Banana Republicanism – Page 21

An Economic Closing Argument for Democrats

The Daily Escape:

Snake River, Grand Teton NP, WY – October 2022 photo by Hilary Bralove

Yesterday, Wrongo said that the Dems should add a focus on inflation and the economy to their closing argument when asking voters to keep them in power. Here’s a suggestion of what that argument might look like from David Doney (@David_Charts on Twitter). Doney draws his stats from the Federal Reserve Economic Data (known as FRED) and the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). Below is an extract from his Twitter feed:

Jobs: More Americans are working than at any time in history: 153 million. The economy now has 500k more jobs than it did before the pandemic. The unemployment rate is 3.5%, the lowest since 1969. With more people working there’s more spending.

Wealth: The bottom half of US households have an average real net worth of $67,200, the highest ever. Under Trump, it was just $34,648. (While Trump gave tax cuts to the wealthy. Biden gave them to the middle and lower class.) Even those in the 50th to 90th percentile are doing better under Biden: average real net worth is now $747,010 vs. $699,530 under Trump. It’s important to remember that these are averages not median net worth numbers, which are lower. Median net worth in the US is $121,700, up 17.6 % from 2016.

Income: Real wages are higher than before the pandemic. Despite what some pundits say, they have outpaced inflation. From February 2020 to last month, wages for production and non-supervisory workers have risen 15.6%, while the Consumer Price Index (CPI) has risen 14.6%. So Americans’ purchasing power is greater today than it was in 2019.

The deficit: Our annual federal budget deficit is 50% lower than it was last year. It was $2.8 trillion in fiscal year 2021 and is $1.4 trillion this year, according to CBO estimates. Government income is up and government spending is down: Revenues are $850 billion (or 21%) higher and spending is $548 billion (or 8%) lower.

This continues the historical pattern of Democratic administrations being more fiscally responsible than Republicans. Yet the GOP’s closing argument includes screaming about Democratic spending which they say caused inflation. They are trying to convince Americans who either don’t read or bother to check facts that it’s the Democrats who spend like crazy. The opposite is true.

The economy: The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) hit an all-time high of $20 trillion in the fourth quarter of 2021, and currently is $19.9 trillion (for the second quarter of this year). The Atlanta Fed thinks GDP will grow 2.8% in the third quarter. So no recession just yet. In fact, Doney reports that the six key indicators that the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) uses to decide if we’re in a recession were all up from June to September.

Health insurance: Biden revived the Obamacare signup campaigns and advertising that Trump had eliminated. And now 92% of Americans (and more than 98% of kids) have health insurance, an all-time high. Before Obamacare, close to 18% of Americans had no health insurance.

There’s no doubt that many Americans are worried about the high prices at the grocery store and at the gas pump. But one reason inflation has increased is because people have more money in their pockets. Americans have $4 trillion more in their bank accounts than they did before the pandemic. So they’re working, earning money, and spending it.

The other factor driving inflation is the consolidation of companies into just a handful of major corporations, and the ability of those corporations to jack up prices. Corporate profits are at a 70-year high, yet American corporations are still raising prices. They’re doing so because there’s so little competition.

Republicans in Congress won’t stop corporate price gouging. And we know the GOP will blame Dems for high federal spending (which, as said above, is down 8% so far vs. last year). But the GOP won’t let the facts get in the way of their bad policies. They’ll use this manufactured crisis, along with refusing to raise the debt ceiling, to try to force Democrats to support cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and other social safety net programs.

As blog reader T. Grosso commented yesterday: (Brackets by Wrongo)

“It is such a good question to ask what the Republicans will do if they gain control. We obviously know the answer. They will block anything and everything that might help people so they can blame Biden for [it in] 2024.”

The Democrats’ closing argument needs to include a strong, populist message. They should be saying that Democrats believe people must come before profits. Dan Pfeiffer reports:

“The folks at Data for Progress tested a series of messages on inflation and found that emphasizing corporate greed was an effective pushback on concerns about inflation.”

