What to do with a Supreme Court of corrupt liars?

The NPR show The 1A had an episode last week that discussed what can be done with the Supreme Court. The current Court (or at least a good number of its members) appear to be corrupt liars – they have been influenced by outside money and have done the opposite of what they said under oath. They also act in a partisan manner, supporting Republicans and blocking Democrats. Too many of their rulings are through the shadow docket without arguments or explanations. They’ve lost the respect of a large number of people. So what should be done? Guests on the show are: Kate Shaw, professor at University of Pennsylvania and co-host of Strict Scrutiny. Alicia Bannon, the judiciary program director at the Brennan Center for Justice, and Daniel Epps, professor at Washington University School of Law. I am working from the transcript. At the top I’m told the transcript may contain errors. Right off I see the speakers are not identified by name and the method of identifying them by number isn’t consistent. So I may not be accurate in identify the speakers. The discussion began with opinions about the Calais case that gutted Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act by declaring gerrymandering can proceed without regard to race. Bannon said that there is such a thing as the Purcell principle that says the court should avoid making election changes too close to an election. A map may be discriminatory, but it must be used for the imminent election. Epps added a reason for that is one of the parties may give reasons why the decision should be reconsidered. Overall the court should exercise caution. That wasn’t invoked in this case. The justices seemed eager to let legislatures revise their maps, leading to changing maps as an election is proceeding, causing chaos over the primaries. Also, issuing the ruling in April, rather than January or June, was the month to cause the most election chaos. Much of the show was host Jen White reading suggestions of Court reform from listeners and sometimes asking her guests to comment on them. I skipped most of the suggestions that didn’t get comment. Shaw said this Congress is unwilling to regulate the Court. The Court would not want Congress to regulate it. Alito told the Wall Street Journal in which he said Congress has no constitutional authority regulate the Court, which Shaw says is flat wrong and a stunning statement. Shaw said she thinks there are things Congress could do: Mandate a code of ethics. Limit when the shadow docket is used. Set the number of members (which had been done in the past). Shaw added we (most of us) want a Court that protect groups that are too small to protect themselves. But this Court is overprotecting the rich parts of the majority that don’t need protecting. Epps said the current system of selecting justices works to give us more extreme partisan views. Listener Matt proposes the idea that the Court be made up of a rotating body of one judge from each Court of Appeals, with a new panel every year. Shaw responded by saying it’s interesting and she doesn’t see a constitutional problem with it. The current Court chooses cases that allows them to give the answer they want to give. Perhaps outsourcing that function would be good. Listener Augustus proposed justices get an 18 year term that expires just after the presidential and midterm elections, giving a vote of confidence from the electorate and avoids making an appointment during an election year. Bannon added this idea would tighten the democratic link between the court and public while also respecting judicial independence. Over time the Court would more reflect public values. Historically, Carter had no Court appointments and the nasty guy had three. More regular terms would prevent that imbalance. Also, the Court wouldn’t be so high stakes. Shaw reviewed the way justices get on the Court. The current Senate hearings are politicized, choreographed, and not informative. Senators give speeches and the candidates evade questions. No one learns much. We don’t know anything about how a president picks a nominee, including whether they give assurances on how they will decide a given question. We do know when the nominee gets before the Senate such questions are evaded. Listener John suggested that a nominee should get approval from 75% of the Senate. Epps agrees that would give us a more moderate candidate. We used to have a filibuster on nominees, which required a 60% approval, but Republicans got rid of that in 2017, so requiring 75% approval isn’t going to happen. Shaw said even if reform of the Court doesn’t seem possible right now a public conversation still needs to happen so that perhaps in a decade reform can happen. Bannon added we need to create the political momentum and opportunity for reform. Emily Singer of Daily Kos wrote about the nasty guy’s $1.8 billion slush fund he wants to disburse to traitorous insurrectionists – people who attacked the Capitol, broke the law, and were correctly prosecuted. But there are people who actually deserve a payout from a weaponized Department of Justice. These are people who had to go to court to defend themselves from fraudulent charges brought by the nasty guy. They had to spend their own money to do it and suffered pain and anguish from being the focus of attack by the nasty guy and his minions. Singer lists some of these people and says the list is not exhaustive. In her list are: James Comey and his daughter Maureen. New York Attorney General Letitia James, the one who successfully prosecuted him for falsified business records. John Bolton, who wrote a book saying the nasty guy had abused power. Former Federal Reserve Board Chair Jerome Powell who refused to let the nasty guy dictate interest rates. Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook, who the nasty guy tried to fire because she didn’t support lowering interest rates. Kilmar Abrego Garcia, wrongly deported and facing deportation again. ChongLy Thao, wrongly arrested by ICE in a dangerous manner. The DC sandwich thrower. The Broadview Six, who were arrested for protesting inhumane treatment at the Broadview detention center near Chicago. Last week Oliver Willis of Kos discussed the report by Judd Legum in his Popular Information newsletter that correlated the nasty guy’s financial disclosures with public statements showing that he praises companies while purchasing their stock. Willis wrote:

Legum wrote on X that he tracked the story’s coverage in mainstream media, with zero mentions by CBS, CNN, Fox News, NPR, PBS, Politico, Semafor, and Business Insider. Of course, Fox News is effectively right-wing propaganda, and CBS is now owned by the pro-MAGA Ellison family. NPR and PBS have been targeted by defunding legislation. But the other outlets present themselves as providers of critical, unbiased journalism, so their silence raises significant questions.

Even so, the general public is hearing about the nasty guy’s corruption. Lisa Needham of Kos wrote that the vice nasty is working hard to root out fraud. It’s strange because didn’t DOGE get rid of fraud last year? The cases he is on now (and loudly proclaiming how wonderful his efforts are) appear to be making claims of fraud where very little exists or where states have been already been aggressive in rooting it out. He also wants to make sure he takes these cases to red state judges because blue state judges are “corrupt.” Wrote Needham:

There’s no question that the anti-fraud initiative is about attacking blue states, but it’s also a pathetic attempt to recreate the DOGE era to get conservatives whipped into a froth about endless fraud without acknowledging that it was supposed to have been eradicated.

