Banana Republicanism – Page 19

Releasing Trump’s Taxes

The Daily Escape:

Surfing Santa via Pinterest

After more than 3½ years of pursuit, Rep. Richie Neal (D-MA), Chair of the House Ways and Means Committee finally was given access to Donald Trump’s tax returns. Trump had refused to provide them and sued to prevent the IRS from giving them to Congress.

But after a federal district court waited 2 ½ years before opining and a subsequently, a federal appeals court ruled in favor of the Committee, the Supreme Court declined to block the release of the returns to the panel last month. The Committee debated over whether to release Trump’s returns to the public and decided by a Party-line vote to do so.

The NYT tells us about the big takeaway from the release:

“The Internal Revenue Service failed to audit former President Donald J. Trump during his first two years in office despite a program that makes the auditing of sitting presidents mandatory, a House committee revealed on Tuesday after an extraordinary vote to make public six years of his tax returns.”

It’s called the Mandatory Presidential Audit Program, but the IRS never even got around to looking at Trump’s. It was only after the Committee asked about Trump’s returns in 2019 that the IRS finally opened an investigation of Trump’s 2016 returns, even though it had been tasked by that time with auditing him from 2015 through 2018.

That he wasn’t audited is strange, to put it mildly. Getting his returns has validated the Committee’s stated premise for opening the case. The Committee is now recommending that the Mandatory Audit Program, which has been in place since the Carter administration, be codified into law.

While not auditing the president, the IRS was quite busy auditing the returns of the FBI’s James Comey and Andrew McCabe, two enemies of Trump instead.

The Republican objection to releasing Trump’s returns was based on the idea that even public servants have a right to privacy about their financial matters. Wrongo has some sympathy for that, but the tax returns of all top government officials should be made public by law.

Rep. Kevin Brady (R-TX) warned that releasing Trump’s tax returns could lead to the release of tax returns of Supreme Court Justices:

Are you trying to hurt the Democrats, Kevin? Shouldn’t we routinely audit every senior government employee? Shouldn’t those audits be public? And especially the Supreme Court Justices, for whom ethics seem to be optional.

There’s also the threat that Republicans who will control of the House in January, will release the tax returns of Democrats. Wrongo thinks they should release any elected official’s return. After all, a government employee is paid by your taxes, so you have some right to transparency.

The difference is that Trump refused to release his, while most politicians release theirs after they are nominated for office.

For those Democrats who are now saying that it was a mistake to release them because of the Republicans’ possible retaliation, the last 30 years have been about Republicans going after Democrats with investigations and inventing scandals out of thin air for partisan political reasons. They will continue to do this irrespective of whether Trump’s tax returns were released.

Some media are reporting that Republicans are saying:

“….the Democrats don’t want to go down the road of releasing tax returns because where will it stop? with releasing tax returns of ordinary citizens?”

This is hyperbole. The media should ask Republicans who say this:

“Why are you so concerned about the House releasing the tax returns of ordinary citizens? Your Party will control the House. Are you concerned that your fellow Republicans would release tax returns of ordinary citizens?”

Next thing you know they’ll be asking for official college transcripts! Or, certified birth certificates. Oh, wait, they’ve already done that.

Because the Committee released Trump’s tax returns, we now know is that the IRS did not even begin its mandatory audits of Trump’s taxes until 2019 and hasn’t completed any of them.

Let’s close today with a tune for Hanukkah which this year is at almost the same time as the Christmas holidays. Let’s watch and listen to the Maccabeats perform “Latke Recipe” to the tune “Shut Up And Dance” originally performed by Walk the Moon. It’s fun, and who doesn’t like latkes?:

What Should Happen When A Candidate Lies On Their Resumé?

The Daily Escape:

Christmas Tree, Cape Porpoise Harbor, Cape Porpoise, ME – December 2022 photo by Eric Storm Photography

Wrongo doesn’t like to write “Dems in Disarray” articles, but here goes. Monday’s NYT had a long article about a Republican Congressman-elect from Queens and Nassau County in NY. George Santos won and is set to be sworn in on Jan. 2. He ran as the “embodiment of the American dream”, something he wanted to safeguard for the rest of us. Turns out his back story is extremely difficult to confirm.

