Pronouns

People habitually mock that which they do not understand. One of the things that a lot of people don't understand is the whole concept of transgenderism. (I think I may have made up a word there) They don't "get" that some people may want to identify as a different gender than the one listed on their birth certificate, or no gender at all and adopt non-traditional pronouns to describe themselves. Their lack of understanding is manifested as derisive stabs at humor or even attempts to legislate away the existence of transgender people. Things such as gender-affirming surgery for minors or whether a person who lived most of her life as a male should be allowed to compete in women's sports may be legitimate subjects for debate, but in my observations what those who are opposed to these things are really opposed to is the very existence of transgender people. 

I'll leave the discussion of gender-affirming surgery for another day, because I believe it's a distraction - a slippery slope argument whose real goal is to erase transgender people from society. (And if you want to call it "mutilation", nobody asked me whether I wanted to be circumcised as an infant - I'll never get that foreskin back) Most things that differentiate a transgender from a cisgender person, including preferred pronouns, have absolutely no effect on any other person. So, why does anyone, other than the individual who identifies as transgender, care? In my everyday interactions with my fellow Nebraskans I can't imagine how a person's gender identity would affect me in any way. Does it matter if I can't tell whether the person who makes my latte (consumption of which is compulsory for us liberals) is male or female? Or neither? Or even whether my grandkids' teachers have identities which conform to societal gender "norms"? All I care about is whether my fancy coffee gets made with the right degree of fanciness and whether the school teachers communicate their subject matter well. 

The bigoted attacks on transgender people (and all LGBTQ+ people for that matter) has been disguised as some kind of concern for children's safety. This "concern" is based on their evidence-free perception that anyone who isn't heterosexual cisgender is by definition a child molester, a pedophile. The term "groomer", meaning someone who intentionally and incrementally gets a child comfortable with sexual activity in order to sexually take advantage of them, as been thrown around liberally. Anyone who who is in the LBGTQ+ community is tarred with this brush, allies among cisgender heterosexuals are included in their minds as "pedo groomers". It reminds me of the hysteria in the cult I was a part of in the nineties during the "homo purge", where anyone even suspected of being gay, as well as what they called "homo fantasizers" and "homo sympathizers" were purged from the ranks. If these legislators and church leaders cared about children's safety rather than performing as if they did to garner the bigot vote, they'd be looking into the many church groups where child abuse is rampant, including but not limited to, the Catholic Church. Keep an eye out for the credible accusations of child molestation and you'll see a lot of ministers and Republican politicians and zero drag queens. 

Then we have the low-key "humor" of saying things like "My pronouns are Prosecute/Fauci" or something equally idiotic. This is a bigot's attempt at cleverness. Yes, they know what a pronoun is and that what they wrote wasn't a pronoun. It a feeble attempt to mock gender identity choice and whatever else they're worked up about at the same time, while exposing both their bigotry and their ignorance. 

While parents aren't always as understanding as their children want them to be when it comes to their sexuality and gender identity, you would think that a bunch of drag queens reading to school kids, or hosting a community event where the parents are fully knowledgeable and bring their children to these events wouldn't be cause for a protest. After all, isn't the current right-wing obsession with schools are teaching all about parents' rights? Since the parents are involved, why are there scores of armed men in combat gear protesting these events? 

I think you know the answer.

The Laptop

With all the crises that Republicans have been screaming about that need solving, like inflation, the border, Social Security shortfall, crime, and imaginary election fraud, now that they're charge of the House of Representatives they'll be concentrating on big issues like investigating the January 6 Committee, impeaching Joe Biden and, of course, Hunter Biden's laptop. 

Republicans, going all the way back to the Clinton administration have attempted to get their way with pointless investigations, while their own people have been engaged in the real corruption, pontificating about "family values" while nominating...Donald Trump. 

Hunter Biden is without a doubt a serial screwup. He has gotten lucrative jobs by trading on his father's name, gotten himself thrown out of the military for drug use, and made a long string bad decisions. But, in true Republican fashion, since they have fantasized that President Biden was involved corruptly in his son's bad decisions it must be so. No evidence needed. 

There is no doubt that Hunter Biden had a laptop that he once abandoned at a computer repaid shop in Delaware. There also appears to be videos on it that make Hunter look pretty bad. It's also indisputable that he's under investigation for various crimes including tax fraud. Fine, if he's guilty I would hope he's held accountable for any hypothetical crimes. 

But...why does anyone care?

With all the serious issues to be addressed, this what the Republicans are going to focus on?

The clown show is open for business.
 

Still a Murderer

 

After seeing Kyle Rittenhouse once again on social media attempting to justify himself, I thought I'd revisit this post from July, with a few additions:

Kyle Rittenhouse was on trial for murder. He killed two people and seriously wounded a third. 

According to trial testimony, the first person that Rittenhouse killed was Joseph Rosenbaum. I've heard different versions of what happened between Rittenhouse and Rosenbaum, and various descriptions of Rosenbaum as a troublemaker. But trial testimony established that Rittenhouse shot Rosenbaum four times after Rosenbaum lunged at him. Multiple witnesses established that Rosenbaum was harassing, not only Rittenhouse, but other counter protestors as well. Video shows Rosenbaum chasing after Rittenhouse and throwing what appears to be a plastic bag at him. There is no credible allegation that Rosenbaum was armed. The defense claims, and video footage confirms, that a shot was heard just before Rittenhouse turned and fired at Rosenbaum, who was still unarmed. No one, not even the defense, was claiming that Rosenbaum fired the shot. I think that it's reasonable to conclude that Rittenhouse was terrified that he was going to get beaten up by Rosenbaum and possibly others. It's abundantly clear that in his mind he connected the gunshot that he heard with Rosenbaum chasing him, freaked out and fired his weapon. Video appears to show Rosenbaum reaching for the barrel of the weapon, or perhaps lunging at Rittenhouse. What would you do if a terrified youngster with an AR-15 pointed his gun at you? It clear to me from the testimony given at the trial that it's entirely plausible that Rittenhouse feared for his life - not because an actual threat to his life existed, but because in his fantasy of protecting property from rampaging hordes and in a moment of irrational terror that existed only in his head  and apart from the reality of the situation, he panicked and killed someone. And fired, not once, in order to drive off someone who he fantasized was trying to kill him, but four times as Rosenbaum fell. 

The jury decided, as the defense claims, that Rittenhouse fired in self defense. I am unfamiliar with the specifics of Wisconsin law, although I am reasonably sure they don't have a version of a "Stand Your Ground" statute, so it's wasn't a sure thing either way. But is it self defense if you purposely put yourself in a position to provoke people to anger by walking around with a loaded weapon that you are prepared to use against people who are damaging property? Emotions were running hot in Kenosha and he inserted himself right into the middle of it. And "inserted" is the right word. This wasn't his city, it wasn't even his state. He got his mother to drive him across state lines and pick up his illegally obtained weapon because he was looking for trouble. And he found it. Trouble didn't find him. He actively sought out a dangerous situation and shot an unarmed man who he thought endangered him. 

Something that wasn't brought up in the trial, but is referred to repeatedly by Rittenhouse supporters and enablers, was that Rosenbaum was a convicted pedophile. This is true. When he was 19 he was accused of molesting several young boys and was convicted and spent time in prison for it. This certainly makes Rosenbaum a terrible person - at least it indicates that he was a terrible person when he was 19, roughly 18 years before he was killed. Rittenhouse stans insist that killing Rosenbaum was somehow a public service given his past. But as much as we may feel that pedophiles are the worst of the worst and deserve to die, (1) Rittenhouse had no knowledge of Rosenbaum's record, (2) He'd served his time and (3) the law frowns on vigilantism, no matter how horrific the crime. This is what we in the piscine metaphor game call a red herring. While in this case, the target really was a pedophile, bringing this up is right in line with the right wing trying to paint anyone who opposes them as a pedophile. But in this case it's totally irrelevant and intended to justify Rittenhouse's actions over and above the tissue-thin self defense claim. 

Regarding Rittenhouse's murder of Rosenbaum, he was found not guilty because the statutes allowed a claim of self defense even when there wasn't anything to defend oneself from other than in the supposed defender's mind. 