I’m sure his definition of fraud is that money is supporting the kinds of people he doesn’t like.

Not even an intelligible lie

I finished the book Wendy Carlos, a Biography by Amanda Sewell. Yes, this is the Carlos that popularized synthesizer music, starting with the release in 1968 of the hit Switched On Bach, though she did much more than that. I remember in my youth being quite taken with this LP. I was already a fan of classical music and this was great stuff. I also got the Well Tempered Synthesizer, the Switched on Brandenburgs, and Switched On Bach II Many years later when it was reissued on CD I bought that too and after a while I realized these performances are actually quite musical. So when I saw the book I knew I had to get it (though I did first check ratings to see it was any good, and it is). Yes, Carlos is transgender and the Switched On Bach album was originally released under her deadname (as trans activists now put it). Being trans, especially female trans, did have a big impact on her life, even though Sewell says Carlos claims being trans is the least interesting thing about her. That’s a notable thing to say because everyone else – the media and many people who know of her music – being trans is the most important thing about her. They want to focus on the trans and not the music. And when they focus on the trans they either want all the little details about her surgery or they are against trans people and say nasty things. Carlos is a well educated musician and composer. While growing up she frequently built the components she needed for a home studio. She did her graduate work at Columbia University, which was just getting into electronic music. She was an early customer of Bob Moog (rhymes with vogue) and his synthesizer components, even though she found them cumbersome and inadequate. It was on the Moog Synthesizer that she tediously created that first Bach album. She was a technical resource for early synthesizer magazines. So in the late 1960s she really did understand what Moog’s devices could do. One purpose of the album, especially the second movement of the Brandenburg #3, was to demonstrate what a synthesizer could do. Bach wrote only two chords for that second movement, relying on a violin soloist to improvise – and Carlos definitely did that. Sewell did extensive research before writing the book, examining every document related to Carlos she could get her hands on. So the book has extensive notes on where Sewell found every little fact she presents. Sewell says at the time Carlos was working on Switched On Bach she also began her gender transition. She knew she was female from a young age. Few, including Carlos, thought the album would generate small sales. She and everyone else was astonished the album soon went platinum. And Carlos had a problem. Being female transgender in 1968 was not safe. She felt she could not appear in public. She became a recluse. That meant she was not available to do all the publicity stuff related to a best selling album, including giving interviews. A whole decade would pass before Carlos felt safe enough. She came out through an interview that appeared in Playboy. And was burned by it. The interview was much longer than would fit in the magazine and the parts chosen to print emphasized the details of the transition and not the music. Even late in life when her name comes up there is more talk of her being trans rather than how groundbreaking her music was and important it still is. I recommend the book to those who are Carlos or classical music fans. Alas, Carlos, on her website, blasts the book as belonging on the fiction shelf because it so completely mischaracterizes her. How could it not be fiction if Sewell never talked to her or anyone close to her? Sewell wrote in the introduction that she repeatedly tried to talk to Carlos and was refused each time. And Carlos’ bio on her website says nothing about being trans. Being trans may be the least important thing about her, but it did have big consequences in her life. I wish we lived in a world where it didn’t. First, it forced her into seclusion for a decade. Then she was in an ongoing battle with media in how she wanted to be portrayed. She wanted to talk music, they wanted to talk surgery. It’s amazing and annoying how many people think they know more about what is going on in Carlos’ head that she does. I agree with Carlos the music is much more important. There’s also a lot of music beyond Bach on a synthesizer. I also agree there is no such thing as a Transgender Symphony in the same way there isn’t female music and male music. I would urge you go out and listen some of it (the albums with Weird Al Yankovic sound quite intriguing) but most of it isn’t available. She found the MP3 format used by download and streaming services to have inadequate sound quality. There are a few videos of her on You Tube which show her with glued on sideburns so she didn’t look too feminine as she appeared under her deadname. Kos of Daily Kos warns us that with the big momentum Harris has there are a lot of scams hoping to cash in. He showed several pleas for money to help Democrats that came over his phone – once one has donated to a campaign one’s phone number is passed around (as I have found with email and snail mail). He investigated some of the groups and found very little gets to candidates – and “consultants” are raking in the bucks. To have your dollars actually go to candidates give those dollars to actual candidates, not PACs. Mark Sumner of Kos wrote about the nasty guy appearing at the National Association of Black Journalists. This is where he said this doozy:

Now she wants to be known as Black. I don’t know. Is she Indian, or is she Black? ... Because she was Indian all the way, then all of a sudden she made a turn and she went—she became a Black person.

He also accused those on stage of asking rude questions. It didn’t go over well. McCarter of Kos discussed some of the reaction. The nasty guy campaign cut the session short it was going so badly. And afterward he accused a lot of people for the problems. Sumner posted again with other things the nasty guy said that are more horrible than the lines that get all the media coverage. For the record, Sumner says all the claims the nasty guy spouted are, we’re not surprised, lies. In a pundit roundup for Kos Chitown Kev quoted Anne Applebaum of The Atlantic describing the recent election in Venezuela that incumbent president Nicholas Maduro claimed he won. The opposition disputes that, saying the election was stolen and Edmundo Gonzáles is the true winner. The opposition assumed the election could be stolen and prepared accordingly. They stayed united no matter what Maduro threw their way. Before the election independent polls showed the opposition with a big lead. AltaVista, a parallel-vote-tabulation initiative, obtained real results from a thousand polling stations, photographed them, and sent results around the world. They had data from 70% of precincts and the data showed 66% for Gonzáles. In contrast, the attempt to overturn the results was sloppy with details even loyalists would find hard to believe. Maduro couldn’t even compose an intelligible lie. In the comments exlrrp posted some good memes. One of them is from George Takei:

When did Trump decide he was orange? I knew him as white before.