OTOH, the inflation and economic message must be carefully crafted. It could backfire with some who have missed the current jobs market and are struggling to pay their bills.

Democrats should acknowledge the pain caused by high prices while pointing out that a strong economy and the Party’s fiscal responsibility are helping many people cope with higher prices today and will help to reduce inflation in the near future.

Preventing Stolen Elections

The Daily Escape:

Sunset, Heceta Beach, OR – September 2020 photo by Jack Arnold Photography

From the NYT:

“Activists driven by false theories about election fraud are working to toss out tens of thousands of voter registrations and ballots in battleground states, part of a loosely coordinated campaign that is sowing distrust and threatening further turmoil as election officials prepare for the November midterms.”

Government databases being what they are, voter rolls do contain errors, usually because voters have died or moved without updating their registrations. States typically rely on systematic processes as required by their laws to update or purge voter rolls.

Now, outside partisan Republican groups are attempting to use privately generated lists to “help” clean up the information. The Conservative Partnership Institute, (CPI) which has Mark Meadows as a senior partner, has distributed a playbook that instructs local groups on how to vet voter rolls.

CPI and other groups have challenged at least 65,000 voter registrations across eight counties in Georgia. In Michigan, another group challenged 22,000 ballots from people who had requested absentee ballots for the state’s August primary. And in Texas, residents sent affidavits challenging the eligibility of more than 6,000 voters in Harris County, the state’s largest county, which is home to Houston.

These are challenges by Republicans who are targeting Democratic cities and counties in battleground states. It takes time for local election officials to review each challenge, and in some cases, the challengers are angry and impatient.

What would bring most of this to a halt, is for cities and counties to impose a hefty filing fee that would be refundable in proportion to the number of valid challenges. Checking to see if a challenge is valid or not takes time and effort. States shouldn’t allow partisans to gum up the work of local election officials for free. If there’s no penalty for throwing spaghetti at a wall to see what sticks, everybody will toss some.

In a more positive note about protecting our democratic process, it appears a reform of the Electoral Count Act of 1887 will pass Congress later this year. Abuse of the vague language in that Act led Trump and his co-conspirators to try to overturn the 2020 presidential election on Jan. 6, 2021.

Since Jan. 6, we’ve seen an organized effort by Republicans in many states to fill key, lower profile election jobs with people who will only certify elections that Republicans win. To prevent that from happening again, both Houses have come up with legislation to reform the Act.

In a move that most likely guarantees passage of an electoral reform bill this year, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) announced support for the Electoral Count Reform and Presidential Transition Improvement Act of 2022.

Eleven Senate Republicans have already announced they are co-sponsoring it, more than enough for it to avoid filibuster and pass. The Senate Rules Committee on Tuesday voted 14-1 to advance the bill, with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Asshole) being the only committee member to object.

Last week, the House passed its version of Election Reform, with the support of nine Republicans. It’s similar, and both bills make it clear that the vice president’s role in counting Electoral votes at the joint session of Congress is purely ministerial.

That by itself would have saved a lot of bloodshed at the US Capitol on Jan. 6.

The Senate bill ensures that Electoral votes counted by Congress accurately reflect the results of each state’s popular vote for president, something the House bill also does. It also provides clearer guidelines for when eligible candidates for president and vice president can receive federal resources to support their transition to power, something that Trump vindictively stalled after the 2020 election.

It would also substantially increase the threshold for Congress to consider an objection to the Electoral votes of individual states, requiring that at least one-fifth (20%) of each Chamber sign on to such challenges. Currently, that requires just one Senator and one House member. From Sen. Amy Klobuchar, (D-MN):

“Right now, just two people out of 535 members can object and slow down and gum up the counting.”

So it sets a much higher bar.

This is good news for America. One, it helps ensure we continue to have peaceful transfers of power between presidential administrations. And two, we’re seeing bipartisanship around a key Constitutional issue.

