Judge Aileen Cannon has made her second payment for the patronage of Donald Trump. She’s interfering with the work of the Special Master she herself appointed and is facilitating Trump’s delaying tactics. I suppose it is wonderful to see gratitude in action. Is anyone interested in impeaching Judge Cannon? Or, a less radical suggestion, will people contribute to her tuition for a redo in law school?
19 IX 2022: De Santis, Abbot, gubernatorial monsters
Mr. De Santis and Mr. Abbot, governors of two of the more barbarous states in America, have resorted to the old-time dictator’s tool of forced migration. Their supporters in the voting population have been tricked into believing that immigrants are a threat to their supposed way of life and so are expected to be gratified by the governors’ tyranny. Antisemitism, racial fear and hatred, anti-Catholicism, and anti-feminism are the oldest devices in the G.O.P.’s bag of deceptions, xenophobia and anti-feminism being now the ones most in favor.
De Santis and Abbot seem to think that their inhuman treatment of the immigrants is a good old boys’, haw! haw! haw!, owning the liberals, stunt. Their treatment of the immigrants is simply nazi-esque, with substitution of air liners for cattle cars. But I think that maybe, in the end, Il Duce De Santis and Oberstürmfuhrer Abbot may have done the immigrants a favor by getting them out of the political and moral abysses over which these two monsters rule.
17 IX 2022: No courtesy to the wrong-headed and treasonous
Republicans are moaning that criticism of “MAGA Republicans” is insulting to all the wonderful, wonderful people who voted for Trump. It is no insult but the simple truth that these voters and the Republican politicians who control them have been dupes. The voters, driven by their fears, and the politicians, driven by their lust for power, have embraced as their messiah a truly satanic figure who promotes satanic behaviors.
Would it have been an insult to Nazi voters to tell them that they have been conned? Would it have been too severe a measure to force the SA to disband? Would it have been over-reach to thwart and bring to justice Nazis in government who were trying to subvert it from within? Would it have been a vendetta to display all of Hitler’s crimes and craziness, and prosecute him according to law?
To try a less extreme hypothetical example: What if prominent politicians entered into a conspiracy to claim that law requires that not the candidate who gets the most votes, but the candidate who raises the most money wins the election. If public figures keep repeating this lie without forceful contradiction and the gullible masses believe them, then we will be told that this falsehood must be treated as an alternative truth in order to prevent trouble hitherto unseen. Does freedom of speech really allow so great and so constant a deception. Must we refrain from showing citizens how wrong they have been in order to avoid insulting them, in order to prevent a violent outbreak of their anger and class hatred?
America is drifting towards destruction. Inaction, delays, and the passage of time are all the liars need to make America a playland for grifters and brigands.
16 IX 2022: What’s in it for her?
Of course, Judge Aileen Cannon is receiving no monetary payment from her buggering the law. Does showing gratitude to her creator give her, perhaps, a warm feeling inside. Or does she think that because she shelters Trump she will get a high position in the judiciary of the new fascist regime?
Or, as seems more likely, she has no clear motive, but simply does not know what she’s doing, a situation foreseen by the American Bar Association and others who opposed her appointment.
15 IX 2022: Trump Threats
The criminal Donald Trump has told an interviewer that if he is indicted for stealing and endangering classified documents “… I think you’d have problems in this country the likes of which perhaps we’ve never seen before.” Trump must have been watching Birth of a Nation, for “never seen before” put me immediately in mind of the parade of the Ku Klux Klan down Pennsylvania Avenue on 13 September, 1926. You can see a photo of this parade on the Library of Congress site (https://www.loc.gov/resource/cph.3b39318/). I don’t think the Trumpies could organize a parade like the KKK’s. We saw their idea of a parade on Jan 6.
Now Trump said about his prediction “That’s not inciting. I’m just saying what my opinion is.” I think that in place of “opinion” one should insert “heartfelt wish.” Lindsay Graham, Trump’s punk and senator from South Carolina, the Birthplace of the Confederacy, was more precise last month in threatening “riots in the streets.”
These “predictions” or “opinions” are, of course, dog whistles — they are a call to action addressed to Trump’s crazies and a warning to the government and the American people that indicting Trump means war. Our overly lax understanding of freedom of speech perhaps does not allow us to prevent incitements to violence like this, but we can take them as the warnings they are intended to be and get ready for the “problems the likes of which” and the “riots in the street.” These are threats of recourse to violence if the law is enforced, not unlike the case with the Mafia in Sicily. If you jail the mafiosi, the Mafia will declare war on the government.
14 IX 2022: Low-risk thievery
The City of St. Louis’ Prosecuting Attorney, Kimberly Gardner, and her staff seem somehow unable or unwilling to prosecute thieves, and the same seems to be true in St. Louis County. In the County, in July-August, there were 46 charges brought for auto theft although 704 stolen vehicles were reported. In the City, between August 1-13, around 462 cases of theft or attempted theft of vehicles were reported and only one person was charged. I do not know if these figures include unlawful entry of unlocked vehicles and break-ins of locked cars.
I do know that in the “safe” suburb in which I live, the number of thefts of automobiles and thefts from automobiles has increased dramatically, as have the thefts of catalytic converters. These thefts are often executed by teams of thieves, cruising in probably stolen cars, seeking opportunities to enter or break into parked vehicles with a view to stealing their contents or the vehicles themselves.
What accounts for the surge in thefts we have lately seen?
This is partly due to the mobilization of thieves. No longer confined to areas close to home, they range far and wide in automobiles hunting for easy pickings, the autos providing also a quick getaway if needed. Perhaps there has been an increased disrespect for private property among people otherwise unable to obtain private property. But I think this surge is mainly due to the fact that thieves believe it is unlikely that they will be caught and, if caught, unlikely that they will face any consequences.
13 IX 2022: My God how the money rolls in!
AARP magazine reckons the cost for two to attend the Notre Dame vs. Clemson game at $740 (tickets $350 each, parking $40). Football has long been Notre Dame’s cash cow. A charitable view is that profits from Notre Dame’s virtually professional football team support its teaching mission. Even so, it seems hard to pretend to be a not-for-profit institution at $350 per ticket.
13 IX 2022: Misc.: Kelly Ripa, King Charles, Trump, Lindsay Graham, anti-abortion bill
Headline under “News and Buzz” on CNN today: “Kelly Ripa recounts passing out during sex because of ovarian cysts.” I’m sorry for Kelly, but do we have to know this.
We should get this straight: Charles Windsor is King of the United Kingdom, etc. Joe Biden is not King of the United States, nor was Donald Trump. So I wish people would stop treating Trump with such caution and delicacy. Ex-presidential thieves deserve no more consideration than the guy who steals your catalytic converter.
I read that Old Lindsay Graham has, again, introduced an anti-abortion bill in Congress. The proposed enactment would forbid all abortions after 15 months, with exceptions in cases of rape or to protect the life of the pregnant woman. It is said that Lindsay hopes to unite Republicans behind his bill that has something for all factions: forbid abortion, but only after 15 weeks, with exceptions and so on. Well, we will have to wait and see. I don’t think the “religious right,” the audience that this bill is meant especially to please, will be at all pleased with it. The hard-core who oppose abortion don’t make exceptions case of rape, and I wonder, if they were to think about it, if they would allow physicians to prefer the life of the mother to the life of the fetus.
11 IX 2022: Make America Ours Again, again
MAOA is a large conglomerate of chronically angry people who find support and excitement in their shared anger. These are not just angry old men, like Alito and Thomas, but angry young regressionists, male and female, all of whom feel dissed and menaced because many, or even most of their fellow citizens no longer agree with them. They are trying to move America into conformity with an idealized past, a past that, of course, never was. We are familiar with the revivalism of religious extremists, Jewish, Muslim, and Christian, and their passionate devotion to their own literal, but distinctly self-serving understanding of their sacred books. American regressionism is similarly a revivalism, but of political extremists, who are also passionately devoted to their own literal and self-serving understanding of their sacred book, the Constitution.
10 VIII 2022:
Good summary account of Steve Bannon’s arraignment on Politico. Skid-row Steve entered the courtroom in handcuffs and tried to boost the melodrama with his bon mot “They will never shut me up, they’ll have to kill me first.” But his six-count indictment for money laundering and conspiracy to defraud suggests that the better epigraph for the occasion was shouted by a bystander as Bannon was entering the court: “Stop hurting America, you greasy grifter.”
Steve is right, of course, They will never shut him up, for only death will silence him. Bannon has tried very hard over the years to fashion for himself the persona of a revolutionary pundit. This has not come out very well. He has been more an insurrectionist Walter Mitty who strives, by blather about rebellion, revolution, seizing power, and so on, to grab attention. It’s the attention that matters, not the politics. What inspires Mr. Bannon is Trump’s Disease, an insatiable craving for notoriety, and sufferers from that affliction never shut up.