Let's move on to the murder of Anthony Huber. 

Much is made by Second Amendment extremists of the "good guy with a gun" as a preventive to "bad guy with a gun" violence. (Of course they are not dissuaded by statistics showing that this hardly ever happens) In their minds armed citizens should be able to stop a mass shooter in the early stages, or even before the shooting starts. Anthony Huber, as well as several others, had just seen Rittenhouse kill someone. Even though he was armed only with a skateboard, he attempted to subdue the killer before he could kill again. The bare facts of this second killing are not really in dispute. Huber attacked Rittenhouse with a skateboard in order to detain him. If Rittenhouse had been killed by the skateboard, I presume that Huber could have successfully used the "feared for his life" defense. After all, Rittenhouse, who had just inarguably killed someone, still was armed with a deadly weapon, was walking away. Wouldn't, in other circumstances, someone like Huber be lauded as a hero? Instead, Rittenhouse was able to get off a shot and Huber was killed; Rittenhouse again claimed to fear for his life as a defense against someone who attempted to disarm and detain him. Team Rittenhouse wants us to view this second killing in a vacuum: someone was attacking him and he defended himself. Since he says, one again, that he feared for his life, he's let off again. But you can't divorce Huber's killing from the context of Rosenbaum's killing. This wasn't a random, unprovoked attack by a mad skateboarder, but a reaction to his murder of Rosenbaum. 

As in the case of Rosenbaum, the Rittenhouse cheerleaders attempted to smear Huber, but with less success. Huber was accused of domestic abuse and sexual assault, however this was inaccurate. He had been charged with several felonies springing from a dispute with several family members, as well as misdemeanors for disorderly conduct and possession of drug paraphernalia. No allegations or charges of sexual assault were included in his record. Unlike Rosenbaum his run-ins with the law were minor, but like Rosenbaum, they were completely irrelevant. 

We finally get to Gaige Grosskreutz, the only one of Rittenhouse's three victims to survive and the only one who was armed. Grosskreutz was at the protests as a medic, but unlike Rittenhouse he (1) had actual training as an EMT and (2) had actively treated around a dozen people for pepper spray and rubber bullet impacts. He was armed and had a license to carry a weapon. Grosskreutz ran toward the sound of gunfire, the gunfire that killed Rosenbaum. He saw Rittenhouse kill Huber and had drawn his gun. Initially he had raised his hands but when he saw Rittenhouse "rerack his rifle to load a new round into the chamber" he ran toward Rittenhouse "to prevent himself from being shot", claiming to have no intention of actually shooting him, but pointing his pistol in Rittenhouse's direction nonetheless. It's obvious that Grosskreutz didn't intend to shoot Rittenhouse...because he didn't , even though he had the opportunity. If he had shot and killed Rittenhouse, surely he would have been able to claim that he feared for his life and been acquitted. Like the murder of Huber, friends of Rittenhouse want to take this shooting out of context and present it as just an incident of him defending himself from someone pointing a gun at him. But the context is supremely important. Grosskreutz would not have been in the position that he was in if two murders had not jus occurred. Rittenhouse wouldn't be in that position if he hadn't just murdered two people. 

The now tiresome accusation of criminality rears its head again. Grosskreutz, while having several misdemeanors on his record was not a felon and was legally able to go armed. 

Rittenhouse got off. In my opinion it was overly broad self defense statutes that allowed his claim of self defense to stand. They're not much different in Wisconsin than anywhere else, but for the most part a claim that someone "feared for their life" is taken at face value. In the case of the first person that he shot, Rittenhouse claimed he was afraid that he would be killed by his own gun, that he testified that Rosenbaum was trying to take from him. In the case of his murder of Huber, he was apparently deathly afraid of a skateboard. He seemed to be completely unaware that he was being "attacked" because he had just KILLED SOMEONE! 

After the acquittal, instead of breathing a sigh of relief that he wouldn't be going to prison, he has become the darling of the gun lovers in the NRA and the Republican Party, spouting pro-gun rhetoric via his Twitter account and encouraging his supporters to justify his murder and maiming spree by pointing out the arrest history of his victims. 

The NRA crowd and its hangers-on don't see the inherent problem with this no-questions-asked "feared for my life" defense. Cops have been using it for as long as there have been cops, but now you start to see videos of aggressive, armed individuals screaming "I feel threatened" at people armed only with words. I'm not advocating unprovoked violence, but wouldn't a natural extension of this belief be for protestors to just proactively shoot any right wing counter-protester? 

After the Rittenhouse verdict, I'd certainly fear for my life if I saw any of those armed assholes at a protest.

The Insurrectionist

[Since I originally posted this, I have learned that "insurrection" has a narrow legal definition, as does "sedition" and "seditious conspiracy". None of the invaders of the Capitol on January 6 were charged with insurrection, but many were charged and convicted of seditious conspiracy, hence "insurrectionist" is inaccurate and "seditious conspirator" is the more accurate label]

Do I think Donald Trump, aka "Losin' Don", will ever see one day in prison, or even be subject to significant civil penalties? [updated May 28, 2023 to note that he was recently held liable for defamation and order to pay $5,000,000]

No. 

Do I think he should because he's guilty as Hell?

Yes, I do. 

One of Trump's impeachments was over his incitement of the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2020. His supporters point to one line in his speech in Washington, D.C. on that day: "I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol Building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard". There are other references to peacefully protesting and being the party of law and order. But does that exonerate him from any blame? 

Throughout his speech on January 6, 2020 Trump rehashed his lies that the election was stolen and that day's Congressional certification of the electoral votes was the last chance to make things right. He had supporters in Congress who would vote against accepting the electoral votes of states that had went to Joe Biden in close contests. He was pressuring Vice President Pence to refuse to accept the results. And now, on the last supposedly legal opportunity to overturn the election results he faced a crowd of thousands of true believers. The core of those who really believed the lies that their cult leader was feeding them and were prepared to act on his words. 

Trump was skilled at not leaving a paper trail, ensuring plausible deniability at every turn. He was the master of "Will no one rid me of this troublesome priest?" utterances, enabling him to claim that he didn't actually issue the orders to do what his subordinates clearly understood to be orders. His defense that he didn't incite that attack on the Capitol is apparently that he didn't say the words "Now go and attack the Capitol". 

The context of incitement in this case can't even be narrowed down to what he said or didn't say on January 6. For months he had been ranting that the election had been stolen from him. His core of supporters, especially those present that day, were people who had no problem with violence. His 'wink and a nod' support of extremist groups (to the Proud Boys "Stand back and stand by") certainly communicated that he was perfectly fine with protests that got more physical than waving Trump flags and wearing red hats. He encouraged rough and even violent treatment of protesters at his rallies. After months of convincing his followers that it was the patriotic thing to do to overturn an election he encouraged them to march to the Capitol...which was not open to the public that day to make their voices heard. What did he think would happen? Maybe he didn't realize how far it would go, but it took him over three hours to call on his cult to stop their attack and go home. And even then he expressed sympathy for them and what they were doing. If he truly intended for their voices to be heard, "peacefully and patriotically", why did he allow the rampage to continue as long as he did? Trump claims that it wasn't his intention to encourage his followers to break into the Capitol, but his followers seem to think it was. He knew what affect his words would have.

Speaker McCarthy released all the security to video that day, not to the media at large, not to the Congressional Committee (that he disbanded) to investigate the events of that day, not to the Georgia prosecutor looking into Trump's culpability, but to Trump sycophants Tucker Carlson, who released portions of the footage where the seditionists weren't attacking the police, breaking windows, scaling walls or stealing items from Congressional offices. As if we hadn't already seen the videos of the violence and destruction or the calls to "hang Mike Pence" or "get Pelosi". 

He's guilty. Go get him Jack.

