Monthly Archives: September 2023

The government shutdown is in the process of being averted:

• Congress has passed a stopgap funding measure within hours of its deadline to prevent a federal government shutdown. It now goes to President Joe Biden’s desk for approval, and the White House has indicated he will sign it.
• The Senate approved the measure Saturday evening after the House abruptly reversed course earlier in the day and passed a bipartisan bill. The bill needed support from two-thirds of House members to pass under an expedited process.
• House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s job could now be on the line. Hardline conservatives threatened to oust him if he relied on Democratic votes to avert a shutdown.
• The stopgap bill will keep the government open through November 17 and includes natural disaster aid but not additional funding for Ukraine, due to objections from some conservatives. The Biden administration has warned this would have serious consequences for the war.

Only 45 days of funding, which seems a trifle absurd. As an engineer, though, I’m inclined to fix problems as permanently as possible.

This isn’t it.

I’ve gotta wonder about the unannounced tradeoffs. Did the Democrats agree to support McCarthy’s ego by voting to keep him in the Speaker’s chair if a member of the Freedom Caucus tries to vote him out? Did McCarthy promise to try to expel anyone as I’ve suggested?

And what about the Ukraine support? Will Biden sign? My reader will probably know by the time they read this, but I could see Biden rejecting the legislation on those grounds, because the Putin’s War is one of the most important events of the decade, a chance to kick a national adversary in the shin and remind them that democracies will be successful governing models.

But 45 days suggests preparation time of some sort. Are the Democrats betting the Republicans can commit suicide in that period? The Republicans believe they can inflict some damage on the Democrats, despite a record of shocking futility in this Congress so far?

Stay tuned.

And … Erick Erickson is pissed, but he still doesn’t get it. It’s not just a few bad apples in a barrel. It’s a toxic culturing medium that leads to an empty leadership corp, which is then taken over by vile opportunists like McCarthy, Gaetz, Boebert, Greene, Gosar, Perry, and etc, all incompetent fourth-raters. The Republican Party, for so long as it clings to Gingrich’s Dictums of extremism, blind loyalty, and refusing to work with Democrats on a regular basis, will continue to be the party of the fourth-raters. Such is the fruits of a toxic team culture.

Add in the arrogance that both parties possess and it’s a recipe for disaster.

DPGA:

[Fei Wang at Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China and his colleagues] called the building blocks of their computer DNA-based programmable gate arrays (DPGA), and each DPGA could be designed to implement over 100 billion distinct circuits by adding different short molecules into its tube.

In one experiment, they connected three DPGAs, comprising about 500 DNA strands, to make a circuit that solves quadratic equations, and in another, they made a circuit for taking square roots. They input numbers by adding molecules of a specific shape that then participated in chemical reactions with molecules that made up the circuit, analogous to an electron moving through wires. [“DNA-based computer can run 100 billion different programs,” Karmela Padavic-Callaghan, NewScientist (23 September 2023, no paywall)]

For those not in the know, there are things called FPGAs: Field Programmable Gate Arrays. They permit mimicking CPUs, creating custom solutions at the hardware level, and other gimcrackery. Sadly, I’ve never worked with them, and don’t know much more than that. I believe a roboticist of my acquaintance works with them, but I’ve not discussed it at great length with her.

And programming with DNA seems trippy.

Part of the Trump phenomenon revolves around his charisma – alleged charisma, I say, but then I thought Bill Clinton, widely regarded as being a highly charismatic politician, quite creepy – and one of the sources of that charisma is his alleged, once again, wealth, and the business acumen that led to that alleged wealth.

So Wednesday’s ruling in the civil fraud case filed by NY AG Letitia James that Trump has committed fraud in his estimation of values for his properties and how it varied depending on the interested party has understandably put Trump allies in a tizzy, in a fix. They derive their power from an alliance with a man who has great influence over a large portion of the American electorate.

Should that swirl down the drain, so will the value of that influence. And Judge Engeron’s analysis of Trump’s business behavior is brutal, concluding with …

“Defendants’ conduct in repeating these frivolous arguments is egregious,” Engoron wrote. “The defenses Donald Trump attempts to articulate in his sworn deposition are wholly without basis in law or fact. [WaPo]

In other words, whatever success Donald J. Trump has achieved may be attributed to cheating. That’s dangerous to those allies.

So how is the right reacting?