From the NYT:

“His campaign biography amplified his storybook journey: He is the son of Brazilian immigrants, and the first openly gay Republican to win a House seat as a non-incumbent. By his account, he catapulted himself from a New York City public college to become a “seasoned Wall Street financier and investor” with a family-owned real estate portfolio of 13 properties and an animal rescue charity that saved more than 2,500 dogs and cats.”

Ok, here’s the issue:

“….a New York Times review of public documents and court filings from the US and Brazil, as well as various attempts to verify claims that Mr. Santos, 34, made on the campaign trail, calls into question key parts of the résumé that he sold to voters…..Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, the…Wall Street firms on Mr. Santos’s campaign biography, told The Times they had no record of his ever working there. Officials at Baruch College, which Mr. Santos has said he graduated from in 2010, could find no record of anyone matching his name and date of birth graduating that year.

Grab your popcorn. More:

“There was also little evidence that his animal rescue group, Friends of Pets United, was, as Mr. Santos claimed, a tax-exempt organization: The Internal Revenue Service could locate no record of a registered charity with that name.”

Maybe Santos can explain. His financial disclosure forms say he has money. He lent his campaign more than $700,000 during the midterm election, has donated thousands of dollars to other candidates in the last two years and reported a $750,000 salary and over $1 million in dividends from his company, the Devolder Organization. But several times, he was evicted for failure to pay rent:

“In November 2015, a landlord in the Whitestone neighborhood of Queens filed an eviction suit in housing court accusing Mr. Santos of owing $2,250 in unpaid rent. In May 2017, Mr. Santos faced another eviction case, from a rent-stabilized apartment in Sunnyside, Queens. Mr. Santos’s landlord accused him of owing more than $10,000 in rent stretching over five months and said in court records that one of his tenant’s checks had bounced. A warrant of eviction was issued, and Mr. Santos was fined $12,208 in a civil judgment.”

He sure sounds legit. How does someone who was evicted for non-payment of a total of about $14,500 in rent wind up in a position where he can loan $700k to his campaign? What caused his sudden change of fortune?

But Democrats, why are we only learning about this after the election? Why wasn’t this seriously negative information available before/during the election? Democrats do opposition research, even in a state like NY where they expect to win most seats.

And it gets worse. Santos ran and lost in the same district in 2020. So the Democrat’s state political higher ups had YEARS to do opposition research on Santos, but they didn’t. The Chair of the NY state Democratic Committee is Jay Jacobs, who is also Nassau County Democratic Chairman. Under his leadership, the Democrats lost four Congressional seats in November.

Within days after the election, dozens of Democratic officials from across the state signed a letter calling for Jacobs to be replaced. They accused him of sleepwalking into the midterms. Was Jacobs asleep at the wheel? Jacobs blames low voter turnout, but it’s his responsibility to get Democrats to the polls, to motivate voters to show up. And to check out the backstories of the opposition.

BTW, the NYT reached out to Santos for comment:

“We could not locate the congressman-elect and a person living at his stated address had no knowledge of his existence.”

The federal government has a False Statements Act for material omissions or misrepresentations on personal financial disclosures. It carries a maximum penalty of $250,000 and five years in prison. We’ll see. The House also has internal procedures for investigating ethics violations, but because Republicans who will control the House with Santos’ help, have no bottom for the ethical lapses they’ll accept, NY is now probably stuck with this guy.

Let’s close with another version of the Mariah Carey hit “All I Want for Christmas is You” this time performed in 2021 by the Welsh of the West End, a group of UK theater performers:

Saturday Soother – December 17, 2022

The Daily Escape:

18^th Annual Las Vegas Santa Run – Saturday, Dec. 3, 2022. Source: L.E. Baskow/Las Vegas Review-Journal @Left_Eye_Image

Lost in the back and forth of the year-end Congressional sausage-making was the unwelcome news that the deal to protect dreamers and to reform our immigrant asylum system has died.

From Greg Sargent in the WaPo:

“For a fleeting moment this month, a deal to protect 2 million “dreamers”…appeared within reach. Two senators with a history of bipartisan compromises were earnestly haggling over details…. The talks were endorsed by influential right-leaning opinion-makers, and even encouraged by the conservative Border Patrol union.”

