Elected officials can’t possibly be that vicious

Thom Hartmann of the Daily Kos community and an independent editorial writer wrote about how Republicans have cheated their way into the White House for more than a half century. That is a long coup. Hartmann wrote the books, The Hidden History of the Supreme Court and the Betrayal of America and The Hidden History of the War On Voting. Hartmann wrote that in 2024 “4 million Americans were either denied their right to vote or their votes were discarded.” He worked from info by Greg Palast and the US Elections Assistance Commission. 4.7 million voters were purged from voter rolls, some through “vigilante” vote fraud hunters given lists of who to challenge. Over 2.1 million mail-in ballots were disqualified for minor clerical errors. 1.2 million provisional ballots were rejected. These are mostly ballots of people who didn’t have the proper ID when they got to their polling place or their name was purged. They voted on provisional ballots and told their registration would be checked. They were usually not told that unless they went to the clerk’s office with ID and proof of address, their ballot was likely thrown out. In Georgia Republicans cut the number of ballot drop boxes by 75%, but only in black majority counties. All these were not isolated incidents, they were part of a coordinated national strategy. The more conservative numbers of suppressed votes was at least 2.3% or over 3,500,000 votes. Harris would have beat the nasty guy by 1.2 million votes, winning both the popular vote and the Electoral College. This isn’t speculation. This has documented evidence. It’s what Republican officials designed their laws to do. Now for the history. In 1968 Lyndon Johnson had a tentative agreement for lasting peace in Vietnam. Nixon used envoys to tell the corrupt South Vietnamese politicians that if they held off signing when he became president he would give them a richer deal. The failure of the peace deal is why Humphrey lost and Nixon won. But Nixon didn’t sweeten the pot. The war went on for another five years with 22,000 more American soldiers dead and more than a million Vietnamese dead. Johnson called Nixon’s action treason. In 1980 Ronald Reagan did something similar to Jimmy Carter during the Iran hostage crisis. Reagan worked out a deal with Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Komeini to keep the hostages until after the 1980 election in exchange for spare parts for the American weapons the deposed Shah had previously purchased. A second act of treason. Carter lost his second term and Reagan won. That spare parts deal continued into the “Iran Contra” scandal. If I remember right low level operatives, like Oliver North, went to jail, but Reagan was merely embarrassed. George HW Bush didn’t use treasonous means to get into office, but he did use racism – the Willie Horton ads – and he did kill investigations to protect Reagan, for whom he had been VP. But, in a sense, if Reagan hadn’t done that treasonous act Bush I would not have been president, making him illegitimate. That brings us to George W Bush. His brother (presumably Jeb) purged 57,000 black voters from the rolls in Florida. That made Florida too close to call (Bush was up by less than 600 votes), prompting five justices of the Supreme Court to award the presidency to Bush, rather than Al Gore. The news didn’t give much notice that Antonin Scalia’s son worked for the law firm defending Bush II (Scalia didn’t recuse) and Ginni Thomas, wife of Clarence, was paid to work on the Bush transition team (Clarence didn’t recuse either). A year later a consortium of newspapers did their own recount and concluded Gore had won. No one noticed that news because the 9/11 attacks happened two months before. In 2004 to get reelected, Bush II became a “wartime president.” Bush I became that in a three-day war and Junior concluded that was the best way to have a two-term presidency (he said his father lost in 1992 because he wasted the advantage). And to be a wartime president, he lied. Back in 1991 I was a fan of Bush I (this was before Republicans became explicitly anti-gay and I learned how awful Reagan had been). Then I saw that Papa Bush accumulated all this political capital – and did nothing with it. So, yeah, he wasted the advantage. Back to Junior. His lies got us into war with Iraq and Afghanistan. And he won a second term (though I heard what happened in Ohio that year was skeezy). Those lies also cost 900,000 Iraqi and 7,000 American lives (though veterans are still committing suicide) and added $8 trillion to the national debt. And in 2016 the nasty guy benefited from: Republicans using Interstate Crosscheck to purge millions of voters, mostly people of color. Russian and other foreign actors flooding social media in support of him. Paying Stormy Daniels to keep quiet. Talking daily about Hillary Clinton’s emails, including an empty accusation the week before the election. The cost of the nasty guy’s first term was: Unnecessary COVID deaths. Iran would still be in compliance with Obama’s nuclear deal. The rich would not have gotten another $2 trillion in tax cuts. The Supreme Court would not have been stolen.

America has ignored GOP crimes to seize and hold the White House long enough. The immunity Ford gave Nixon has echoed down through the decades, leading to a packed Supreme Court that gave new immunity to Trump and two unnecessary and illegal wars (not to mention tax cuts for billionaires that have gutted our middle class). It’s time, at long last, to tell America the true story of Republican electoral crimes.