It’s clear that these bills must be negotiated into a single bill that is approved before January when there’s a decent chance that Republicans will get control of the House.

Most pundits think it will come to a vote after the November mid-terms. Now we have to hope McConnell doesn’t change his mind.

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – September 25, 2022

Liz Truss’s big bet since taking over as UK prime minister is to lower taxes just like St. Ronnie and Trump did in the US. Said Truss:

“Lower taxes lead to economic growth, there is no doubt in my mind about that,”

Trickle down will work this time, we promise, say UK Conservatives.

The tax reductions will require the UK government to borrow bigly to balance their budget. They hope that there will be so much growth that the UK will make it all back in future tax payments. Just like in the US, the lie is that these tax cuts will pay for themselves! Something that has never happened.

The UK Treasury said that the top personal rate will be cut from 45% to 40%. That will be more beneficial for the wealthy than the majority of British society. Shortly after the cuts were announced on Friday, the pound sank almost 2.6% to its lowest level against the US dollar since 1985. Wrongo hates to quote Larry Summers, but he said this:

“The UK is behaving a bit like an emerging market turning itself into a submerging market…it is pursuing the worst macroeconomic policies of any major country in a long time.”

Bloomberg’s Mark Gongloff tweeted:

“Liz Truss just announced the UK’s biggest giveaway to the rich since 1972, which resulted in an IMF bailout. Now the pound is crashing in the middle of the worst inflation since the 70s. Bold strategy….Let’s see if it pays off.”

It’s hard to believe this will go well with the UK already in a recession. On to cartoons.

Russian men are facing tough choices:

Ukrainian ballot:

Reserves get their orders:

Trump’s building something new in NY:

He says witch hunt a LOT:

The coming election may surprise some people:

Monday Wake Up Call – September 19, 2022

The Daily Escape:

Sunrise, Willard Beach, South Portland, ME – September 2022 photo by Eric Storm Photo

Last week, Wrongo wrote about how if you know a little about politics, your issues are guns, abortion, and taxes. We need to think about adding immigration to that list. Blog reader Craig G. asked, “when is enough, enough?” in response to Wrongo’s column on DeSantis sending immigrants to Martha’s Vineyard.

It’s a great question. We tend to think of immigration as an American/Mexican border problem, but it is much, much worse than that. The UN’s High Commissioner for Refugees reported in May 2022, that the world, for the first time in history, had 100 million forcibly displaced people either in camps or on the move.

Of those who were on the move, “conflict and violence” accounted for 14.4 million, and “weather-related events” accounted for 23.7 million. The distinction between these numbers is often hard to understand. The civil war in Syria for example, produced large numbers of refugees. In 2021, more than 6.8 million refugees were from Syria, more than any other country in the world. At the same time, another 6.9 million people were displaced within Syria. The Syrian civil war followed the most profound drought ever recorded in what used to be the Fertile Crescent.

About 100 million migrants is huge, more than the population of Germany, Turkey or, Vietnam. But it could get worse as the impacts of climate change broaden throughout the 3rd world. The International Organization for Migration has predicted that we could see 1.5 billion people forced from their homes by 2050.

These numbers are staggering. Now couple them with America’s declining birth rate. Econofact reports that the US birth rate has fallen by 20% since 2007. They say the decline cannot be explained by demographic, economic, or policy changes. So, what if it continues while the number of people knocking on America’s doors continues to grow?

As Craig G. implies, there could come a time when all Americans will agree to limit immigration. Otherwise, a smaller, aging America will be asking what some on the Right are asking today: Who are the “real” Americans? What do we owe recent immigrants?

The Fourteenth Amendment, Section 1 says:

“All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”

How will we adjust when the majority of our population are from different cultures, different races and speak different languages? The children of first-generation immigrants generally are well-adapted to the broad American culture; for the most part, they sound and act like Americans. If they were born here they ARE Americans. But the first generation migrant has an understandably difficult time.