The two Senators are Sens. Thom Tillis (R-NC) and Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ). Back to the WaPo:

“What happened? Tillis and Sinema were negotiating over bill text, much of which had been written, as late as Wednesday night. But Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) informed Sinema and Tillis that he wouldn’t allow it to be attached to the end-of-year spending omnibus bill, effectively killing it…”

Passing it was always a long shot. It looks as if the Republicans want immigration as a political issue more than they want a solution.

If you follow what’s going on at the southern border, you know that using Title 42, to allow police and border officers to expedite the expulsion of illegal immigrants is ending. A federal judge ordered the Biden administration to stop using it by Dec. 21, stating that it was “arbitrary and capricious.”

Immigrants are now crossing the border in large numbers, expecting that it will soon be impossible for US Border Patrol to simply send them back without reliance on Title 42. More from Sargent:

“The framework would have created new processing centers that would detain incoming asylum seekers — with increased legal and health services — until screenings could determine whether they have a “credible fear” of persecution if they were returned home. Those who passed would get a final hearing much faster than under the status quo, due to major investments in legal processing. Those who failed would be expelled promptly.”

The proposed Tillis/Sinema bill was designed to disincentivize exactly what the Republicans keep yelling about: Migrants who arrive seeking asylum, who then disappear into the interior and fail to show up for hearings. More from Sargent:

“What’s deeply frustrating about this moment is that the fundamental principles underlying reform were real and workable. Many Republicans recognize the absurdity of banishing the dreamers….And on asylum, these reforms represented a good-faith effort to come up with a solution that both sides could accept.”

The bill would have discouraged the exact sort of abuses that the Republicans constantly call the “border crisis” while retaining the US commitment to provide a fair hearing to all who seek refuge here.

Now, the border infrastructure that intercepts and processes migrants will be strained past the breaking point once Title 42 is lifted. But solving the problem doesn’t provide a political payoff to Republicans, who want to keep the “border crisis” hot as a 2024 campaign issue.

The Sinema/Tillis plan was a worthwhile effort. But there weren’t even 10 Republicans willing to break the filibuster. This is why, according to Gallup, more Americans say government is our biggest problem. And they’re saying so for the seventh time in the past 10 years. “Government” is a broad category of dissatisfaction that includes the President, Congress, Party politics and of course, gridlock.

There will be no end to gridlock unless and until bi-partisan efforts are rewarded. So, not in Wrongo’s lifetime.

But now’s the time to let go of the hot steaming mess that is our politics. Grab a few moments of calm and distance before we turn to a weekend of sourcing more Christmas presents and wearing our ugliest seasonal sweaters to family parties. It’s time for our Saturday Soother.

Here on the Fields of Wrong, we still have patchy snow on the ground, although the much-hyped winter storm that made it to the Northeast after wreaking havoc elsewhere seemingly has missed us entirely.

Let’s kick back and brew up a hot steaming mug of Ethiopia Uchoro Nansebo Washed ($27/12oz.) coffee from Floyd, VA’s (pop. 432), Red Rooster Coffee. The roaster says it is surprisingly savory and creamy with notes of apple cider, lemon-lime, and stewed peaches.

Now grab a comfy chair by a window and listen to Michael Bublé perform “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)” with Hannah Waddingham (Rebecca Welton on Ted Lasso). Her singing is a revelation. It’s hard to believe she could make Bublé look and sound like a guy in the chorus. It’s from his 10^th Anniversary “Christmas in the City” show:

Monday Wake Up Call – December 12, 2022

The Daily Escape:

Oak Creek in snow, Sedona, AZ – November 2022 photo by Ray Redstone Photography

What is it with our national politicians? There are only a few days left for the House and Senate to increase the country’s debt limit, but both Parties have been screwing around, and now it looks like they may punt the problem to the incoming Congress.

From the NYT:

“Congressional leaders have all but abandoned the idea of acting to raise the debt ceiling this month before Democrats lose control of the House, punting the issue to a new Congress when Republicans have vowed to fight the move, and setting up a clash next year that could bring the American economy to the brink of crisis.”