Another shows, “The ultimate DEI hires: Don Jr., Eric, and Ivanka.” In response to Vance and his childless cat ladies is one showing Jesus saying, “Wait til they find out I don’t have kids.” A cartoon by Kipper Williams shows Michelangelo painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and a sign on his platform says, “Thank you for not calling me a content creator.”

Both incoherent and irreconcilable with reality

With the removal of McCarthy as Speaker I didn’t have time to delve into the week’s other big story – the nasty guy’s trial for fraud. Last Sunday, the day before that trial got started Heather Vogell of ProPublica, in an article posted on Daily Kos, reported Judge Arthur Engoron granted a summary judgment (no actual trial) in favor of the state of New York that the nasty guy organization executives (meaning him and his sons) engaged in persistent fraud by submitting false and misleading Statements of Financial Condition. Based on that ruling Engoron canceled certificates, which are needed to legally operate in the state. Which means his real estate empire is in peril. Of course, the ruling will be appealed. On Monday Laura Clawson of Kos reported the nasty guy trial for fraud got underway. This is separate but related to Engoron’s ruling above. I don’t know the distinctions. This is a bench trial (no jury) and is a civil case brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James. The result won’t be a prison term, but a fine and James is asking for $250 million. Amazingly the nasty guy actually attended. He didn’t have to and hasn’t attended many of his other court hearings. The nasty guy and his sons of course complained about the judge, the AG, and everyone else of being unfair to him, that it’s all a politically motivated witch hunt to interfere with the election – the same blather he’s been saying for a long time. Hunter of Kos reported that during the lunch break on the first day of the trial (which will last several weeks) the nasty guy emerged from the courtroom and performed an eight minute rant before the cameras. Hunter included video of the whole rant (but why would you want to watch?) and transcriptions of excerpts. In response to one excerpt Hunter wrote:

Members of Trump's base have regularly taken this "fight" language as permission to mount harassment campaigns and death threats against Trump's enemies of the moment, whether they be public figures or private citizens.

Mid afternoon on Monday Kerry Eleveld of Kos posted with a title that serves as a sufficient summary, “Facing potential financial ruin in civil trial, Trump asks his followers to bail him out.” An Associated Press article posted on Kos on Tuesday reported the nasty guy was there again in person. I’ll let the article work through the details of the legal wrangling. Also on Tuesday Mark Sumner of Kos discussed the ranting over this not being a jury trial. Did his lawyers fail to request it? Was the request denied? I read later this type of trial doesn’t get a jury. Sumner wrote:

Trump attorney Alina Habba also complained that Trump wanted a jury. However, when she raised this issue to Engoron, she got back a simple reply: Trump’s legal team had never requested a jury trial. The general assumption has been that this was a screwup on the part of a legal team that has—so far, at least—failed to impress. But it could also be a strategy designed to give Trump what he’s always looking for: someone to attack. ... Keeping the focus on Engoron (with the occasional shot at James), Trump gets to play his favorite role: victim of a system that is always unfair to poor Donald Trump, America’s only honest man. Painting himself as completely beset by radical Democrats, deranged prosecutors, and a legal system isn’t what Trump does in court. It’s what he does every day. It’s also not so different from what he’s done through thousands of other lawsuits. Trump has enormous experience in bullying judges, belittling prosecutors, and evading charges. This is just the latest. The “no jury” bit is just another excuse for him to pound the table when he cries about how this was all so unfair. But hey, it could also be a screwup. And honestly, when it comes to the result of the trial this time, it’s not likely to matter.

An AP article on Wednesday reported the nasty guy was there in person again. There was more of what he does every day, though this time there’s a bit of reporting about one of the witnesses, one of the organization’s accountants. Also, the judge imposed a limited gag order requiring “all participants in the trial not to hurl personal attacks at court staffers.” This was in response to the nasty guy being nasty to one of the clerks. He took that post down. Lisa Rubin, in a thread on Thread Reader App, explains why the nasty guy is taking so much interest in this case he showed up in person.

Part of it is image. Trump’s self concept and public persona alike rest on his King of All Real Estate construct. Although the Attorney General has already exposed how much of it is a fiction, the trial will methodically unspool his legend, witness by email by letter. But it’s more than that. The remedies the AG is seeking — which Trump himself acknowledges constitutes a sort of “corporate death penalty” — are the only ones he can’t campaign away.

He also can’t pardon himself if he managed to get back to the White House. And if he loses he (and his sons) could lose his real estate empire and be barred from doing business in New York. All that could be worse than prison. On Monday, during that first day of the fraud trial, Sumner wrote that when the nasty guy has been speaking lately his words are getting “both incoherent and irreconcilable with reality.” He has examples. The other part of Sumner’s post is how much effort is being spent documenting every one of Biden’s gaffes – did you hear he’s 80? – and how little effort is being spent documenting how disconnected from reality nasty guy’s rants have become. The articles about Biden’s blunders are almost formulaic. But...

What the articles never get around to mentioning is that there is a fundamental difference between Biden making an error or a verbal gaffe, and Trump weaving a whole narrative—complete with people calling him “sir,” crazy whales, or killer batteries—that has no relationship to reality. Failing to highlight that difference isn’t just bad journalism; it’s intentionally bad journalism designed to create a false equivalence. And that’s being generous.

Aldous Pennyfarthing of the Kos community has an example of the reverse. A week ago Biden gave one of the most important speeches of his presidency. He gave...

a fierce defense of democracy, the Constitution, and American values—all while name-checking Donald Trump and the extreme MAGA movement that threatens the basic foundations of our republic. ... You’d think the current president (rightly) calling out his top political rival for being a power-mad, wannabe tinpot dictator who disdains the Constitution would merit searing, front-page coverage across the legacy media. But you’d be wrong.

The speech didn’t make the front page of either the New York Times or Washington Post. Pennyfarthing quoted a tweet from Jeff Sharlet:

Yes, @washingtonpost, “Democracy Dies in the Darkness.” You know where else it can wither? A3, inside, which is where you buried the fiercest, highest stakes pro-democracy speech I’ve heard from a president in my lifetime.