This has caused the Right and specifically, the Christian nationalists on the right to be stingy about who they say is a true American, despite when many kids of immigrants are born here in America.The 14th Amendment doesn’t require any ideological, racial or language prerequisite.

Our low birth rates mean we can’t replace our population, so our economic growth will slow. If we replace our population with immigrants, we’ll have economic growth, but our culture will inexorably change.

Our history gives us some pointers. Immigration to the US peaked in the 19th century in the decade 1880-89 when it reached 5,248,568. The first decade of the 20th century saw another record with 8,202,388 people entering the country. In 1910, 75% of the population of New York, Chicago, Detroit and Boston consisted of first and second generation immigrants.

Remember that the US population was 62,979,766 in 1890, an increase of 25.5% percent since the prior census in 1880. Contrast that with today. Stastia says that 710,000 legal immigrants arrived here in 2021, and that we had 11.39 million illegal immigrants living in the US at year end 2018. We’re five times larger today.

Think about it: In 1890, our foreign-born population was 9.2 million. The total US population was 62.9 million. 5.2/62.9 = 14.6% of our population were immigrants. In 2018, out foreign-born population is 44.8 million. 44.8/320 million in US = 14.0%. Is our problem worse today?

Time to wake up America! A tsunami of immigrants will try to move from the 3rd world to the developed world. The numbers will be staggering, beyond anything experienced so far by Europe or the US. Our ability to cope with so many people in motion in some even modestly humane fashion will determine the character of our country over the next century.

To help you wake up, listen to John Moreland perform “Ugly Faces” from his 2022 album “Birds in the Ceiling”.

Sample Lyric:

You’re seeing ugly faces in your dreams
Let me know what it means
We told ourselves we’d tell it true
But I learned how to lie, watching you
This dirty place don’t want you here
Looks like you’re stuck another year
You close your eyes, a scene rolls by
A strip mall under sunburst sky
My back was to a corner, lonely in a crowd
I couldn’t hear you calling, the bullshit was so loud

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – September 18, 2022

On Friday, the DOJ filed a motion in the 11th Federal Circuit Court for a partial stay of judge Cannon’s order appointing a special master to review the stolen documents that the FBI recovered at Mar-a-Lago (MAL). They are asking the federal appeals court to temporarily block Cannon’s ruling that prevents the DOJ from using thousands of pages of government documents seized from Trump at MAL.

It came after judge Cannon, for the second time in two weeks, issued a ruling in Trump’s favor that flabbergasted legal experts. From the WaPo:

“US District Judge Aileen M. Cannon on Thursday night rejected the Justice Department’s request to allow it to review the documents seized from Trump’s residence at Mar-a-Lago that were marked classified. Cannon previously ruled that a special master review all the seized documents, at least temporarily delaying the government’s criminal probe.”

The brief is here: Motion for Partial Stay Pending Appeal. The essence of the DOJ’s argument is summarized at page 6:

“Plaintiff has no claim for the return of those records, which belong to the Government and were seized in a court-authorized search. The records are not subject to any possible claim of personal attorney-client privilege. And neither the Plaintiff nor the court has cited any authority suggesting that a former President could successfully invoke executive privilege to prevent the Executive Branch from reviewing its own records.”

Let’s leave it to Robert Hubbell to point out the double standard at work in a recent Supreme Court decision: (brackets and emphasis by Wrongo)

“Here is a fun fact: “Executive privilege” is not mentioned in the Constitution. Instead, the Supreme Court ruled that executive privilege is “implied” in the Constitution because it is “inextricably rooted in the separation of powers under the Constitution.”

Another fun fact: The Constitution does not mention “separation of powers.” So, executive privilege is an implied right based on an implied principle [in the Constitution].

Compare the Court’s recognition of the implied right of a president to invoke executive privilege to the Court’s recent pronouncement in Dobbs regarding reproductive liberty: “The Constitution makes no reference to abortion, and no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision.”

With its decision in Dobbs, the Supreme Court eliminated an implied right that offends its religious agenda.

