Unsightly Mental Blemishes

Not the best clarity, but a fight at night adds to the terror.

In horror movies featuring exotic monsters, their cult followings are often built despite their failures at traditional story-telling, rather than because of. Most or all of the Godzilla movies fall into this category (cardboard cutouts running around frantically), as do those of genre classic The Blob (1958) (cardboard cutout teenagers running around aimlessly), Destination Inner Space (1966) (why is the Technicolor lizard from the stars killing everyone else indiscriminately?), the Gamera franchise (sometimes there’s almost a good plot about this rocket-ass giant turtle and its attachment to human children), and quite a number of other movies reviewed on this blog.

King Kong (1933), however, falls into the sparsely populated alternative category of Damn, that was good! where it finds one of its relatively few fellow high achievers is Pacific Rim (2013). The progenitor of the eponymous franchise, none of the King Kong remakes and sequels, at least that I’ve viewed, match the original for excellence in story-telling. In this original, each major character has an explanatory backstory, from the movie-maker out to make the best movie he can, to the village chief trying to safeguard his village from a monster that isn’t on the island to safeguard the village, but to eat it, and desperate Claire and her new-found seaman beau. This results in a story, lurid as it might be, that makes real sense and brings a sense of urgency to it, rather than the peals of laughter that so many of the genre tend to generate.

Becoming a late night snack.

Are there complaints? Certainly, the special effects can be criticized, as Kong was a big challenge for the special effects masters of the day. But they achieve a certain creepy sexual effect that makes for quite a result: it forces at least the lustful male portion of the audience to ask themselves if they are as repulsive as Kong. Or do they?

And the science has its cracks. Why is a sauropod, of which there have never been any carnivorous varieties found, eating that guy out of the tree? But it’s still a terrifying scene, if the audience will buy into that mistake. In general, the mistakes are minor and in service to the plot. Moreover, the acting and sets are more than adequate, and the pacing is not at all lackadaisical.

There are certainly moral questions being asked and, perhaps, answered, in Kong’s escape after the reporters have been assured he can’t escape, his kidnapping of his love interest, Claire, and the scaling of the Empire State Building, and his eventual extermination. But there’s no dwelling on them, no ballpeen hammers between the eyes to make the audience irritable, to lure them from their ephemeral, yet real, bond with the film into sordid reality. The questions are presented but don’t become fetid clumps of monkey dung.

Recommended.

One word of warning: Find a good print. We watched a version on Amazon Prime that was virtually spotless; no doubt it was restored. It improves the experience we each individually remember from years ago immeasurably.

The pit of Santos continues to deepen:

A member of George Santos’ political team had a plan to raise money for the Republican congressman’s campaign: Impersonate the chief of staff of now House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.

Wealthy donors received calls and emails from a man who said he was Dan Meyer, McCarthy’s chief of staff, during the 2020 and 2022 election cycles, according to people familiar with the matter. His name was actually Sam Miele, and he worked for Santos raising money for his campaign, according to one GOP donor who contributed to Santos’ campaign. This financier and some others in this story declined to be named in order to speak freely about private discussions.

The impersonation of the top House Republican’s chief of staff adds to an emerging picture of a winning congressional campaign propelled by fabrications and questionable tactics. Santos now finds himself in the sights of investigators and in danger of losing his political career even after he’s been sworn into office. In raising money for his campaign, Santos fed donors the same falsehoods he gave voters, campaign fundraisers and others say. [CNBC]

Ethical? Nope.

Will McCarthy do anything about it? Expediency will outweigh outrage when the GOP’s House advantage is so slim.

But flattering donors with someone claiming to be SOON TO BE SPEAKER McCarthy’s chief of staff is not surprising, and nor that it worked. It might work on Democratic donors as well.

Still, where there’s smoke there’s fire, and between moderate Republicans mortified by the tactics, and anti-gay GOP activists, Santos may end up being pushed out before the depths of his electoral immorality is fully plumbed.

Which would be a pity.

A work by Vince Guaraldi Trio. Guaraldi also did the music for most of the Peanuts television specials. This is something else, though.