The plan had been for Democrats to act during the lame-duck post-election session to increase the legal borrowing limit. That would take advantage of the Dems’ final month of control of both Houses of Congress. It would head off a pissing contest with Republicans when they take over the House in January. Republicans have threatened to block the increase once they are in charge of the House. They plan to hold it hostage until the Democrats agree to substantial cuts to domestic spending and Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.

There are several problems here. The debt ceiling which the US will reach sometime next year; the expiration of the last stopgap funding bill that expires on Dec. 16; and passing an overall budget for the current fiscal year.

The Dems had planned to attach a series of other priorities to the big funding package, including the reform of the Electoral Count Act (ECA), a critical reform that helps prevent election denier shenanigans in 2024. On December 3, Wrongo warned that this was a high risk gambit: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“…the Democrats need Mitch McConnell and other GOP Senate leaders to agree to attach ECA reform to a spending bill and enlist the 10 GOP Senators to support it. That means the GOP controls whether this bill is enacted.”

Now we’re hearing that the leadership of both Parties can’t get to an agreement on the big package. More from the NYT:

“Republicans and Democrats remain at odds over how to split funding between military and social programs. Talks are set to continue through the weekend ahead of the Dec. 16 deadline, though aides said lawmakers could pass a one-week stopgap bill to give negotiations additional time.”

So America’s Christmas present from Congress will be no Electoral Count Act reform and no new budget, and no debt ceiling increase. Instead, we’ll get another Continuing Resolution that will fund the government until early in 2023 when the Republicans will try once again to toss the US credit rating off a high cliff with their far Right ideological theories on US government debt.

Under the last debt limit increase passed late in 2021, the federal government can borrow $31.381 trillion. Total national debt has been slightly above that level, but since a small portion of the debt is exempt from the debt ceiling, we’ve stayed in compliance. As of last week, total debt subject to the debt limit got as close as $31.345 trillion.

The consequences of failing to extend the debt limit are immediate and bring great risk. For example, it could force the government to choose between paying Social Security checks or paying the interest due on the country’s debt. That happened in 2011, when Congressional Republicans pressured President Obama to accept similar spending cuts in exchange for raising the debt limit.

That standoff led to downgrading the credit rating of the US. It rattled American investors and the US economy. This time, it could have global economic implications, given that the world is facing a global recession.

Before you say: Well, these birds learned this lesson back then, so they surely will make a deal this time. Consider that Goldman Sachs reports that less than a quarter of Republicans and less than a third of Democrats who will serve in the House in 2023 served there in 2011.

Time to wake up, Congress! Sure, some of you are very old, and want to go home for the holidays. But we pay you to fix things, not to make them worse. Schumer and Pelosi should make them all stay in DC until they vote on what the country needs.

To help them wake up, watch, and listen to a live version of the Allman Brothers’ “Midnight Rider” with Vince Gill, Gregg Allman and Zac Brown from a 2014 performance at the Fox Theater in Atlanta. One of the wonders of live music is what happens when artists collaborate in a live setting:

We’re also seeing Chuck Leavell on keyboards and Kenny Aronoff on drums.

Sample Lyric:

And I don’t own the clothes I’m wearing
And the road goes on forever
And I’ve got one more silver dollar
But I’m not gonna let ’em catch me, no
Not gonna let ’em catch the midnight rider

Griner Comes Home

The Daily Escape:

Barn before a storm, Walla Walla, WA – 2022 photo by Gary Hamburgh Photography

After 10 months in Russian custody, including time in a penal colony, WNBA star Brittney Griner is on her way home. In exchange for Griner’s freedom, Russia secured the release of Viktor Bout, a convicted Russian arms smuggler. Another American, the former Marine Paul Whelan, remains imprisoned in Russia.

CNN reports that the White House said Griner was released to US officials. From Biden:

“Moments ago I spoke to Brittney Griner…She is safe. She is on a plane. She is on her way home.”

The prisoner swap occurred in Abu Dhabi on Thursday. A joint statement from the UAE and Saudi Arabia said both Gulf countries played a role mediating the exchange between the US and Russia. By the time you are reading this, Griner should be on American soil.