But Cannon and most likely, the Supremes will likely protect Trump by implying a right based on the general structure of the Constitution. On to cartoons.

Judge Cannon bars the DOJ from Trump. We thought we’d hit bottom and then we heard knocking from below:

Trump envies Charles. There’s always Burger King:

Republican immigration plan:

Ukraine advances supported by Russian troops:

Putin maintains same strategy:

Right to choose has many meanings:

DeSantis Dickitude

The Daily Escape:

Cathedral Valley, Capitol Reef NP – September 2022 photo by Mary Warner

Pretty sure everyone saw the news about planes landing on Martha’s Vineyard full of Venezuelan immigrants. From the NYT:

“The migrant group, which included children, arrived on two planes around 3 p.m. without any warning, said State Senator Julian Cyr, a Massachusetts Democrat representing Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard, and Nantucket. Officials and volunteers from the island’s six towns “really moved heaven and earth to essentially set up the response that we would do in the event of a hurricane,”

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) took credit for sending the planes with migrants. This is frat-boy behavior from a dick Republican governor. Not to be outdone in showing his big dickitude, Texas governor Greg Abbott (R) sent two busloads of migrants to the home of VP Kamala Harris in Washington DC.

DeSantis isn’t the first to do this. The JFK Library twitter account reminds us that in 1962:

“To embarrass Northern liberals and humiliate Black people, southern White Citizens Councils started their so-called “Reverse Freedom Rides,” giving Black people one-way tickets to northern cities with false promises of jobs, housing, and better lives.”

Maybe DeSantis and Abbott should have read a few history books before deciding to ban books.

DeSantis knows that Florida is home to 60% of the Cubans living in the US. These immigrants fled to the US to escape poverty, violence, and a Communist dictatorship. Many didn’t follow immigration laws at the time. More still try to reach Florida every week. Is DeSantis saying that he doesn’t want Venezuelan migrants but sure, more Cuban migrants are ok?

MA State Rep. Dylan Fernandes, whose district includes Martha’s Vineyard, tweeted: (brackets by Wrongo)

“The Governor of one of the biggest states in the nation has been spending time hatching a secret plot to round up & ship people—children, families-lying to them about where [they’re] going just to gain cheap political points on Tucker [Carlson] and MAGA twitter….These immigrants were not met with chaos, they were met with compassion. We are a community & nation that is stronger because of immigrants.”

Another thing: Have these plane/bus operators committed crimes? Airlines usually file manifests about who is onboard and where they’re going. Why would they, most likely private/charter operators, agree to be part of a political stunt?

The companies that transported the migrants should be told that while Abbot or DeSantis can hire them, the transport companies also have legal obligations to their passengers. If the charter companies are MAGA and won’t comply, they could have their permission to operate revoked.

And one more thing: Why are people who may not qualify for asylum being sent to other parts of the US rather than being sent back to their country of origin? And by self-professed law-and-order type governors?

DeSantis says he’s a Christian, but he’s not clothing the naked or feeding the hungry. He’s doing the opposite: Driving them from his state, not because it’s required legally, but because he can use them to advance his political ambitions. He’s using vulnerable human beings for his personal advancement. That’s evil personified.

Are we now a country of political gotcha? Should Chicago and NYC send their gang bangers to Florida and Texas? What do any of these stunts solve? From Digby about DeSantis:

“…his despicably cruel, racist worldview has been embraced by conservative Christians [for] as long as I can remember. Certainly in the years after 9/11 it was on display everywhere you looked. Their view of Christianity is that Jesus loves white people like them, period. Everyone else can literally go to hell.”

There is nothing Christian or Conservative about what DeSantis did. The folks in Martha’s Vineyard, who welcomed the immigrants, were the ones who acted as Christians. DeSantis is surely aware of the passage in Matthew:

“Whatsoever you do to the least of my people, that you do unto me.”

The requirement of that passage is what a Christian church on Martha’s Vineyard did to help these migrants. All that DeSantis and his friends do is complain that they can’t have their preferred prayers said in public schools.