Pennyfarthing then quoted a good chunk of the speech. Biden said the world is watching the chaos in our government:

Think about this: The first meeting I attended of the G7—the seven wealthiest nations in the world—in Europe, the NATO meeting, I sat down—it was in ... January, after being elected—so late January, early February—and it was in England. And I sat down, and I said, “America is back.” And Macron looked at me, and he said, “Mr. President, for how long—for how long?”

NYT does have some good stuff. Hunter discussed an NYT report that looked at Win It Back, a conservative anti-Donald Trump PAC, and their testing of 40 ads in hopes of finding one that would prompt his base to abandon him.

"All attempts to undermine [Trump’s] conservative credentials on specific issues were ineffective," writes McIntosh. "Even when you show video to Republican primary voters — with complete context — of President Trump saying something otherwise objectionable to primary voters, they find a way to rationalize and dismiss it." We’ve been saying this for years, but now $6 million in research hammers it home: Republican voters do not care what Trump says, what he does, or whether he makes an ass of himself on the world stage. Republicanism is a cult.

Hunter then ponders what might work.

Republicans are drawn to Trump because his public performances are seen as enraging non-Republicans and "elites." But if anti-Trump Republicans portray him as a laughingstock? Maybe that’ll have traction. Show the man as he appears on the golf course, not in his suit and tie. Mock him for being revealed as a business failure. Have former members of his administration who now oppose him laugh on camera as they tell viewers that he should be on “Dancing with the Stars,” not in the White House. Show him instead as a weak and pitiful figure whose best days have passed him by, a man who can't keep up with his own lies—an object of derision. Mock him so viciously that Trump's shallow, lib-owning base voters feel like suckers. If ads like these were prolonged enough, Republican voters might not be able to brush them off so easily.

A bit more on McCarthy’s removal. Clawson noted that the nasty guy could have helped McCarthy and didn’t. A good word from him might have swayed enough votes. Yeah, he was sitting in a courtroom while the House drama was going on. But between the vote to keep the government open and the call for McCarthy’s removal the nasty guy did post to his social media. But that didn’t include anything about McCarthy. And when, during the trial, he was asked about McCarthy he ignored the question. Yeah, the House has a Speaker Pro Tempore in Patrick McHenry. About all he’s done so far is retaliate against Democrats. As for actual House business – like a possible government shutdown in mid November – he’s not touching it. Yet. That means Republicans are consumed by palace intrigue over who will be the next Speaker. Two guys have declared they’re candidates. One is Jim Jordan, the guy running the Biden impeachment inquiry and seems to be best at jumping in front of cameras to bellow about Biden. The other is Steve Scalise, current Majority Leader with lots of contacts with other members. But he’s getting treatment for cancer. And... “Neither of the two have proven interested in or capable of compromise with Democrats.” Both are much more likely to blame Democrats. The best outcome would be for moderate Republicans to form an alliance with Democrats. Yeah, that ain’t happening because “none of the Republicans ... have been willing to buck their party, even when they could easily team up with Democrats and create a big enough bloc to have influence.” Even Republicans from districts Biden won are trashing Democrats. Yeah, trashing Democrats. Hunter reported Rep. Nick Langworthy, vice chair of the National Republicans Congressional Committee even added the idea that George Soros and liberal dark money caused McCarthy’s removal.

It only stands to reason, then, that Matt Gaetz is an enormous, caucus-sabotaging asshole because George Soros made him do it. No doubt liberal dark money was behind every far-right Republican extremist's vote to oust the party's leader.

Hunter described what that accusation represents.

It's just as accurate to note that the omnipresent Republican obsession with finding out-group scapegoats for every news event—everything from natural disasters to pathetic intraparty slap-fights—is yet another hallmark of authoritarianism in general and fascism specifically. The party can never fail. It can never have corrupt elements and can never be wrong when it declares that an ideological policy prescription will solve a particular problem. If an indictment comes down, it is because the party's enemies have engineered it. If the party's enacted policies only worsen what they were intended to solve, it is because the party's enemies secretly sabotaged the country to make the party look bad. And of course, if the party is plagued with rabid extremists and flat-out incompetents who themselves keep the party from accomplishing any of the things it promises, or who even flub things so badly that the party can do nothing at all, it is the party's secret enemies who are behind that, too, working with unknown "elites" to trick the party into its own self-destruction. ... You heard it from Langworthy first: Matt Gaetz is secretly in league with the liberal elites.

