Hunting In RINO Country, Ctd

A few weeks back Rep Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) raised the call of RINO (Republican In Name Only) hunters everywhere:

PURITY!

Because by eliminating those who are impure, you move up the social power ladder, while reassuring, or at least confusing, the unambitious. Here’s the report from Steve Benen:

All of this came to mind again this week after seeing Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia speak to NBC News Vaughn Hillyard about the state of her party’s presidential race. Ahead of the New Hampshire primary, the right-wing congresswoman said:

“This is a true change for the Republican Party. It says not only do we support President Trump, we support his policies, and any Republican that isn’t willing to adapt [sic] these policies, we are completely eradicating from the party.”

As Benen points out, this results in the shrinking of the Party, not only because the impure are kicked out, but, given the propensity of RINO hunters to mendacity, even the rivals who are faithful get kicked out. Some will still vote for Trump, but others will become embittered and not vote – or even switch Parties.

All of this results in a move up prestige ladder for Rep Greene, but the odds of the Republicans doing well becomes less and less. It’s the self-immolation dance of the Republicans.

And here comes a RINO now!

Wisconsin GOP Rep. Mike Gallagher, who made news earlier this week with his vote against impeaching Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, announced on Saturday that he won’t run for re-election this year. [NBC News]

Beyond the Mayorkas vote, this probably put a bullseye on his back:

Republican political consultant Alex Bruesewitz has been mulling a primary challenge to Gallagher and said in a social media post on Saturday that Gallagher was once “considered by many as a rising star in the GOP,” but “instead of embracing the MAGA movement, he decided to betray the grassroots and protect the swamp.”

In the dog eat dog world of Republican politics, Greene was merely taking out a rival – a rising star – early. How do we know she’s involved?

Such was the case with Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.) on Tuesday night. A Princeton and Georgetown-educated PhD, a Marine veteran and a committee chairman, he had warned his GOP colleagues not to “pry open the Pandora’s box of perpetual impeachment,” and he became the decisive third Republican vote against Mayorkas’s impeachment, dooming the effort. As Johnson held the vote open and Democrats howled for the vote to be closed with cries of “regular order,” Republican colleagues encircled Gallagher along the back aisle.

Georgia’s Greene got in his face, clearly threatening him. Tennessee’s Green screamed at him, wagging his index finger. Reps. Virginia Foxx (N.C.), Jodey Arrington (Tex.) and Guy Reschenthaler (Pa.) joined in the berating — while Greene placed a call on her phone. From the first row of the gallery, I could see Gallagher, sometimes with mouth agape, sometimes swallowing hard, as he took in the abuse. In the well, Rep. Pat Fallon (R-Tex.), pointing at the siege of Gallagher, urged Johnson to stall further. But the slashing gesture Greene made indicated it was all over. [WaPo]

Be loyal or get out, and shaking up a combat veteran like Gallagher suggests the threats were earnest and appalling. Gallagher seems like a far better qualified leader than Greene, but in today’s Republican Party, good leaders run a real and substantial risk of removal.

Such leaders as Greene will be little more than caustic acid, destroying the Party from the inside. Soon enough, the Republican Party will consist of three members. And two of them will be on probation.

About That Immigration Bill

Observers of the political scene may recall that Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) led an effort to write and pass a bipartisan immigration bill back in 2015, right up until his Party told him this was not useful, at which time he repudiated the bill. It failed to pass; it may not have even received a vote.

Why was it not useful? The Republican Party at the Federal level, as many of those same observers will diagnose, is built on grievance, not on accomplishment. Immigration, school vouchers, Christian Nationalism, abortion, the Federal debt – these are the issues that have not been resolved for a very long time. Some, like Christian Nationalism, are belabored by the most difficult of hurdles, a forbidding clause in the Constitution, and only make progress through dubious arguments accepted by SCOTUS. Others, such as abortion, required a decades-long effort to populate SCOTUS with anti-abortion Justices to take away a Constitutional protection.

It’s noteworthy that possibly the greatest mistake of the Republicans in recent memory was the SCOTUS decision in Dobbs, as it inflamed not only the active pro-choice groups, but also conservatives who suddenly discovered an existential risk to themselves and their sisters, and previously inactive voters who, again, discovered an existential risk to them and their sisters. To be succinct, the putative decision puts women’s lives at real, existential risk, thus proving the intellectual winners of the contest are the pro-choice forces, and because the Republicans began losing close elections.

Returning to the point, the parallel of the Rubio experience of almost ten years ago with the Senator James Lankford (R-OK) experience of the last few weeks has seemed only a curiosity. As another brief aside for those readers unfamiliar with Senator Lankford’s work, here’s Steve Benen’s summation:

Lankford spent four months doing real legislative work, forging a multifaceted compromise on border policy, immigration policy, and security aid. Given his credibility in far-right circles, and the strength of the bill, the senator predicted as recently as a month ago that the bipartisan package would receive as many as 70 votes.

A month later, Lankford’s bill is effectively dead — killed by his own party, the day after he and his negotiating partners unveiled it. Donald Trump, meanwhile, is making his displeasure with the senator known, boasting yesterday that he didn’t endorse Lankford’s 2022 re-election bid, despite the fact that the former president really did endorse Lankford’s 2022 re-election bid.

With a key part being:

… of a Fox News interview in which Lankford also said, “The key aspect of this, again, is, are we as Republicans going to have press conferences and complain the border is bad and then intentionally leave it open?”

Well, yes – because Mr. Trump, running for President again, demands it. Of this there is no dispute.

As I said, a curiosity that happens to prove the Republicans operate on grievance, not accomplishment. But, as storytellers and military strategists know, the evil guys in a conflict are those that fight among themselves for personal advantage, leading, often enough, to triumph for the good guys. And, following an article on Daily Kos, a MarketWatch article suggests this may be true again, this time in connection with immigration and the surprising strength, and Biden reelection bulwark, of the economy:

Analysts at institutional brokerage Strategas led by Don Rissmiller agree that what they call “big fiscal” — the large budget deficits being run at a time of full employment — is a major driver of the economy. But they also point to another factor at work: immigration. “There are good reasons to believe the U.S. has benefited from positive supply effects, ie, there’s surprisingly solid real economic growth (~3%) along with more tame inflation (~3%) as we start 2024,” they say in a presentation. And the upside really appears to be specific to the U.S. rather than global.

My bold.

And, I think, it’s a two-fer. Not only is Mr. Trump’s puddle-headed interference in Senator Lankford’s effort leading to a high-performing economy with lower inflation, benefiting is eventual opponent, President Biden, but it also leaves the Republicans with a festering wound in connection with their refusal to begin fixing, whatever that may mean, the immigration problem at the border. This has led to illegal efforts by Governor Abbot (R-TX) and others to resolve the problem, including talk of secession by disgraceful far-right power mongers in the Republican Party.

All of this, properly messaged, may cost the Republicans yet another election cycle.

So it’s rather fascinating to watch the self-immolation of the Republicans, but running a Party on grievance rather than accomplishment is not only an evil thing to do, theoretically, but is proving in real world experience to have bad consequences. Which is sort of definitional.

The Republican leaders remain a hotly corrupt mess, and the base is a pack of marks.

An Opportunity For A Deal?, Ctd

It appears that many legal observers believe that Trump will triumph in Trump v. Anderson, which is the disqualification suit brought by mainline Republicans and independents to force Trump off the Colorado GOP primary ballot. If this is correct, I think it’ll be an opportunity lost in the wake of the Special Counsel report of President Biden. But nothing is official just yet.

Speaking of the Special Counsel report, reaction to the report on Biden has been more or less as expected. Right-winger Erick Erickson:

Every red flag about Biden is now suddenly up at once. The public thinks he is too old, and the Special Prosecutor thinks Biden is not mentally fit for trial. That raises too many questions.

It was political malpractice for Biden’s team to rush him into a press conference where he confused the Mexican and Egyptian Presidents. It shows Barack Obama’s concerns are well-founded.

For me, at least, it was notable overnight that Democratic strategists who had been open in the past with their concerns about Biden were noticeably quiet. They know they have a problem. They just are not sure how to proceed.

Republicans will try to pounce and probably just break their necks.

Historian and liberal Professor Richardson, based on material from multiple sources:

But in Biden’s case, what followed the announcement that he had not broken a law was more than 300 pages of commentary, including assertions that Biden was old, infirm, and losing his marbles and even that “[h]e did not remember, even within several years, when his son Beau died” (p. 208).

As television host and former Republican representative from Florida Joe Scarborough put it: “He couldn’t indict Biden legally so he tried to indict Biden politically.”

Liberal Kevin Drum:

It’s instructive that, as far as I know, not a single person who has interacted with Biden personally has ever reported any kind of cognitive decline. This includes Republican leaders who have visited him in the White House, even though they have every incentive to leak dirt on Biden to the press. In fact, I’ve never come across a comment from anyone, even on background, that describes him as anything other than attentive, engaged, and detail oriented.

On a connected note, conservative/centrist/classic liberal Andrew Sullivan, behind a paywall:

And look: neither you nor I know how much dementia is affecting an 81 year old. There are times when Biden seems remarkably lucid for a man his age. My best guess is that it’s patchy: he has good days and bad days. But this much we do know: even if we judge him able to do the job now, what about in three or four years’ time? That’s what we are being asked to judge. Many of us have parents who were fine in their eighties … until suddenly they weren’t — and in the case of my mother, the decline was swift. That’s why in a poll last year, “fully 77 percent said Biden is too old to be effective for four more years,” and 69 percent of Democrats feel this way. Who wouldn’t?

Sullivan strikes an informed balance, as is his wont.

On Lawfare Chuck Rosenberg critiques the process:

But a special counsel must write a report in a way—if possible—that gives no advantage or disadvantage to any one person, apart from the consequences that flow naturally from the factual findings of the report. It is one thing to explain in a neutral way why evidence exists—or does not exist—in a case (such as Biden could not recall) and another to use language that is arguably disparaging (such as that Biden is “an elderly man with a poor memory”). It is one thing to suggest that a defendant could come across to a jury as sympathetic and another to suggest that a defendant is utterly incapable of forming criminal intent. Political opponents will turn the latter characterizations into political capital. A special counsel report should avoid providing that sort of ammunition to either side (and I believe Hur could have threaded that needle here) while still adequately explaining a declination decision to the attorney general.

Although I do not believe his final recommendation was politically viable:

If you do not want to pour the fruits of sensitive investigations (with their attendant impressions and assessments) into the public domain, then handle these investigations through normal channels at the Department of Justice, and do what prosecutors always do when they decide not to charge a case: nothing.

Doing nothing is still politically sensitive in an atmosphere that is as charged as it is today. An old-fashioned phrase for that is the fix is in.

So what is a slightly bored independent like me – and maybe you – to do in November? Sure, past performance is no guarantee of future achievement, but it’s indicative of how to bet, so I suggest evaluating Biden on the last four years, and in that respect, Biden’s running on a superb record. Sure, he had a bit of inflation, but it’s relatively easy to deduce that inflation was an unfortunate side effect of cleaning up the mess left by the Republicans. Unemployment has fallen to shocking lows, wages are up, inflation is back under control, and supply line issues have been managed, sometimes by Biden personally. The predicted recession never made an appearance, much to the flustering of Republicans and economists. He’s put outstanding personnel in charge of the various departments and then helped only where necessary. Indeed, he’s shown a highly mature understanding of the job, a matter that escaped, and, given his recent comments, will continue to escape Mr. Trump.

Speaking of the former President, treat every claim of Mr. Trump with regard to the achievements of his Administration with skepticism. His inclination to make any claim that he believes will benefit him results in mass mendacity that you may not suspect. And remember: a healthy chunk of the Federal debt is due to the 2017 tax reform bill, passed by the Republicans and signed enthusiastically by President Trump, which did nothing for the economy while reducing tax revenues, causing the annual deficit, and therefore the debt, to skyrocket.

Based purely on economic achievements, it’s clear that Biden has Trump beaten, hands down.

Is Biden declining cognitively? Could be. As Sullivan notes, some cognitive declines are sudden and definitive. But a disabled President, unlike most disabled dictators, such as Brezhnev, has specified processes for transfer of authority, its return etc. If Biden becomes cognitively disabled, we take him out and put in VP Harris, who will be supported by Biden’s various appointees, and we continue, presumably with most or all policies intact.

Mr. Trump’s judgment in the selection of most appointees proved defective during his Administration, to judge from the numerous scandals attending them, and there’s little reason to think his judgment will improve. What scandal came in with Biden’s appointees?

Well, despite the nattering of House Republicans over the President, his son Hunter, and Department of Homeland Security’s Alejandro Mayorkas, there hasn’t been much in the way of scandal. Right-wing extremist Erick Erickson claims the Administration has been infiltrated by Iranian agents, but I’m not even going to link to those claims as I’ve seen no corroborating reports. It sounds like Erickson is repeating something he saw on a blog.

Now, there was the loss of thirteen service members during the Afghanistan withdrawal, but there are two points of importance in the matter that are often glossed over. First, it was President Trump who signed the legally binding document that we would withdraw by the target date, not President Biden. True, Biden could have ignored the matter, but there is value in upholding promises, even those with which we personally disagree or find politically inconvenient. Second, it was not the Taliban who claimed to have killed the Americans, but a Taliban opponent seeking to gain an advantage of some sort. Stopping the attack used is difficult. Less defensible aspects might include treatment of Afghan translators, and the equipment, damaged, worn out, outdated, etc, that was left behind. And keep in mind that both Trump and Biden wanted the United States out of Afghanistan – and I suspect that, if Mr Trump managed the withdrawal, it might have been a disaster.

But if this incident, which is only a scandal for a far-right extremist, in truth, is the worst it gets, then, at least so far, Biden is doing as well as President Obama, who also had no scandals. And there’s some value, for the voter, in that. Almost as much as the recovery of the economy, as managed by the Democrats.

Quote Of The Day

From WaPo’s reporting on Robert Hur’s Special Counsel report President Biden’s retention of classified documents:

“We also expect many jurors to be struck by the place where the Afghanistan documents were ultimately found in Mr. Biden’s Delaware home: in a badly damaged box in the garage, near a collapsed dog crate, a dog bed, a Zappos box, an empty bucket, a broken lamp wrapped with duct tape, potting soil, and synthetic firewood[.]”

It reads like a labored metaphor, which had me both sad and laughing for some reason.

The Ol’ Mailbag

I received this bit overnight from a friend up north, with the subject line, misspellings and all:

Want your blood to boil?d

Rather bald-faced manipulation, isn’t it? Here’s the body:

Heard on the news tonight that Minnesota is putting forth a bill to make MN a “sanctuary state” !!!!!  Good grief!  The dems control governorship, and noth the house and senate in MN.   We’re doomed.

https://kstp.com/kstp-news/top-news/lawmakers-push-north-star-act-in-effort-to-make-minnesota-sanctuary-state-republicans-warn-of-economic-burden/

or how about this:

www.startribune.com/hennepin-county-minneapolis-leaders-back-minnesota-sanctuary-state-proposal/600340789

If this doesn’t make you panic, nothing will.  Disgusting.

So I glanced through the StarTribune article and then replied to the sender:

“Uh huh. From the cited article:

It says the board supports “efforts to ensure that non-citizen residents are assured due process in the criminal legal system, be free from harassment, and supported in their efforts to remain in Minnesota and contribute to community vibrancy.”

Terrible? Horrible? The doom of society?

Hysteria.

Here’s the problem with the far right conservatives: Manipulation. They take serious discussion and turn it into The End Of The World. And they do it again and again and again, all while sticking their hands out.

And everyone’s learning this is how they operate. You can’t have a serious debate with them, you – or rather they – won’t compromise unless it’s an overseas issue, and even that is beginning to become infected with this sickness.

So we don’t have as serious of debates as we might. I have a conservative friend with whom I dined a month or so ago. He runs an organization that keeps an eye on the Legislature, and he expressed concerns about the Democrats’ control of all both wings of the legislature and the governorship. Not that they are Democrats per se, but the potential, partially fulfilled, that bills are now sailing through the legislature and becoming law far too quickly, without the substantive and respectful debate that society should require.

And that, by and large, is the fault of conservatives who have suffered the manipulative grifters to not only live, but to hold positions of power and influence. Names such as Trump, Gingrich, Greene, Gaetz, for everyone who is paying attention knows they are clowns, absolutists and grifters.”

There ya go.

It’s Just A Little Lean

The 2022 Senate race was interesting for what it said about polling. I noticed that pollsters with lower FiveThirtyEight ratings tended to skew a trifle conservative, both during and afterwards, as did other pundits. For example, in my post-mortem summary, I said this about Senator Hassan’s (D-NH) reelection bid:

In New Hampshire, some conservative pollsters gave challenger Don Bolduc (R) a small lead over Senator Hassan (D), while others called it a dead heat. Then pollster Lowell Center gave Hassan a ten point lead, pointedly out of step with everyone else. Hassan’s final margin of victory? 10 points.

This was echoed in a few other races, such as Fetterman/Oz in Pennsylvania. It was as if the conservative pollsters were trying to generate enthusiasm for their ideologically aligned candidates, rather than just reporting their findings.

Maybe their adjustment models reflected a poor understanding of electoral realities. Or perhaps the electorate came late to the realization that Bolduc, Oz, et al, held deeply inappropriate views for Senators from those States.

So how is this playing out in the 2024 Presidential election? On Daily Kos, Kerry Eleveld has an observation on recent polling:

The Economist published a welcome reminder Sunday that not all polls are created equal. The outlet parsed the 538 aggregate of national polls, dividing them up by pollster ratings between the very good, good, decent, poor, and unranked. Generally speaking, the worse the pollster’s ranking, the better Trump performed in the survey.

  • Very good (13 polls): Trump +.15
  • Good (eight polls): Trump +2.4
  • Decent (30 polls): Trump +1.7
  • Poor (four polls): Trump +5.3
  • Unranked (two polls): Trump +6.5

So it may be that, once again, the lower quality pollsters are trying to incline the playing field to the far-right candidates. Keep that in mind when my reader sees a poll. Here’s the FiveThirtyEight ranking of pollsters, dated late January of 2024. They’ve apparently switched from a letter grade system to a star system, 0 to 3 stars. And the above mentioned dead-eye Lowell Center? They have a 2.9 stars rating. Trafalgar, who had given Bolduc a small lead? Less than a star at .7.

An Opportunity For A Deal?

I see Robert Hur, Special Counsel investigating President Biden’s possession of classified documents from his time as Vice President, chose today to release his report. It tries to be damning:

However, this is not only mitigating, but even contradicts the above findings:

  • In the report, Hur noted that Biden cooperated with the investigation and returned the classified documents once they were discovered — noting the significant differences between this case and the one against former President Donald Trump, who was charged last year in relation to his handling of classified documents after he left the White House.

Naturally, the White House and Biden’s personal lawyer ripped the report. I’m not in a position to judge the report, although the above contradiction seems obvious.

But I will note this: There may be an opportunity to reset our politics.

How so? Today was also the day SCOTUS heard arguments as to whether Mr. Trump engaged in insurrection on 6 January 2021 and, if so, is he then disqualified from the Presidency and all other offices. I tried to listen to the arguments, but, being a working dude in a job consumed with details, I found their nattering and nitpicking both irritating and, due to their unknown references, incomprehensible. No offense. And I’ve noticed pundits are already opining that Trump will win this fight, which will be a rare victory for him.

But this can be changed.

Keep in mind that a widespread complaint among the electorate is that both Presidential candidates, Biden and Trump, are, really, way too old for the rigors of the job; I disregard Haley as it seems unlikely that she’ll win the GOP nomination. The electorate, outside of the evangelicals on the right, really would prefer someone younger, even though Biden has done far better than we could have expected, foreign and domestic, when he was elected, despite frantic GOP stonewalling and denial. And as a manager responsible for picking his subordinates, he has done very well.

Also, Biden has said that if Trump was out of the race, he’d be tempted to step out as well. He knows he’s too old, I think.

So here’s what Biden might consider doing: open a line of communications with Chief Justice Roberts, and suggest that if Trump is found to be an insurrectionist and disqualified from office, Biden will cancel his reelection run. Trump will scream, but most everyone else will sigh with relief. There’ll be a mad scramble on both sides of the aisle.

Naturally, Roberts would have to find a confederate, assuming the liberal wing is willing to find for the plaintiffs (Norma Anderson is lead plaintiff in Trump vs. Anderson), to gain the necessary 5-4 advantage. He might try to intellectually convince one of the six conservatives to join him, or he might just lay it on the line. But it’s noteworthy that there’s really no precedent at stake here. As Tristan Snell points out, it’s awfully darn clear that Trump’s politically an insurrectionist. The 1314th Amendment very clearly states that insurrectionists are ineligible to occupy elective offices. If they choose to find for Anderson, it’s not likely to result in damage to the polity in the future.

And the Republicans will find some of the pressure is off them. As anyone paying attention to politics knows, the border problem persists because of the GOP absolutely refusing to do anything about it; it’s the new abortion issue, if you accept that abortion was the issue with which the GOP kept their base in line for decades. But it’s also the Trump issue de jour; if he is forced to trundle off and just whine about the unfairness of the world, perhaps we can make progress on the border issue, Ukraine assistance, Taiwan assistance, and Israel assistance, all of which are tied up in the GOP fourth-rater incompetence vortex.

There’s a lot to like in a deal like this: younger, if inexperienced, candidates. Haley, as nominee presumptive, will get vetted, as will Democratic nominees. Maybe some new ideas will pop up. Younger voters may find new candidates more attractive. President Putin of Russia will be disappointed, of course, as Trump is widely viewed, correctly in my opinion, as Putin’s patsy – but if Trump cannot deliver, then Putin will have to make a move, such as sue for peace with Ukraine. And with Trump forced out, Ukraine funding might open up.

My oh my. I wonder if Biden’s discussing this idea with his advisors, because this may be win-win-win, the third being for voters.

The Forgotten Declaration

Author and lawyer Tristan Snell points out that SCOTUS, and everyone else, shouldn’t try to hide behind the declaration Let the voters decide!, because, well, they already have:

Fortunately, the Supreme Court need not look far for answers to these questions. They can simply look across the street at the Capitol, where majorities of both chambers of Congress already found that January 6 was an insurrection and that Trump not only engaged in it but “incited” it.

This may come as a shock. When, one might ask, did Congress ever hold such votes?

Those votes came in the second impeachment of Trump, in January and February of 2021, in which majorities of both the House and the Senate backed an article of impeachment against Trump for “incitement of insurrection.”

This was a finding of fact, by majorities of our elected representatives, after a full public trial in which Trump was able to mount a defense — and it should be deemed persuasive, if not conclusive, in answering the factual questions before the Supreme Court. Indeed, for the more right-wing justices, who are often fond of pontificating that courts should not make policy judgments and should instead defer to legislatures, one would think that such a clear public pronouncement from Congress on Trump’s engagement in insurrection would be a compelling precedent. [CNN/Opinion]

OK, Amendment 13 does include a way to have the dishonor removed. Yes, yes, yes, but it requires supermajorities in Congress, and I doubt that’ll ever happen.

The Hunters Are Out

Are we seeing the end of Senator and long time GOP leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY)?

Senate GOP leadership screwed this up—and screwed us. Even while refusing to let us see the bill they claimed to be negotiating on our behalf—for MONTHS—they were never in doubt, insisting we’d be dumb and even unpatriotic NOT to support it. This is a disqualifying betrayal.

Posted just a few days ago, it’s one of several signifying instances collected by Steve Benen. But he doesn’t think McConnell’s yet near the cliff’s edge:

My point is not that members like Cruz and Lee will successfully soon replace their party’s Senate leader. That’s unlikely. But the fact that this far-right duo is going after McConnell, against a backdrop of setbacks, challenges, partisan infighting, and congressional dysfunction, leave little doubt that the minority leader’s power has diminished, and McConnell’s influence appears to be ebbing away.

But I’ve noticed that shifts in power in the GOP do happen with some rapidity. My guess is that, soon enough, someone in the GOP will decide that McConnell is a liberal, start shouting RINO! because they want to be a Kentucky Senator, and McConnell’s age and general decrepitude will work against him. He may gracefully retire rather than fight it.

It’ll be Another RINO run out of a position of influence, and someone, probably more than one, will prance about proclaiming victory, that they’ve purified the Party.

The ironic part of the deal, of course, is the complete ignorance of history. If it weren’t for McConnell’s dishonorable leadership when Justice Scalia died, and, later, when Justice Ginsburg died, SCOTUS would be short two conservative Justices, probably Kavanaugh and Barrett, Roe vs. Wade would still be shielding Republicans from the mistake of pushing anti-abortion legislation, and the USA would be in a far better place. But McConnell couldn’t make himself lead his caucus in voting for impeachment on either occasion, seriously miscalculating the depth of Trump’s pathological narcissism, and, having followed Gingrich’s proclamations for the Republican Party, is faced with a Party getting ready to kick out a loyal Party man, so loyal that he dishonored himself, for Not Being Loyal Enough.

Poor guy. And it’s not even clear, at least to me, that he’s smart enough to realize he’s been playing a leading part in the stage drama The Dissolution of the Republican Party, and The Reduction of America To Second Rate Status.

And now a third-rate McConnell will soon be replaced by some fourth-rater extremist, who’ll fight for Trump’s favor.

I seem to be cranky tonight.

That Reminds Me

Steve Benen gives a casual summary of Republicans nation-wide:

While the GOP’s self-imposed drama [concerning border security] unfolds in the Senate, elsewhere on Capitol Hill, Republicans are poised to impeach the Homeland Security secretary for reasons they’re struggling to explain, knowing that their Senate counterparts intend to ignore the entire fiasco.

The impeachment vote later failed. Maybe they’ll try again!

Meanwhile, Donald Trump appears to be throwing his handpicked chair of the Republican National Committee [Ronna Romney McDaniel] under the bus for reasons he also hasn’t explained.

It’s against this backdrop that the state Republican Parties in Florida, Arizona, and Michigan have recently parted ways with their chairs; the chair and vice chair in Oklahoma don’t appear to be on the same page; and Nevada is holding a presidential primary and caucus on the same week for a series of confusing reasons that have left local voters baffled.

Yep, that sounds like arrogant amateurs at work.

Which all reminds me: a few years back I went to a birthday party where I met a lady who had helped run elections in a number of roles. While she was obviously of a leftish inclination, she seemed quite honestly bewildered when discussing the lawyers who represented the right over election night issues, who she described, if I remember rightly, as becoming more and more stupid as the years passed.

Earl Landgrebe Award Nominee

Perennial award hopeful Rep Matt Gaetz (R-FL) has submitted a House Resolution for approval that gives him another nomination for the Earl Landgrebe Award:

Resolved, That it is the sense of the House of Representatives that former President Donald J. Trump did not engage in insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or give aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.

Just the sort of thing you’d expect from someone whose only strong leg is the one to which he clings.

What’s he going to do when Mr. Trump becomes a political non-factor? Retire?

Word Of The Day

Meme coin:

meme coin (also spelled memecoin) is a cryptocurrency that originated from an Internet meme or has some other humorous characteristic. It may be used in the broadest sense as a critique of the cryptocurrency market in its entirety—those based on particular memes such as “doge coins”, celebrities like Coinye, and pump-and-dump schemes such as BitConnect—or it may be used to make cryptocurrency more accessible. The term is often dismissive, comparing the value or performances of those cryptocurrencies to that of mainstream ones. Supporters, on the other hand, observe that some memecoins have acquired social currency and high market capitalizations.

That could be an expensive joke. Noted in “Solana-based GameStop meme coin gains traction after retailer pulls plug on crypto,” SlamAI (oh, great, now I’m quoting fucking AI writers), yahoo!finance:

A Solana-based meme coin inspired by GameStop’s GME shares has surged to over US$31 million in market capitalization in just three days.

The new cryptocurrency, which also has the GME ticker, rose by more than 285% in the past 24 hours, echoing GameStop’s headline-making stock market saga.

In January 2021, GameStop experienced a dramatic stock surge due to a short squeeze largely driven by users of the Reddit forum r/wallstreetbets, inflicting heavy losses on hedge funds and short sellers.

Surely it’s a sign of the apocalypse.

Which itself will be memorialized by the Apoca-coin. Its mascot will be the alpaca, its fruit will be the opalka, and its dance?

The polka. Music provided, naturally, by “Weird Al” Yankovic fronting The Ramones. Because.

And we’ll all die dirt poor and bewildered on while our schemes bore fouled fruit. Except Weird Al. He’s too smart for that. He’ll die in a stampede of alpaca, or maybe smothered in opalka.

And Your VP Might Be

One way Mr. Trump is keeping attention focused on his campaign is by not naming his VP pick. Now, I don’t envy him that particular task, as former VP Mike Pence (R-IN) has too high of moral standards to use again, and your replacement pick is always ticklish.

But he’ll have a few eager volunteers to pick from: Rep Stefanik (R-NY) and Mace (R-SC) have reportedly waved some flags, for example. But here’s the guy I’d put my money on … if I really had to. From Maddowblog:

In the same interview, Stephanopoulos reminded [Senator J. D. Vance (R-OH)] of a 2021 podcast in which Vance suggested that Trump can and should defy court rulings. Evidently, the Ohioan hasn’t changed his mind.

“The Constitution says that the Supreme Court can make rulings, but if the Supreme Court ― and look, I hope that they would not do this ― but if the Supreme Court said that the president of the United States can’t fire a general, that would be an illegitimate ruling and the president has to have Article 2 prerogative under the Constitution to actually run the military as he sees fit,” Vance said, suggesting politicians should decide which court rulings are and are not “legitimate.”

But I was especially interested in an exchange in which the ABC News host asked, more than once, whether Vance would’ve agreed to certify the 2020 presidential election had he been the vice president at the time. It led to this answer:

“If I had been vice president, I would have told the states, like Pennsylvania, Georgia, and so many others that we needed to have multiple slates of electors and I think the U.S. Congress should have fought over it from there. That is the legitimate way to deal with an election that a lot of folks, including me, think had a lot of problems in 2020. I think that’s what we should have done.”

Hey, look at Vance’s qualifications:

  1. He blows with the wind. He used to be a Trump critic, now he’s a Trump lover. Moral flexibility – ironic from a guy against divorce – is an important quality when working for Mr. Trump.
  2. Senator Vance has held the title for 1 year, with no other elective experience; by inauguration, he’ll have another year under his belt. No real accomplishments in the Senate, which are hard to come by for newcomers to the chamber.
  3. His foreign affairs experience appears to consist of opining that Ukraine will just have to give up territory to the aggressor, Russia. Perhaps we should ask him if he’d prefer to fight the Russians on the fields of Ukraine, or at Niagara Falls.

These are dream qualifications for Mr. Trump, as it discourages the use of the 25th Amendment to remove Trump, as Vance would be just about as ineffectual as Trump.

And possibly as ambitious, but more for power than prestige or flat-out wealth.

Enough Clowning Around … If True

This report from ABC News is intriguing for both the alleged behavior and its implications:

Special counsel Jack Smith’s team has questioned several witnesses about a closet and a so-called “hidden room” inside former President Donald Trump’s residence at Mar-a-Lago that the FBI didn’t check while searching the estate in August 2022, sources familiar with the matter told ABC News.

As described to ABC News, the line of questioning in several interviews ahead of Trump’s indictment last year on classified document charges suggests that — long after the FBI seized dozens of boxes and more than 100 documents marked classified from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate — Smith’s team was trying to determine if there might still be more classified documents there. …

As investigators would later learn, Trump allegedly had the closet’s lock changed while his attorney was in Mar-a-Lago’s basement, searching for classified documents in a storage room that he was told would have all such documents. Trump’s alleged efforts to conceal classified documents from both the FBI and his own attorney are a key part of Smith’s indictment against Trump in Florida.

To be sure, this is an unverified report. But I think if it’s found to be true, immediately put Mr Trump up on charges of obstruction, as a signal to the American electorate that one of the prominent figures in the Presidential 2024 election is apparently guilty of illegal behavior.

Next, determine, if possible, the contents of all of these hidden rooms, and if the release of those contents could be damaging to the security of the United States.

And if this report is not verified, then “never mind.”

Word Of The Day

Architrave:

As we mentioned before, architrave is a form of interior moulding — those little timber (or plaster) strips or sections that cover up the otherwise messy joins between surfaces.

In the case of architrave, this is the strip of material (usually timber) that covers the join between door frames and the walls. Not only does it hide the join, it will also conceal future movement or shrinkage that may occur between the wall and the casing within the door surround.

Architrave is used for internal doors, external doors and also around windows and built-in cupboards — and can even be used to smarten up loft hatches.

Other examples of interior mouldings include skirting boards that conceal the junction between wall and floor, and cornice, the plaster mouldings that deal with the point at which the ceiling and wall meet. [Homebuilding & Renovating]

Noted in this video by Our Restoration Nation’s Laine Berry:

Stop According Unearned Respect

Reading Professor Richardson’s description of political social influencers sparked a thought in me:

Right-wing influencers want views and shares, which translate to more money and power, Darcy wrote. So they spread “increasingly outlandish, attention-grabbing junk,” and more established outlets tag along out of fear they will lose their audience. But those influencers and media hosts don’t have to govern, and the anger they generate in the base makes it hard for anyone else to, either.

Too often, millions of readers and watchers, audience members, are patronizing someone like me: neither trained, credentialed, nor exhibiting any particularly good track record[1] in political punditry. Some, like the infamous Alex Jones of Infowars, have been so absolutely awful at it that they’ve been sued and fined millions of dollars.

Which, sadly enough, they can actually afford to pay, despite their pathetic grasping after victimhood.

You guessed right. This is a depiction of a political social influencer working over an audience member. Please note the audience member’s juices are untouched, but their wallet is becoming empty.

So, rather than according them a learned role name that sounds respectable such as political social influencer, I suggest a new role name should be selected. It should reflect the fact that all they really bring to the table is an imagination, a mouth that will say anything, some strong opinions, and a few dollars and odds and ends.

Never forget the impact that a strongly expressed opinion will have on some folks who are too befuddled by the subject matter, or the process of nuanced thinking, which is a hard process to learn and use, to formulate an opinion of their own.

So, for those who favor neologisms, I suggest tongue-waggers. It has a natural visual sufficiently repellent to be applicable to its new usage, and should induce the proper skepticism in those who learn to use it.

And, for those of a more old-fashioned bent, I think you’ll find town gossips to be of sufficient age, meaning, and negative connotation to warm the cockles of your heart. Town gossips, for those unfamiliar with the term, specialized in salacious news, unverified rumors, and all the other information that was better ignored or unknown, as applied to the common weal of a town.


1 I actually hope to not quite satisfy that third criterion.

It Was Just A Suit He Had On

Well, this morning we thought we were making the final trip to the vet with Mayhem. We woke to find he’d gone blind in his right eye, and was already blind in his left. Add to that having gone deaf a few months ago, advanced decrepitude, and excessive vocalizations. It didn’t look good.

The vet even walked into the room with the fatal syringe, or so Deb reported.

But the vet looked into his right eye, pronounced that, unlike the blindness in his left eye, which is mysterious, his right eye clearly has a detached retina, which she said often happens in response to hypertension aka high blood pressure. I didn’t know that.

And she had noticed, from two or three weeks ago when we brought him, that the attempt to take his blood pressure yielded a reading on the borderline of hypertension. OK, then. Treatment? I asked.

Amlodopine, she replied, naming a human hypertension treatment drug. I took it, briefly.

And … lowering hypertension in cats frequently results in the retina re-attaching itself.

That was new to me, too.

So he came back home, took his first dose of Amlodopine, is also on gabapentin for possible joint pain, and is nosing his way energetically around the house, learning how to avoid falling down stairs, and nesting on his relocated (off the bed) heating pad.

And still vocalizing. Supposedly that’ll stop in a couple of days.

So I guess that was the feline Grim Reaper, just some fella with the same suit.

That Anti-American Message

I was struck by the magnitude of anti-Americanism exhibited by Fox News personality Jeanine Pirro:

Staring directly into the camera on Monday, Fox News host Jeanine Pirro had a message for [singer/songwriter Taylor] Swift: “Don’t get involved in politics; we don’t want to see you there.” [WaPo]

As if the United States was not founded on the principle, among others, that we all get to participate in the governance of our nation, and all the activities that go along with that[1], regardless of skin color, religion, and a few other unjust reasons for exclusion[2]. Sorry, Mz. Pirro, but Taylor Swift’s American citizenship makes her far more qualified to comment on and influence American elections than, say, Russian President Vladimir Putin. Naturally, we can say this is just part of the rough and tumble of American politics, but it puts Pirro in an unfortunate light.

But this bit speaks to the paranoia and methods of the managers of the conservative movement:

[Jesse] Watters said Monday on Fox News that [Taylor’s romantic partner and Kansas City football team member Travis] Kelce is “sponsored by Pfizer” and that his relationship with Swift “was engineered in a lab.” Alison Steinberg, a host on the ultraconservative One America Network, claimed that Swift’s relationship is a “fake, carefully crafted show” meant to get children “obsessed with some grown man who gets paid millions of dollars every year to throw a ball around while promoting poison death shots.”

I might expect such ridiculous jabber from a juvenile science fiction show, but not from adults – unless they had solid evidence they could introduce in court without embarrassment. Their reading on the silliness meter is a measure of their worries.

And what is their worry? That the infamous conservative epistemic bubble, observed by many over the last twenty and more years, encasing the conservative movement and stopping the importation of other views and other arguments, might be breached by Swift. Swift is a pan-political phenomenon, reportedly having masses of fans in most political movements, as well as the a-political. She can be considered a funnel into which otherwise-verboten views and thinking can be injected into a conservative movement which will inevitably have members with weaker commitments to the philosophy.

Such weak commitments that the comments of a pop star could sway them.

This attitude really speaks to the consciousness of the conservative leaders of the weakness of their fundamental intellectual arguments, and of their dependence on the isolation of the conservative movement from mainstream intellectual currents in order to maintain the conservative movement as a national force.

And not as just some podunk collection of far right extremists whose arguments have self-aggrandizement behind them, rather than the common weal.

Will their epitaph be Destroyed by Taylor Swift?

Time will tell.


1 Subject to what are often portrayed as common-sense constraints, but are argued over and meddled with endlessly, which is itself part of politics.

2 But age is not one of them. Age is used as a constraint for the office of President. It’s important to note that age is inevitably changing, unlike, say, skin color and religion, both of which can change, but are unlikely to do so. 30+ years ago some Minnesota legislative member advocated for giving the vote to kids, which I thought was just nutty.

The Punditry And Mr. Trump, Ctd

As I’ve been suspecting, the Republicans might be better off selecting former Governor and UN Ambassador Nikki Haley (R-SC) as their Presidential nominee:

As signs point to the 2024 presidential election being a repeat of the 2020 race between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump, Biden holds a lead over Trump 50 – 44 percent among registered voters in a hypothetical general election matchup, according to a Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pea-ack) University national poll of registered voters released today.

In Quinnipiac University’s December 20, 2023 poll, the same hypothetical 2024 general election matchup was ‘too close to call’ as President Biden received 47 percent support and former President Trump received 46 percent support. [Quinnipiac University Poll]

Yes, yes, get on with it.

In a hypothetical 2024 general election matchup between President Biden and Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley, a former United Nations Ambassador and South Carolina Governor, 47 percent of voters support Haley and 42 percent support Biden.

There’s still a ways to go, and, technically, both parties need to officially select their candidates.

Importantly, the Democratic National Convention is scheduled for August 19 to 22, 2024, while the Republican National Convention is scheduled for July 15 to 18. This means that if the unofficial selection of a GOP candidate is delayed past July 15, then President Biden will be forced to make a decision based on incomplete data.

And he’s already stated that he may not accept a nomination if Mr. Trump is not the Republican nominee.

Haley has a number of qualities not possessed by Mr. Trump nor President Biden, such as dynamism, being female, and connecting with voters outside their respective political bases, which are quite old. If Haley is selected, the Democrats may want to look at someone else, such as Harris, Klobuchar, or one or two other younger political powers. President Katie Porter (D-CA), anyone? (No, I don’t think Michelle Obama will be the shocking surprise candidate, and even Erick Erickson disputes the thought in an article on conservative grifters. Charisma is not the same as leadership.) It could make for some serious drama.

But that’s speculation. While I think Governor Haley has a chance, a good chance, of defeating Mr. Trump, it’s still less than 50% in my book. The Quinnipiac Poll, a respected polling service, has provided some good information.

Quote Of The Day

I think the Missouri State Senate’s leader has had enough of extremism:

“The beginning of the 2024 legislative session in the Senate has been nothing short of an embarrassment,” Senate President Pro Tem Caleb Rowden, R-Columbia, said Tuesday, flanked by 14 fellow Republican senators. “A chamber designed to be occupied with civil, principled statesmen and women has been overtaken by a small group of swamp creatures, who all too often remind me more of my children than my colleagues.” [St. Louis Public Radio]

Calling your colleagues children, especially those purporting to be of your own party, suggests just how far the Missouri Republican Party has fallen from the realm of acceptability, and just how far the responsible voters have to go before they are sending acceptable Republicans to the State Legislature.

On The Educational Assembly Line

Erik Hoel remarks on the unsettling findings of educational research … or research on education, if you detest ambiguity. After discarding a lot of traditional approaches to excellence in education, he gets to the meat of the matter:

Many have taken this null effect of schools to be a sign of genetic determinism, wherein some innate ability, like IQ, is all that matters, and education is, at best, just the delivery of a repository of facts.

I don’t think this is the case. For paradoxically there exists an agreed-upon and specific answer to the single best way to educate children, a way that has clear, obvious, and strong effects. The problem is that this answer is unacceptable. The superior method of education is deeply unfair and privileges those at the very top of the socioeconomic ladder. It’s an answer that was well-known historically, and is also observed by education researchers today: tutoring.

Fascinating stuff, although the definition of a literary leading light is either unmemorable or utterly dispensed with. And while I think I see some acknowledgments of context changes, they’re not explored in any detail. On the other hand, this is part of a series, so perhaps he better accounts for context changes, and even what it means to be a ‘genius’, in the parts I have not read.

This is useful as a collection of links to studies of how useful various approaches to learning augmentation appear to be, and to triggering your own thoughts on the subject.