The Latest Election

It ain't over yet, but here's how it looks:

• Most election deniers were not elected, a notable exception was Ron DeSantis, Florida governor; Kari Lake in Arizona may still squeak by

• In all likelihood when the dust settles Republicans will have the majority in the House of Representatives

• In the Senate, Alaska, Nevada & Arizona are too close to call, but the two top vote getters in the ranked choice election are Republicans

• Nevada is tilting toward the Republican; Arizona to Senator Mark Kelly

• This leaves 49 Democrats and 50 Republicans with a runoff election in Georgia between Senator Warnock and a violent, lying, brain-damaged Hershel Walker - I predict Warnock wins in December

What does all this mean? Probably nothing legislatively for the next two years (unless the trends reverse themselves in the remaining races and the Democrats retain control of the House). There's a good chance that if they are the majority the Republicans will entertain themselves by opening investigations in Hunter Biden and anything else that their paranoid little minds dream up. Even if they gain the majority in the Senate, the Democrats still have the filibuster and Biden still has the veto, so a MAGA/right-wing agenda  isn't going to happen. (If McConnell were to eliminate the filibuster, it's unlikely that he would do it with a Democrat in the White House, since Biden could veto anything they come up with and there won't be enough to override). The biggest issue if the Republicans take over the Senate, even by 51-49, is that they can prevent President Biden from appointing any more federal judges. 

There's still a lot that's undecided, so pay attention!

 

Our Allegedly Nonpartisan Legislature

Nebraska has what's called a unicameral legislature. That means there is only one house of the legislature, as opposed to a bicameral, or two-house legislature like every other state.  You also hear the word "nonpartisan" thrown around a lot. In this context, nonpartisan means that in elections to the legislature (or simply "the unicameral") party affiliation does not appear on the ballot, nor are there formal party caucuses. But don't let that fool you, Nebraska's government is as partisan as any other state's. 

Once upon a time, party politics in Nebraska wasn't as...well...partisan as it is now. The difference in the unicameral was more about urban versus rural than it was about Republicans versus Democrats. There was a time when both Senators were Democrats and the governor was Republican. Of course our Republicans weren't the fire-breathing radicals that you get now, and Democrats were pretty conservative. They were more concerned about property tax relief, aid to public schools, tax rates and the many mundane things that governments used to be concerned about. Little by little though, Nebraska politics became more aligned with the trends being set by the national parties - demonizing their opponents and holding on to power.

I'm not going to suggest that Ricketts started it, but he certainly brought things to a head. Shortly after he was elected he loudly chastised Republican members of the unicameral for not supporting a bill that was important to him. He then, utilizing the deep pockets provided by his family's ownership of TAmeritrade, he financed primary challenges against the Republicans that he deemed not partisan enough. 

These days, though, Nebraska politics is a reflection of national partisan divides. Two years ago, Governor Ricketts, clearly sniffing the possibility of a Senate run, started mouthing MAGA talking points. He'd always been a conservative politician, but his utterances became more and more Trump-like, even though he opposed Trump's preference for governor, knowing that the MAGA base among at least the Republicans primary electorate would reward him for his remaking himself in the Trump image. Ricketts' chosen successor, Jim Pillen, pandered even more to the right-wing voters, posing in campaign ads with a rifle. Even more overtly, one of his goals was "more red sweaters", his way of saying that he wanted a filibuster-proof Republican majority in the unicameral. The results aren't all in, but it's likely that Republicans will get that thirty-third vote that would prevent Democrats from blocking nakedly partisan laws, such as a total abortion ban. 

We're still waiting for the results of a few elections that will affect national politics, such as which party controls the Senate, but here in Nebraska, we've set the clock back...quite a bit more than an hour. 

Tilting at Imaginary Windmills

Once upon a time the two largest political parties disagreed and argued about actual issues. You could disagree with what either their positions were, but you could be sure that they were talking about things that were real. Economic issues, foreign policy, infrastructure, taxes - maybe they weren't sincere, or were in the pocket of big donors, but they fought about things that existed!

One of the things that don't exist that Republicans have made an issue of is Critical Race Theory. Critical Race Theory exists, but it is a legal hypothesis that is based on the premise that racism in the United States is less caused by individual acts of bigotry and more on structural and systemic considerations. This is taught in law school, not your local community college, not any high school, and certainly not elementary schools, despite what "parents rights" advocates and the right-wing politicians would have you believe. Despite its absence from any school curriculum that any child or any adult who is a non-lawyer is likely to encounter, Critical Race Theory has become one of the non-issues with which today's Republicans get their supporters excited about. School Board meetings are disrupted by angry parents and governors, who have no input whatsoever in what gets taught in school, campaign on it. 

In addition to the fact that Critical Race Theory isn't being taught in schools, what people think Critical Race Theory is, is inaccurate, a fantasy put forth by Republicans looking for a wedge issue. Fantasy Critical Race Theory includes the idea that all White people are racists, that they are born racists, that Black people should hate White people, that all White people are oppressors, that all Black people are helplessly oppressed, that today's White people are responsible for the past - it goes on and on. Republican led state legislatures and local school boards are banning the teaching of Critical Race Theory in public schools. One might wonder, since it's not actually being taught in public schools, and it's funhouse mirror version certainly isn't, why banning something that's already not there would be a problem. I'm glad you asked.

Republican politicians, along with confused and angry parents, have interpreted virtually anything in school history curricula that addresses racism, including slavery, Jim Crow, lynchings or segregation, as being Critical Race Theory. Some have even gone further, pointing to any mention of contributions by Black Americans, including celebrating Black History Month, as Critical Race Theory. The imaginary windmill that the Republicans are tilting at is a twisted, exaggerated, and false definition of a scholarly discipline. The real discipline isn't even in school curricula, but the do-your research crowd has been convinced that it is, that the false definition is the true one, and have lumped basic United States history that used to be noncontroversial in with their invented definition, causing a spike in the sale of pitchforks, scythes and torches among the angry villagers.  

This isn't the only make-believe issue that Republicans are running on. The lie of the stolen election and equating the acknowledgment that gay and transgender people exists with pedophilia are two other big ones. Causes you to wonder how they plan to govern when most of what they think needs to be addressed can only be found in their imaginations. 

Safe & Secure Elections

Is there such a thing as election or voter fraud? ("Voter fraud" indicates actions by individuals, usually isolated; "election fraud" is organized actions by political parties, lobbying groups or other entities to change the or illegally influence election results) Of course there is. We see a handful of cases every year. From someone who manages to vote twice, to a a deceased voter's mail-in ballot be filled out by a family member, to organized schemes that have popped up in a few constituencies. But is election or voter fraud widespread? Is it common? There is no evidence to suggest that it is, so where does the Republican idea that our elections not only are subject to fraud, but are so overrun with it that the results cannot be trusted, and are rigged in favor of Democrats? The answer is pretty easy to identify. 

Donald Trump.

Until 2016 candidates for public office operated under the assumption that votes would be counted accurately. That there were checks in place to identify any irregularities. That close elections would receive extra scrutiny, including recounts. 

This is not to say that politicians did whatever they (legally) could to make their own election and reelection more likely. Gerrymandering, unreasonable barriers to registration, and the like have a long history - but virtually every candidate for public office accepted the results and graciously (usually) conceded defeat when the numbers told them that's what happened. 

In the months before the 2016 presidential election candidate Donald Trump began to suggest that the only way that he could lose was if the election was "rigged" against him. He suggested that the primaries where he lost were rigged. Journalists, picking up on this started asking him if he would accept the results of an election in which he lost. He never said "no", but his answers, like "we'll see", and "if I win" indicated that he wouldn't accept the results of an election if he wasn't the winner. Since he did win, the point was moot. 

Or was it.

His opponent, former Senator and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, received close to three million more votes than he did. In our Electoral College system of electing a president, that's an irrelevant number. It really only matters in that it's an indication of popular support, but for the purposes of deciding who sits in the Oval Office it's meaningless. But it wasn't meaningless to President Donald Trump. He started tweeting (his preferred form of communication) that in addition to winning a majority of Electoral College votes, he actually won the popular vote...if you didn't count millions of votes by illegal immigrants. He also began referring to his victory as a landslide, even though his Electoral vote margin of victory was fairly average. 

Unable to believe that he hadn't convinced a majority of Americans to vote for him he established the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity (aka "The Election Fraud Commission) headed by Vice President Mike Pence, with Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach as vice-chair and the driving force behind the commission. The commission was disbanded in January 2018 without finding any evidence of voter or election fraud. 

