, and Grumpworld Are Haters

For his part, Trump says his wandering speech is deliberate. He calls it “the weave.” I’ll talk about, like, nine different things, and they all come back brilliantly together, and it’s like, and friends of mine that are, like, English professors, they say, ‘It's the most brilliant thing I've ever seen.’”

Back when I was doing social media and Grump was launching his meteoric career as a statesman I remember this poster who made it her mission to document Trump's every lie. Before the end of 2017 it was apparent that this would be a daunting task. And by the end of his four years WaPo counted his lie totals at over 30,000 lies. I always figured it would be much easier to count the things he says that are actually more or less true, so another whopper comes as no surprise (part of the reason the media still don't know how to deal with him) but as I've said many a time should we survive the nightmare of the Trump Era the comic gold in this guy's lying mendacity is seemingly bottomless. 

It's like that classic line from George on Seinfeld, "Remember, Jerry, it's not a lie if you believe it." Only here it's not a lie if Trumpworld believes it and if Trumpworld believes it the major media will platform it because to do otherwise would be liberal bias and unfair partisanship, and they all know such critical commentary is frowned upon by their Donor Class publishers. 

And so, alas, here we are. But you have to laugh too. No English professor ever said that. It's like his boast that he's the best thing to ever happen to Black people since Lincoln. Bigots love this stuff. He's storming the Overton window; fighting back against the 'woke mob.' And his chutzpah is so upside-down stupid that you have to chuckle at the audacity of his narcissism. 

That announcement [Trump pandering and flipflopping over abortion rights] has given wings to the Democrats’ messaging about Republicans’ determination to end abortion rights.

The Dems messaging needs a boost on this issue?! For crying out loud, with the Dobb's decision Trump's packed court ended women's reproductive rights. And if that wasn't bad enough his monumental assault on women's rights has unleashed vindictive laws at the state level that persecute and endanger pregnant women. The Dems don't need "wings" on this issue, they need the fucking media to do their jobs and lay out the stakes for women in the election. That's all. 

"The Harris campaign said: “Let’s be clear: Donald Trump is the reason Louisiana women who are suffering from miscarriages or bleeding out after birth can no longer receive the critical care they would have received before Trump overturned Roe. Because of Trump, doctors are scrambling to find solutions to save their patients and are left at the whims of politicians who think they know better. Trump is proud of what he’s done. He brags about it. And if he wins, he will threaten to bring the crisis he created for Louisiana women to all 50 states.”

Boom! What she said. 

Keynes warned us, I will remind you again. Let the capitalists run amok, unfettered, laissez-faire, and they will chisel and lowball workers and labor until their predatory behavior provokes social unrest and reaction. And that reaction is rarely radical leftism, as elite panic fantasizes. Or even workers recognizing Bernie or Warren or AOC as champions, as they should. But those without much education are more likely to line up behind some demagog telling them Jews or immigrants or gays or communists or liberals are threatening their jobs and communities, and urges people to act violently against political enemies and forces for reform.

In short, corporate economic austerity eventually generates bigot pogroms, it should be recognized as a historical rule at this point. Or until the people tire of the conflict and division and support living wages and a fair tax structure on the rich. What corporate rule precisely resists most (or maybe also throw in there getting out of paying for the costs they externalize onto the environment), as should be obvious to all. 

HCR is super good at finding evidence that we are getting there, turning the corner towards progressive populist reforms, but we are not there yet. Vote Blue No Matter, up and down the ballot!!!

Letters from an American Historian

And Yay Isaac Hayes Jr.'s estate for filing a copyright infringement against Trump's use of his music. And, by the way, Hot Buttered Soul, 1969, is a stone cold psychedelic soul classic. If you don't know, check it out, and if you do, enjoy. Can't get enough of it right now: 

And the White Stripes are also stepping up as well. Jack White wrote on Instagram: “Don’t even think about using my music you fascists. Law suit coming from my lawyers about this (to add to your 5 thousand others).” The music machine sues fascists!

We await Taylor's public endorsement of Kamala. Make it big, please. 

Trump's Second or Third Coup Plot

From Heather Cox Richardson: 

Almost exactly a year ago, on August 1, 2023, a grand jury in Washington, D.C., indicted former president Donald J. Trump for conspiring to defraud the United States, conspiring to disenfranchise voters, and conspiring and attempting to obstruct an official proceeding. The charges stemmed from Trump’s attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election. A grand jury is made up of 23 ordinary citizens who weigh evidence of criminal activity and produce an indictment if 12 or more of them vote in favor. 