There is nothing I can write here that would be odder than this movie.

Men & Chicken (2015; Danish: Mænd og Høns) is the story of five men in search of their father, a man who was indiscriminate in his mates … and didn’t mate with them.

The two eldest, Elias and Gabriel, were sent away as babies, and don’t learn of their biological heritage until their adoptive parents are dead. So, between bouts of semi-public masturbation, they discover that their father is now located on a small, Danish island named Ork, and set out for it.

Their introduction to the island is sadly tragic, as Gabriel is run over by the local mayor and his daughter, leaving him an invalid, but they make it to the institution where their father lives.

And finding him, while fending off their three brothers, who appear to idiot savants – feel free to emphasize your favorite word of that pair as is your wont, or even want – is an adventure in dominance behaviors in and of itself.

But it all circles around and around and around the question that will afflict American audiences, if not Danish audiences: Why make this movie? Is this a Danish peculiarity, or someone’s perverted pet project of little pertinence nor perspicacity?

Acted with great competence, I’m still puzzling over it.

Pass the chicken.

Trepid:

(adjective) timid by nature or revealing timidity [Vocabulary.com]

Hah! I’ve not actually ever seen this word in writing anywhere that I can recall. While I was watching our elder cat, Mayhem, now in his twentieth year, contemplate a leap down from a counter, it occurred to me that he should be showing more trepidation. The adjective intrepid flashed to mind, followed by the question, What is the root of trepidation?

Example: It was a trepid koala, even for its kind, terrified of the shaking leaves that formed its tenuous diet.

For those readers remembering cryptocurrency platform Celsius, here’s a bit of a shock:

More than half a million people who deposited money with collapsed crypto lender Celsius Network have been dealt a major blow to their hopes of recovering their funds, with the judge in the company’s bankruptcy case ruling that the money belongs to Celsius and not to the depositors.

The judge, Martin Glenn, found that Celsius’s terms of use — the lengthy contracts that many websites publish but few consumers read — meant “the cryptocurrency assets became Celsius’s property.” …

The bankruptcy ruling focused specifically on whether Celsius as part of the restructuring can now sell $18 million in so-called stablecoins, a type of virtual currency, to help stay solvent. But its implications are much larger. By ruling that the money in the accounts wasn’t really owned by the 600,000 account holders, the court has basically said they are now just unsecured creditors. And “there simply will not be enough value available to repay” them, Glenn wrote. [WaPo]

And if Celsius worded their agreement in such a way, so will have some of their competitors and brethren. And when this news becomes rampant, will cryptocurrency users and investors rush to read their agreements, and then withdraw from these platforms in one mad rush?

Will we be seeing comparable collapses all across the industry?

I’m guessing the crypto platforms at risk saw Celsius and FTX collapse and are working hard to keep up and plug the holes by modifying their agreements, restraining their urges of greed in preference to those of survival. But one or two may not get it done in time, depending on how quickly the news spreads.

And they may join Celsius in the trashbin of history.

Newt Gingrich (R-GA), former Speaker, former Representative, and quitter, is considered in some quarters to be the grandfather of the modern GOP. If he is, it appears that he’s lost control of the grandkids:

Newt Gingrich called every anti-Kevin McCarthy Republican, “a blackmailing idiot.” pic.twitter.com/zYDOT3sFkp

— PatriotTakes 🇺🇸 (@patriottakes) January 4, 2023

And perhaps even more telling is Rep Boebert (R-CO) telling off her former idol, Donald J. Trump:

“Even having my favorite president call us and tell us we need to knock this off, I think it actually needs to be reversed,” Boebert said as she nominated Rep. Byron Donalds, R-Fla., ahead of the fifth round of voting. “The president needs to tell Kevin McCarthy that sir, you do not have the votes, and it’s time to withdraw.” [MSN]

At that time …

McCarthy needs 218 Republican votes to become Speaker, however, he remains stuck at 201 votes after the fifth round of voting. Twenty House Republicans voted for Donalds.