Fast forward to the 2020 presidential election. Who knows whether Trump believed that it possible that he would lose. He has a massive ego, but also has a history of massaging the facts in his favor. He made his first public remarks suggesting that election results were untrustworthy in April 2020. But as early as Summer 2019 he certainly was aware that former Vice-President Joe Biden would be the likely Democratic nominee and was taking steps to undermine Biden's chances. July 2019 was when Trump encouraged Ukrainian President Zelensky to open an investigation in the Biden and his son which resulted in his first impeachment. Trump disparaged Biden as "Sleepy Joe" and downplayed Biden's chances of defeating him, treating his candidacy as a joke. 

There were several differences in the 2020 voting environment from 2016. The Covid-19 pandemic caused many states to modify their rules, making mail-in voting, early voting, and the availability of drop boxes much more prevalent. Trump began his assault on election integrity by questioning the security of mail-in ballots. It's true that in some states this was a new thing, but other states had been using voting by mail for years without any problems, and some states' elections were entirely conducted by mail. Mail voting existed when the Election Fraud Commission was doing its investigations, yet they found no systemic problems with the practice. 

Throughout 2020 Trump continued to attack the reliability of voting systems, accelerating his rhetoric once Joe Biden became the Democratic nominee. Think about that for a minute or two - months before a single vote was cast he was asserting, without a shred of evidence, that due to these ephemeral irregularities, the election would be rigged against him...if he lost. In fact he insisted that the only way that he could lose was if the election was rigged and rife with fraud. He and many of his supporters imagined that voting by mail and the use of drop boxes was by its very nature not secure so therefore there will be fraud. Not a shred of evidence was presented; possibly because the election hadn't happened yet, but they couldn't point to any evidence that it was happening in states that were already using these voting methods either. But Trump's most ardent supporters had already been primed, as cultists often are, to believe anything that Trump told them. Based on the doubts sown by Trump, Trump voters now had their own doubts, which they echoed back to Trump and his allied political leaders, which Trump in turn pointed to as evidence that "many people had questions". Who knows what would have taken place if he had squeaked by and won again in 2020 - which very easily could have happened with a few thousand votes in some key states going the other way. Ironically Biden's Electoral College victory was exactly the same as Trump's 2016 margin. 

We all know what happened next. Trump not only refused to concede, he announced, before all the votes were counted in states with close elections, that he had won. Eventually he would start calling his "win" a landslide. Biden received around 7 million more votes than Trump. Recounts, audits, investigations, lawsuits, all turned up no fraud and no results were changed. But the damage was done. Millions of people believe that the election was stolen from Trump. Some of them went to Washington while the electoral vote certification was underway and invaded the Capitol. A majority of Republicans voted to not certify electoral votes in states where Trump narrowly lost. 

This was new. There have been disputed elections in the past. Recounts have taken place. in the 2000 election the Supreme Court got involved. But in all cases the loser eventually conceded defeat and moved on. Trump not only refused to admit defeat, but has ramped up his claims of chicanery by the Democrats, still insisting that he won...by "a lot". He has inspired hundreds of Republican candidates to run explicitly as election deniers. Candidates, who in positions like Secretary of State, have the power to influence how an election is conducted, and who indicate that a Republican victory is the only valid victory to be contemplated.

There's still no evidence. There never has been evidence. In over 60 court filings no evidence was ever presented. Affidavits without exception speculated on how fraud might have taken place, without uncovering any actual fraud, or pointed to "suspicious" activity that turned out to be perfectly normal procedure. Statistical "anomalies" were only anomalous if you didn't understand statistics. 

The idea of a rigged election came from the paranoid mind of Donald Trump and was passed on to his cult who accepted it without evidence. Scarily, the current crop of MAGA Republicans make the thought of a rigged election a real possibility.

Fortunately, in the election that took place earlier this month election deniers were elected, but fortunately the worst of them, the ones in positions to actually skew election results were not elected. In fact the trend seemed to be that traditional Republicans did better than Trumpy Republicans overall. The danger isn't past, but maybe it's delayed a little. 

Church-State-Bigotry Overlap

Christians have been arguing about what constitutes a "true" Christian, battling about esoteric theological points virtually since day one. Even when "the Church" was ostensibly united - before the East-West Schism, before the rise of Islam cut off many Christians from regular communication with their coreligionists, before the Protestant Reformation and the various Great Awakenings, there have been arguments about just about every aspect of Christianity, with the winners - those who held the power - writing the rules and casting out those who disagreed as heretics. I'm sure some of the arguments were good faith attempts to make sense of the jumble of mutual exclusivity that is The Bible, but often theological arguments were just a way to sanctify purely political disagreements.  Over the centuries The Bible was used to justify pogroms against Jews, colonialism and slavery. 

Wow, it's almost as if there's a Bible verse to justify just about any kind of horrible behavior.

We shouldn't be surprised that in 2022 there are still people who are using The Bible to rationalize their repugnant actions and beliefs. A textbook example of the "No True Scotsman" fallacy, Christians who subscribe to the version of Jesus who loves everybody and is a kind of proto-socialist, call out the Christian Nationalists and homophobes as "not true Christians", while the latter could claim to have a longer pedigree than the former, going back at least 1500, if not 2000, years. They're just as "true" as the flower children, soup kitchen building, love thy neighbor Christians. 

Today, bigots and White Nationalists cloak their views in The Bible just like horrible people have always done. They can't construct any rational arguments to support their bigotry and hatred, so they justify it as divinely mandated. Their bigotry against gay, transgender and other groups, while ignorant at its core, has to have a cover. No one likes to see themselves as the villain of the story. Few people want to come right out and say that they want to restrict the rights of LBGTQ+ people simply because they hate them. They have to start with the assumption that the existence of LBGTQ+ people is inarguably wrong. I say start, but the stating point is actually the bigotry, they convince themselves that the bigotry isn't really bigotry, that it isn't their view, but God's, abdicating responsibility for their own hatred. In this twisted view, you don't need to accuse individuals of anything because the very fact of their being who their are is viewed as the offense. 

Once you have redefined a person's whole self as an aberration it's a short hop to defining anything connected with them as worthy of being legislated against. Simply acknowledging that a school child has gay parents becomes a crime, counseling or comforting a teenager who feels they were born as the wrong gender and may be contemplating suicide can get you fired or jailed. Drag Queens reading to kids is interpreted as "sexualizing children". The most innocent of actions becomes reframed in the most awful terms...if it's an LBGTQ+ person doing it. But talking to a 5 year-old boy about the little girl next store as his "girlfriend" or telling stories about the princess succeeding at life because she gets the prince isn't "grooming" at all. Right. 

Now we are seeing laws being written in jurisdictions across the country codifying this bigotry. Politicians revel in their hatred and subjugation of marginalized groups, decrying the homosexual or transgender "agenda" as if they were a domineering majority in power, rather than a small vulnerable minority. The way our political system works, this is effective. A Republican in many states only has to energize their Christian Nationalist-Bigot base to win a primary and victory over the Democrat is virtually assured due to the brainwashing that paints all Democrats as socialists who hate America. It's how in state after state the views of a minority become law.  

These people are not going away. 

The Golden Calf

If you've following my series So, You Want To Join a Cult on my "Aes Duir" blog, you know that I know what makes a cultist. You know that I opine that a cult doesn't necessarily have to involve a Kool-Aid drinking suicide pact, but can be banal, ordinary in its manifestations. There are different levels to cult behavior. There are those who will do anything, ever kill, for their leader or ideology, and there are also those, who while acting just like their neighbors, still harbor an absolute, fervent belief in the truth of what they have been taught. 

Trump supporters are in a cult.

Very seldom do I encounter a Trumpist in the flesh. I'm not a very socially extroverted person. I work from home and my social interactions center around live music performances. My Facebook bubble consists mostly of people with whom I have a significant overlap of beliefs and positions. Twitter is the social media locale where I see what the other side says and believes (or says that they believe!). Recently I have had conversations with two people who were pretty solidly on the MAGA side of the fence. The first, somewhat mildly, the other, full-bore all the way. Both of these people claimed, in preface to giving their political opinions, that they didn't know much about politics. 