Christian nationalism as it is practiced today in the US is becoming the worst and most destructive heresies to afflict American Christians. More about this tomorrow.

This incident on Martha’s Vineyard is another reminder that a central conceit of Republican politics is that everyone is secretly as cruel as they are. And because of that, no one would be genuinely willing to help the people Republicans pack into planes and buses and ship off to liberal land.

They’re wrong.

Corporate Money Is Flowing To Senate Republicans

The Daily Escape:

Sunset, Housatonic River, New Milford CT – 2022 photo by Tony Vengrove

There are just 55 days left until the 2022 midterm elections, and Wrongo’s crystal ball remains cloudy. For example, take the US Senate race in Pennsylvania. Democrat John Fetterman leads Republican Mehmet Oz by 48.5% to 40.4% in the 535 average of polls as of September 8. Sounds like a big lead, no?

But the US Chamber of Commerce told Axios on Sept. 11 that it was donating $3 million to support Oz’s campaign. Who is the US Chamber? They are an industry group that represents virtually every major American corporation. From Judd Legum:

“Corporations — whether individually or through a trade organization like the Chamber — are prohibited from donating $3 million directly to Oz’s campaign. (Corporate PAC donations are capped at $5,000 per election.) So instead, the Chamber is routing the money through the Senate Leadership Fund, a Super PAC set up by Republican Leader Mitch McConnell….The Senate Leadership Fund can raise unlimited funds from any source and spend them to boost Oz and other Republican candidates.”

In a statement, Chamber EVP Neil Bradley described Oz as “a pro-business champion” and said Fetterman “subscribes to a far-left, government-knows-best approach.”

So, America’s big corporations are against Fetterman. Sounds like a reason to be for him.

Legum takes a deep dive into where the US Chamber gets the millions it is donating to promote Oz’s candidacy: It comes from dues paid by member corporations. And which corporations are members? The Chamber keeps its membership list secret. More from Legum:

“We know, however, that virtually every major American corporation is a member of the Chamber. The Chamber’s board of directors includes representatives from FedEx, Bristol Myers Squibb, Facebook, AT&T, United Airlines, Abbott, 3M, Microsoft, Deloitte, Fidelity, Chevron, Intuit, Xerox, Pfizer, Dow, AllState, Delta, and many others.”

And most member companies don’t have a board seat. Their donations are secret as well, but CVS disclosed that it paid $500,000 to the Chamber in 2021 and $325,000 to a related organization, the US Chamber Institute for Legal Reform. And CVS isn’t a board member! Imagine how much the really big guns paid.

A few major corporations aren’t members. Apple, for example, resigned its membership in 2009 in protest of the Chamber’s policy on climate change.

Sadly, corporations are not accountable (or even visible) in their support of the extreme policies of the GOP when they donate through vehicles like the US Chamber. We have to hope that as the Republican message gets ever more extreme, corporations will have a harder time continuing their support for this type of Citizens United chicanery.

This shows just how scummy our politics have become with the help of the Roberts Court and the Federalist Society. If it’s illegal to donate a certain amount directly to this person or organization, we simply create a PAC or a Super-PAC, and then donate huge sums directly to them.

If creating a PAC achieves this result, how is the individual limitation protecting democracy?

There’s an old joke about how if you know a little about politics, your issues are guns, abortion and taxes. If you know a lot about politics, your issue is campaign finance reform.

Pennsylvania is one of a handful of states that could determine which Party holds the majority in the Senate. While Fetterman has a lead, Pennsylvania is still a competitive state, with money pouring into its governor’s race as well. This $3 million from the Chamber could have a real impact on the outcome.

It’s important to understand that more than 40% of the Pennsylvania electorate seems to want what Oz is offering. That’s scary, and it speaks to something that many in the media don’t want to address. They’re actually scared to address what the Republican Party has become. It isn’t surprising because the media are both a large part of the problem and not a part of the solution.