First, Speaker McCarthy and his Freedom Caucus, nominal opponents, are creating quite the distracting uproar, and we can expect the government to go into shutdown in favor of a third-rate Republican clown show in the next day or two, despite the spring-time agreement of McCarthy & Biden. Oh, now I see McCarthy might be replaced, just to up the noise level. See, it’s easier to be pointlessly destructive than to come to a respectable, responsible compromise.

Second, Mark Levin seeks to throw doubt on the legal failures of Trump in the time-honored tradition of, uh, being intellectually lazy.

Isn’t it amazing to you that he never wins a case? Is it because he’s just wrong all the time? Is it because he’s been ripping off people by hundreds of millions or billions? He’s been roaming the country, raping and molesting women? Is it because he sold national security documents to the enemy and exposed our national security? Is it because he led an insurrection – is guilty of sedition on January 6th that, in fact, he organized a gang-style criminal enterprise in Georgia during the election?

I mean, ladies and gentlemen, they’re destroying his business tonight. They’re destroying everything he built in New York. They’re destroying his life. They’re trying to put him in prison for the rest of his life. I don’t even think Stalin would go through all this nonsense to take out one of his opponents. I’ll be right back. [Media Matters for America, includes video source of this partial transcript]

No, Mark, it’s because he’s a pathological narcissist. His behaviors all point to it, and the persistent incompetence that is traditionally seen accompanying this diagnosis explains why he continually loses.

And, third, right wing radio host and blogger Erick Erickson is still working on his long-term project of somehow morally equating President Biden with Trump. In this particularly breathless post, after hinting the judge is either corrupt or incompetent to his job, Erickson also suggests…

• “… the Biden Administration has been infiltrated by the Iranians and it turns out the Obama Administration was too.” A Chief of Staff for a DoD higher-up is implicated, and this is so important that Erickson is forced to twice tell the reader this is a real big deal. Twice!
• “A Chinese Communist wired Hunter Biden $250,000.00 to Joe Biden’s home at a time Hunter Biden was not living there.” Uh huh.
• And some questions about Obama-era security protocols.

Hey, maybe these are all true. So where’s the arrests, the trials, the reports from respectable news outlets? Maybe they’re coming. But the behavior of Erickson and the right has taught me to wait a few days and look for independent reporting before I get too excited.

Here’s the thing. Let’s stipulate those in the listing, not the judge, is true. How does this differ from Trump, then?

Intentionality. If, indeed, there were security protocol problems in the Obama-era, or Iranians have infiltrated our government, then I and every other liberal and independent should be happy to see these problems detected and procedures improved.

But Trump? Judge Engeron seems to believe that Trump deliberately committed fraud for Trump’s personal gain, much to the damage of the parties depending on accurate estimations of Trump’s properties. A personality who disregards personal honor, honesty, and all those other important attributes which Christ, Moses, etc presumably emphasized should not be trusted with positions of high responsibility.

And that’s one of the lessons of that ruling.

Given how much pain devolves on Trump’s allies if that ruling sticks, we’re seeing attempts here to discredit and distract from the ruling by said allies. Will they succeed? The road will be long, as there are three other cases to follow as well as the fallout from his loss to E. Jean Carroll.

And this may explain an unexpected decision by Trump in the Georgia election subversion case:

Former President Donald Trump will not attempt to move the criminal charges brought against him by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis to federal court, his lawyers revealed in a court filing Thursday.

The move comes as a surprise, as Trump was largely expected to try to move the Georgia case as part of a bid to invoke immunity protections for federal officials. Under federal law, criminal cases can be removed to federal court if the alleged behavior relates to their government duties. [CNN/Politics]

Trump may be going to ground now in order to avoid damaging publicity, although I should think it’s too little, too late. Time will tell.

This:

Trump announces he will not choose anyone currently running for President as his running mate. pic.twitter.com/EvXW8kTg6U

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) September 28, 2023

Evidently, everyone missed the announcement. Vladimir Putin will be Trump’s running mate, as will Trump be in Russia’s next Presidential election.

And, if they lose either one, Trump will be blamed and chased by Putin, armed with a radioactive knife.

Speaker McCarthy (R-CA) is in so deep he’s breathing through a tube, and may need help from the Democrats to survive. What would that cost? The House Minority Whip supplied some of the answer:

In a podcast interview with POLITICO, Rep. Katherine Clark of Massachusetts was asked what it would take for Democrats to bail out the top Republican as he faces the ongoing threat of a “motion to vacate” vote from Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida.