The first person was what one might assume was a typical Fox "News" viewer, since almost all of her opinions seemed to be recitations of the official Fox News line. Conversations with this person revealed no knowledge whatsoever of national level policies of either Trump or the Democratic Party. Her opinion of Trump seemed to be based entirely on the myth that "they" never gave him a chance, that "everyone" was out to get him. Her opposition to mainstream Democratic politicians seemed to be based entirely on whether their manner of speaking annoyed her. She would bring up Fox News talking points like "Hunter Biden's laptop". Any attempt to engage her on a possible alternative to her mindset was met with the protest of "I don't know much about politics". 

The send person was also typical of what I would envision a Trump supporter to be, but in different ways. He was born in a small rural town, currently lived in a somewhat bigger, but by no means urban town, and worked a blue collar job. He seemed to be a decent enough, hard-working family man. He told me that he was apathetic about politics before Trump. He thought all politicians, law enforcement, the legal system - all of it, was corrupt and that voting didn't make a difference. He never voted until he voted for Trump in 2016. 

Somehow he thought that Trump would be different. 

It's completely understandable to have the position that politicians are corrupt, that the system itself is corrupt. I've known many people over the years who never voted for precisely that reason. It's not an unreasonable position to take. How often have we seen the rich and powerful get away with things that the rest of never could? How often have we seen back room deals take precedence over what is clearly the public interest? Fair enough. But why would any clear thinking person think that it was Donald Trump who would be the one to "drain the swamp" and eliminate the corruption within government? 

Trump was (and is) by any objective measure a con man. His business dealings were failure after failure, with unpaid contractors investors, defaults on loans and bankruptcies. But his skill (his only skill) as a conman and convincing liar enabled him to continue to arrange financing for more projects. He would always ensure that his own salary or consultant or management fee was paid, and make sure his own money wasn't at risk as business after business crashed and burned. Anyone who considered what actually took place during Trump's career, versus what he claimed had happened, quickly come to the conclusion that Trump was most certainly not the guy to clean up government corruption. But most people don't look at the details, they look at the big, brash personalities, they listen to the promises without considering the operational likelihood that they can be accomplished. Trump took advantage of this weakness in the average voter. He stood out from the pack of other Republican hopefuls - the other almost 20 fell into two main categories: Traditional candidates like Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, Jeb Bush and John Kasich - senators or governors and a much smaller group that included non-politicians such as CEO Carly Fiorina and neurosurgeon Ben Carson. It was almost predetermined that Trump, in a category of his own, would surge to the front of the pack. He was saying what people wanted to hear, that no one else was saying.

[Trump's barely disguised racism and misogyny, including an admittance on tape of sexual assault, was part of what appealed to some. I didn't get any of that from the person that I talked to, for him, it was the "drain the swamp" aspect.]

One of the things you hear sometimes in religious contexts is "there's no zeal like the zeal of the newly converted". People like my second Trumper had just recently been converted to caring about politics and the catalyst was Donald Trump. And just like a new convert to any religion, these Trump supporters were fervent in the belief. And like any cultist, it didn't matter that the facts didn't line up with the rhetoric. Virtually none of what drew people to Trump was accomplished. The Wall wasn't built, and the only significant accomplishment was a tax cut that mostly benefitted corporations and the ultra-wealthy. (Conservative additions to the judiciary, which ended up with Roe vs. Wade being overturned, would likely have occurred under any Republican president). The "drain the swamp" aspect was a joke, with actions of questionable ethics taking place continually throughout his four years. The "swamp", if anything, got swampier, with Trump businesses even making money by charging the Secret Service for rooms to protect the president and his family and to accompany Trump sons on business trips around the world. (A full list of all the unethical actions is a topic for another day). Yet the faithful stayed loyal.

One of the things that keeps people in a cult, or in any harmful situation, is looking at the time spent as a sort of investment. If you get out, you have "wasted" all the time you spent inside. Related to this is the reluctance for most people to admit that something that they so fervently believed in was a fraud, so they stay on, convincing themselves that what was wrong was right and what was black was actually white. Trump's four years are full of examples of why he was incompetent, dishonest and corrupt. In addition to the tendency of people to want to ignore the inconvenient, Trump himself kept up a steady drumbeat, undermining confidence in everything, the media, Congress, the courts, everything but him. 

Trump steadily built up a cult of personality around himself. It didn't matter if he succeeded in any of his promises, it didn't matter when his words were exposed as lies, his people would stand by him. In the case of the second of my two Trumpists, he was already primed to believe that corruption was rampant, it was but a small step to imagine that corruption would be directed at his messiah, the one who said "I alone can fix it". To this man, it didn't matter that no evidence was ever produced in court of election fraud because the judges were corrupt. The FBI search of Mar-a-Lago? Corrupt FBI. Any negative story you read or hear? Corrupt media. 

With this kind of mindset, facts don't matter because they can be ignored or explained away. No other source of information is to be trusted, every other source of information is corrupt, all except one man. 

If that's not a cult, I don't know what a cult is (and I know what a cult is)

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is Not the Problem

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is not the problem. 

Over the last two decades (at least) whenever Republicans have had the opportunity they have cut the operating budget of the IRS. This elicits cheers from a lot of people; I mean, who likes to pay taxes? But the IRS doesn't make the rules, Congress, abetted by the President, makes the rules. And those rules, despite regular pledges by people running for office to simplify the rules, just get more convoluted and Byzantine all the time. And the IRS has fewer and fewer resources to keep track of all the rules and to be able to track down those who avoid their legally due tax bill. 

Something you'll hear from time to time is that it's the ultra-rich who are the ones who are sliding out from under their full tax burden, while it's the lower income people who get hit with interest and penalties. Part of the problem is that for lower to middle income people the ways to avoid taxes are few and straightforward. Someone gets a second job and is paid off the books, or takes an occasional cash gig. About twenty years ago I was delivering newspapers in the early morning and didn't report the income. The newspaper, however, sent copies of the 1099 to the IRS and I got caught. The interest and penalties added up to close to half of the added gross income that I had earned at that second job since this extra money was added on to what I was already earning at my regular job. I didn't have a leg to stand on since it was without question taxable income. Someone who has earnings in the millions or billions has more tax avoidance options than simply not reporting income from a second job, and those options are usually more complex.

One popular way for the super wealthy to avoid taxes is to have access without actual earnings. Billionaires routinely finance their lifestyles by taking out loans with their stock holdings as collateral. Since unrealized stock gains are not taxable until the stock is actually sold, they are living off loan proceeds, which are paid back with the profits from appreciated stock value (that's taxed, but a small portion of what they're living off). The very rich often own a web of interlocking limited liability companies (LLCs) which, if you have a smart accountant, can have a paper loss. LLCs are what's known as "flow-through entities", whereby the profit or loss "flows through" to the owners. The loss is often borrowed money anyway, but the loss that flows through reduces the owner's tax bill. Then there's deductions and credits for various reasons that may or not be legitimate, but with not enough staff to sift through it all, and definitely not enough staff competent enough to decipher the complicated accounting, the billionaires are rolling the dice that they won't get caught. So, not only do the Daddy Warbuckses of the world have more options to shelter their wealth from taxation, they are less likely to get caught when they cheat. 

One thing that gets reported as sort of a scam, but really isn't, is depreciation. In a business, taxes are paid on the profit, which is gross revenue minus expenses. With large asset purchases, however, business are required to spread that expense over the useful life of the asset. The useful life varies from 39 years for buildings, down to 5 years for laptop computers. The simplest type of depreciation splits the expense into equal amounts over the life of the asset. It's not a way to get out of paying taxes, and it doesn't equate to getting your asset for free, it's just a way to spread out the tax benefit of a large purchase. 

Part of the recent large bill passed by the Senate Democrats was to increase the IRS budget by $80 billion over 10 years. The Republicans are screaming that this will mean 87,000 new auditors who will target middle income Americans and small businesses. While the 87,000 number of employees is mentioned in a recent Treasury Department report, the increased budget will not only go toward hiring, which will include not only auditors and other enforcement agents, but IT and customer service positions, and also toward technology upgrades, which are sorely needed and it's slated to be spread over 10 years, when around half the current 72,000 IRS employees will be eligible to retire. 