The grand jury indicted Trump for “conspiracy to defraud the United States by using dishonesty, fraud, and deceit to impair, obstruct, and defeat the lawful federal government function by which the results of the presidential election are collected, counted, and certified by the government”; “conspiracy to corruptly obstruct and impede the January 6 congressional proceeding at which the collected results of the presidential election are counted and certified”; and “conspiracy against the right to vote and to have one’s vote counted.” 

“Each of these conspiracies,” the indictment reads, “targeted a bedrock function of the United States federal government: the nation’s process of collecting, counting, and certifying the results of the presidential election.” “This federal government function…is foundational to the United States’ democratic process, and until 2021, had operated in a peaceful and orderly manner for more than 130 years.” 

The case of the United States of America v. Donald J. Trump was randomly assigned to Judge Tanya S. Chutkan, who was appointed by President Obama in 2014 and confirmed 95–0 in the Senate. Trump pleaded not guilty on August 3, after which his lawyers repeatedly delayed their pretrial motions until, on December 7, Trump asked the Washington, D.C., Circuit Court of Appeals to decide whether he was immune from prosecution. Chutkan had to put off her initial trial date of March 4, 2024, and said she would not reschedule until the court decided the question of Trump’s immunity. 

In February the appeals court decided he was not immune. Trump appealed to the Supreme Court, which waited until July 1, 2024, to decide that Trump enjoys broad immunity from prosecution for crimes committed as part of his official acts. Today the Washington, D.C., Circuit Court of Appeals sent the case back to Chutkan, almost exactly a year after it was first brought.

Letters from an American Historian, HCR

I can't get past this story. We are right now in Trump's second or third coup attempt. We can pretend otherwise, but that won't make it not so. Another coup plot backed by murderous dictators and dirty global oligarchs and violent white supremacists and Maga Repugs and Billionaires and police unions and now SCOTUS, backing a candidate for potus so ridiculously and obviously violent, criminal, and treasonous that damning evidence for several of his highest crimes were recorded or on TV! 

I know, he still may not win. Democracy can still prevail, hopefully. But, meanwhile, all his people on the ground in government positions and in the red states are doing everything they can to rig the election for him and the mainstream media, NY Times/WaPo et al, pretend Trump and the GOP have legitimate support on issues like crime or economics, meaning presumably more tax cuts for the rich and financial fraud?!

Again, this is not serious and at the same time will mean only more serious ruin for the country. Trump, the candidate for law and order?! Come on! Even if you hate all the people he hates you gotta have a better sense of self-preservation than this nuclear meltdown of a political movement.  

Twenty-six former Officials Say Trump Unfit to be POTUS

"They’ve expressed their concerns about his character, his leadership, his impulsiveness, and his narcissism, among other traits. The opposition from so many former close aides is unprecedented in the annals of American politics."

Many Trump Alum Never Trumpers, TPM 

The RNC Convention, 2024: Traitors, Violent Bigots, Cruel Sexists, and Crooks

Paul Manafort walking onto the floor of the Republican National Convention yesterday illustrated that the Republican Party under Trump has become thoroughly corrupted into an authoritarian party aligned with foreign dictators. 

There were actually preprinted signs at the convention for attendees to wave, which they did with apparent enthusiasm. The signs said: “MASS DEPORTATION NOW!” 

The convention has also emphasized its opposition to women’s rights. Trump, who has proudly claimed responsibility for the Supreme Court’s overturning of the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision recognizing abortion as a constitutional right, walked out last night to the song “It’s a Man’s World.” 

Their rejection of democracy requires a strongman at the head of the government, and in Milwaukee that man is Trump, who will be the first convicted criminal nominated for president by a major party.  

Letters from an American Historian, HCR

Cannon takes sledgehammer to rule of law protecting country from tyrants and hostile foreign interests (in other words, Trump and Putin)

Cannon slow-walked a grand jury’s meticulous indictment of the former president for criminally risking the free world’s safety by walking off with nuclear secrets and intelligence sources and methods, leaving them in places accessible to apparent foreign agents, and obstructing the government’s efforts to retrieve them. Now she has toppled the whole case by shredding the long-established structure through which successive attorneys general have appointed special counsel to investigate and prosecute crimes against the nation too sensitive for the justice department to handle in the ordinary course.

This election, our constitutional republic is at stake, along with its first principle: no one, including the most powerful, is above the law. Only We, the People, can preserve the freedom and security our laws safeguard.

Cannon takes sledgehammer to law, Professor Tribe, The Guardian

"Grump Chaos Fatigue"

A "personal" account of the Trump rally shooting over the weekend that speaks to feelings my go-to journalistic-historical sources just cannot quite reach. It's not precisely my take but I recognize in it immediately a kindred soul, the familiarly frustrating predicament many of us share, perhaps even a 'silent majority.' We're partially shutdown by the relentless gaslighting mendacity of the Republican assault on democracy and the rule of law, and want, wish for, hope for above all else nothing more than that this Trump national nightmare finally end and we can return to our regularly scheduled-- peace loving, if mundane-- lives. 

Anyway, some choice excerpts to give you the flavor. Find the whole piece at the hyperlink.  

Do you remember what Trump said at CPAC two years ago, about the horrific plot to kidnap the Governor of Michigan that the FBI foiled? He said: “It was a fake deal. Fake. It was a fake deal. Gretchen Whitmer was in less danger than the people sitting in this room right now, it seems to me.”

Donald Trump was in less danger on Saturday night than the people sitting in the stands right then, it seems to me. Two of them are in the hospital. One of them is dead. Trump was on the golf course the next day.

That, too, was a lie [his claim in 2016 that he would stop the "American carnage"]. The carnage did not stop. Trump saw to that personally. And in a second term, as Project 2025 makes clear, it will only get worse. Donald could snap his tiny fingers right now and have the Senate approve one of the gun control bills—but he won’t. He is an arsonist who lives to throw gasoline on fires. And his whoremaster Vladimir Putin would rather we keep shooting each other, because it makes the United States an international embarrassment.

But we were asked on Saturday night to ignore all of this and show sympathy for this monster—to keep him in our own thoughts and prayers—even though he is, as both the head of the Republican party and a recidivist instigator of violence, a primary author of this persistent but preventable American carnage.

On January 6, 2021, remember, Trump “expressed support” for his army of MAGA besiegers hanging his own vice president, Mike Pence. Read that last sentence again, because the media has completely normalized putting a hit out on a VP.

No one has done more to ratchet up the anger and hatred in the United States than Donald Trump—in the 21st century for sure, and probably in my lifetime. He foments violence. He cultivates it. He cheers it. He lusts for blood.

The most irksome part of the rally shooting is that it forced us all to once again pay attention to this bloated orange bag of venom. Like all dictators, Trump demands all of our attention all the time. There is no let-up, no relent. No safe spaces. It is the sick mentality of a serial rapist, which Trump also happens to be.

The rally shooting reminded us of what an unpleasant experience life during the Trump years was. It’s not going to win him the election, as his fanboys have proclaimed. Quite the opposite.

Despite what MAGA might think, we don’t want Trump killed. We just want him to go away and leave us in peace.

Notes on Trump Rally Shooting, By Greg Olear

More on the history of republican violence:

Repubs at RNC use violent rhetoric, won't stop, Popular Information 

Horse-Race Election Coverage Abets Fascist Takeover

 "An extraordinary effort to use the courts to set up a Trump dictatorship appears largely to have been hidden under the horse race.

And now that this scaffolding is in place, Trump’s team has begun to try to make him look more moderate than he is. On July 5, Trump claimed not to know anything about the extremist Project 2025, which calls for an authoritarian leader to impose Christian nationalism on the United States, despite the fact that his own appointees wrote it, his own political action committee advertised it as his plan, and his name appears in it 312 times."

Letter from an American Historian, HCR

An Election Warped by Fascism and Fear

"And so fascism spreads and settles in our minds during this, the crucial period between Trump’s first coup attempt and his second. The Biden administration is being held to standards, while the previous Trump administration is not; and Biden personally is being held to standards, while Trump as a person is not. This helps to generate a fascist aura. There must be something special about Trump such that he is different from others: a Leader beyond criticism rather than just an indebted hack or a felon from Queens or a client of a Russian dictator.

It should seem odd that media calls to step down were not first directed to Trump. If we are calling for Biden to step aside because someone must stop Trump from bringing down the republic, then surely it would have made more sense to first call for Trump to step aside? (The Philadelphia Inquirer did). I know the counter-arguments: his people wouldn’t have cared, and he wouldn’t have listened. The first misses an important point. There are quite a few Americans who have not made up their minds. The second amounts to obeying in advance. If you accept that a fascist is beyond your reach, you have normalized your submission."

Fascism and Fear and The Election, Timothy Snyder

SCOTUS Clears the Way should the Electorate Vote for Fascist Takeover

Unless Congress acts quickly to overturn this obscene 6-3 decision — which won’t happen so long as Republicans control the House — democracy in America has been wounded, perhaps fatally, and the president has been made into a dictator, should he or she choose to behave that way.

When we have a president (Biden) who respects the fundamental law, history, and traditions of America, we’ll be safe — for now. On the other hand, if [G]rump or any other fascist Republican becomes president, he can pretty much do anything he wants.

The imperial presidency is now officially here, not just rhetorically but in actuality. The six Republicans on the Supreme Court today did massive, perhaps irreparable, violence to our republic.

Rightwing SCOTUS's Imperial Presidency, The Hartmann Report

Translation: To the best of my understanding, I'm just a poor retired school teacher without a degree in law, SCOTUS, 6-3 (meaning: all the authoritarian right wingers, three of them placed there by the  illegitimate POTUS in question, vs three liberals), decided POTUS is immune from all prosecution for "official acts," so now the indictments against Trump for his failed coup attempt go back to the lower court, where they will reportedly take a year or more to decide whether Grump ordering his insurrectionary mob to march to the capital to "fight like hell" to stop the peaceful transfer of power to President Biden on Jan 6, 2021, or arranging his fake elector scheme, were "official acts," by which time the hope is, obviously, the worst candidate for POTUS in American history, already a convicted felon, a massive financial fraudster, rapist, and special friend (think "Manchurian Candidate") to murderous dictators (and known enemies to our national independence) is re-elected and all the prosecutions are dropped before any such legal decisions are made. The fascist corruption in this decision is so blatant it takes one's breath away. 

Sinclair Floods Local News Sites with Disinformation

"This month, Sinclair Broadcast Group has flooded a vast network of local news websites with misleading articles suggesting that President Biden is mentally unfit for office. The articles are based on specious social media posts by the Republican National Committee (RNC), which are then repackaged to resemble news reports. The thinly disguised political attacks are then syndicated to dozens of local news websites owned by Sinclair, where they are given the imprimatur of mainstream media brands, including NBC, ABC, and CBS." 

Sinclair Disinfo War on Public, Judd Legum, Popular Information

MAGA Repugs own Sinclair, which owns more local news outlets than anyone else. Hitler had a newspaper magnet Alfred Hugenberg as well, but Hugenberg resisted the Furor's takeover more than Sinclair resists Grump's criminality and treason. BTW, the Sinclair station to avoid in Seattle is KOMO (channel 4) and KATU (channel 2) in Portland. More relevant commentary, 

The Republicans Feeding You Cheapfakes Think You're Stupid, Brian Buetler at Off Message 

Resistance, transference, and projection in conservative politics--

A retreat into a paranoid world (Fox, Sinclair, etc) where one feels accosted by monstrous bad objects-- immigrants, women, LGBTQ+, homeless, minorities, liberals, non-Christians, "communists," city people, etc-- and increasingly threatens violence against these scapegoats like they, conservatives, are really the cornered victims ("they will not replace us," etc). This is a common enough human smokescreen Repuglicans have erected to avoid experiencing crushing guilt for their own hatreds and destructiveness: 

Guilt for backing a convicted felon, 

a hero to crooks and abusers, 

guilty of flagrant election interference, 

guilty of massive amounts of financial fraud, 

wrong on women's rights, wrong on climate change, wrong on protecting workers,

guilty for supporting the biggest traitor to the country in American history, one bent on destroying democracy for the sake of the preposterously narcissistic fantasy that he ought to be The Boss, Il Duce, America's Cheetolini! 

Conservatives are stuck in a Reality TV nightmare of their own making and now one they cannot escape. Or, in other words, the Republican party is a failed state and Grump their Warlord. And the rest of us are hoping the adults in leadership stand up before the party of sadistic bigot reaction destroys everything.