And since then, today, McCarthy has flipped 15 votes back to himself. How? I believe I saw one report that said it was by having the former President call each of those Representative-elects to exert pressure, and not through further concessions.

I suspect those were threatening calls and not nice ones. McCarthy had been serving up entirely too much frosting and not nearly enough baseball bats.

But it’s also telling that the peak of the rebel population has been a mere twenty, less than ten percent of the GOP caucus, and they are effective only due to the failure of the GOP to fulfill the optimistic predictions of their leaders. Unless potential joiners are laying low for strategic reasons, no one wants to join them. In truth, these rebels are few and unpersuasive. It’ll be interesting, in a year and a half, to see how many of them make it out of primaries, and then how many persuade independents that they deserve another term. I know extremist conservative commentators want me to believe this is a great victory, but I remain unconvinced.

The game isn’t over just yet, but I expect some time tomorrow we’ll come to the end of this little drama. The trick for the audience is to not let antipathy for the rebels cloud one’s judgment of the extracted concessions. There may have been some justifiable complaints, such as permitting huge bills be voted on just after introduction, that will be remedied. It’s worth keeping an open mind.

Searching for clues at the local hop. Possibly while hopped up. Later, they were hopping mad.

Murder at the Gallop (1963) is a bit unusual. It’s a movie derived from an Agatha Christie novel that switches the lead detective from the famed Hercule Poirot to the nearly as famed Miss Marple, and it incorporates a more broad form of humor than do most, or all, of Christie’s works. I often think Christie is hiding just a bit of a grin as she sticks it to the target British stereotypes du jour, but this work takes advantage of several opportunities to go for the guffaws.

And, for all that, it is a successful show on its own terms. Marple is, possibly, a bit more aggressive than she often is in other shows, but enjoyably so, and the evil-doer is just one of a cast of reproachable and reprobates. Said cast are potential heirs to the fortune of their brother, who fell down the stairs to Marple’s witnessing. But what does he have that’s so valuable? My Arts Editor actually cringed when we examined the art due to be transferred. And, so, we’re off and running!

Throw in excellent acting, admirable cinematography, a nice plot, and quirky characters, and it makes for a lovely hour and a half or more of light detecting.

Erick Erickson wants to convince his audience that the media is out to mislead the world:

From Fox News to CNN to MSNBC, the major talking heads and anchors are back in the pre-Trump era of attacking the conservatives, claiming it is all nihilism, theater, and ego, and not actually honestly articulating the issue with fairness to the conservatives.

The bottom line is actually very easy to understand despite the pro-McCarthy and Establishment GOP spin. This is about ending Kevin McCarthy’s Speakership. Some things really are that simple.

Sure, there are some rule changes the conservatives want too. You know, we didn’t use to rush into debt ceiling and government shutdown crises. Now, leadership lets the crises fester till they can rush through sight-unseen, multi-thousand-page pieces of legislation.

The conservatives want to end that and go back to regular order, which was done until about fifteen years ago.

Then there’s this anonymous Republican member of the House:

House Republican Member of Congress goes off against @GOPLeader McCarthy’s GOP detractors: pic.twitter.com/ZtdnBeltcp

— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) January 3, 2023

Without considering history, it’s hard to say who’s closer to the truth; hidden agendas are easy to imagine. However, while we can’t say much for the anonymous Republican themselves, it’s not hard to see that their description of what has been called, by Republicans themselves, the Taliban-19, is far more congruent than Erickson’s description.

I find this mismatch in presentations from two people claiming to be conservative quite interesting. It provokes good questions.

Just like this web.

From CNN:

A 41-year-old California man was placed under arrest Tuesday on multiple charges after he allegedly intended to drive off a cliff on the Pacific Coast Highway with three passengers in the car, authorities said.

All four occupants of the Tesla survived the crash on Monday after the car plunged between 250 and 300 feet below the road it was on and into a rocky beach area known as Devil’s Slide, about 20 miles south from San Francisco, according to the California Highway Patrol. …

They were all taken to a local hospital with serious injuries, the highway patrol said Tuesday. The San Mateo County Sheriff’s Office previously said in a social media post that the children were “unharmed.”