And when Biden accurately calls out what the Republican Party has become, when he says that Republican behavior and beliefs are inimical to what America is supposed to be, the media says he’s being divisive.

Oz is an example of what happens when one Party creates an existential situation out of whole cloth. When it’s backed by their 30 years of increasing extremism, the existential threat to democracy is now real.

No, America’s corporations aren’t going to save you. Giving money and time to Democratic Senate candidates like Fetterman, or Georgia’s Warnock (up by 2%), or Arizona’s Kelly (up by 2%), or New Hampshire’s Hassan (up by 4%), or Ohio’s Ryan (up by 1%), or North Carolina’s Beasley (up by 1%) MIGHT save you.

Do what you can.

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – September 11, 2022

It’s 21 years since the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. As Michael de Adder says:

Twenty one years on, America is more at war with itself than with any foreign terrorists, despite having troops deployed in 80 countries. Our society and our democracy are threatened from within in a way that Osama bin Laden could never have managed. And where are we today? Cartoonist Mike Luckovich has a thought:

If ever so briefly after that fateful day. Today we face threats that might end our democracy:

We’ve nearly lost our social cohesion
We aren’t dealing with income inequality
We’re seeing racism grow
We see clear threats to the right to vote, or whether our votes will even count if we cast them

In these 21 years, Republicans have moved from being the Party of national security to the Party of grievance and anger. As Elliot Ackerman wrote last year in Foreign Affairs:

“From Caesar’s Rome to Napoleon’s France, history shows that when a republic couples a large standing military with dysfunctional domestic politics, democracy doesn’t last long. The US today meets both conditions.”

MAGA asks the wrong question:

When you have no policies, this is what you get:

Let’s close today with a song by Mary Chapin Carpenter that she wrote back on the first anniversary of 9/11. Carpenter was inspired by an interview with Jim Horch, an ironworker who was among the early responders at the WTC site. Here’s part of what Horch said:

“My responsibility at the site was to try to remove big pieces of steel. The building fell so hard there wasn’t even concrete. It was dust….I started to feel the presence of spirits…not very long after I was there. The energy that was there was absolutely incredible and…it was more than just the people that I was working with…it was energy left behind….One day when I was working, I felt this energy and it felt lost and it wanted to go home but it didn’t know how to go home and it came to me to go to Grand Central Station. When I got off the subway, I walked into the Great Room. Into where the constellation is in the ceiling. And I walked around the perimeter and…out of the building. I didn’t feel the energy anymore. I could feel it leave.”

And here’s Carpenter’s “Grand Central Station”:

While Wrongo Was Away

The Daily Escape:

Morning storm, Grays Beach, Cape Cod, MA – August 2022 photo by David J. Long

It’s good to be back. Did Wrongo miss anything besides the fraught decision by a Trump-appointed judge about the FBI’s search of Mar-a-Lago (MAL)? Or, the contrasting apocalyptic speeches by Biden and Trump?

First, with the end of summer in sight, a few words about what Wrongo did on his vacation. We attended a Judy Collins concert at Tanglewood, MA. At 83, her voice remains remarkable. She opened with “Both Sides Now” and although Joni Mitchell owns the song’s copyright, Judy Collins owns the song. Collins performed songs by many other artists and led the crowd in several folk-style sing alongs. It was a very worthwhile evening.

Let’s turn to the two big news items that occurred over the Labor Day break.

First, the competing views of America by President Biden and the former president. Last Thursday, Biden gave a speech identifying Trump and MAGA Republicans as a threat to democracy. Then on Saturday, Trump gave a speech in Pennsylvania that proved Biden’s point.

Trump reprised his “Pocahontas” attack on Elizabeth Warren. He claimed that the FBI planted evidence at MAL. He called for the death penalty for drug dealers, and a ban on electric vehicles. Trump took on the FBI and DOJ:

“The FBI and the Justice Department have become vicious monsters, controlled by radical left scoundrels, lawyers and the media, who tell them what to do.”