But the result is a mixed bag. It’s very good news that Griner is free. But Viktor Bout is also free to rebuild his arms-dealing network. People are rightly wondering why Whelan wasn’t included in the trade. After all, he’s finishing his fifth year in Russian prison. But negotiation requires both sides to agree and the Russians would only offer Griner.

Of course, the Right-wing chattering class disapproved. First, from House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy, who tweeted:

“This is a gift to Vladimir Putin, and it endangers American lives….Leaving Paul Whelan behind for this is unconscionable.”

Some Conservative mouth-breather named Jessie Kelly tweeted this:

“She’s a black lesbian who hates America. Biden is just bringing another voter back home.”

Another mouth-breather, Conservative Benny Johnson who has a show on Newsmax, tweeted this with typical Right-wing understatement:

“This is the lowest point in US foreign policy in my lifetime. Collapse of an empire.”

It can’t be a long life for young Benny. What is he, five years old?

You have to love the comments by these wingnuts each of whom say they could have brokered a better deal with their expert negotiating skills. And rather than be happy that one American is returning home, they use their oral flatulence to make comments about what should have happened, and why Biden is a loser.

Poor Paul Whelan’s family shows that most Americans still have decency and class:

“NEW from the Whelan family: “There is no greater success than for a wrongful detainee to be freed & for them to go home. The Biden Admin made the right decision to bring Ms. Griner home, & to make the deal that was possible, rather than waiting for one that wasn’t going to…”

The American people should thank Paul Whelan’s brother David for being so gracious. That isn’t something that we can say about the many Republican mouthpieces who felt it was necessary to weigh in.

People need to stop thinking about this as a trade or a prisoner exchange. The Russians kidnapped Griner and held her for ransom. She was a wonderful target, being a very tall black lesbian woman playing professional basketball in Russia. She was chosen, then convicted, and then sent to the gulag for the very purpose of being bait to spring Viktor Bout.

Does it suck that the price of releasing her was letting an odious killer go free? Of course. It shouldn’t be lost on anyone that as individuals and given their relative “crimes”, they weren’t equivalent assets. Everyone knows that Griner’s offense was simply a pretext to create a prisoner that could be traded. The initial arrest was about finding a small amount of hash oil on a Black gay woman.

Prisoner exchanges usually look like, “You arrested one of our spies and we want him back, so we arrested one of your spies. Let’s talk.” They don’t normally look like: “We plucked a random minor celebrity of yours off the street and she’s gonna do nine years.”

And when they do, it’s important to point out that it’s more like a kidnapping and a ransom than it is like an equivalent exchange.

Two closing thoughts. First, Conservatives always say: “Don’t negotiate with terrorists“. But all nations negotiate with terrorists; that’s just something governments say. Negotiating with terrorists doesn’t incentivize terrorism. It incentivizes terrorists to negotiate. The alternative is that terrorists engage in terrorism that does not involve negotiations. And that only leads to terrible outcomes.

All governments have to decide whether to negotiate or not on a case by case basis.

Second, Americans, especially conspicuous Americans, should stay the hell out of Russia until the Putin government’s current business plan is updated.

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – December 4, 2022

Well, the US is out of the round of sixteen at the World Cup. Wrongo didn’t watch. It’s maybe arbitrary on his part, but he really has quite a bit of antipathy about the Gulf countries. Those countries have oil, without which they would simply be backwater places with doctrinaire religions and impossible politics.

Another thing: Last week, Edward Snowden swore an oath of allegiance to Russia and has received a Russian passport, his lawyer said Friday. The 39-year-old former intelligence contractor was granted Russian citizenship by Vladimir Putin in September. He faces espionage charges and 30 years in prison in the United States if he were to return, but he no longer faces extradition to the US. On to cartoons.

When will Trump get his just desserts?

Why was it necessary for Dems to portray the possible railroad strike as a problem caused only by labor?

With all we hear about Elon, Trump, and Bezos, why are they still glorified?

Republican Rep. Kevin McCarthy is having some trouble becoming the next House Speaker:

Which is worse?