Congrats to the Tesla safety engineers!

Regardless of the results of the Speaker of the House election today, the far-right extremists who cannot stomach Rep Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), who is himself a far-right extremist, are lighting the path forward for the Republican Party.

It’s right into an abyss.

Fly away! Get off my back!

But, in the meantime, how is this going to play out? This is a classic example of a Party pulling itself apart, as power hungry ideological extremists claw for power. Right now a faction of convenience, called the Freedom Caucus, has McCarthy by the neck, wringing concessions out of him in his moment of weakness.

OK, so he’s had years of weakness, but you get my point.

But this breakup of the Party will be delayed, because the base of the Freedom Caucus’ power is, of course, their positions in Congress. If they choose to leave the Republican Party, how can they guarantee they’ll continue in their positions.

They can’t. If presented with two conservative candidates, district voters may choose the other one, the one with (R) after their name on the ballot.

So watch for the Republican Party to continue to lurch along, parts rattling loudly and smoke coming out where it shouldn’t. Can the Democrats take advantage? We’ll have to wait and see.

Bibelot:

a small object of curiosity, beauty, or rarity. [Dictionary.com]

Somehow, that one’s evaded my notice for decades. Yes, yes, I know there is, or was, a store chain named the same. I thought it was just a proper name. Noted in “The newly relevant relationship between Trump and ‘Sunset Blvd.’,” Karen Heller, WaPo:

Unfortunately, all of the pigments were poisonous. The hospital commented that this was the third dead actor brought to them in a monster costume last week.

Destination Inner Space (1966), a science-fiction / horror film concerning an ocean floor research station, features human frailties, inner turmoil, some ladies who, while holding doctorates, don’t really add to the plot, a cute little seeding (no, not “seedy”) alien spaceship, and an alien that looks like a successful art project.

And that’s all you really need to know.

But if you insist:

The potential outcomes of tomorrow’s struggle over the seat of the Speaker of the US House of Representatives are numerous, and many pundits are enumerating and commenting on them. Here’s Steve Benen:

Aside from the palace intrigue, why should folks care about this?

Because the public needs a functioning House — and ideally, a majority party capable of governing. If the GOP struggles to elect a speaker, it would represent a new level of Republican chaos.

Brendan Buck, a consultant who previously worked for Republican Speakers Paul Ryan and John Boehner, wrote in The New York Times today, “If Republicans are unable to muster the votes for a speaker, it will make very clear from the outset they cannot be counted on to fulfill the body’s basic responsibilities.”

Let’s say McCarthy comes up short tomorrow. Then what?

That would be the first ballot, making a second ballot necessary. If no one secures a majority on the second ballot, either, then there’d be a third, and so on.

McCarthy has said he intends to keep trying, as long as it takes, but no one can say with confidence how long his own allies will remain behind him. It seems likely that at some point, if McCarthy’s GOP opponents won’t budge, rank-and-file Republicans will start taking alternative solutions more seriously.

It sounds like serious chaos. Elsewhere, Benen notes that the core of the McCarthy opposition wants a single Rep “motion to vacate” capability, i.e. no confidence vote, and McCarthy has offered a compromise of a five Rep requirement. Given the GOP repugnance of compromise, it seems unlikely to be accepted.

And it raises the question of how often it would exercised, too. Interestingly, National Review does not seem to be addressing the potential chaos at the moment, so on to Erick Erickson:

Congress will convene this week and in so convening, I must remind everyone again that here in 2023 there still is no good reason to put Kevin McCarthy in the Speaker’s chair. The response has been, “Who is the alternative?” Well, there are at least 218 better choices. Note that this number means I’m excluding people like George Santos and Marjorie Taylor Greene. From Jim Jordan to Steve Scalise to Jim Banks to Chip Roy to literally just about any other Republican, there are better options than McCarthy.

For those who say, “Well, they’re all supporting McCarthy,” I would respond by saying that’s for the first vote.