David Frum in The Atlantic:

“For the 2022 election cycle, smart Republicans had a clear and simple plan: Don’t let the election be about Trump. Make it about gas prices, or crime, or the border, or race, or sex education, or anything—anything but Trump….Republicans had good reason to dread the havoc he’d create if he joined the fight in 2022.”

Now, Biden’s attacks have pushed Trump over the edge — exactly where Democrats want him in the run-up to the midterms. More from Frum:

“Biden dangled the bait. Trump took it—and put his whole party on the hook with him. Republican leaders are left with little choice but to pretend to like it.”

Sounds hopeful to Wrongo.

Second, Monday brought the order by federal judge Aileen Cannon approving Trump’s request to appoint a special master to review the documents seized by the FBI from MAL. This stops at least temporarily, federal prosecutors from using those documents in their investigation into obstruction and mishandling of government secrets by Trump.

From a political viewpoint, while her incorrect reading of the facts and the law may slow the investigation, the DOJ was never going to indict Trump before the midterms. They’re saying they are still at the early stages of the investigation.

The judge’s decision is wrong, because stolen defense secrets aren’t privileged; they are the evidence that Trump committed a crime.

It seems clear that the DOJ hasn’t decided whether to appeal her decision to the 11^th Circuit, or to play out the special master fight. Of course, it could start by complying with the order and then appeal once the judge has: a) selected a special master, and b) provided instructions on the scope and duration of effort by the special master.

The DOJ’s delay may be caused by the fact that after an appeal to the 11^th Circuit, any further appeal is first heard by a single Supreme Court Justice before it goes on to an expanded Supreme Court hearing. In this case, that initial hearing would be before Justice Clarence Thomas, who would likely side with Trump.

Like in Biden’s attack on democracy strategy, Trump’s theft of government secrets will remain a front page story throughout the mid-terms, and regardless of what happens afterwards, all the way to the 2024 presidential election.

The end game politically is to persuade the few persuadables on the Right, along with the majority of Independents to agree with Biden: That we’re in a “war” about the future of our democracy. The threat from one side of our political spectrum is grave. And it’s Biden’s obligation to do whatever he can to pull people away from the brink. On Friday, Biden said to Peter Doocy on FOX:

“I don’t consider Trump supporters a threat to the country. I do think anyone who calls for the use of violence, refuses to acknowledge an election….changing the way you count votes, that is a threat to democracy.”

That clarifies a message that could reach a few Republicans. They and most Independents should then vote with the Dems in November. The Dems now need to carry that message to its logical conclusion.

These can be good developments for Democrats. Before the Dobbs decision and the raid on MAL, Republicans had convinced Americans that the greatest threat to democracy was high gasoline prices.

Now Dems should be going for a win.

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – August 28, 2022

A thought experiment about Trump’s collection of classified documents. Forget for a minute that we’re talking about Trump.

What does the US government (USG) do if it finds out a former employee took home dozens of boxes of sensitive/classified government information without authority? And then the USG finds out that the documents the former employee had taken included information on some of its foreign operations. And that the employee kept them in an unlocked closet for eighteen months?

The USG would assume that every one of those operations had been compromised, because it’s totally wrong to assume otherwise. So, the USG would move to close the affected operations down. It would pull its people and invent a cover story that the other side might buy as plausible. It would attempt to insulate its foreign operatives.

The agencies involved (CIA, DIA, AID, State Department, FBI) would lose some credibility for a blown operation, along with the budget for those operations. It would need to find the money to wind up and cover them up. They would have to lay the groundwork for replacement operations along with new budgets. That would take time. They would have to repair the damage to their networks: The foreign governments and recruited private actors, all because some shit for brains former USG employee stole classified records.

How do we estimate the costs Trump has imposed on this country, just from the activities implicated in his set of stolen secret documents? And what was his purpose? On to cartoons.

He can’t just take his sharpie and write DECLASSIFIED on it: