Two nightmares in life: being broke and being in jail

My Sunday movie was Absolute Beginners episodes 3 and 4. This series is rated TV-MA – very much for mature audiences. I need to give a spoiler alert. So if you intend to watch, skip to the next section of this post. Lena and Niko are creating a movie they hope will get them into film school. Niko refused to do a sex scene with Lena because she is like a sister. So they recruit Igor to be in their movie. In episode 3 Lena and Niko work to become friends with Igor and make him comfortable with the idea of acting. Lena begins to show that Igor would do quite nicely as her partner in the sex scene. Niko and Lena are good friends because their parents share a vacation cottage by the seashore. But the friendship and Niko’s parents’ marriage are falling apart. Episode 4: As the student movie progresses I see why this is tagged as an LGBTQ story (which is why I started watching), though one relationship surprised me. Episodes 5 and 6 this weekend. Reactions to the nasty guy’s conviction began being posted shortly after the convictions were announced. Walter Einenkel of Daily Kos collected several. At the top is Dark Brandon with an ice cream cone in one hand and holding out a big “L” with the other. We also get such things as Derek Guy noting “First sneaker designer to be convicted of 34 felony counts.” And Discussing Film noting “‘Home Alone 2: Lost in New York’ star Donald Trump has been found guilty of 34 felony counts. Of course, the nasty guy used it as an opportunity to fundraise. JekylInHyde of the Kos community posted a bunch of editorial cartoons. Denise Oliver-Velez tweeted, “Trump’s appeal oral arguments will be in front of the first All-Black women Appellate bench. On Saturday, not quite two days after the conviction, Kos of Kos noted that punditry and conservative gaslighters claim these felony convictions are good for the nasty guy’s campaign and is energizing his supporters. First, those supporters don’t need to be “energized.” And they won’t decide the election. Kos looked at a poll by Morning Consult done after the verdict: + 54% approve of the conviction. + 34% disapprove of the conviction. That’s only a third. + “Just 15%” of Republican voters want him to drop his White House bid. “Just”? That’s a big number in a tight election. + 49% of independents think he should end his campaign. In the two previous races the nasty guy hasn’t gotten 47%. Last time around Biden got 51.3%. Of course RFK Jr. is a wildcard. Also, this really is a race in just a few battleground states. The math doesn’t look good for the nasty guy and the conviction will make the math worse. Kerry Eleveld of Kos wrote:

Republicans added a new litmus test to the list of loyalty pledges they must make to Donald Trump following his criminal conviction: Do they believe in the U.S. justice system? Before Trump's guilty verdict, Republicans were already required to say they don't believe in U.S. elections (2020 was stolen!) and that they wouldn't accept the 2024 election if Trump loses (no peaceful transfer of power!). Now the GOP has officially thrown "law and order" on the MAGA pyre too.

Larry Hogan, Maryland Republican running for the Senate, urged people to “respect the verdict.” The nasty guy campaign told him “You just ended your campaign.” But Maryland is reliably blue in presidential elections, so he has to please more liberal voters. But the Republican edict to fall in line is clear. Eleveld then listed many Republicans who did fall in line. At the top of the list is Speaker Mike Johnson. He asked the Supreme Court to force a do-over. Of course, those auditioning to be Vice Nasty spouted their condemnation of the verdict as fast as they could. At least Moscow Mitch didn’t complain about the entire legal system. David Nir of Kos noted the curious case of Republican House members from districts that voted for Biden yet who called the verdict shameful. Aldous Pennyfarthing of Kos wrote about 11 times the nasty guy was in legal or political peril (the list is not exhaustive nor in a particular order) when he was pulled out of the fire and allowed to continue. 1. “Access Hollywood” tape, rescued by the James Comey letter about Hillary Clinton. 2. His campaign launch where he declared Mexican immigrants were criminals and rapists, rescued by primary voters who didn’t think that was offensive. 3. He mocked a disabled reporter, rescued by primary voters. 4. He disrespected Gold Star families and John McCain. 5. The Mueller probe, rescued by Bill Barr’s spinning. 6. He called Nazis very fine people in Charlottesville, rescued because Nazi apologia isn’t a problem for Republicans. 7. Extorting Ukraine and first impeachment, rescued by Republicans. 8. He believed Putin over his own intelligence at the Helsinki summit, saved by dissolving Republican spines. 9. The Capitol attack and second impeachment, rescued by Moscow Mitch and Rep. Kevin McCarthy. 10. The E. Jean Carroll judgment, rescued through Republican indifference. 11. Four felony cases with 91 felony charges, rescued through Republican indifference. Last Friday Eleveld discussed the nasty guy’s apparent mental deterioration. Eleveld referred to a podcast by Chris Christie to explain the situation. The podcast was recorded before the verdict was read out. Christie recounted a discussion with the nasty guy two decades ago, summarized as:

Christie said Trump is haunted by two nightmares in life: being broke and being in jail. If Trump were to be found guilty, Christie predicted, "He will get angrier and angrier and more paranoid.”

After the verdict a reporter asked if the nasty guy was worried about going to jail. He ignored the question. But mentally he’s in a very dark place. To me it means during his campaign speeches he will emphasize violence and retribution more than he usually does while making a lot less sense. Kos of Kos wrote about whether the conviction would hurt the nasty guy in the election. He looked at several polls. Then concluded:

But you want to know how we really know that the felony conviction is hurting Trump? Because he hasn’t shut up talking about how rigged it is, demanding his entire party—the supposed “law and order” Republican Party—endorse a convicted felon as their nominee. If it didn’t hurt him, Fox News and the rest of the conservative ecosystem wouldn’t be in overdrive trying to paint the conviction as a politically motivated hit job by hostile nefarious forces. If it didn’t hurt him, he’d be bragging about the conviction, rather than attacking it

. At the top of a pundit roundup for Kos, Greg Dworkin put a montage of newspaper headlines, most of them with the words “Guilty” or “Convicted” in large font. People who don’t read the stories do read the headlines. Dworkin included a tweet by Brian Klaas:

Interviewers: I beg you. Stop asking Republicans if they think the trial was “rigged.” Ask them if they believe that candidates should be allowed to make illegal hush money payments to further their campaign. Ask them, specifically, which evidence they think the jury got wrong.

In the comments of this post there are a lot of cartoons showing the nasty guy in prison. There are a lot of variations on that theme. The only one I’ll mention is one by Ben Jennings. It shows the nasty guy having been in the communal shower for a while and the orange bronzer still washing away. Below that is a cartoon by Mike Luckovich related to Justice Alito’s scandal. There are a few women dressed in Handmaid Tale robes and bonnets. One says, “But we still have control over out flags...” Megan Herbert posted a cartoon of the orange crayon saying between the orange bronzer and the orange jumpsuit he’s going to be worn down to a stub, so he quits. Mark Sumner of Kos wrote:

Hints that Elon Musk and Donald Trump are working their way toward an alliance have been increasing for months. Trump has wanted to tap Musk’s billions to solve some of his fiscal problems—like the hundreds of millions he owes after being found liable for fraud, sexual assault, and defamation. ... Musk and [billionaire Nelson] Peltz are conducting regular soirees with other billionaires to convince them to turn against President Joe Biden. Musk isn’t satisfied with cutting a massive check for Trump; He’s trying to cut any support out from under Biden by putting pressure on other members of his billionaire boys club. ... It doesn’t matter if Trump and Musk secretly hate each other; Neither of them is interested in making friends. They’re interested in money and power, they want more of both, and they want to lock in a plutocracy that means no one can ever get in their way.

Pennyfarthing reported that Bill Pruitt, producer of the TV show The Apprentice, had a nondisclosure agreement that expired this year. So he told many of the shows secrets in an essay for Slate.

Pruitt goes on at length about the smoke and mirrors the show employed to make Trump look competent and sane, and he doesn’t mince words. He confesses that “The Apprentice” was essentially a “long con played out over a decade of watching Trump dominate prime time by shouting orders, appearing to lead, and confidently firing some of the most capable people on television.” Pruitt stresses that the con wasn’t malicious (it was just a TV show, after all), but admits that “we played fast and loose with the facts, particularly regarding Trump, and if you were one of the 28 million who tuned in, chances are you were conned.” Gee, ya think?

One way they did it was re-record his dialogue. They would put him in a boardroom set and feed him lines over the phone, which he would then say into a microphone. They did that because he couldn’t remember the contestant’s names and couldn’t describe the task the contestants were to do. That sounds quite a lot like many media outlets who cover for his many verbal stumbles. Just after the 2016 election I listened to a group of guys talk about it. One of them was not at all surprised the nasty guy won. He had traveled through America and listened to how the locals gushed over him. They said the reason for their gushing was how forceful he was on The Apprentice and we needed a president like that. Yep, they were among the conned. Also, a few years ago on Gaslit Nation hosts Sarah Kendzior and Andrea Chalupa discussed that The Apprentice was specifically designed and practically forced onto a network for the purpose of rehabilitating the nasty guy’s image. Meaning that bit about “just a TV show” wasn’t true. Dartagnan of the Kos community challenged the nasty guy’s campaign claims (going back to 2016) that he was the cause of the greatest economic turnaround in history. He said inherited an economic disaster from Obama and cleaned it up and that Biden has squandered it. Of course, the truth is nothing like that. Obama cleaned up Bush II’s economic disaster and the economy was humming along quite well, so well that former White House communications director Jen Psaki explained, “A buffoon could have kept the recovery going.” As for everyone being wealthier, that was true for pretty much only the billionaires, or .000006% of the population. After the nasty guy left Washington Biden cleaned up the pandemic’s economic mess, which has been humming along so well it has prompted the stock market to reach new highs.

As economists are fond of pointing out, the performance of the economy is mostly a consequence of events that presidents cannot control. Thus, most presidents tend to operate as stewards, carefully managing all the various unexpected crises and the domestic and global repercussions that befall their terms in office, with a view toward maintaining the nation’s economic growth. Obama governed in this manner, as has Biden, and both have the numbers to show for it. Trump, however, has shown no such forbearance, either in his appalling response to the COVID-19 pandemic or in his pet policies before that catastrophe occurred. His specific economic plans should he be elected again have been characterized as potentially disastrous. Americans’ memories may be short, but there is one basic fact they ought to keep in mind. This country has sustained two successive economic calamities during this century, in 2008 and 2020, both occurring under Republican administrations. In both circumstances, it was the Democrat—Obama in 2009 and Biden in 2021—who succeeded in pulling the economy and this nation out of a very deep, dark hole left to them by their Republican predecessor. So Americans ought to ask themselves, which party has proved itself competent at managing the economy, and which has not?

TheCriticalMind of the Kos community discussed a podcast by media personality Colin Cowherd. He’s normally known for his sports analysis, though after the conviction he had a few things to say about the nasty guy. In particular, he had a rebuttal to the dystopian fantasies the nasty guy likes to declare. Here are excerpts of what Cowherd said:

I get on planes. There’s people in normal clothes. They don't look rich to me. And the planes are all full. And the hotels are all full. And the freeways are all full. That means people are going to work.” ... Trump’s entire game plan is that the country is in a free fall. Maybe in the Trump-centric neighborhoods, it is. It’s not anywhere for my sister, who lives rurally. Doesn't have a lot of crime in her neighborhood. I don't. My friends don’t. We live all over Los Angeles in one of those big scary cities that voted for liberals. ... Stop trying to sell me on everything's ‘rigged’. The country’s falling into the sea. The economy’s terrible. The economy is OK. It's not like ‘on fire.’ But get on a plane. Find all the empty seats. I don't see them. Those aren't cheap. Either are hotel rooms over Memorial weekend.

Sumner addressed the claim by the nasty guy, Republicans, and conservative media that America has become a very violent place.

Preliminary statistics for 2023 indicate the lowest levels of violent crime ever recorded, dropping below previous records in 2014 and 2019. And that’s still not all, because right now it appears that 2024 is still trending down. Americans are safer now than they have been in decades, and the numbers have only gotten better under Biden. But you won’t hear that from Republicans, or Fox News, or much of the media. Because pushing fear is all they know. There are fewer violent crimes now than there were in 1971 under Richard Nixon, despite a population that has increased by over 100 million people. Today we are experiencing not simply fewer crimes per person, but fewer crimes overall. According to FBI statistics, there were over 5 million fewer violent crimes in the United States last year than in the final full year of Ronald Reagan's “tough on crime” administration.

In the comments of another pundit roundup Captain Frogbert discussed the requirements for getting a governmental security clearance. Summary: With a felony conviction the nasty guy does not qualify for a security clearance and, because of that, cannot execute the duties of president. That’s the big reason why he wouldn't get clearance. There are also many more: mental instability, foreign entanglements with America’s enemies (Putin), massive debts, shady business practices, long-term association with mobsters, and a history of cavalier treatment of classified intelligence (that one has 11 subpoints). And this is the guy Republicans intend to nominate. That shows they believe the rules of a civil society, morality, and rule of law do not apply to them. Sumner, in his weekly 7 stories post for Kos discussed the start of the Hunter Biden trial. Which refutes the big Republican claim that the nasty guy’s trial was rigged. If Biden had that much control over the judicial system why is Hunter on trial? In the second story for the post Sumner reviewed the effects of 20 years of same-sex marriage. He worked from an article in the Los Angeles Times. The quotes are from the Times:

“If there were negative consequences in the last 20 years of the decision to legalize marriage for same-sex couples, no one has yet been able to measure them,” researcher Benjamin Karney told the Times. ... The headline from our new analysis is no negative impacts and some positive ones. We see an increase in marriage, and that increase is driven not just by newly marrying same-sex couples, but also by an increase in marriage among different-sex couples. That was a bit surprising to us.