Monday Wake Up Call – November 28, 2022

The Daily Escape:

Thanksgiving Day, Brewster, MA – November 2022 photo by Anne Marie

There was plenty of news over Thanksgiving that Wrongo was itching to talk about, but instead, he decided to take a complete break. Here’s something that’s been on his mind.

Despite all of the self-congratulating by Democrats, the Cook Political Report shows that Republicans received some 3.5 million more votes than Democrats in the midterms. Republicans received 54.13 million votes compared to the Democrats’ 50.79 million votes. Republicans did better in 2022 than they did in the 2018 midterms by 3 million votes, while Democrats got 10.3 million fewer votes than 2018, when they won control of the House by 235–199. Much of this is turnout.

Despite this context, the narrative is that America rejected the far Right by defeating election denier candidates. And most Trumpist candidates were defeated by significant margins. Democrats shouldn’t rest on their laurels or assume “the Trump fever has broken”. It hasn’t. America comes out of the midterms with voters evenly divided between the Parties.

Now, there are only four swing states left: Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, and Wisconsin. These four only account for 43 Electoral Votes. Stanley Greenberg, a Democratic pollster points to the striking “continuity among the elections” since Trump emerged as a national political figure:

“We’ve now gone through 2016, ’18, ‘20 and ‘22 – and all looked pretty much alike….And it has locked in the coalitions.”

So we’re not only evenly divided, but we’re also deeply divided politically.

Looking at the Electoral College, the midterms offered some optimism to Democrats when 2024 comes around. The five states that decided the last presidential race did so by flipping from Trump in 2016 to Biden in 2020. Those five (Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin) moved more toward the Democrats in 2022.

The Dems won six of the eight Senate and governor races across these states, and Dems could notch a seventh victory if Sen. Raphael Warnock defeats Herschel Walker in a Georgia run-off next month.

But Republicans made Ohio, Iowa, and Florida Redder. Each now appears securely in the GOP’s column for 2024 (and most likely beyond). And the Dem’s perennial hope of turning Texas Blue still looks like it’s another 10 years away after Republican Gov. Greg Abbott’s double-digit victory against Beto O’Rourke. Republicans again won all of Texas’ statewide offices, continuing a Dem shutout that stretches back to the 1990s.

It appears that the offsetting and hardening partisan strengths of each Party could again give the power to decide the presidency to a few hundred thousand voters, in a very few close counties in a few very balanced states.

CNN’s Ron Brownstein says that a 2024 presidential race with just Wisconsin, Nevada, Georgia, and Arizona as true battlegrounds would probably begin with Democrats favored in states holding 260 Electoral College votes (including Washington, DC) and Republicans in states with 235. That means Democrats would need to win just one of Arizona (11 votes), Georgia (16), or Wisconsin (10) to reach an Electoral College majority. But that’s far from a certainty.

This division will make for tons of political stress over the next two years. Each Party understands that our nation’s future is now controlled by the choices of a tiny minority of people living in a few contested political districts: White-collar suburbs of Atlanta and Phoenix, working-class Latino neighborhoods in and around Las Vegas, and the mid-sized communities in Wisconsin’s so-called BOW counties (Brown County, Outagamie County and Winnebago County).

No GOP presidential candidate will concede Michigan or Pennsylvania just because of the midterm results. But the magnitude of those 2022 Democratic wins show how difficult it will be for a Republican nominee to take them in 2024 – particularly if the GOP candidate supports further restrictions on abortion.

It’s likely that Democrats will target North Carolina to expand their roster, while Republicans will target Minnesota and New Hampshire. But flipping any state will be difficult, depending upon candidate quality.

This shrinking list of competitive presidential states could increase political tensions for the next two years. Time to wake up America! Think about how your indifference to politics and to voting in our elections has put the country on a knife edge. The threat posed to America by the MAGA extremists remains very real.

It’s going to take tremendous effort in every single election until this dynamic shifts. And that could take a full generation. To help you wake up, watch “People Get Ready”, a Curtis Mayfield tune that foretold the turning tide in the battle for racial equality. It hit the top of the R&B charts after its original 1965 release by The Impressions.

It’s been covered by scores of artists, including Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen and here in 2009 by Rod Stewart and Jeff Beck at the El Rey Theater in Los Angeles. Beck’s reaction when Stewart comes on stage is priceless. Stewart served as vocalist for the Jeff Beck Group back in 1969:

Sample Lyrics:

People get ready
There’s a train a-coming
You don’t need no baggage
You just get on board
All you need is faith
To hear the diesels humming
Don’t need no ticket
You just thank the Lord

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – November 20, 2022

According to the LA Times, come January, more than 80% of Americans will live in states with governments entirely controlled by one of the two major Parties. That means when all the new legislators and governors are sworn in, 39 states will be controlled by the same Party, a seven-decade high.

That means Americans will have to live with greater differences in their schools, workplaces, and doctors’ offices as they move cross state lines. A citizen’s right to carry a gun, to get an abortion, to join a union and the rate a minimum-wage job pays, will now depend almost entirely on whether their state is Blue or Red.

Can’t let Sunday go by without talking about Jack Smith, appointed special counsel by Attorney General Merrick Garland to carry forward the Trump Jan. 6 and Mar-a-Lago investigations.

It does have advantages: It makes it simple for the DOJ to refuse Rep. Jim Jordan’s demands for information about the various Trump investigations. You can’t subpoena a special counsel during an investigation.

Second, It ensures the continuity of any prosecution after 2025, no matter who is elected. That’s important since it’s possible that neither the stolen documents nor the coup attempt investigations may be completed by then. And it isn’t the first time a special counsel was appointed when Congress changed hands. Remember that John Durham became a special counsel in December 2020 as Bill Barr was deciding to leave as Attorney General, and the Congress was about to change hands in January 2021. That shielded Durham from political interference in case Trump lost the election. Durham investigated potential criminal misconduct that might have occurred during the Trump-Russia probe without success. His investigation continues today. On to cartoons.

But what’s political?

Investigations are what the people want:

Will the GOP move on?

Elephant tries to let him down easy:

Who’s next?

McCarthy fills the Speaker’s shoes:

Saturday Soother – House of Representatives Edition, November 19, 2022

The Daily Escape:

Verbena and sunset, Anza Borrego SP, CA – November 2022 photo by Paulette Donnellon

We start Saturday with a reflection on the outgoing Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA). Many think that she ranks as the best House Speaker in modern times.

Wrongo remembers her for standing up to Obama and his chief of staff, Rahm Emmanuel during the debate over the shape of the ACA. There was much concern about how far the Democrats could go with the bill. Emmanuel wanted to tone it down to meet objections from the GOP and from moderate Dems.

Pelosi met with Obama and his aides and said that she wouldn’t support anything but the full monte. That caused the White House’s effort to find a more moderate way forward to crumble. And America made its biggest single step toward providing health insurance to all Americans.

At the end, It was Pelosi not Obama, who made it happen. It was her ability to deliver her caucus that gave Obama et.al a spine.

Wrongo recently learned that when Nancy Pelosi was a teen and her father, Thomas D’Alesandro Jr., was mayor of Baltimore, she maintained his “favors book”. That explains much about her effectiveness when she finally got to Congress at age 47. At the point when she took office, she had five kids. Wrangling them, plus learning to keep a “favors book” was probably ideal preparation for being the first woman House Speaker.

This week, control of the US House has passed to the Republican Party. That means two things: First, that Republicans will now say that compliance with House subpoenas is mandatory, even though they purposefully ignored them for the last two years.

Second, Americans should prepare for investigations of the Biden administration by grandstanding GOP Congresscritters. James Comer (R-KY) held a press conference saying that he will be looking into Hunter Biden, his laptop, and his father. Comer, the incoming Oversight Committee chair, has said an investigation into Hunter Biden and other Biden family members and associates will be a priority. His idea is to try and position the president as having compromised national security.

If that seems to echo the FBI/DOJ investigations into Trump, well, that’s purely a coincidence. Be prepared to see absolutely nothing get done over the next two+ years that might improve the lives of the American people.