What I suspect will happen is that McCarthy will rely on Democrats to get the votes, which is actually appropriate and fitting. An opportunist with no principles relying on Democrats, not conservatives, to win the Speaker’s chair highlights McCarthy’s opportunism.

Given Erickson’s long history of being wrong, on the side of extremism, and his suggestion that Rep Jordan (R-OH), a flaming lunatic, is substantially better than McCarthy, I’m not thinking he’s right. I cannot see why Democrats would vote for McCarthy, given that this is an opportunity to show American independents that portions of the Republicans, such as Jordan, Rep Biggs (R-AZ), etc, are really just power-mad nutcases.

They’re so bad that they bring dishonor and infamy down on their districts, in case the point isn’t clear.

But let’s step back and ask who all this crap benefits. Got your guess in place? If it’s not one of our national adversaries, such as Putin or Xi, then you’re not thinking big enough. For those who love decisive, strong decision-makers, regardless of wisdom, of consensus, of humility, they’ll believe this chaos illustrates the foolishness of democracy.

To my mind, though, it illustrates the foolishness of humanity, especially if tomorrow is a maelstrom of madness, of moral pygmies chasing after power.

I would not be surprised if, twenty or thirty years from now, forensic financial experts discover efforts by the aforementioned national adversaries to influence some of those opposing McCarthy today. Not that there’s much to admire in McCarthy, mind you, but paralyzing the armory of democracy requires chaos and not a smooth transfer of power.

Curated:

carefully chosen and thoughtfully organized or presented [Merriam-Webster]

Note its lack of synchrony with the related curator:

a person who oversees or manages a place (such as a museum or zoo) that offers exhibits

Certainly, one might add a modifier to curator, but to do so is to draw attention to the abnormality of applying such a word to the modifier, amplifying the dubiousness of suggesting the item is worthy of a word carrying a relatively high amount of prestige, which it has not previously earned.

Keeping in mind that museums and zoos are generally considered to be establishments of high respectability, although personally I hold the admittedly minority view that zoos are offensive, this leads to the observation that the initiating word of this post, curated, is being appropriated by less esteemed institutions. An example is a local cinema cum restaurant, ALAMO DRAFTHOUSE: WOODBURY, under the subsection Location Features:

Vetted Well, an attached lounge featuring a curated craft cocktail menu, and an array of local and regional craft beers

In other words, Our booze is served as entertaining cocktails selected by our bartender. Please get sloshed to enhance our profitability.

Another example arrived in email, and originates with The Motley Fool:

Curated content that shares the top stories most relevant to your services.

As Random content … would hardly be sensible, the selection of Curated reveals itself as little more than a desperate grasp after a higher level of respectability, an attempt to impress the reader with the effort that may have been put forth. As I have not yet inspected this new web site, I cannot comment on whether this is an improvement on earlier iterations, or more resembles an office notice I encountered thirty years ago and now quote, to the best of my memory:

In order to improve service to our patients, this office will be closing.

Instead of walking to the doctor’s office, I had to drive for ten to fifteen minutes. I was not amused.

So, color me annoyed with the use of curated in Internet discourse. A curator in a museum? Great. A curator in a grocery store. No.

And, for those unfamiliar with this sort of discourse, permit me to summarize: No! Unless you work for a museum, do not use curated! It’s deceptive and annoying!

But in many ways, [typing] is less challenging for the brain [than handwriting] — and challenging the brain is central to education itself.

– Markham Heid

I hated handwriting with a passion when I was a kid, to the extent that there is family lore about it, Heid’s point is very important. Read the article.

This is the zombie draft board. Each dead person must register, failure to do so results in … can’t quite read this … “becoming dinner.” Please fill in your paperwork and remain sitting until we call for you.

The zombies in King of the Zombies (1941) are not the variety found today in movie theaters, a statement that brings forth weird visuals of the dark caverns of cinemas, infested with dead humans and the inferior popcorns on which they subsist. Yeah, yeah, I live near a large chain movie theater.

I mean, we’re sort of there, but not really, if you ken my drift.

No, in this movie we’re talking the voodoo zombies segment, who seem to be mostly big guys who are fighting to keep grins off their faces.

And the referenced king? No, no magnificent super-zombie there, sad to say. But still set on evil, he’s captured a US Navy Admiral, and he’s intent on extracting his secrets, using zombie-style methods. But he finds himself beset by surreptitious rescuers who survive a plane crash, and find themselves provisioned with little else than cliched dialog, with which they do their best to find the missing admiral, as well as each other.

All in all, there’s a zombie element, a comedic element, and a romantic element involving a couple of ladies, and they are not well-melded. I could see the welds, and they were rushed and prone to leakage. The cinematography is nice, I dearly loved the character of the old lady, and Mantan Moreland completists will have to see this flick, but otherwise I foresee this to have a scant current audience.

Oh, you’re one? Here, let me help you out.

Dave is our God, for he is all-creating, all-knowing, all-…. line!

Dave Made A Maze (2017) is a top-rank whimsy machine.

Maybe literally.

Annie, a young contemporary professional, comes home from a business trip to find her boy friend, or maybe boy toy, Dave, has made a maze the living room of their apartment. Constructed of traditional cardboard, artist-wannabe Dave has chosen to go with an enclosed variety of maze that he has constructed from within, meaning that when Annie comes in the door, her living room is engulfed in a maze, and she can’t find Dave. Neither, for that matter, can he.

But she can hear him, and he can hear her, just by yelling. Warned not to enter, nor to destroy, she goes along with these suggestions when he expresses existential alarm at her disassembly attempts.

But their friends, called upon to help talk him out of the construct, talk themselves into going in after them, despite his frenzied attempts to dissuade them, and before we know it, shrinkage occurs, and the fun begins.

Indeed, the fun can’t be stopped even when one friend ends up with her tongue-protrudant head ends up separated from the rest of her.

And now it’s an exploration of Dave’s subconscious, a race against the monsters who think humans tasty, and the real question: Will Annie keep Dave around after this particular fuck up?

A whimsical comedic horror that left us laughing, Dave Made A Maze is good fun. Unless you have an artist in the family. Then, good luck with that.

Long-time readers will recall my occasional, but sincere, concerns about journalism’s faltering ability to cover news critical to the health of the United States. This observation, from Tim Franklin, senior associate dean and professor at the Medill School, does nothing to reassure me that the problem is being resolved:

Franklin predicts that “if we don’t fix the crisis in local news, we’re going to see more George Santos-type cases and instances of politicians going unchecked.”

Fox News has proven uninterested in the task, instead letting the Fox owners’ lust for money and power dictate their agenda. It’s getting to be too late to return to the traditional journalistic models, and that may result in the loss of everything we hold dear.

Parvenue:

a woman who, having risen socially or economically, is considered to be an upstart or to lack the appropriate refinement for her new position [Dictionary.com]

In the example, parvenues is used. The author may be referencing the above regardless of gender. Noted in “Learning an old lesson from the Tudors: Grifters gonna grift,” Philip Kennicott, WaPo:

From Wikipedia.

Long ago, in a reality far, far away, the legendary Orson Welles put on a radio play, and, lo, it wasn’t all that bad. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1939), was broadcast as part of the Campbell Playhouse series of radio plays, from a novel by Agatha Christie.

As is often the case, Christie is chronicling the not unusual burden that wealth can impose on individuals, whether one that controls it, Roger Ackroyd in this case, or lusts after it, as do several characters in this clever little play.

But not, of course, Mr. Hercule Poirot, now in retirement in the tidy little village of King’s Abbot. Upon the discovery of the rich Mr. Ackroyd’s death, he leaps into the breach, more than willing to plug it with his, ah, little gray cells. Kind of annoying, that.

Needless to say, but nonetheless mentioned, nothing is really what it seems. Misdirects are everywhere, and crabby characters around every corner, even in the control booth of the play, one might suspect.

Naturally, the play comes complete with commercials. Sometimes such cultural ephemera can be fun, even fascinating. These were not; indeed, they made my Arts Editor shake her head in some disgust.

So much for Campbell’s Chicken Soup.