The IRS is not the problem. They are merely the agency tasked with carrying out the laws that Congress has passed and the President has signed. 

Time to Make the Sausages

The great architect of German unification once compared legislating to sausage-making, commenting that you really wouldn't want to watch either one being made. Politics is not pretty. Politics is not simple. Politics is more complex than everybody "just doing the right thing"...whatever that is. 

Somehow we have gotten to the point where the populace assumes that everybody in one party is going to agree on everything and everyone in the other party is also going to agree, but on different things. There's also a misapprehension that the President, by virtue of being the titular leader of his party, has the power to dictate policy to the Congressional members of his party. (I'm consistently using the male pronoun mainly because we haven't [yet] seen any women elected President) Part of this confusion comes from the term "Commander in Chief". The President is not the Commander in Chief of the United States, but according to the Constitution, the Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States and of the militia of the several states when called into actual Service of the United States. In other words, he sits atop the chain of command of the U.S. military. And the Constitution gives the President this authority in order to avoid military control of the government, giving a civilian ultimate military authority. The members of Congress are in no sense in that chain of command, or in any way subordinate to the President, and as a matter of fact, as a body, the Congress is the equal constitutionally, to the President. 

The two party system of government is to be found nowhere in the Constitution, but it has evolved to become the de facto system nonetheless. Because real power is concentrated in this dyarchy, effectively shutting out additional parties, the two main parties function as "big tent" entities, home to a variety of ideologies that coexist, often uncomfortably. Since the election of Joe Biden and the attendant Democratic Party majorities in Congress, there has been an expectation among progressive Democratic voters that "things would get done", presumably a wide-ranging progressive agenda. The problem is twofold: (1) The filibuster in the Senate and (2) Multiple factions within the Democratic Party. 

A few months ago I was "laugh emojied" for suggesting that the Republicans were united in opposition to anything the President tried to accomplish, while the Democrats were fragmented. The person who disagreed with my assertion asserted himself that the Democrats were taking their orders from central authority that had them all marching in lockstep. Even a cursory scan of political news should disabuse one of this opinion, unless of course the belief in some secret conspiracy that controlled both parties was too difficult to let go of. The modern Democratic Party is usually portrayed as having a "progressive" wing and a "moderate" wing, with a few outlying "conservatives" like Joe Manchin rounding out the circus. The truth is a lot messier. Every single member of Congress has their own unique constituency that they cannot aggravate too much or they won't be reelected. Senators from large populous states have the additional challenge of balancing the interests of their urban and their rural voters. 

Vote trading has long been a staple of legislating. Senator "A" might be inclined to vote for Bill "X", but will withhold her vote unless amendment "Y", benefitting her state, is added. Senator "B", on the other hand, might be persuaded to vote for Bill "W", which he had doubts about, but whose "yes" vote will carry the day, if Senators "C", "D", "E" & "F" agree to support appropriating funds for a military base in his state. 

This is just what's been happening in the halls of Congress lately. Media reports focus on Senators Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, on his seemingly un-Democratic conservatism and her supposed wackiness, and the allegations that both of them are in the pocket of special interests. This is mainly because they both appear to be the last two holdouts in any intra-party negotiation, and they are the two who are most vocal about retaining the filibuster, which prevents bills being passed by less than 60 votes if their are minority party objections. Bills do not spring fully-formed from the brow of Joe Biden, but are the result of hours and days and weeks of negotiation in order to address concerns from multiple directions. Surprise! Not everybody agrees on everything!

Are We In A Recession?

Are we in a recession? That question reminds me of the punch line to the the question: "What is the difference between ignorance and apathy?" - " I don't know and I don't care". 

The reason that I don't know is that economists, who are the ones who come up with these terms, don't agree on what defines a recession. In most cases they assign the label to a time period retroactively. One definition that you hear a lot about is two consecutive quarters of negative Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth. It's the definition that the party that's out of power (currently the Republicans) likes to use because it's easy to point at and say "Look, those idiots in charge have got us into a recession!". The problem with that definition is that hardly any economists use it. Mainly because, by itself, it doesn't really give us a clear picture of what is going on. The more popular, and more nuanced and therefore more vague and hard to pin down definition is "a significant decline in economic activity spread across the economy, lasting more than a few months, normally visible in real GDP, real income, employment, industrial production, and wholesale-retail sales." There's a lot of moving parts that could contribute to the big economic picture. It's not one moment in time that can be pointed at as "THAT'S the recession". 

So are we in a recession? I stand by "I don't know and I don't care". "I don't know" because the definition is so nebulous and "I don't care" for more complex reasons.

The state of the amorphous monster known as The Economy is going to affect different demographics in different ways. The stock market was setting new records every week for several years, but for the most part this had no effect upon the average American. This year it slid down a little a had investors sweating - but did that same average American notice? I'd wager not. The unemployment rate is another measure of economic health; the rate has been ridiculously low the last few years, but if the majority of the employed are working multiple jobs to get by, the news isn't so good. Wages are going up, but so are prices. Whether we are in good economic times or not is an individual thing. It's also highly subjective. Studies have been done that indicate that most people believe that the economy is bad even when they personally are doing well!

How you look at current economic conditions is going to be colored by your partisan leanings. Of course if you didn't vote for the party that's currently in power you're going to focus on inflation, in particular gas and grocery prices; if you're a supporter of the incumbent administration your focus will be on continued low unemployment, continued record job creation, as well as record corporate and retail sales and profits.  

Parties in power claim credit when things are going well and make excuses when things are going poorly; parties out of power point the finger of blame when things are going badly and defect attention some other thing when the economy is doing well. So how things going now? Some good, some bad. Just like always.

Kyle Rittenhouse & Fearing for One's Life

Kyle Rittenhouse was on trial for murder. He killed two people and seriously wounded a third. 

According to trial testimony, the first person that Rittenhouse killed was Joseph Rosenbaum. I've heard various versions of what happened between Rittenhouse and Rosenbaum, and various descriptions of Rosenbaum as a troublemaker. But trial testimony established that Rittenhouse shot Rosenbaum four times after Rosenbaum lunged at him. 

The jury decided, as the defense claims, that Rittenhouse fired in self defense. I am unfamiliar with the specifics of Wisconsin law, although I am reasonably sure they don't have a version of a "Stand Your Ground" statute, so it's wasn't a sure thing either way. But is it self defense if you purposely put yourself in a position to provoke people to anger by walking around with a loaded weapon that you are prepared to use against people who are damaging property? Emotions were running hot in Kenosha and he inserted himself right into the middle of it. And "inserted" is the right word. This wasn't his city, it wasn't even his state. He got his mother to drive him across state lines and pick up his illegally obtained weapon because he was looking for trouble. And he found it. Trouble didn't find him. He actively sought out a dangerous situation and shot an unarmed man who he thought endangered him. Then he killed Anthony Huber, who was trying to detail and disarm him, who was also unarmed. Finally he shot and maimed Gaige Grosskreutz, who was armed and trying to stop him. The only reason he was able to shoot the Grosskreutz was that he was unable to pull the trigger and potentially kill Rittenhouse. 

The Kenosha Police Department wasn't on trial, yet their actions were as much to blame for the shootings as is Kyle Rittenhouse. Why, when arresting people for curfew violations, and knowing that the anger was just ready to bubble over into violence, did they allow openly armed vigilantes to roam the streets? And not only allow it, but encourage it?  

Rittenhouse got off. In my opinion it was overly broad self defense statutes that allowed his claim of self defense to stand. They're not much different in Wisconsin than anywhere else, but for the most part a claim that someone "feared for their life" is taken at face value. In the case of the first person that he shot, Rittenhouse claimed he was afraid that he would be killed by his own gun, that he testified that Rosenbaum was trying to take from him. In the case of his murder of Huber, he was apparently deathly afraid of a skateboard. He seemed to be completely unaware that he was being "attacked" because he had just KILLED SOMEONE! 

After the acquittal, instead of breathing a sigh of relief that he wouldn't be going to prison, he has become the darling of the gun lovers in the NRA and the Republican Party, spouting pro-gun rhetoric via his Twitter account and encouraging his supporters to justify his murder and maiming spree by pointing out the arrest history of his victims. 

The NRA crowd and its hangers-on don't see the inherent problem with this no-questions-asked "feared for my life" defense. Cops have been using it for as long as there have been cops, but now you start to see videos of aggressive, armed individuals screaming "I feel threatened" at people armed only with words. I'm not advocating unprovoked violence, but wouldn't a natural extension of this belief be for protestors to just proactively shoot any right wing counter-protester? 

After the Rittenhouse verdict, I'd certainly fear for my life if I saw any of those armed assholes at a protest.

Russia, Russia, Russia

One of the pro-Trump/Republican talking points is to point to the investigation into the 2016 Trump Campaign's connections to Russia as a hoax. They act and talk as if were a proven fact that there was no "collusion" between individuals connected to Russian State Security and the Trump for President organization. They further deride any investigation into Trump's finances, his support for the January 6th attack on the Capitol or any other investigation as "just another 'Russia, Russia, Russia' hoax". In the main they have been pretty successful. Definitely Trump acolytes and other rightists are convinced that Trump was exonerated and that the investigation by Mueller was uncovered no "collusion". But I'd bet that many who have no love for Trump also believe that Mueller's investigation, if not providing a total exoneration, at least uncovered no questionable or unethical actions. But Mueller's report concluded no such thing.

I don't know who among my circle of family, friends and acquaintances has read the Mueller Report. I did. 

To be clear, what the Mueller Report doesn't allege, is that Russia, to use the popular Trumpist term, "rigged" the election, changed any votes, suborned any election officials or otherwise caused fraudulent ballots to be submitted. What it does conclude is that Russian Intelligence was using social media to spread false information about Trump's opponent former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. It also came to the conclusion that Russia hacked into various computer systems, including that of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and provided hacked emails from the DNC to Wikileaks, which subsequently leaked them. Mueller's investigation also revealed that several Trump campaign officials were in illegal contact with the Russian government, and that others met with a Russian operative for the express purpose of digging up dirt on Clinton. Several Trump campaign staffers were indicted and convicted of various Russia-related crimes - pardoned by Trump after his election. Mueller was very clear that many of Trump's actions, before and after his inauguration,  met the legal definition of obstruction of justice. 

There was no indictment of Trump for two reasons:

1. The actions of Trump and his campaign did not rise to the legal definition of conspiracy
2. The Department of Justice adhered to a long-established policy stating that they could not (or would not) seek to indict a sitting president. 

That's it. Despite the way the word "collusion" was thrown about by the media and by the general public, there is no such crime as "collusion". Criminal conspiracy is a crime, but it is very hard to prove. The key component in a conspiracy charge is that there has to be coordination between or among the parties. Despite attempts by the Russians to coordinate, Trump's people were either too incompetent or too lazy to do so, although it was clear that they were quite happy to accept all the help that the Russians were giving.  

Don't be fooled by the gaslighting. The Russians worked hard to discredit Clinton and support Trump. Trump gladly accepted the help. Trump obstructed the investigation. 

Not a hoax. 

 
 

The Republicans Think You're A Pedophile

The other day I posted about the ignorance of the American electorate. Maybe I'm too informed about what's going on in politics these days, if such a thing is possible. Part of my effort to keep my finger on the political post is to follow people on Twitter who represent a wide swath of opinions. This exposes me to, as former President G.W. Bush is supposed have said, some crazy shit. One of the most prevalent lately is how the political right wing's predilection to accuse anyone that they disagree with as a pedophile. As far as I can tell this originated in one of the QAnon conspiracy fantasies. Supposedly former President Trump was leading the fight against wide-ranging pedophilia rings. Maybe some of you remember the accusations that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was heading up a group of pedophiles in the basement of a Georgetown pizza restaurant - that didn't have a basement. It's only escalated. Democrats who hug their grandchildren are pedophiles. Librarians who stock books that feature gay characters are pedophiles. Teachers who make reference to their own same-sex spouse are pedophiles. 

What's at the root of all of this is homophobia becoming "respectable" again. 

Those of us who were born a half century or more ago remember how one of the boogiemen images of gay people was that they were child abusers, despite statistics showing how child abuse was overwhelmingly perpetrated by heterosexuals. How homosexuality was classified as a mental illness. How homosexuality was a sin. Some of the more optimistic among us consoled ourselves with the delusion that homophobia was a thing of the past, or at least relegated to the most ignorant among us. 

Apparently there a lot of ignorant among us. More than we thought. A lot more.

Just as overt racism resurged after we elected a Black president, and racists felt empowered under former President Trump, the under-the-radar hatred of Gay Americans bubbled to the surface as well. The very fact that Gay Americans can "come out of the closet", that same-sex marriage has been legalized, and there Gay members of the presidential cabinet has not prevented hatred and bigotry from making a center stage appearance. 

Recent legislative actions, specifically in Florida and Texas, have, under the cover of defining age-appropriate sex education and classroom discussion, effectively made any mention of the existence of Gay people illegal. Proponents of these actions claim that they are against the "sexualizing of children" and teaching of sexual topics to children to young to understand, which on the face of it doesn't sound terrible, but characterize opponents as child abusers and yes, pedophiles and groomers. A groomer, in the context of sex, is someone who influences a child over a period of time in order to prepare them for, and make them comfortable with, sex with an adult. Yet this is another "solution" for a problem that does not exist. Teachers aren't "grooming" children in the care, nor are they having explicit discussions with first graders about sex. They aren't even, as the homophobes allege, pushing a "homosexual agenda", training, or grooming, if you will, children to become gay. No, what is being prevented is any acknowledgement that Gay people exist. If little Betty asks teacher why Johnny's two dads are holding hands when they pick him up after school, or where Johnny's mom is, teacher isn't allowed to say "Johnny doesn't have a mom and a dad, he has two dads". Or if a child runs into teacher at a Christmas pageant with her spouse, she isn't allowed to tell the child that she is her wife. School teachers are to act as if Gay people do not exist. The assumption underlying these rules is that being Gay is bad, is sinful, is harmful, and any recognition that Gay people live in the community is pushing a bad, harmful, sinful "agenda". And people who don't pretend that Gay people don't exist are pedophiles. 

Homophobia, in my observation, is bigotry disguised as religion. Certainly one way to interpret some passages of the Bible is that homosexuality is a sin, but that interpretation is not universal, even among religious Christians. And for some reason the loathing and hatred of the "sin" of homosexuality doesn't extend to the myriad other offenses against God that are found in the Bible. Divorced people, those who cheat on their taxes, or those who drink too much may be subject to lectures from the pastor, or disapproving looks from the busybodies, but there aren't any other categories of so-called sin that have whole segments of society fighting against them. (Of course I'm not talking about offenses against others like murder or larceny). To be consistent, someone who wants to drive Gays into the closet would also do the same for those who don't keep the Sabbath. But if it's religious observance that fuels a stance against Gay people, it should not be the business of government to enforce one group's religious faith on others. We wrote a whole amendment to the Constitution about that. 

So religiously motivated bigots have come to an impasse. Constitutionally we can't legislate one religion's beliefs, and we certainly can't pretend that naked bigotry is a good reason for legal restrictions, so we are left we with them convincing themselves (or at least saying that they're convinced) that what is actually happening is sexualizing of children and...pedophilia. It doesn't really matter (to them) if they believe it, as long as they get the job done. 

I understand the seriously religiously motivated homophobia. The cult that I belonged to was at one point viscously anti-gay. At the time I went along with the idea that God did not approve of homosexuality because I wanted to do what God wanted me to do, although I never was comfortable with the rabid hatred this belief seemed to engender in some of my co-religionists. One I left that cult, as well as Christianity in general, I had no reason to retain my belief that being Gay was a sin. I changed my mind. Christians who think that they are following God's will be supporting homophobia can change their minds as well, they need to examine whether their sincerely held religious beliefs is a valid pretext for denying other Americans their full civil rights. 

Hardcore bigots - I hold little hope for them.  

 

Wild West

One of the recurring talking points from the right wing, science-denying Trumpists and Republicans is that somehow, President Biden is an autocrat, or a Communist, or a dictator - depending on the day and the mood of Tucker Carlson. Much of this is rooted in the irrational resistance to mask mandates, and partial vaccine requirements. There is also a lot of overlap with the Second Amendment absolutists who equate "freedoms" with owning enough guns for a small army and believe that the purpose of the Second Amendment is to allow citizens to overthrow the government if they don't like it. It seems that an article of faith among this strain of America First philosophy is that "freedom" is the ultimate goal and that government - any government - is an illegitimate infringements of our rights. 

While  acknowledging that our government doesn't oversee a utopian society (or anywhere close to it) and that power usually does corrupt, what would our world look like without any kind of government? A familiar saying is that "nature abhors a vacuum". If the government of the United States, for whatever reason you can imagine, ceased to exist tomorrow something would take its place. Maybe not immediately, and likely after a period of chaos, but the people who had power in that post-governmental world would almost certainly exercise that power. Science fiction writer S.M. Stirling wrote a series of novels beginning with Dies the Fire, in which he envisions a catastrophe that renders nuclear and electric power unavailable and even gunpowder won't work in a firearm. (He doesn't explain how this happens...magic?). The immediate aftermath is chaos, death and destruction. As his series progresses he imagines that society is reorganized in a variety of ways. In some areas urban gangs become the new ruling elite. An army general tries to rebuild the United States from his headquarters in Idaho. A renaissance cosplayer organizes Portland on a middle ages feudal model. Iowa closes its borders and its government stays in power with large farmers as the new power base and refugees from other states as virtual serfs. He imagines a dizzying variety of mini civilizations. The areas where there is no forced organization degenerate into dead zones or cannibalism. It's fiction, but with a basis in truth. 

If there really was no government as we know it, one of the first things that you'd see is large scale infrastructure failure. With no one in charge, who is maintaining the roads, how are the electrical plants kept running, and if you think inflation is bad, how can you purchase what you don't grow yourself (assuming you can do some subsistence farming) if there is no agreed-upon currency? 

Some people might be able to live a life of "freedom" on their farm, or out in the woods, away from civilization, protecting themselves with their guns. Until they run out of ammunition of course. How long would it take for somebody with a following to decide that he's the new bigshot in town and you work for him now? Or the local preacher who spent years screaming on YouTube decides that you're the wrong type of Christian and sweeps through your area purging the heretics? Freedom might just be keeping your head down and hoping no one notices you, if you even have the skills to feed and clothe and house yourself. But make no mistake, something or someone is going to fill that void left my an absent government. And the new boss might not be the same as the old boss, it might be worse. 

I Don't Know A Lot About Politics, But...

"I don't know a lot about politics, but..."

How many times have I heard a sentence start with that phrase? I don't know, but anyone who starts off that way really shouldn't aspire to hold an opinion about politics. 

I realize that there is no one correct way to govern the country. Every policy has unintended consequences. Every policy that benefits one segment of the population is virtually guaranteed to negatively affect another group. But wouldn't it be nice if the majority of our fellow Americans actually did their homework regarding the various policies of the people who run the government? 

But this isn't the current reality.

Granted, the electorate hasn't ever been particularly educated. I'm thinking of the days of the urban political machines, where jobs, and even bribes, determined the votes of whole groups of people. But what's the excuse today? We have access to more sources of information than ever. We can cross-check a politician's claims faster and with more accuracy than ever before, but the problem is that we aren't any smarter than ever before. There are more sources of information, but also more sources of disinformation, and people are just as lazy as ever in regards to the effort they are willing to put into sifting through the flood of words to determine the facts. 

I was recently challenged on my use of the term "talking points" in some of my Facebook posts criticizing Republicans. My challenger wanted to know if I thought Democrats used talking points as well. As I understand the term, "talking points" are not inherently good or bad, true or false, they're merely agreed-upon responses to an issue. For example, one political party has proposed a bill that they know has some opposition, so they provide a list to their supporters of benefits of the legislation, and canned responses to any objections. There's nothing necessarily dishonest about it, but when you hear multiple people making the same point, with mostly identical language, it's highly likely that a lot of those people have not thought through their responses, but are just repeating what they heard, not as the result of a reasoned thought process. 

My annoyance level is highest when I hear people with whom I have a large overlap of opinions doing this. Perhaps because I have deluded myself into thinking that people who think like me actually think, and therefore are smarter than the average bear. Like I said - a delusion. 

Despite the existence of irrational opinions and ill-informed positions by my fellow progressives, I definitely encounter more of this from the so-called conservatives. And I say "so-called", because the existence of true conservatives in the Republican Party have become harder and harder to find as Trumpism and its attendant cult of personality has taken over. 

Are The Republicans Eliminating Social Security?

While I wouldn't put it past them for a minute, the evidence that they are going to end, or even significantly cut Social Security benefits is murky at best. Despite there being no clearly articulated plans, there have been hints from various Republicans.

Before we look at that - a brief review of how Social Security works:

12.4% of every person's wage is collected as payroll deductions (6.2% paid by the employer, 6.2% paid by the employee - self-employed people pay the whole 12.4%). This money is then used to pay benefits to current retirees. Whatever is left over, i.e. the annual surplus, is invested in U.S. Treasury securities. The general budget fund pays interest on the Treasury bills which are redeemed at such a time when benefits paid exceed payroll taxes collected. Some previous explanations can be found here. 

We are now at the point where benefits paid out exceed payroll taxes collected each year. What this means is the Treasury securities will need to be redeemed in order to make up the annual shortfall. There are multiple scenarios projecting when the accumulated surplus will run out. 

 In the chart to the left, the Social Security Administration considers Scenario II to be the most realistic, which would put 2037 as the year of insolvency. Scenarios I and III are respectively more pessimistic and more optimistic. The next chart shows what will happen if nothing is done between now and 2037:

There will still be enough income from payroll taxes to pay benefits, but only at 76% of their scheduled rate. In other words, if no action is taken, Social Security recipients will lose 25% of their benefits. So, when we hear politicians talking about entitlement reform (yes, Social Security is an entitlement as explained here) it's a good thing, whether it actually turns out to be good or bad will determine whether it's good or bad for American seniors. In order to make up the difference between what coming in and what's going out, one or more of several things would need to happen

• Leave it alone and reduce benefits
• Increase the retirement age (effectively reducing benefits)
• Increase the percentage of the payroll tax
• Remove the cap on earnings subject to FICA deductions
• Fund Social Security deficits through borrowing (the Social Security Administration currently does not have borrowing authority)
• Fund Social Security deficits through the general fund budget

Republicans have not put forth any plan (and neither have Democrats), but they have offered a few hints, and history offers some glimpses into their thinking as well:

• Senator Rick Scott has suggested that every piece of legislation have a "sunset" date, this presumably would include Social Security. Senator Scott has also suggested that the tax code be changed so that every American pay some taxes (currently millions of Americans pay no income tax due to low wages, Earned Income Credit or other deductions)
• Senator Lindsey Graham was recently quoted as saying that "people like him" (presumably retirement-age people) would have to "take a little less" and "pay a little more in"
• The 2017 tax reform bill, advertised as a "massive" tax cut for all Americans, turned out to be a bonanza for corporations and wealthy Americans, with a modest, almost undetectable, tax cut for low to middle wage earners
• Way back in 1983 under President Reagan, a portion of Social Security benefits became taxable

If either party had control of the White House and a filibuster-proof majority in Congress, it likely, based on past performance, that Democrats would make changes that would protect current benefit levels, even at the expense of increasing general fund deficits, possibly even expanding Medicare. Removing or significantly raising the cap would also probably happen. Republicans, if history is any guide, would take actions such as raising retirement age, or increasing payroll taxes, possibly creating a two-tier system of benefits so that future wage earners would see reduced benefits. But the way things are going, it is unlikely in the extreme that even if one party controls Congress with one of their own as president, that they could achieve a filibuster-proof majority. (Although I have no illusions that the Republicans wouldn't eliminate the filibuster if it were in their interest to do so). 

S, what is the solution? Is there any solution being seriously debated? Despite right-wing meanderings by Senators Scott and Graham, and left-wing suggestions by Senators Sanders and Warren, there seems to be no sense of urgency by either party and the "plan" appears to be to kick the can down the road until it's an unavoidable crisis.