In the comments citixen said that Hartmann forgot REDMAP, the Republican effort in 2011 to gerrymander as many states as they controlled to get maximum Republican representation. Michigan was one of those states (isn’t anymore). While citixen has a point, the article was about presidents, not Congress or legislatures. Rambler 797 pointed out that in those key years Democrats had incumbent problems. 1968 – Support for the Vietnam war dropped and Humphrey was not advocating change. 1980 – Support for Carter dropped because of stagflation. 2000 – Gore was awkward, a climate radical, and squandered incumbent advantages of being Clinton’s VP. 2004 – In a time of dropping support for the Iraq war Kerry ran as a War Hero. 2016 – Clinton’s support was already sagging in Midwest working class states. 2024 – Support for Biden collapsed, Harris lost ground with working class and immigrants, and the party was split over Gaza. And why did Bush I lose in 1992, McCain in 2008, or the nasty guy in 2020? A big reason why those three lost is the country was quite fed up and tired of them and their predecessors. Also, one premise of Republican cheating is that the election would be too close or they would lose without it. That implies the prospects of those Democratic losers were better than Rambler797 says they were, and without that meddling Democrats would have won. Commenter democratos says Hartmann used the words “treason” and “traitor” without reference to their legal definitions. Ximena Bustillo of NPR reported on white South African refugees arriving in the US. These are the first refugees the nasty guy’s administration has allowed in and more are expected. Refugees from other countries are on hold. The nasty guy says they are welcome here because of the violence they faced back home. Of course, the question: The refugees from Afghanistan didn’t face violence and won’t if they return? Many Afghan refugees were stuck abroad after being approved for travel when the nasty guy changed the rules. A judge ordered the administration to restart the refugee program. The State Department says they’re still considering it (meaning, they are defying a judge’s orders). Michel Martin of NPR talked to Sean Rowe, the presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church on the denomination’s decision to not help resettle Afrikaners. It will end its long partnership with the US government to support migrants. Rowe said the decision is straightforward. They are committed to racial justice. They are a sister church to the Anglican Church of South Africa, home church to Archbishop Desmond Tutu who fought against the racism of Apartheid. They are saddened and ashamed because of the refugees who are being denied entrance, especially those who worked with the US military in Iraq and Afghanistan. Fast-tracking Afrikaners is not morally just. Rowe said that the nasty guy seems to think some people, white people, are more valuable than others, people of color. That doesn’t fit with the morals of the Episcopal Church. Since 1980 the Episcopal Church has helped resettle more than 100,000 refugees. Since January their program has been shut down, no refugees coming to the US. Helping Afrikaners ahead of others doesn’t make sense. They will continue to work with migrants and the most vulnerable, though not as partners with the US government. Alix Breeden of Kos talked about why the Afrikaners wanted to come to the US. They, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Deputy Secretary Christopher Landau have been spreading the false narrative they had endured racial discrimination and violence from the government of black South Africans. They also feared their property would be seized without compensation. South African President Cyril Ramaphosa disputed that narrative, saying they are not being persecuted, hounded, nor treated badly. They are leaving because they don’t want to embrace the changes directed by their constitution. South Africa is implementing the Expropriation Act, which will redistribute some land owned by white farmers to black farmers. This is in response to Apartheid, under which black farmers were not allowed to own land and were driven into extreme poverty. This Act seeks to redress the land imbalance. And as the nasty guy’s administration welcomes white Afrikaners, they ended the Temporary Protected Status of Afghans. They said in a sense Afghanistan is all better now, it is safe to go back. Though it isn’t. Landau was asked why Afrikaners are welcome and Afghans are not. He replied that a criteria was “they could be assimilated easily into our country.” Ooh, that’s a troublesome word. Ask American Natives what assimilation got them. But what that answer is saying is, “We the administration get to decide who we will welcome and who we won’t.” I kept waiting for some news report would say the reason the nasty guy welcomed the Afrikaners and not others is because they are just as racist as he is. Alas, none that I read put it that bluntly. Lisa Needham of Kos wrote the nasty guy is doing a good job of pissing off religious groups. With this effort he annoyed the Episcopal Church. He pissed off the US Conference of Catholic Bishops by refusing to pay $13 million the denomination had already spent on refugee resettlement. They sued, lost, and appealed. Public-private partnerships don’t work when the public funding is removed. Polling shows Evangelical Christians broadly support general refugee resettlement and are annoyed it is being limited to White South Africans. I said the Afrikaners are racist? Down in the comments of a pundit roundup for Kos Aaron Reichlin-Melnick tweeted:

WOW. The Trump admin said they will review social media and deny immigration benefits to people saying antisemitic claims. They're even trying to deport people with green cards on alleged claims of antisemitism. Anyway, here's a tweet from an Afrikaner they flew here on Monday.

That Afrikaner is Charl Kleinhaus, whose icon is a Christian cross. He tweeted:

Jews are untrustworthy and a dangerous group they are not Gods chosen like to believe they are. Where is the Temple that must be their concern and leave us alone we all believe in the God of Abraham, Moses and Jacob! I almost said something ugly ...

Not “almost.” And... Hey Big Guy! You said you would deny immigration benefits to people saying antisemitic things? Look right here! Back to the body of the pundit roundup Chitown Kev had a few interesting quotes. First, Catie Edmondson and Margot Sanger-Katz of The New York Times on the Republican controlled House trying to get a budget reconciliation bill passed by Memorial Day:

Even as the committees approved their slices of the plan in party-line votes, House Republican leaders faced dissent in their ranks that could delay or derail passage. Conservative lawmakers have argued the proposed cuts to Medicaid, which stopped short of an overhaul in an effort to protect vulnerable Republicans, do not go far enough. And Republicans from high-tax states like New York were furious about a provision that would increase the limit on the state and local tax deduction to $30,000 from $10,000, a cap they regard as far too low and which was still being negotiated. The plan is also facing Republican opposition in the Senate. Senators Rand Paul of Kentucky and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin have said the current bill is fiscally irresponsible. Senator Susan Collins of Maine has said she opposes at least one Medicaid provision in the legislation. And Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri described the bill’s changes to the government health program for the poor as a nonstarter, saying they amounted to “taxing the poor to give to the rich.”

Yeah, a Republican said that. Paul Krugman, writing in his own Substack about cuts in support for renewable energy:

The purpose of these cuts, sadism aside, would be to partially offset the cost of huge tax cuts for the rich — cuts that would still explode the budget deficit. The cruelty is mind-boggling. In fact, I have both a suggestion and a prediction for major media organizations: I’d like to see them do focus groups with ordinary voters, describing these plans. My prediction, based on what we’ve seen in the past, is that many voters will simply refuse to believe the policy descriptions, insisting that elected officials can’t possibly be that vicious. But they can be and are.

Jennifer Weiss-Wolf of The Contrarian wrote about the “pink tax.” But the excerpt didn’t sort out whether this “tax” is actually imposed by the government or just a pervasive price differential practiced by corporations. I think it’s the latter. The pink tax refers to gender-based pricing. Things marketed to girls and women are priced higher than the corresponding product for men and boys. Examples are toys, bikes, scooters, shampoo, shaving gear, body lotion, and deodorant.

He’s still trying to prove his manliness to himself

I was a barely grown lad when Nixon’s Saturday Night Massacre occurred on October 20, 1973. Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox was investigating the Watergate scandal. President Nixon ordered him fired. Attorney General Elliot Richardson (Cox’s boss) refused and resigned. Deputy AG William Ruckelshaus also refused and resigned. Solicitor General Robert Bork carried out the firing and intended to resign, but Richardson and Ruckelshaus persuaded him to stay. That started the impeachment process against Nixon. Lisa Needdham of Daily Kos reports in comparison to what happened over the last few days in the DoJ that night in 1973 looks like “a quaint tea party.” I’ll summarize. Deputy AG Emil Bove ordered the criminal charges against NYC Mayor Eric Adams be dropped. The reason wasn’t the usual prosecutorial misconduct or insufficient evidence. Rather pending charges meant Adams couldn’t devote enough time to fighting illegal immigration. This would be an illegal quid pro quo arrangement. Yeah, this echoes the nasty guy’s own presidential immunity. Also strange, the charges were to be dismissed without prejudice – they could be refiled at any time, such as when Adams is declared to be insufficiently vicious to immigrants. Bove demanded a federal prosecutor sign the order. Seven refused and resigned. These were not Biden holdovers but included a Federalist Society member and former clerks for Justices Scalia and Kavanaugh. They all recognized when something was downright illegal and they had limits. Since Bove could have signed the order himself he was using it as a loyalty test and to see how far he could push them into acting unethically and illegally.

All of these acts are part and parcel of Trump consolidating power within the executive branch. Demanding federal employees engage in illegal or unethical acts is designed to weed out those who won’t go along with his plans. It’s terrifying that it took such a short time for those demands to be so over-the-top that even people otherwise ideologically aligned with Trump had to tap out. It’s equally terrifying that he’s seeking complete control over agencies that were previously independent. He’s warping the whole executive branch to be nothing but a place where amoral loyalists do his bidding. Now, unvarnished, unrestrained authoritarianism feels right around the corner.

Kai Ryssdal, host of the NPR show Marketplace, talked to Sarah Binder, professor of politics at George Washington University and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. The topic was the new executive order from the nasty guy saying he is taking over several agencies that Congress designated as independent from the president, even though the prez. nominates the head and the board. The order includes: the Federal Election Commission, the Federal Communications Commission (TV and radio), the Securities and Exchange Commission (stock markets), the Federal Trade Commission, and more. This does not (yet) include the Federal Reserve’s ability to set interest rates, though the Reserve does a great deal more to stabilize the economy and those are affected. Yes, this is illegal. But who in Congress will stop him? It will end up before the courts. Will he abide by their decision? These agencies were set up as independent to they would be insulated from politics and the whims of the president. Having them under the control of the nasty guy affects the ability to control inflation, regulate banks to keep them healthy, keep companies that sell stock honest, decide who does or doesn’t get a radio or TV license, and whether candidates for office play by the rules. What these executive orders are doing is allowing the nasty guy to usurp Congress’ ability to designate how money is spent. And Congress isn’t standing up for itself. Steve Inskeep of NPR took up the same topic, discussing it with Jane Manners, a legal historian at Temple University Beasley School of Law. The discussion was prompted by Russell Vought, author of parts of Project 2025 and now the head of the Office of Management and Budget, has declared the nasty guy administration is rejecting the notion of an independent agency within the Executive Branch. Everything under the nasty guy is under his power. Inskeep and Manners have four key points. First, independent agencies go back to 1887 with the regulation of railroads, which were becoming quite critical to commerce. Because of the importance Congress wanted the agency to be insulated from politics. Second, independent agencies need to be accountable to someone. If not the president, who? But they can’t function properly under presidential pressure. Third, the current system says an agency is responsible to its appointed board. They can be removed only for neglect of duty and malfeasance. That accountability seems ambiguous. Fourth, the Department of Justice is headed by one person, not a board. It’s independence is (again) to shield it from politics. Scott Detrow of NPR started a segment with:

New York Times opinion writer M Gessen lived through much of Russia's slide into autocracy and wrote a book about it. They argue that one of the ways that Vladimir Putin consolidated power was by making a series of arguments that seemed outrageous at the time, like the idea that the LGBT population was a threat to Russian sovereignty.

That book is The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia. Gessen didn’t take that argument seriously, though a couple years later had to flee the country. In the same way the nasty guy has put out a “barrage of unthinkable ideas.” They don’t seem connected, but Gessen says they are. People who are the targets of an autocrat see it as terrifying. But for most people living under autocracy is just dumb. The US buying Greenland? Clearing Gaza? Dumb ideas. But they undermine the idea that people have obligations to one another and that there is a law-based world order. Gessen said:

I think that Americans voted for Donald Trump because there are some really major problems with the system of government as it's constituted. And I think that, basically, the Democratic Party, for at least three election cycles, has now insisted that things are fine just the way they are, that we just have to live in some sort of imaginary normal, really refusing to hear that the normal - whatever that is - isn't working for a lot of people, that they are anxious and miserable. And they would rather throw a grenade at the way things are in the form of Donald Trump than continue living the way they've been living. And the reason it's important to think about that now is that it's still the same sort of dynamic where Trump is taking a sledgehammer to the world as we've known it, and the Democrats are saying, well, you can't do that. That's not how the rules are written. Americans have said that the way that the rules are written and the way that the system functions doesn't work for them. So there has to be a bigger idea. The rules were written for a reason. They were there to perform certain functions. They were there to make sure that our obligations to one another are, in fact, fulfilled, and they haven't been.

I read that and think of the biggest issue Democrats didn’t touch – inequality and curbing the power of the extremely wealthy. Yeah, there have been voices – Sens. Warren and Sanders – but no action by a party supposedly for the worker yet paid off by those wealthy people. People were expecting the nasty guy’s second term to be similar to his first. And it isn’t. Now people may act to give the authoritarian more power over them.

I think that, rationally, people are settling in for the long haul and making decisions about their organizations that will benefit them or at least keep them safer in the short term. And that's really the problem with this kind of abeyance is that it is reasonable, it is well thought through and it is sometimes even values based. People are thinking, I'm protecting my employees. I'm protecting my organization. The problem is that when everyone does that, that is exactly how autocracy is built. It cannot be built without people's cooperation.

As part of a series Explaining the Right on Kos Oliver Willis titled his article, “Why conservatives are obsessed with phony masculinity.” As in at least one other article in the series the question isn’t answered, though several examples of phony masculinity are described. One is Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth at the NATO summit. His performance was seen to be quite an embarrassment. There is the nasty guy who posted his criminal mug shot outside the Oval Office. Bush II in his flight suit declaring “Mission Accomplished” when it wasn’t. Then the discussion turned to research that show diversity really does lead to a better armed forces.

But figures like Hegseth and Trump are locked into the worldview that only people who look like them are legitimate, and everyone else must fall to the wayside. That has historically been the path that leads to unwinnable quagmires, claiming the lives of millions of innocent people. History tells us that this time won’t be any different.

I did find an answer to the posed question in the comments. Mystic Michael wrote:

I’m not going to accept any lectures from the likes of Pete Hegseth — and certainly not from the likes of Donald Trump — about what it means to be a man. A real man doesn’t abuse women — as Hegseth does. A real man doesn’t pick on the weak, the underprivileged, the marginalized — as Trump does. A real man doesn’t feel the need to prove his manliness...because it’s obvious. Any man who’s obsessed with demonstrating his masculinity only succeeds in showing how insecure he really is...because he’s still trying to prove it to himself. Not exactly the most manly quality in the world. Spare me from these macho creeps. No wonder so many women are so on guard against their type. They give men a bad name.

They know their plan is not legal and not moral

I watched the funeral for President Jimmy Carter this morning. In all a fitting tribute to the great man. I was amused and a bit annoyed that the church officials, in their prayers, referred to him as “James” and not “Jimmy.” Carter was the one who insisted he take the oath of office beginning with “I, Jimmy Carter.” I was also annoyed that the CBS commentators took the moments of music to talk, to share their useless observations. I wanted to hear the music. Thankfully, at each musical moment they talked less and let us listen more. Seven people gave eulogies. Carter’s predecessor Gerald Ford had written one that his son Steve Ford read. Carter’s VP Walter Mondale had also written one that his son read (I didn’t catch the name). Both eulogies talked about how they became solid friends with Carter. Stuart Eizenstat, a staffer in the Carter White House said we should evaluate a presidency by how his policies and programs have lasted through time. By that measure Carter’s presidency did quite well. Rev. Andrew Young (he has his own long list of accomplishments) did a good job. I was disappointed in Biden’s eulogy – it seemed to be a lot of recycled cliches. Grandsons Joshua and Jason Carter talked about their grandfather. Jason gave the best eulogy of the bunch. Jason said his grandfather was the same in public as he was in private, demonstrating his integrity and authenticity. The hearse arrived about 20 minutes before the service and the casket was kept in it until the service started. An honor guard also stood in the cold with a wind strong enough the soldier with the presidential flag struggled to hold on to it. Yes, a fitting tribute. Oliver Willis of Daily Kos reported that Mark Zuckerberg, head of Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, announced the company will no longer use independent fact checkers. He claims he is a big defender of free speech, as is the incoming Oval Office occupant. Yeah, that’s a similar reason Musk gave to fire the moderators in what was then Twitter. And his claim about the nasty guy being a defender of free speech is laughable. Another reason for the change: Fact checkers are too politically biased. Does this confirm reality has a liberal bias? Zuckerberg said Meta would use the same idea used on X, that individuals can post corrections and then they are voted on.

But in practice, very few users see these notes, which are easily manipulated, and they are published after misinformation has been widely circulated. Meta’s announcement that it is pursuing the same model to deal with misinformation as Musk likely means that the company’s platforms will be awash with lies, bigotry, and other content that misinforms the public. ... Ditching fact checking is the most Trump-like behavior that Meta could embrace and is another sign that tech and media leaders are lining up behind the incoming administration and against an informed public.

Not surprisingly, this came after Zuck visited Mar-a-Lago and donated to the inaugural committee. I wrote after the election that the nasty guy’s base won’t turn on him, no matter how bad their lives get, because they won’t know he was the cause of their oppression. This is another reason why they won’t know. In a pundit roundup for Kos Chitown Kev quoted a few articles describing Zuck’s change. Kev also quoted Jordi Pérez Colomé of El País in English talking to disinformation researcher Renee DiResta about the difference between “misinformation” and “propaganda.” I’ll summarize: In the case of misinformation when more accurate information is presented a person would change their mind. So most of what we’ve been calling misinformation is really propaganda. Jan Sorensen posted a cartoon on Kos about corporations cozying up to the nasty guy with the key line: “It’s almost as if capitalism doesn’t have a problem with a dark authoritarian future.” I had written that Rep. Nancy Mace had proposed a transgender bathroom ban that would affect only new Rep. Sarah McBride. The new House convened. They elected Mike Johnson as speaker again (after a couple members switched votes to him). And they adopted the rules that are to be followed for this Congress. Alix Breeden of Kos reported that Mace’s ban is not in the rules. Was Mace snubbed? Did other Republicans back away from the bathroom ban? Or are they all relying on statement Johnson said a couple months ago that there is a ban? When Johnson announced the ban it was not accompanied by any House approval. Amanda Becker of The 19th, in an article posted on Kos, wrote about how Project 2025 could get implemented. The nasty guy has already nominated to important positions several key people who were authors of the project. Likely many of them will be confirmed. One of the authors is Russell Vought, nominated to lead the Office of Management and Budget. Vought’s vision for the OMB, according to Bel Olinsky of the Center for American Progress, is “to basically change the plumbing so they can do whatever they want without any meaningful checks and balances” during Trump’s second term. Vought has said his goals are to destroy diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives (unknown whether that’s in government or across the country, likely both) and to advance Christian Nationalism. Vought sees his purpose is to ensure all policy initiatives are in sync with his goals and to stop plans veering off course. He has two ways to guide wayward policies. First, by eliminating dissent within agencies. Second by withholding money appropriated by Congress for programs he and the nasty guy don’t support. That first goal is to be accomplished by reclassifying federal employees, turning 50,000 jobs from being career jobs to being political jobs. Then firing those who aren’t loyal to the nasty guy. As for the second, yes, the Constitution says Congress controls the purse. The executive branch is to spend money in the manner Congress directs. More below. Vought’s alignment with Christian Nationalism means implementing Project 2025’s call for restricting abortion and removing policies that support LGBTQ families. He would also work to turn the FBI into a political entity to settle scores and help with deportations. Project 2025 says all its goals are to be done by executive action. No Congressional oversight needed. Here’s the “more below.” Back at the end of November Molly Redden of ProPublica, in an article posted on Kos, explained what the nasty guy and Vought plan to do. The idea is called impoundment. The name refers to a president deciding to “impound” or not spend money he deems wasteful. The nasty guy would use it to cut the vast array of government services Musk and Ramaswamy want to make disappear. Most of the examples of impoundment are cases where Congress left details up to the President. When Jefferson was president Congress said the number of gun boats to be purchased should not exceed 15 and the price should not exceed $50,000. Jefferson decided zero fit within what Congress authorized.

President Richard Nixon took impoundment to a new extreme, wielding the concept to gut billions of dollars from programs he simply opposed, such as highway improvements, water treatment, drug rehabilitation and disaster relief for farmers. He faced overwhelming pushback both from Congress and in the courts. More than a half dozen federal judges and the Supreme Court ultimately ruled that the appropriations bills at issue did not give Nixon the flexibility to cut individual programs. Vought and his allies argue the limits Congress placed in 1974 are unconstitutional, saying a clause in the Constitution obligating the president to “faithfully execute” the law also implies his power to forbid its enforcement.

To me that sounds like Alice in Wonderland style reasoning. “Faithfully execute” is supposed to mean carry out and enforce every detail of the law. It doesn’t mean prevent a law from being fulfilled. The Supremes confirmed my understanding back in 1838. But this will likely be the first case the nasty guy takes to the Supremes and this court is quite different from the court in 1974 or 1838.

Vought was also a top architect of the controversial Project 2025. In private remarks to a gathering of MAGA luminaries uncovered by ProPublica, Vought boasted that he was assembling a “shadow” Office of Legal Counsel so that Trump is armed on day one with the legal rationalizations to realize his agenda. “I don’t want President Trump having to lose a moment of time having fights in the Oval Office about whether something is legal or doable or moral,” Vought said.

Note that last bit. The nasty guy and Vought know what they want to do is not legal. They know what they want to do is not moral. They intend to do it anyway.

When they talk about freedom, they mean freedom from empathy

A couple weeks ago I listened to an episode of Gaslit Nation hosted by Andrea Chalupa. It was sufficiently worth discussing that instead of trying to take notes from the audio I decided to wait until the transcript was available, which it was a few days later (as in a couple weeks ago). Some of the main points: Merrick Garland is the worst choice for Attorney General, head of the Department of Justice. He let two years go by before getting serious about bringing cases against the nasty guy and this accomplices. In the meantime coup plotters are free, enriching themselves and working how to complete the coup that started with the Kremlin’s help in 2016. That the nasty guy still walks free and maybe getting only probation is an absurdity that has disillusioned America. It erodes faith in our institutions, which are crumbling and complicit. Paul Manafort, a Kremlin asset, had worked to destabilize Ukraine as he had done here in America as part of the nasty guy campaign and administration. The difference is that Ukraine removed the traitors from power and in America we gave them power. Michael Flynn and Steve Bannon (who will soon be spending four months in jail) are getting the storm troopers ready should the nasty guy go to prison. These troops will intimidate and terrorize poll workers in close precincts. The precincts important only because of the Electoral College,which is a major national security vulnerability that makes election stealing too easy.

So what do we do? Round up all the traitors and throw them in prison as Ukraine did? Ban all disinformation TV networks and media, like Fox News, like Ukraine did. I wish. That's one of the many reasons MAGA hates Ukraine because Ukraine forces accountability. Ukraine stands up to the Kremlin and exposes it for the terrorist state that it is, and has the moral courage to stand up to their traitors. Whereas we're continuously getting steamrolled by ours. And I've been saying for years now, what's long hurt Biden's approval ratings is worthless Merrick Garland and the impotent DOJ enabling all this.

President Ford pardoned Nixon to keep the national tranquility that had developed. But that tranquility was there because people knew the wannabe dictator Nixon had been indicted and faced trial. Proceeding with the trial would have kept that tranquility, not broken it. Ford established the precedent that criminals that threaten our democracy could go free.

So the warning is loud and clear. Trump must go to prison. No accountability leads to larger and more dangerous crimes. Trump and his crime machine are worse than Nixon because Nixon escaped prison. Nixon crawled so Trump could run. That is why Trump must go to prison, for the safety of our future of every American, the world. This isn't complicated.

There’s a question: Is America better off to avoid the violence that will happen if the nasty guy is put in jail with the certainty that if he regains the Oval Office, with violence to help him get there, he’ll become a dictator? Or is it better to put him in jail and be ready for the violence?

The thing Trump fears most is accountability. Getting away with crimes is a literally Trump's brand. That's what he's campaigning off of. His supporters throw money at him, even to pay his legal bills because they all get off on seeing him live above the law because that's what they want to do. That's why they support him. It was the same with Hitler. They got a surge of pride and power, feeling invincible, feeling free of societal norms. That's the appeal. When they talk about freedom, they mean freedom from empathy, freedom from the collective good freedom from having to care about others. ... That is the entire appeal of Trump and that is why he must go to prison to show consequences for trying to live above the law.

No, house arrest isn’t good enough. Manafort committed crimes under house arrest. Also, Mar-a-Lago is a pretty big house with a lot of visitors, including foreign adversaries. Once in prison the nasty guy should not get the big suite. He needs to be treated like everyone else. “You don't coddle criminals or you end up with more criminals in the White House.” Perhaps the nasty guy will flee? Great. Make sure the ticket is one way. And goes to Russia. All that grievance the nasty guy spews is being fed by the Kremlin. Prison is the only option. It also tells Putin the Hague is waiting. The talk turned to a third member of the transnational crime syndicate (Putin and the nasty guy being first and second), Israel’s Netanyahu. Protests in Israel are demanding he accept Biden’s cease fire deal. But if he does the far-right members of his governing coalition threaten to leave, bringing down his government. Netanyahu would rather cling to power than end the war. And yet Netanyahu may soon be speaking to the American Congress. That leaves many Democrats with a dilemma. Boycott the speech or use it as a time to confront Netanyahu? One way to confront is to stand with their back to the podium. Bernie Sanders issued a statement explaining why he won’t go. While Israel does have the right to defend itself against Hamas, it does not have the right to go to war against the entire Palestinian people, killing huge numbers and destroying massive amounts of housing and infrastructure. Netanyahu’s speech was scheduled for a week ago and hasn’t happened yet. Towards the end Chalupa said:

Congratulations to Mexico for electing your first female president as well as the first Jewish president, climate scientist Claudia Scheinbaum, a granddaughter of Holocaust survivors who was part of the intergovernmental panel on climate change that won the 2007 Nobel Prize for its research into the climate crisis. Scheinbaum brings with her a master's degree from UC Berkeley, a progressive agenda and a mandate to stand up against the brutal corruption across Mexico where a female mayor, Yolanda Sanchez was just gunned down after facing death threats and kidnapping.

That’s good news! In the comments of a pundit roundup on Daily Kos are a few good cartoons. One by Ted Littleford shows Justices Clarence Thomas and Sam Alito with Thomas saying, “I don’t see why Trump shouldn't have total immunity. After all, we do.” Below Thomas are bags representing four million dollars in gifts and three million behind Alito. The comments include a tweet my Rev. Benjamin Cremer in response to a new law in Louisiana.

“When I was hungry” you put up posters of the Ten Commandments in my classroom while making sure I didn’t get lunch at school. “Whatever you do for the least of these, you do unto me.” –Jesus

Just below it is a tweet of a new ad by the Lincoln Project showing that the nasty guy has broken five of the Ten Commandments. This is the guy the Christian Nationalists, the ones putting up posters of the Ten Commandments, are supporting.

Stay behind the blue line

Another grocery run today. At one store there is now blue tape on the floor. At the meat counter the workers wearing masks requested we stand behind the blue line in front of the display cases. Once they made up a package they no longer handed it to customers, they left it on the display case and backed up. The blue tape lines at checkout were a guide to spacing ourselves six feet apart.

At the second store, much smaller, they now have a policy of only so many people in the store at any one time. I had encountered that last Sunday when I was the only one waiting outside. Today there was a line and I waited more than 20 minutes to get inside. Fortunately, it wasn’t cold. I roughly measured the sidewalk slabs to be about six feet and spaced myself accordingly.



There was an article in last Sunday’s Detroit Free Press by Joe Guillen and Gina Karufman about how COVID-19 hit the police department in Detroit. At the moment even the police chief is infected. There was a community event back on March 6 with about 100 people in attendance, before any cases were found in Michigan. And one attendee was contagious. Once people started getting sick there seemed to be a lack of responsibility of who should tell the other attendees to quarantine themselves.

Then a policeman arrived home from travel on March 9 and went to his job on the 10th. He started showing symptoms 4 days later. Colleagues were already infected.

Michigan Radio says there are now well over 9,000 cases and 337 deaths in the state. Half of those cases are in Wayne County and another 2000 in Oakland County just to the north. This link has counts that are updated every day at 3:00pm.



Tonight’s opera is Nixon in China by John Adams. No, this isn’t the early American president come back to life to write music about a later president. There really is a modern composer with that name. I quite like some of his music, Harmonium, Harmonielehre, Short Ride in a Fast Machine, and Hoodoo Zephyr – and the first 12 minutes of this opera. He is grouped with Minimalist composers such as Steve Reich and Philip Glass, though I wrote a term paper for my master of music (sheesh, two decades ago!) on what there was in the music that explained why I liked Adams and not Reich and Glass.

The opera is, of course, about the 1972 visit of Dick Nixon to China, which opened China to the west. The first act features the Nixons and Kissinger getting off the plane. Then Dick Nixon and Kissinger meet Mao Tse-Tung and when Mao spouts off we wonder if he’s talking philosophy or is just senile. The act ends with a big state dinner and several toasts.

In the first half of Act 2 Pat Nixon is taken around to meet factory workers, grocers, farm workers, and students. In the second half there is a dance presentation, a play within the play, of a story about an unscrupulous landlord’s agent, titled The Red Detachment of Women. I read on Wikipedia that there really was a show by that name and dominated the stage in that era, and really was performed for the Nixons. One of the Chinese bad guys is played by the same actor who played Kissinger and at one point Pat remarks he looks familiar. But the story gets brutal, which distresses Pat and she tries to interfere. Madame Mao shrieks at the characters to be true to the little red book. The scene ends in mayhem, showing what Madame Mao wrought in her Cultural Revolution.

There is an Act 3. I didn’t watch it. It’s just weird. I know because I’ve seen it before, perhaps when this same Met performance was broadcast to area movie theaters 9 years ago.

This past summer I played a video of the last movement of Harmonielehre for my niece. She wasn’t impressed.

Because I actually watched parts of the opera, especially the dance, some of my other stories will have to wait until tomorrow.

Wresting the title of worst

After the nasty guy pulled out of the Paris Climate Agreement I began to wonder if he might reach the distinction of worst president ever. I knew the one currently at the bottom of the ranking was James Buchanan the one just before Abraham Lincoln. My understanding was that Buchanan was either the most incompetent or the laziest. Perhaps the nasty guy would win on most destructive, the one that brought the world ecology to collapse? So I went surfing for bad presidents.

Brian Scot MacKenzie of the Indivisible Movement takes a look at a Buchanan and a few other bad presidents to give us a benchmark. First of all, the nasty guy hasn’t been in office long enough – two months when MacKenzie wrote his post, four months as I write mine.

Some reasons why bestowing the title of worst is premature: It evokes too much juvenile glee. The nasty guy won by declaring Obama to be the worst (which the GOP implied the day he took office). A claim of worst should not simply affirm our biases. False claims of worst assume the past has nothing to teach us. So let’s study that past.

MacKenzie lays out what made Buchanan (1857-1861) earn the spot at the bottom:

* At a time when the issue of slavery in the south shifted from an economic practicality to fanaticism, Buchanan lobbied the Supreme Court to finally settle the matter. That resulted in the Dred Scott decision that declared black people as subhuman noncitizens and opened northern territories to becoming slave states. This energized abolitionists in the North.

* The economy floundered and the Panic of 1857 wiped out hundreds of banks. Buchanan refused federal relief. That spooked investors, deepening the following depression. Buchanan’s party, the Democrats, had refused banking regulations.

* Buchanan’s appeasement of the South alienated Northern fellow Democrats. That divided his party and handed the House and Senate to the Republicans in 1858.

* When Democrats split into North and South in 1860, Buchanan didn’t stop them. Southern states started seceding. Buchanan essentially gave the South a four-month head start in preparing for the Civil War (at the time the Inauguration was in March).

MacKenzie’s benchmark:

In order to wrest the title of worst president from Buchanan, a contemporary commander in chief would need to wreck the economy, revoke all human rights from an entire race, violate the constitutional separation of powers, and plunge the country into a ruinous civil war that kills nearly 2% of the US population.

Are we there yet? The nasty guy hasn’t wrecked the economy, though today’s jobs numbers were low. As for human rights, he seems to gaining ground on revoking rights of Muslims. He’s working real hard to violate separation of powers (and commit other impeachable offenses), though not providing checks the Congress seems to be urging him on. As for the ruinous Civil War, perhaps we can substitute ruinous climate change? Perhaps as an extra bonus we can add disenfranchising voters and in other ways making hash of the constitution?

Some of the other bad presidents listed by MacKenzie:

Andrew Jackson (1829-37): defied the Supreme Court who required protection of Native American property rights. This resulted in the Trail of Tears, several tribes forced from their lands. He also killed the Second Bank, causing the Panic of 1837.

Andrew Johnson (1865-69): An avowed racist he vetoed every effort to protect the rights of former slaves. Congress overrode the vetoes, so Johnson tried to interfere with enforcing those laws. He was impeached, but not removed from office.

Warren Harding (1921-23) was incredibly corrupt. He signed laws that banned nonwhite immigration. Calvin Coolidge (1923-29), was Harding’s VP and with Harding’s help, invented modern economic conservatism: tax cuts for the rich and no regulation for workers or consumers. The 1920s were wonderful. The 1930s weren’t.

Herbert Hoover (1929-33) didn’t cause the Great Depression. But he did make it worse.

Richard Nixon (1969-74): Lyndon Johnson almost had a peace deal for Vietnam. The Nixon campaign convinced the South Vietnamese to hold out for a better deal once Nixon took office. But that deal, not reached until 1973, doomed South Vietnam. His incursions into Cambodia led to the bloody Khmer Rouge that killed off a quarter of the country. At home there was the Southern Strategy, War on Drugs, and Watergate.

George W. Bush (2001-09): He signed tax cuts skewed towards the wealthy, turning surpluses into deficits. He may have been justified in going into Afghanistan (we’re still there), but bungled it by needlessly going into Iraq, which destabilized the entire region, leading to the rise of ISIS. Deregulation led to the 2007 financial crisis, in which he insulated the rich from their bad behavior as the rest of us lost houses and jobs.

So the nasty guy isn’t the worst. Yet. But it is up to us to resist, to make sure he isn’t as bad as Buchanan because if he is many of our fellow Americans and humans will have suffered a great deal.

Some time in the arts

On Monday evening I watched PBS for Great Performances doing the Metropolitan Opera production of Doctor Atomic by John Adams. His previous two operas were on historical figures or incidents -- Nixon in China and The Death of Klinghoffer -- and this one is too. It's about the final preparations for the first atom bomb test by Robert Oppenheimer. Even though in an interview Adams says this is the first time declassified government documents have been set to music the opera is more about the doubts Oppenheimer and the rest have about the morality of what they were doing. That makes for good opera. Alas, the thoughts of his wife is a lot more obscure and made for a slow spot. Then there was the Native American shaman (I think that's what she was supposed to be) who didn't seem to fit at all. I don't know if or when it will be on TV again. I caught it almost by accident when I plugged in my TV for an episode of In The Life and caught an ad for the broadcast. However, the opera will be broadcast on the radio from The Met on Saturday, Jan. 17. I was able to tape a program (also Sunday night) about how the opera was put together. Something for me to watch this evening waiting for the ball to drop. Here's an interview (about 8 minutes long) with John Adams about the opera when it was premiered in San Francisco in 2005. And here is The Met's own page about the opera.

This afternoon I went to see the movie Frost/Nixon, about the interviews David Frost did with Richard Nixon in 1977. There wasn't all that much of the actual interviews (which, I think, spanned about 6 hours), but all the work that went on in getting the interviews to happen and the cat-and-mouse games in trying to get Nixon to confess Watergate crimes. That's especially interesting because in the early interviews it appears that Frost is badly overmatched. Nixon sees these interviews as a chance to rehabilitate his image in preparation for a comeback. Very well done and highly recommended.