But they are mercifully short. The audio itself is in excellent shape, with very little distortion. While I don’t think it’s to everyone’s taste, it’s only an hour long, so if you want a peek into how people spent their entertainment time 90 years ago, this is not an atypical activity. We fount it on Amazon Prime. Enjoy!

You’d think it was a horde after just one night.

And the cats? They keep pushing their walkers about, complaining they’re too tired to chase the whipper-snappers.

An entire movie about ambling. Whoda thunk?

Now You See Me (2013) is about seven magicians. Four are a team, working together to accomplish amazing feats of illusion; one is a monitor, tracking and deconstructing them.

And the last two? Ah, but that’d be telling.

Sadly, none of them come to life; they are a collection of cardboard cutouts in this story, a story formulated by tellers captivated by their own cleverness, and not about the impact of the plot on those who’ve been plotted about. As a result, there’s merely an intellectual question of where this is going, how the tricks are accomplished, and no driving need to see the plot succeed, or not, because of a connection to the characters.

At best, it’s a paean to the importance of planning and preparation.

And, maybe … well, that’d be telling, too.

Important to completists, I suspect, but not many others.

I think the drama in New York surrounding Rep-elect George Devolder-Santos (R-NY) is building into a wave that Santos will not be able to surf through. The big time pundits such as Steve Benen have been noting Santos’ lack of support by Republicans, some of whom are even making the appropriate noises about Santos resigning.

And part-timers are starting to point at oddities in his FEC reports. This is from justin423 on Daily Kos:

I pulled down all 1.8 million disbursement records from the FEC, loaded it into a database, and then screened it for just transactions between 199.90 and 199.99. Looking at the data, it appears a lot of campaigns spent that amount on zoom, and after removing those transactions, we have confirmation.

only 1 ID shows up with more than 5 transactions with THIRTY-SEVEN transactions for exactly 199.99 each totaling about $7400….

Committee ID…C00721365

Devolder-Santos for Congress…

www.fec.gov/…

yeah, those totally look like campaign expenditures…

And then he shows them. Follow the link if you’re interested.

I’m a little puzzled by aspects of the quoted FEC filing. My Arts Editor cum Former Banker suggests money laundering, although just how sending $199.99 to, for example, “DELTA AIRLINES,” will launder money was not clear – unless that’s not the Delta Airlines who we think we knew and, well, let’s just not go on with that. But apparently $200.00 is the point at which the FEC starts paying attention, so there’s something fishy going on.

There’s two potential consequences to what I’m seeing. First, Santos might make it to and participate in the swearing in and seating of new members of Congress, as that happens January 3rd, 2023 – that is, next Tuesday. But how long will he last before he’s shamed out of Congress? Well, it’s not clear that he can be shamed out of Congress. As a Trump supporter, it’s likely that he’ll emulate his political leader by simply ignoring the shameful aspects of his life, and thus not do what an honorable person would do: resign and seek solitude.

But it’s not impossible, or even unlikely, that he’ll be arrested and charged with some election-related crime, and that could result in his resignation. If he still won’t resign, the House might gets its gumption up and expel him, but that takes 2/3 of the membership.

The other consequence is What will this expose? Remember, Santos won his 2022 election in an upset, and it wasn’t even close, with a nearly 9 point victory. Democrats held this seat starting with the 2012 election and won by large margins; prior to that was the redrawing of district lines, rendering comparisons dubious.

Was New York District 3 substantially redrawn after the 2020 election, and the result naturally had Santos winning? If so, why did election watchers still pick his opponent, Robert Zimmerman (D), to win? Or did something happen here? While I recognize there’s a superficial similarity between this speculation and the actions of Republican election deniers, it’s only superficial. I’m curious as to whether evidence, real solid evidence, is found for election fraud of some sort: subversion of election machines, election workers actually engaging in fraud, or some other activity of an illegal nature that gave Santos an illicit victory? I have no interest in lighting my hair on fire while screaming about election fraud with zero evidence.

This second consequence might possibly have nation-wide repercussions. I rate this a 5% change of occurring.