“Listen, we’ve been here waiting to have Kevin McCarthy ask for our help in governing responsibly,” said Clark. “I haven’t gotten that call.”

But when pressed further, Clark began to list some of the things that Democrats would be interested in seeing from McCarthy.

“We want to get disaster aid out, we want to continue our support for Ukraine, and we want them to end this sham of an impeachment inquiry,” said Clark. “If Kevin McCarthy chooses to… get back to work for the American people, to do the right thing, we’re going to be there to, you know, meet and compromise with him.” [Business Insider]

I’d like to think tossing out the sham impeachment inquiry is a throw-away item, because otherwise it can be interpreted as a coverup, and, quite honestly, looking like idiots does little for Republican unearned dreams of power.

If you pay attention to politics, and particularly the behaviors of Rep Jordan (R-OH) and a few other Republican House Committee chairpeople in connection with the various charges directed at the former President, his cronies, and his minions, this will ring true with the indictment of Senator Menendez (D-NJ) yesterday:

So a Democratic Senator is indicted on serious charges, and no Democrats attacking the Justice Department, no Democrats attacking the prosecutors, no Democrats calling for an investigation of the prosecution, and no Democrats calling to defund the Justice Department.

Weird, huh?

— Joe Walsh (@WalshFreedom) September 22, 2023

So a Democratic Senator is indicted on serious charges, and no Democrats attacking the Justice Department, no Democrats attacking the prosecutors, no Democrats calling for an investigation of the prosecution, and no Democrats calling to defund the Justice Department.

Weird, huh?

And that’s how it’s supposed to work. The difference in behavior reflects the internal culture of the parties, and while the Democrats have problems, as noted by polls of independents, the Republicans are a good ten steps behind them.

I don’t expected the Senator to resign, at least not until he’s convicted, and maybe not even then. At this stage, it’s difficult to use behavior to accurately guess whether he’s falsely accused or has permitted himself to be corrupted, as I can see both types of person stubbornly sticking around.

Joe Walsh is not the musician, but former Rep Joe Walsh (R-IL), who served a single term as a far-right extremist, 2011-2013, and subsequently apologized for his poor behavior during that term, particularly towards President Obama.

Not to continue a theme or anything.

Smart toilets could leak your medical data, warn security experts
– NewScientist (12 September 2023)

So do plumbers, I hear.

Jake Sherman of Punchbowl News:

“Fucking chaos” … “a total shit show”

Two texts I’ve gotten from inside the House Republican leadership in the last few minutes.

— Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) September 21, 2023

It occasionally crosses my mind that a sagacious Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) might try to bring his caucus to heel by expelling the leading troublemakers, such as Rep Gaetz (R-FL), not from the caucus, but from the House of Representatives.

And then maybe boot them out of the Republican Party, if he can manage it. Probably not, but I’m no expert on Republican Party rules.

It’s true that McCarthy’s operating on a knife’s edge, but he could try to strike a deal with the Democrats that allows him to retain his treasured Speaker’s position, while implementing a discipline that will smart more than a little for the people making trouble.

If he follows up with a remark about the House being for adults only, he might take the edge of the rest of the Freedom Caucus by slowly, inevitably booting them out.

I haven’t been actually expecting this, as the procedures seem both slow and would result in a warning to the targets. Still, McCarthy might make a go of it because otherwise he may end up with a reputation as the worst Speaker ever.

Even beating the execrable and incompetent Rep Newt Gingrich (R-GA) of nearly thirty years ago.

Lustration:

Lustration is the removal of public officials and judges who are associated with a tainted political regime. It has been used as a tool of transitional justice in newly independent and postconflict countries. Lustrating begins with vetting—a review of conduct and competency. Individuals associated with the discredited government, and credibly accused of corruption or human rights violations, are dismissed. Officials appointed on the basis of political connections may be removed or reassigned to lower-level positions. Lustration also can be implemented indirectly, as with lowering the mandatory retirement age for judges. [Judiciaries Worldwide]

Noted in “Change will come to Russia — abruptly and unexpectedly,” Vladimir Kara-Murza (currently imprisoned), WaPo:

Aaron Blake of WaPo comments on a not-unexpected result akin to those of previous run-ups to elections:

New Hampshire on Tuesday became the latest state in which Democrats over-performed in a special election — a trend that has held very steady ever since Roe was overturned last summer.