Let’s spend a minute on Hunter Biden’s laptop. Last March, the WaPo did a story on a security review it had authorized of the disk drive on the “Hunter Biden laptop”. The WaPo asked security experts Matt Green and Jake Williams to review the drive to see what they could authenticate. From the WaPo:

“In their examinations, Green and Williams found evidence that people other than Hunter Biden had accessed the drive and written files to it, both before and after the initial stories in the New York Post and long after the laptop itself had been turned over to the FBI.”

So people had kept adding content to the “laptop,” making it impossible to say what was on the “laptop” when it was originally provided to the Delaware computer repair shop.

Saturday Soother – Midterms Edition, November 12, 2022

The Daily Escape:

Colorado River with the Fisher Towers and the La Sal mountains in background, UT – November 2022 photo by Benjamin Williamson Photography

Wrongo can admit to being anxious and a bit depressed during the two weeks leading up to the midterms. But it wasn’t the blowout that America’s BS pollsters and the slavish media had been predicting. So he’s feeling better.

While it’s still too early to know what the political landscape will be in 2023, we can be reasonably sure that the Republicans will control the House and the Dems the Senate.

If that happens, what should Biden’s strategy be? It’s likely that he will retool the White House into a more overtly political operation with a focus on 2024. Axios reports that Biden’s considering bringing on a business leader to improve Democratic relations with the business community. That becomes more important if the US is heading into a recession sometime before the 2024 presidential election.

The idea is for Biden to stay in front of any potential financial crises. His team wants to be sure he’s getting a 360-degree view of the economy, even if that means angering the Party’s progressive wing.

Biden also plans to sharpen the contrast between Democrats and Congressional Republicans. It’s certain that the GOP will at best, hold only a narrow margin in the House. Some Republican Congress Critters are already considering mounting a challenge to Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) as House Speaker.

That’s likely to leave Republicans with an unwieldy and possibly chaotic majority, which should give Democrats an opening to be on offense. If Democrats keep their minimal Senate majority, Biden could promote his agenda in the Senate and then continually ask why House Republicans are stalling it.

And when it comes to House Republicans spending time investigating the Biden administration, Biden and his team should use similar delay and deflect tactics as the Trump administration did.

The MAGA fringe in the House will also try to hold the country hostage to increases in the debt ceiling. It’s logical that a Dem + responsible Republican faction will work on a bipartisan basis to stave off the MAGA effort to burn up America’s credit rating.

Wrongo would urge the Senate and the House to try to get two big things accomplished in the lame duck session. It MUST complete its reforms of the Electoral Count Act. Over the summer, a bipartisan group of senators reached a deal to make it harder to overturn a presidential election. The proposal still needs to be approved by both chambers. The Senate proposal has the backing of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. The House has passed a slightly different version, but if it doesn’t get done by January you can kiss these reforms goodbye.

Second, the Senate should attempt to use the budget reconciliation process to raise the debt ceiling to preclude House Republicans from threatening default on the national debt as pretext for extracting concessions on Social Security, Medicare, and possibly, Veterans benefits.

If Biden can have success with working across the aisle on the Electoral Count Act along with the budget and debt ceiling, that will position Democrats (and Biden) as the adults in DC politics. To the extent that inflation continues to fall, and we avoid a deep recession, Biden can claim the Democrats are doing a good job on the economy.

Since it’s Saturday, welcome to our Saturday Soother. Wrongo invites all readers to pause for a few hours, (or more) to recharge after escaping the phantom red wave. It is imperative that we prevent burn out because there’s much more to do before the new Congress is sworn in, in January.

For Wrongo, that means going outside and doing yard work, or simply wandering around the fields of Wrong.

Wrongo and Ms. Right started this early on Friday by taking a walk in a nearby town park. The leaves on the park’s trees are down, but the grass and plants remain green and the air was warm. Despite being a national holiday the park was nearly empty, making for a delightful escape.

To help you pause, grab a seat by a south-facing window and watch and listen to Telemann’s “Sonata in D major, TWV 44:1” played here by the Bremer Barockorchester (Bremen Baroque Orchestra). It was performed at the Unser Lieben Frauen Church in Bremen in October 2021. It features a very interesting performance on a 3′ long natural trumpet, which is valveless. Julian Zimmermann is the great musician making this solo trumpet performance:

The Wrongologist

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