That should make your blood run cold

In my previous post I told the story of my little red car showing its age (17 years) and refusing to start. The saga continues. I went car shopping on Thursday. A friend took me to a dealer that had an old Honda Insight at a nice low price. I took it for a test drive and immediately saw a deal breaker. Part of the rear window slopes with the roof. Part is vertical. That means there is a bar across the middle of my rearward view. Why anyone – both car designers and government regulators – thought this was acceptable is a mystery. I am leaving behind a car in which I thought the back window was too small. I wasn’t going to buy one with another rearview obstruction. So I said no thanks. I realized the other dealership of interest was less than two miles away. I hadn’t done my daily walking yet so I asked the salesman if it was possible to walk from here to there – if there was a sidewalk the whole way, especially when one major road went under another. He said that wasn’t a problem (I saw later it was), but safety could be – I was in Detroit. So he offered to drive me to the other dealership – in the car I had just declined. I asked him about the bar through the rear view. Yeah, he had to tilt his head up and down to see around it, but he thought he could get used to it. I felt I shouldn't need to get used to it. The second dealer had a Prius I had seen online. I took it for a test drive and decided this would work well. So I bought it. I’ll describe the color as boring black. The paperwork took about two hours. I’ll have to take it back to get the tire sensor replaced. And sometime soon they’ll send the instruction manual. And this car needs one. The big task on Friday was to send the little red car on its way. For that I needed the title. For several years the title sat on one of my cabinets. Then I realized I should put it somewhere safe. Now several years later it wasn’t in the places I thought were safe. After a few hours searching I found it and thought why is it here? There’s nothing safe about this spot. Looking over the title I saw that it had a lien showing. When I bought it I was given a discount if I financed it rather than paying cash – even if I financed for just one month, which I did. The title did not show the lien had been cleared. In what was not my finest hour, I got on the phone and called the loan company. I ended up talking to three different people because when I got disconnected or had to hang up to call somewhere else, I was given a different agent when I called back. The big question was how to get a release letter to me and do so quickly. One guy said we can fax it to you, or to someplace like FedEx or UPS. The next guy said we can only fax it to a DMV office. So I called the Michigan Secretary of State central office to get the fax of a local SoS office. I was told it may not go through on the first try, so I should call the central office and they’ll check with the local office to see if it came through. I wasn’t allowed to call the local office because if they gave out their number they’d spend all day on the phone rather than dealing with customers in their office. After I called the loan company the third time I realized the original release letter would be in the same place I found the title – and it was. The things I do to myself sometimes. A release letter will still come through the mail in two weeks. I didn’t call back a fourth time to cancel that request because the answer bot demands an account number or SSN and because it was a brief loan from 17 years ago it had neither. I called the guy handling the pickup for the car donation company and set a time. I drove the new car to the old one. I transferred the plate and cleaned out the old one. Then I waited a while. The tow truck came and loaded the old car. I said my goodbyes (it had been a part of my life for 17 years), then reached in and pulled out the garage door opener. The car is being taken to a place where it can be sold (likely a scrap yard will buy it) and proceeds given to a charity. The public days of the Detroit Auto Show has been going on for a week and ends tomorrow. I had planned to go on Thursday to see when I might be able to buy an all electric car. I’m sure what I want is still a couple years away. Now that I have a Prius I’m confident will last me a few years the need to find out the electric car schedule is no longer urgent. The Auto Show should be back as an annual event. The nasty guy and his legal difficulties have been in the news a lot this past week. On Wednesday Joan McCarter of Daily Kos reported Letitia James, Attorney General for New York, filed a $250 million civil lawsuit against the nasty guy and his adult children, alleging numerous acts of fraud in the way he valued his real estate holdings. When he needed a loan the claimed value went up (which could act as more collateral for a larger loan) sometimes up to ten times the actual value of the property. When he needed to pay taxes the claimed value went down. This wasn’t a little oopsie. This was intentional and ongoing. Alas, there is no jail time for a civil lawsuit, though James has asked for criminal charges to be brought. I’ve written before that The nasty guy asked for a special master to review the documents taken from Mar-a-Lago, his for profit estate, to see if some of them were really his and should be returned. The nasty guy got as special master one of the people he requested. Also on Wednesday Mark Sumner of Kos reported the nasty guy’s legal team went before the special master Judge Raymond Dearie. It didn’t go well. The legal team tried to cast doubt on whether documents were classified while refusing to show evidence they had been declassified, a “Schrödinger’s cat” position. They wanted to keep the status undetermined. They said future prosecution was “proof” the nasty guy would be endangered by telling the truth. Dearie was quick: show the evidence or shut up. They shut up. In a second post Sumner explained a bit more:

Specifically, Trump’s legal team is refusing to talk about whether, or how, Trump actually tried to declassify any of the documents by claiming it would harm their “defense to the merits of any subsequent indictment.” In other words, they’re saying that if they reveal that Trump didn’t declassify any documents, that could subject him to legal action for stealing and holding highly classified information. Which he did. And if Trump claims he did declassify documents, then he’ll have to prove that in court, and also be subject to possible charges over failure to follow the law regarding declassification. Plus, there’s the whole perjury issue—and the issue of Trump obstructing an investigation—that comes with lying about the whole thing.

The nasty guy has an out – Judge Aileen Cannon, who babied the case all the way and who agreed to the nasty guy’s claims and added a few outrageous conditions of her own, has reserved the right to dismiss the special master if he displeases her. An appeal of Judge Cannon’s ruling is before the 11th Circuit Court. And, as Sumner reported, in a filing for that court the nasty guy made some incredible claims. He, as president, has interest in his own records, no matter the classification. And if he wrote on the documents they are privileged information. Also, the DOJ hasn’t proven the documents are classified. They’re ridiculous claims. See the Presidential Records Act. Also, he’s no longer president. And that last claim should be that the nasty guy hasn’t proven they’re not classified. On Thursday Sumner reported a three judge panel of the 11th Circuit ruled the DOJ and the FBI provided all the legal points and evidence to support their position. And the nasty guy’s team offered only speculation and unsupported claims. The court also had a few things to say to Judge Cannon – such as the reasons she gave for the need of a special master are not in the law. As for the nasty guy the court said he hasn’t shown a need for the classified documents or shown a need to know the contents. Even if he did that doesn’t explain why he should have them. An appeal of an 11th Circuit Court decision goes to the Supremes. What happens there will be a mystery for now. In a late afternoon Thursday post Sumner reported on the latest from Judge Dearie. The nasty guy claimed the classified documents were an FBI plant. Dearie said here’s the list of things the FBI took from Mar-a-Lago. Tell me which are FBI plants. Tell me if the FBI left documents off the list. You can lie all you want to Fox News. But you can’t in my court. Since so many of the nasty guy’s cronies have been subpoenaed Mr. Newberger, who calls himself a political satirist, tweeted a photo of the nasty guy and several cronies at a golf course with the caption: “Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Subpoena.” Turning to Russia, Mark Hertling, a retired soldier, tweeted:

Putin's announced mobilization of 300,000 "reservists" was jaw-dropping to me this morning, but not for the reason some might suspect. Why? Because I know how Russian soldiers are trained, in basic training & in their units.

He then reviewed the extensive training American soldiers get. Then discussed how little training Russian troops, especially conscripts and draftees, get before being tossed into the war. And they don’t get much training once they’re at the front.

The issue is the Russian army is poorly led & poorly trained. That starts in basic training, and doesn't get better during the RU soldier's time in uniform. Mobilizing 300k "reservists" (after failing with depleted conventional forces, rag-tag militias recruiting prisoners & using paramilitaries like the Wagner group) will be extremely difficult. And placing "newbies" on a front line that has been mauled, has low morale & who don't want to be portends more RU disaster. Jaw-dropping. A new sign of RU weakness.

Sumner reviewed Biden’s speech before the United Nations General Assembly, which was about calling out Russia for violations of human rights and of international law. Some of Sumner’s excerpts of Biden’s speech:

This war is about extinguishing Ukraine’s right to exist as a state, plain and simple, and Ukraine’s right to exist as a people. Whoever you are, wherever you live, whatever you believe, that should make your blood run cold. ... To be very blunt, let us speak plainly: A permanent member of the United Nations Security Council invaded its neighbor, attempted to erase a sovereign state from the map. Russia has shamelessly violated the core tenets of the United Nations Charter—none more important than the clear prohibition against countries taking the territory of their neighbor by force. ... If nations can pursue their imperial ambitions without consequence, then we put at risk everything this very institution stands for. Everything. Every victory won in the battlefield belongs to the courageous Ukrainian soldiers, but this past year, the world was tested as well. We did not hesitate. We chose liberty. We chose sovereignty. We stood with Ukraine. ... A nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.

Sumner then discussed how that mobilization of 300K men is going. Charles Jay of the Kos community reported that Alla Pugacheva, a Russian pop music icon, has spoken against the war. She started her career in the 1960s and her Instagram account has 3.5 million followers. Her post with the announcement got 800K likes and 110K comments. For her to declare her opposition is a really big deal. Sumner reviewed the history of the war – what Russia intended and how it went so badly for them. Then Sumner discussed this call for mobilization.

Putin had resisted calling for mobilization, because he knew exactly what that meant. It meant that while Russians were perfectly willing to make happy noises about how Putin used his army of contract soldiers that the average Russian sees as a pathetic pile of misfits constantly bullied by Russia’s criminal-based upper class, they would not make happy sounds if they had to actually put an inch of skin in the game. Back in May, a poll showed that poor Russians—those most likely to have relatives in the military—were, unsurprisingly, the ones most likely to be against the invasion of Ukraine. A majority of Russians who had trouble putting food on the table were either hesitant about continuing the war or straight-up wanted to withdraw from Ukraine. At the other end of the scale, wealthy Russians were hugely in favor of watching poor people get slaughtered for sport.

Then Sumner said there is nothing partial about this mobilization. It looks like a million – not 300,00 – are facing conscription. Whole university classes are being hauled away, even though students were supposedly exempt. And, of course, a greater percent of the conscripts come from ethnic minorities, a form of ethnic cleansing.

Vladimir Putin crashed the Russian army on the rocks of Ukraine. What’s left if it is a wreck tottering on the edge of total destruction. The situation is so bad that Putin has turned to what is legitimately a last-ditch effort to patch the holes and try to keep things afloat long enough to … to … And that’s the real kicker. Putin will hold his mock elections. He will proclaim parts of Ukraine to be parts of Russia. But he will never get to keep them. Still, maybe he will get a little ethnic cleansing done and call that victory. Maybe it’s time for another poll on just how much Russians love this war.

The longer you believe in the con, the harder it is to admit you’ve been scammed

I said yesterday I was relieved the forecast for my area predicted a high of 95F and my thermometer barely cracked 80F. That didn’t happen today. The prediction for today was 92F and my thermometer registered 90F. Last week I reported on a story by Mark Sumner of Daily Kos that said the COVID death rate for white Americans had risen higher than the death rate for black Americans, reversing a trend from early in the pandemic. Wrote Sumner about what he wrote:

However, that article was wrong. So was the source article. Both fell prey to a statistical phenomenon known as Simpson’s Paradox, in which “an association between two variables in a population emerges, disappears, or reverses when the population is divided into subpopulations.” I was wrong, both in my interpretation of the data, and in the commentary I drew from this conclusion. And in both cases, I forgot one of the most serious dictums of any form of journalism: Beware the story that is too friendly to your own beliefs. ... This article was incorrect on its core assumptions. You have a right to expect better. Apologies.

This willingness to admit errors and to explain why they are errors is a big reason why I trust Daily Kos as a primary news source. Yes, I quoted and linked to Sumner’s previous article. So I’m posting this correction. Here’s another example of why I trust Kos. It is again by Sumner and he discussed a new cancer drug and why he is skepical. He didn’t simply praise it and go on to another story. A week ago the New England Journal of Medicine published the results of how well that drug treated a specific form of cancer. There was “100% response” – in all of the patients their tumors were completely eradicated. That’s great! News outlets touted this is a cure for cancer. Sumner explained why that designation is premature: The study had only 12 patients. All that can be determined from a study that small is that a larger study is worthwhile. It was tried on patients with one particular form of cancer. The study is too small to understand side effects and how serious they may be. One side effect might be autoimmune diseases. If it works – if indeed it can be shown effective on a lot more patients, on other types of cancers, and without side effects worse than radiation and chemo – then it can be proclaimed as the new cancer wonder drug. We’d even praise it if it worked only for this one type of cancer. But we don’t know that yet. Joan McCarter of Kos reported Sen. Bernie Sanders held a debate with Sen. Lindsay Graham a couple days ago. Sanders said America spends twice as much on health care than other major countries. The reason is insurance companies are ripping off the system. McCarter wrote:

That’s socialism, said Graham. “And it’s not going to fix America. We are not a socialist nation. There is a better way, I promise you this.”

So if government provides a service that’s socialism and therefore bad. If there is a corporate layer that rips off the government and the citizens then it’s cool. As for Graham’s better way: Gut Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. And, if Republicans retake the Senate, Graham, as head of the Senate Budget Committee, would be in a very good position to make that happen. This is part of a fight among Senate Republicans. The issue at the center of the fight isn’t the cuts, as devastating as they would be to millions of Americans. It’s that several senators insist on talking about the cuts before the midterm elections. I had written that five Republican candidates for governor on Michigan were removed from the primary ballot because they hired a company to gather signatures and too many of those signatures were fraudulent. Rebekah Sager of Kos reported there is a campaign in Nebraska to gather signatures to put a proposal on the November ballot to require voters to have an ID. Yeah, that’s a law adopted in many other states that suppresses black voters. So, yeah, a Republican effort. This campaign in Nebraska hired the same company that turned in fraudulent signatures in Michigan. Well, we don’t know if they’re fraudulent yet. But there have been so many complaints about the people gathering signatures (and being paid to do it) that law enforcement has started to investigate and the state Attorney General has heard about it. The primary complaint is they can’t explain what the proposal is about or they are lying about it. Sager wrote about Sen. Carol Blood, a Democratic nominee for governor.

“We have real fraud taking place in the streets in order to prevent fraud that is not happening in Nebraska. … It is a weird dichotomy,” Blood said.

If you were the victim of a con would you tell anyone about it? If you were well snookered and ripped off, would your pride let you admit it? What if it wasn’t a monetary con but a political one? What if the con was so complete you invested your identity into what the con artist told you? What if admitting you were conned meant expulsion from your tribe? Dartagnan of the Kos community explores those ideas. That’s why many followers of the nasty guy can’t admit their faith in him was misplaced or wrong:

That is a personal indictment of their own intelligence and self-worth, as well as an indictment of the people in whom they most commonly put their faith (usually friends and family); for that reason, their errors can never be acknowledged. The fact that those who presume to challenge their self-worth are their political opponents makes such an acknowledgment doubly impossible under any circumstances. ... Trump uses every opportunity to tell his supporters that such assertions [that the election was stolen] are the product of a “left-wing mob,” which stokes the same visceral fight-or-flight response in which Fox News regularly traffics. But the real kicker is the cloying implication that his supporters have special knowledge, that they’re smart, danger! And every assertion to the contrary by Democrats is simply perceived as an attack on their intelligence. “Of course the election was stolen, my tribe and a hundred social media sites confirm this,” they insist. And it makes no difference how much evidence is produced to the contrary.

This brings to mind something I had heard several years ago. A con man will frequently convince the mark that they as a team are conning someone else. Such as what Putin did to the nasty guy. Because the con man warns his marks what the official legal or Democratic response will be and defines what those responses are supposed to mean, when they happen the mark feels vindicated – my side was right. Dartagnan discussed why many “religious” people embrace the Big Lie:

An attack on Trump is viewed as an implicit attack on their faith, for which they’ve invested (some of them literally) practically everything they own. Their entire self-worth is predicated on the implicit assumption that they, and they alone, are “right.” In fact, that’s the comforting attraction of many religions: the need to be proven right. And as a corollary, anything espoused by “godless” Democrats—no matter how objectively rational—must be wrong.

Maria Konnikova has written books about how scams work. In a 2019 interview with NPR she said:

One of the things you realize when, you know, you study con artists is that we're conning ourselves all the time about who we are, about our stories. And con artists just pick up on that. They figure out how we're conning ourselves. That's one of the reasons why we're so susceptible.

Elizabeth Winkler, writing for Quartz in 2016 noted:

The longer you believe in the con, the harder it is to admit you’ve been scammed.

In a post of two weeks ago Marissa Higgins of Kos reported that Adam Tritt, an Advanced Placement English teacher at a high school in Brevard, Florida, is running a “banned book drive” to buy copies of books banned or challenged in Florida so students can read them over the summer. At the time of the post Tritt had raised $5,000. Moms for Liberty, a local chapter of a conservative group working to get books banned, is furious. They took to Facebook to claim Tritt was a sex offender, a “groomer,” and a provider of pornographic books. Those moms, in their fury, included a link to the fundraiser. Perhaps that put the link in front of more eyes and made donating a bit easier?

A guy who got the silver spoon and still failed

Last Tuesday the New York Times delved into the finances of Fred Trump, father of the nasty guy, and the hundreds of millions of dollars daddy shoveled at his kids through various tax dodges. Mark Sumner of Daily Kos provides a summary. Then he adds:

Donald Trump isn’t just a rich kid who was born with a silver spoon in his mouth and a daddy who put cash into him through every orifice. He’s not just a guy who was still living on his allowance into his 50s. He’s a guy who got all that and still failed.
…
The door that was left open, happily enough for Trump, was real estate. And that’s how he recovered from spending all his daddy’s cash and then some — by being bailed out by Russian mobsters engaged in a series of money-laundering schemes. It was money-laundering that injected fresh blasts of cash into Trump’s ruptured accounts. When his actual father was no longer there to save him, Trump relied on his Russian sugar daddies.

It is too late for criminal charges over what Daddy did. But the tax fraud probably didn’t stop with Daddy’s death and civil charges are still possible. So the IRS and New York state authorities are very interested in this story.

Self-focused and myopic

Amy Koch was a leader in the Minnesota state Senate and was instrumental in getting the marriage protection amendment onto next year's ballot. She's now out of the Senate after it was revealed she had an affair with a senior staffer who is not her husband (which means the staffer cheated on his wife). So much for protecting marriage.

John Madeiros sent Koch a letter on behalf of all gays and lesbians apologizing for destroying her marriage. It is worthy of Mark Twain (say some responders) in its sly snarkiness. I'll quote only a sample, the whole delicious thing is worth a read.

It is now clear to us that if we were not so self-focused and myopic, we would have been able to see that the time you wasted diligently writing legislation that would forever seal the definition of marriage as being between one man and one woman, could have been more usefully spent reshaping the legal definition of "adultery."

No, really, fraud is a problem

Guy Raz did an 11 minute segment on All Things Considered on NPR yesterday discussing voter fraud prevention. The piece included an interview with the GOP Secretary of State of Kansas, Kris Kobach. He says fraud may be rare, but that's not the point. In battleground states the tiny amount of voter fraud can still account for more votes than the difference between the two candidates. Dems say that efforts to combat fraud actually prevent poor, college students, and other likely Dem voters from being able to vote. The GOP says that government issued ID cards (the lack of one is the most common ways to prevent citizens from voting) are free. Dems counter that the court costs to document citizenship necessary to get one of those cards is actually quite expensive.

We agree God wants gay people around

Steve Simon is a Democratic Representative in the Minnesota House. He is on a committee debating whether a ban on same sex marriage should be placed in the state constitution. He gives a great 3 minute speech to his colleagues about why he is voting no. A paraphrase of his remarks: If homosexuality is innate instead of learned, and is a gift from God, how many more gay people does God have to create before we agree God wants them around? I'm comfortable with a society that bends towards justice, fairness, wholeness, openness, and compassion.

The bill passed out of committee on a party-line vote. The Minnesota legislature is controlled by the GOP.



Steve and Roger Ham, a gay couple, have adopted 12 children. They adopted one and then found the boy had 4 siblings in the foster care system. So they adopted them. They also served, for a while, as foster parents and every so often they encountered another case with siblings. However, 12 is enough. The adoption agency thinks Steve and Roger are fantastic parents. The state of Arizona doesn't like the idea of gay couples adopting, so Steve is the only legal parent. This is a wonderful (and long) story in the Arizona Republic.



Ricky Santorum, formers senator and wannabe prez. candidate (just Google the name and see what pops up), was asked why he is working so hard to deny adoption by gay people. His answer was that adoption is a privilege, not a right.

Sorry, Ricky, the 14th Amendment covers privileges too, or anything in which you say I'm better than you are and I get to decide what you are allowed to do.



Google's guiding principle is "Don't be evil." They topped that by doing quite a bit of good recently. They bought a 90 second ad on the hit show Glee (topping $800K) a show that has several prominent gay characters. The ad features their Chrome web browser. The cool part is the browser is showcasing the It Gets Better project of Dan Savage and his husband. Thank you, Google.



I wrote a while back about Pam's House Blend being whacked with a lawsuit by an organization whose income is from shakedowns of blogs for posting copyright material even though the blog follows fair use guidelines. That prompted Jim Burroway of Box Turtle Bulletin to declare he will no longer quote or link to any newspaper that has joined that organization. I'll let you read the whole list, I'll only note it includes the Detroit News, the conservative of Detroit's two newspapers.



Barbara Lenk has just been approved to join the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. It is news because Lenk is an open lesbian with a wife. The two were married when the state allowed gay marriage (wow -- that was seven years ago this month!).



Friendfactor is a new gay rights organization. We need another? This one is different. We may not do something if a big organization asks, but we would if a friend asks. So this group and accompanying website runs campaigns to influence legislation by guiding people to ask their friends to call legislators. Their first big effort is for marriage equality in New York.

Blog shakedown

One of the gay news blogs I read daily is Pam's House Blend. As is done by many progressive blogs, Pam and the other major writers will quote a bit of a story published elsewhere, add a photo or two, provide a link to the original, and perhaps add some commentary. I do a bit of that myself, though I don't use many pictures and my readership is in the 10s while Pam's is somewhere north of 100,000. As far as gay blogs go, Pam is rather influential. But blogging, even with ads on the site, doesn't pay well. Pam and other contributors keep day jobs and must interrupt those jobs when covering an event or take part in a conference. Travel expenses are barely covered by ad revenue.

There is a conservative organization out there (which I'm reluctant to name to avoid popping up on their Google Alert) that targets progressive blogs and recently hit the Blend. They file a suit of copyright infringement, asking for a penalty greater than what most blogs can afford, but small enough it's too expensive to hire a lawyer to protest the suit. They don't warn the blog owners to stop infringing on copyrighted material, they go straight for the suit. In addition they ask the court, not just compensation for the infringement, but to seize the site's domain name. That makes the risk of a trial even higher. The real goal is, of course, to shut the blog down. It is essentially a shakedown.

If it went to trial, Pam might have won based a couple facts. First, she (and other contributors) stay within "fair use" of copyrighted material, meaning short quotes are permitted, reproductions of whole articles are not. Second, as is now being revealed, the leeches do not actually own the copyrighted material they mention in their suit. That means they are not the ones being harmed and thus have no legal standing to bring the suit. More info here.

Pam is quite annoyed that both previously targeted blogs and mainstream medial has been mighty quiet on this extortion. Perhaps that is beginning to change.

You don't want the court to define you

I haven't wanted to bother with this particular scandal -- ho hum, another anti-gay "expert" is caught with his pants down in the company of a rentboy -- but there is now a twist that interests me. George Rekers was paid by the state of Florida to testify against repealing the ban of adoption by gays. He found "Lucien" on a rentboy website and hired him for a 10-day European vacation so that Lucien could "lift his luggage" and provide extensive nude massages. If you really want more detail there are numerous gay blogs happy to share.

Rekers is now threatening a defamation lawsuit because some Florida newspapers have said he's gay, something he hotly denies. If the suit goes to court it will hinge on what is the definition of homosexuality. Is homosexuality an orientation in which one is attracted to people of the same sex -- one who is aroused by same-sex contact? A trial witness from a mental health profession or psychological organization would testify to that commonly accepted definition of the term. However, the anti-gay crowd, of which Rekers had been a head honcho, defines the term differently. There is no such thing as homosexual orientation, there is only homosexual behavior. They insist on this definition because they want to claim everyone is straight, only deviants engage in homosexual behavior, and they can be cured from doing that. This then requires defining homosexual behavior. Rekers can then claim he and Lucien did only certain things (though Rekers was clearly aroused, according to Lucien), but they didn't do those things, so he can't be gay. All a part of the linguistic gymnastics.

What happens, then, when a court says Rekers' definition is nonsense? The court just might confirm what Rekers is trying to avoid by saying, "Yes, you are gay." Commenters wonder if that makes him a Rekersexual. Does Rekers want that risk? Perhaps the court would simply throw the case out by saying accusing someone of being gay is not defamation.