Democrat Hal Rafter won by 12 points in a state House district that went narrowly for Donald Trump in 2020. The 12-point improvement on the 2020 margin is in line with Democrats’ encouraging continued over-performances in special elections this year; Daily Kos Elections and FiveThirtyEight data on more than two dozen special elections show the party running an average of 7.6 points better than their 2020 margins — margins from a 2020 election that, it bears noting, were already good for Democrats — and double digits better than the normal partisan fundamentals.

New Hampshire wasn’t even the only state in which Democrats lodged a crucial win and an overperformance in a special election Tuesday. They also took back the majority in the Pennsylvania Capitol by defeating a Trump-aligned candidate. That result was expected in a blue-leaning district, but Democrats again beat the fundamentals by around double digits.

To illustrate the depths of Trumpian madness involved, here’s Rafter’s opponnent:

He said supporters of abortion rights desire “blood sacrifices to their god, Molech.” He also had a long history of anti-LGBTQ+ comments.

What it comes to is this: Tell a woman that if her pregnancy should turn deadly, she’ll simply be discarded by society, and you will alienate more than half of them. Substantially more than half of them.

It doesn’t matter how deeply religious you may be, because being deeply religious doesn’t guarantee you’re right, it only impresses the gullible.

But here’s the part Democrats shouldn’t ignore: Without Trump, without the crazed MAGA-heads running for office, winning nomination, and then bursting into fire, the Democrats would actually be in a substantial minority.

They really need to ask themselves if they’ve got a repulsive screwup of their own that’s alienating voters.

The YouTuber who runs TheCanvasArtHistory recently did a video on the illustration of execution aftermaths by forgotten artist Jean-Léon Gérôme, and I was particularly struck by Gérôme’s work The Execution of Marshall Ney. As TheCanvasArtHistory notes, Ney was one of the famed marshalls of Napoleon Bonaparte’s regime; Bonaparte, himself famed for his bravery, called Ney the bravest man in Europe. Here’s the work:

Source: Wikipedia

It’s the history that matters. Ney, a deeply respected figure, was executed by the restored Bourbon monarchy following a trial in the Chamber of Peers, itself a symbol and instrumentality of French Monarchism.

It’s worth emphasizing for the idle reader that absolute monarchies are easily viewed as autocracies in saucy dresses.

Again, from the YouTuber, we see the execution squad walking away. They are French soldiers, symbolic of the power of the French Monarchy, for monarchies depend on the power of the military to stay in power. They have used their primal power to stamp out Ney.

But, now for myself, Ney himself, huddled pathetically in the mud, is more than an anonymous victim, is more than some contemptible criminal receiving a comeuppance. A Marshall in the French Army, known for his bravery, and for having switched his loyalty from Bonaparte to the Bourbons when the former was initially imprisoned, and then back to Bonaparte when he returned to power. There is an implied, absolute criticism of the Bourbon Monarchy

And when the Bourbons had the opportunity, they liquidated him, without mercy, even without legitimacy.

The message of The Execution of Marshall Ney, at least to me, is consonant with an ongoing theme of this blog. It is that the monarchy, the autocrat, brings with him or her a society of chaos and arbitrariness. It does not matter how good or how bad one may be, the final blow is entirely at the discretion of someone whose merit for their position is not their positive attributes, but their negative attributes: mendacity, bullshitting, violence.

For the reader who thinks monarchies and autocrats are good as leaders, think of beloved family members being killed for no good reason, and then try to tell me again that Putin, Bolsaro, and, yes, Trump are good national leaders.

Iconoclasm:

Iconoclasm (from Greek: εἰκών, eikṓn, ‘figure, icon’ + κλάω, kláō, ‘to break’) is the social belief in the importance of the destruction of icons and other images or monuments, most frequently for religious or political reasons. People who engage in or support iconoclasm are called iconoclasts, a term that has come to be figuratively applied to any individual who challenges “cherished beliefs or venerated institutions on the grounds that they are erroneous or pernicious.” [Wikipedia]

Noted in this display introduction for Icons Of The Late Empire: Story and Art, at The Museum of Russian Art:

My Arts Editor is a fan of icons, especially their covers (for which I cannot find their technical name).

Awright, awright, stop horsing around. Who ordered the spaghetti?

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves (2023) is a light-hearted romp, mostly forgettable, except for the oh-so fat dragon. A metaphor for the consequences of unrestrained rapaciousness, behind its cuteness is a drive to eat all in its path, scrambling the conflict between good, if slightly stuck on wealth, and those with a more spiritual compulsion towards, oh, power.

Go, dragon. Too bad his part is limited. The rest is OK. I can barely remember it three weeks later.

That would be Republicans.

The more people have to work to stay afloat, the less time to contemplate the foolishness of what passes for the conservative wing of the country these days.

The Democrats, on the other hand, will be arrogant enough to believe they’ll come off on the positive side of any such contemplation, and that the implied redistribution of wealth is just.

They may be right.

But I’m a little wary of such a conclusion. As you may have guessed, though, I’m out of time for contemplation on the topic.

I probably have too many pleasures. Full stop. This guy goes in the bin labeled Guilty.

In this post regarding Erickson’s support for Senator Tuberville (R-AL/FL) I mentioned that approving the promotions of American military officers en masse was more efficient, at a few minutes, than processing each promotion at a time. Of course.

But just how much more efficient? CNN/Politics figured it out:

It would take the Senate approximately 700 hours of floor time to individually process and vote on hundreds of military officers whose promotions are being blocked by Alabama Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville, the Congressional Research Service concluded in a memo released on Tuesday.

The number of pending nominations has only increased since the memo was written in late August, from 273 to over 300 today.

At 10 hours a day, which I figure is about as much as can be expected from this elderly mass of citizens, it would take 70 days. Not interlaced with other Senate duties, such as working on critical budget issues and raising the debt ceiling.

Just promoting officers, ten hours a day. That’s ten weeks of work, with no days off, not even weekends.

Tuberville is plumbing the depths in his quest for endangering the country. Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) should be chasing him out of the chamber with a baseball bat, and not mouthing invalid excuses for him.

Anemoia:

nostalgia for a time you’ve never known [The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows]

Nice. Love the definition source name, too. Noted in “J. Crew wants to remember its past. Victoria’s Secret wants to forget.” Ashley Fetters Maloy and Maura Judkis, WaPo:

Some readers may recall a tactic of the Democrats, no doubt local in nature and used over the last couple of elections, in which during the primaries that are open the Democrats would vote in the Republican primary for the most extreme, far right candidate, and even donate to them. The working theory, at least in swing districts, is that presenting independent voters with a reasonable Democratic candidate and an extremist Republican candidate will result in more votes for the Democrat than the Republican.

And, to my fragmented knowledge, this mildly dishonest tactic worked, much to the fury of Republican pundits such as Erick Erickson, who I recall (I shan’t be looking it up) warning that this tactic could result in the election of far-right extremists. He was wrong. The targeted districts in which the more extreme candidate won the primary went Democratic.

Now, like any competition, imitation of competitors’ tactics is a common approach to improving outcomes, and there’s nothing wrong with it. I expected to hear of Republicans attempting to advance the fortunes of far-left Democrats and allied parties in their primaries, as independent voters, for the most part, are partial to centrists, not to extremists. This preference, incidentally, explains the repugnance felt by the far-right for ranked choice voting, as it gives moderates, even those who are unaffiliated, a better chance of winning as independents can select moderates, then extremists, while maintaining an ideological loyalty. This forces extremists to add to their collection of attractive attributes, a difficult proposition for most, as the voting public has a natural distrust of the extremist, thus causing experience to not be available, and they can be abrasive, arrogant personalities in any case.

So have the Republicans managed to load up the Democrats with distasteful candidates? According to Dave Weigel of Semafor, and reading between the lines as Weigel didn’t address the issue, not at all:

The image, used in ad after ad, stuck with Rhode Island Democrats: White House staffer Gabe Amo with Joe Biden, in the Oval Office. As early voting wrapped up, Democrats in the 1st Congressional District saw another potent image: Amo and Patrick Kennedy, their old congressman, who warned that Bernie Sanders-endorsed front-runner Aaron Regenburg would put the state’s defense economy at risk.

“We need someone who understands the way Washington works,” said Kennedy.

On Tuesday, Amo won his first-ever race by 3000 votes, ending this year’s Democratic primary season — and dealing the latest setback to his party’s left flank. Endorsements from the Congressional Progressive Caucus, the Working Families Party, and some of Rhode Island’s leading progressives couldn’t elect Regunberg, who also narrowly out-fundraised Amo. Former White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain, who endorsed Amo early, declared victory over “pundits who dismiss Bidenism” as a Democratic Party force. …

Progressives shaped the party’s last presidential primary and pushed many of their ideas into Biden and Klain’s White House. Now they’re limping out of 2023, and into the next cycle, with smaller ambitions, more divisions, and no one figurehead to rally around. For the first time since 2016, no Democratic incumbent in Congress has a credible primary challenger on the left.

[My bold.] Now, perhaps the Republicans didn’t try. My somewhat deaf political ear heard nothing about such efforts. Given the rampant dishonesty of elected Republican officials, it wouldn’t be an ethical matter. But it could be a matter of incompetence. Many Republican state chairs and other leaders seem to be mired in such controversies as fake election results, abortion struggles, judicial controversies, taxation rates and how to funnel more money to the ultra-wealthy, IRS funding, and the like, and adding in a fealty to former President Trump, who has displayed vast incompetency when it comes to running things, really is gilding the lily: local Republican leaders from Arizona to Michigan to North Carolina seem to be struggling with internal rivalries, attacks, and outright absurdities, rather than an organized approach to elections.

It could be simply a matter of disorganization.

Whatever it was, the Democrats, by excluding candidates from their banner that have pushed unpopular positions such as defunding the police, true socialism, and the like, have increased their chances of holding an overwhelming majority, following the 2024 elections, in a House where the current Speaker is at the whim of such dubious personalities as Rep Gaetz (R-FL), Greene (R-GA), and other such extremists. Their desire to defund any part of the government that threatens their current control or the former President, including defunding the military (!), the spectre of secession, along with their lack of production, denial of climate change, and, in general, failure to be serious legislators, will continue to disenchant independents and certain blocs of voters and even usual non-voters.

The question in my mind is not whether the Democrats will lose control of states, but rather whether local Democratic entities can get their act together enough to make gains, or if some notoriously disorganization problems, such as in Florida, will continue to disappoint Democrats, and thus hurt voters who really need to select members of Congress of better competence than the aforementioned Gaetz, et al.

It’s time to discard the practice of blind loyalty and its progeny of Dobbs, etc, and begin practicing a better version of being a citizen.

Media reports that dictator Kim Jong Un of North Korea is taking a heavily armored train into Russia, precisely where is uncertain, in order to visit with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

To which I keep repeatedly thinking, This is one of the oddest assassination attempts in history.

Don’t ask me why I keep having that reaction.

Today, Speaker McCarthy (R-CA) announced a formal impeachment inquiry. Liberal punditry denounces it as having no basis in fact, and is furious. I myself, if they find nothing to pin on Joe Biden other than bad parenting of Hunter Biden, will see this as a gift to the Biden campaign.

But a friend has chosen to use this as a trigger, and I’m taking the liberty of quoting his letter in full:

(This message was sent to 100 people.  Please forward to others as you see fit)

Today, the GOP again proves itself to be the party of “Rapture and Revenge” animus :  McCarthy declared the GOP House will proceed with Impeachment proceedings against President Biden.

And so this is a gentle reminder to help vote out the GOP at all levels of government — so that there is no further waste of time, money, and continuing distractions by the collective GOP preventing our Federal Government from addressing truly significant issues threatening our future — with the Global Climate Crisis being my top ranked issue for the remainder of my lifetime here on Earth.

[signed]

Please consider forwarding this letter onward, and when voting.

Suspended Texas AG Ken Paxton (R-TX), currently on trial on impeachment charges of various sorts in the Texas Senate, earns the latest Earl “don’t confuse me with the facts!” Landgrebe nomination:

But as Paxton has aggressively pursued such [high-profile, anti-Biden and anti-Democratic] lawsuits, he has repeatedly declined to do a critical but less glamorous part of his job: represent state agencies in court.

Despite his role as Texas’ lead attorney, Paxton has denied representation to state agencies at least 75 times in the past two years, according to records obtained by ProPublica and The Texas Tribune. The denials forced some of those agencies to assume additional, unanticipated costs as they scrambled to secure legal assistance.

“Every time he backs out of one of these cases – and an agency, a university has to get outside counsel, if they get the funding approved – that’s costing the taxpayers a lot of extra money, because that’s one of the principal reasons the AG’s office exists, is to provide these basic legal services, basic legal defense,” said Chris Toth, former executive director of the National Association of Attorneys General.

Over the years, some of Paxton’s representation denials have become public. Among those is his longtime refusal to defend the state Ethics Commission against lawsuits filed by the now-disbanded Empower Texans, a political action committee, and the PAC’s then-head Michael Quinn Sullivan. Empower Texans contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to his campaign and loaned him $1 million, according to campaign finance reports. Another has been his choice not to represent the State Commission on Judicial Conduct after it issued a public warning to a justice of the peace who refused to perform same-sex marriages despite a U.S. Supreme Court decision that legalized the unions. [The Texas Tribune]

At first glance, this may seem dubious evidence for a nomination, but give me a chance to validate it. First, as a reminder, the Earl Landgrebe nomination is for those individuals who have displayed absurd levels of allegiance to former President Trump.

Putting aside the fact that Paxton was lead AG in the notorious pro-Trump lawsuit Texas v. Pennsylvania, which asserted that Pennsylvania’s Electoral College votes were invalid because its voting methods were – allegedly – invalid, I assert that the activities for which Paxton is being tried, which include manipulating the State to the benefit of real estate investor Nate Paul, arranging for the woman he was cheating on his wife with to get a job with Nate Paul, are quite consistent with, and thus constitute praise and affirmation for, the numerous repugnant and anti-American activities of the former President.

So both in word and in deed, in multiple senses, Paxton has indicated admiration and allegiance to the former President, perhaps to a degree greater than his competitors, and thus deserves his nomination.

If the charges at the above link are proven true, I’d then have to say that Paxton has charged into his career choice – public official grifter – with abandon, and is certainly a bullshitter of the second water – not yet at the level of Trump, who appears to be unique in his ability to combine bullshitting with public appeal, but to a very respectable level. For those who wonder about the difference between a liar and a bullshitter, the most recent issue of Skeptical Inquirer has an article on the subject here.

Last week, while I was on vacation, Erick Erickson posted with regard to Senator Tuberville (R-AL) and his hold on military promotions that is best interpreted as Erickson simply falling apart. It starts with the title:

Senator Tuberville’s Strong Stand

The good Senator, unfortunately for Erickson, has betrayed very little understanding of history or the role of the Senate. For example, he believes his dad went to Europe in WW II to fight the “socialists.” He has a number of other such blunders to his credit. The end result is that he appears to be little more than a clown. It doesn’t help that he lives in Florida but represents Alabama, which certainly sounds illegal.

Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) refuses to give his consent for the United States Senate to advance hundreds of military promotions. His objection stems from the Biden Administration changing military policy to pay for abortion related travel. Prior to the end of Roe v. Wade, the government would not cover those costs. Now, President Biden is using the military to advance an aggressive abortion agenda. Senator Tuberville is having none of it.

And that would be because … there was no need to travel to leave a jurisdiction forbidding abortion, because jurisdictions could not make such laws. I don’t doubt there was some travel to reach a doctor competent in the life-saving procedure, but I have no idea what those numbers might be – and that would be little more than sleight-of-hand if Erickson were to cite them.

In response, much of the mainstream media, the Democrats, military leadership, and even some Republicans and conservative pundits are savaging Senator Tuberville. Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro, on CNN, said, “For someone who’s born in a communist country, I would have never imagined that actually one of our own senators would actually be aiding and abetting communist and other autocratic regimes around the world. This is having a real negative impact and will continue to have a real negative impact on our combat readiness. And that’s what the American people truly need to understand.” Even some military leaders have been outspoken, not fully appreciating the concept of civilian control of the military.

This is what it must seem like to try to swallow Erickson’s piece, at least by thinking people.

And the fact that a number of Republican Senators find Senator Tuberville’s actions embarrassing is an important detail. Erickson’s trying to portray this as some terrible Democratic plot, but he’s swimming against a strong current here: Republicans who recognize that Tuberville is attacking both the military and the traditions of an American Senate that has other important matters to pursue.

And that brings up a detail omitted, insofar as I can tell, by Erickson: the act of bringing up each officer for debate of their promotion will delay Senate business by several days for each officer. There’s a good reason the whole bunch are usually promoted as a group: because it’s more efficient.

And that leads to another question: is it wise for the Senate to even try to debate the merits of an officer’s promotion? What do they know of the individual merits of each officer?

Doesn’t this risk politicizing the military?

But all this Erickson omits. Instead, this is his opportunity to, once again, smear the main stream media in order to keep his flock of conservatives together:

… the American press corps’ unwillingness to accurately report the story. Every major press outlet has take the Democrats’ party line and advanced it. They have not acknowledged the promotions could happen with votes. They seem to insist unanimous consent is the only way forward.

And … no. Just a lie. Every time I run across this story, whether it be WaPo or MSNBC’s Steve Benen, it’s made clear that individual votes could take place.

But better yet is the first part of the above paragraph:

But abortion politics reigns supreme for the Democrats. They cannot get Senator Tuberville to yield and the Democrats are not interested in advancing military nominations more than the abortion agenda. More alarming than the Democrats’ abortion politics is the American press corps’ unwillingness to accurately report the story.

When bulging eyes warp your perspective.

I actually hooted with laughter. Abortion politics reigns supreme for the Democrats? Dude, haven’t you been paying attention? The Republicans have been fixated on abortion for literally decades! Have you no shame? You’re one of many who smeared Democrats with the epithet baby-killers!

And that fixation eventually lead to Dobbs, which then lead to Republicans placing various serious restrictions on a life saving procedure, imperiling women’s lives, all put in place by fourth and fifth rate politicians who are entirely so full of themselves that they’ll explode from an overpressure of arrogance someday. The Democrats’ fixation is a result of the foolishness of Republicans who don’t understand that Americans do not take kindly to their lives being put in danger by a pack of yahoos.

I’m simply amazed that Erickson wrote that.

There you go. It’s strictly a rallying piece because of Erickson’s fixation on abortion. It’s his bad luck that one of the worst Senators is involved. It forces him into a land of ludicrous irony that must have turned him purple.

Hetmanate:

the authority, rule, or domain of a hetman. [Dictionary.com]

The last time I ran across hetman was in a Jack Vance novel titled The Killing Machine. I’ve never bothered to look it up before.

the title assumed by the chief of Ukrainian Cossacks of the Dnieper River region, with headquarters at Zaporozhe.

Noted in “Ukraine’s Lost Capital,” Daniel Weiss, Archaeology (September / October 2023):

In 1569, Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, which included Ukraine, united to form the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Chafing at this new entity’s efforts to control them, many Ukrainians took refuge on the frontiers to the south and east known as the Wild Fields. There, they were able to pursue a life of independence and adventure and came to be called Cossacks, derived from a Turkic term meaning “free men.” The Cossacks established successful farms, which they had to defend against persistent threats from the Ottoman Turks and their allies the Crimean Tatars to the south. Over time, the Cossacks became the political elite of Ukraine and, along with members of the Orthodox clergy, started to demand the right to rule themselves. After a series of failed uprisings, in 1648 the Cossacks achieved their goal. Led by their hetman, Bohdan Khmelnytsky, they threw off the yoke of Polish rule, attaining a measure of independence and establishing a state known as a hetmanate.

With the impeachment trial of suspended Texas AG Ken Paxton (R-TX) under way in the Texas Senate, Professor Richardson summarizes the sad contretemps of the Texas GOP:

The Republican Party in Texas is split over [suspended Texas Attorney General due to impeachment Ken] Paxton much as the country is split over former president Donald Trump. Some say that Paxton’s extraordinary behavior warrants impeachment and trial and that, after all, a majority of Republicans in the Texas House were so concerned they impeached him.

But others insist that he is, as he claims, a victim of political persecution. They maintain that a flawed man can do God’s will, and they support Paxton no matter what his failings out of support for his political crusades on their behalf. J. David Goodman reported yesterday in the New York Times that right-wing donors have embarked on an expensive, high-pressure campaign to convince Republicans in the Texas Senate to vote against conviction, threatening to primary anyone who votes against Paxton.

And all I can see is a bunch of businessmen saying, Awwwwww, he was so easy to buy off!

It appears that some of the GOP base think this is a good thing. A dash of corruption to make the chili hot, so to speak. Logic would suggest that if Paxton’s corruptly using his office for this, it’s a good chance he’s corrupt in other areas.

Why is it necessary that a flawed man do the will of God, anyways? The whole damn thing is silly.