Retribution Execution, Con't

House GOP Number 3 Clown Elise Stefanik has filed an ethics complaint against  NY Trump civil trial Judge Arthur Engoron for the crime of overseeing that civil fraud case against Donald Trump.

Rep. Elise Stefanik, the House GOP conference chair, has filed a judicial ethics complaint against the judge presiding over the New York civil fraud case against Donald Trump, accusing Judge Arthur Engoron of “weaponized lawfare” against the former president, and calling on the judge to recuse himself.

Engoron has exhibited “clear judicial bias” against Trump, including by telling Trump’s attorney that the former president is “just a bad guy” whom New York Attorney General Letitia James “should go after,” Stefanik, R-N.Y., said in a letter to the New York State Commission on Judicial Conduct. She said the judge has failed to honor Trump’s due process rights, concerns that she said are exacerbated by the former president’s position as the front-runner for the presidential nomination.

Engoron is presiding over a bench trial in the $250 million lawsuit, meaning the judge will also determine guilt and any penalties in the case. The suit, filed by James last year, accuses Trump of inflating asset values for financial gain. Trump testified angrily on Monday in the high-stakes case and has complained and clashed with the judge for weeks.

Engoron issued a partial gag order on Trump last month after he made disparaging remarks about a law clerk on social media and to reporters. He was fined twice for violating the gag order. The judge expanded the gag order last week to include the former president’s lawyers.

“I filed an official judicial complaint against Judge Arthur Engoron for his inappropriate bias and judicial intemperance in New York’s disgraceful lawsuit against President Donald J. Trump and the Trump Organization,” Stefanik said in a statement to NBC News. “Americans are sick and tired of the blatant corruption by radical Leftist judges in NY. All New Yorkers must speak out against the dangerous weaponized lawfare against President Trump.”

Stefanik said in the letter to accompany the complaint that Engoron had illegally gagged Trump’s protected political speech, violated political giving rules with financial contributions to Democrats as recently as 2018, and ignored a decision on the appropriate statute of limitations in the case. At the start of the trial, Engoron “infamously smiled and posed for the cameras,” she noted.

“If Judge Engoron can railroad a billionaire New York businessman, a former President of the United States, and the leading presidential candidate, just imagine what he could do to all New Yorkers,” Stefanik writes. “Judge Engoron’s lawlessness sends an ominous and illegal warning to New York business owners: If New York judges don’t like your politics, they will destroy your business, the livelihood of your employees, and you personally. This Commission cannot let this continue.”

“All Americans, including political opponents, must receive due process and equal protection under our U.S. and New York Constitutions,” Stefanik wrote. “Judge Engoron’s disdain for President Trump and his politics are evident, and the Commission must take corrective action to restore a just process and protect our constitutional rights. Judge Engoron must recuse from this case.”

You can tell how badly things are going for Trump in this case if he called up Stefanik and had her file this formal complaint to try to force Judge Engoron to recuse himself.  It also becomes a major marker in any expected appeal to a higher court.

Again, Trump's play is get back in office and have all of his legal problems go away. No, he can't pardon a state civil judgment, but he can have SCOTUS toss the case. He has to win in November or he's going to jail, broke and penniless. He just has to outlast the legal process.

We'll see, but this is clearly a long shot. It does however have the advantage of giving Trump fundraising fodder for millions more, which is the real point.

 

 

The Manchin Off The Hill

WV Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin is hanging it up, leaving his fellow Democrats out to dry and making keeping the Senate considerably harder, because why wouldn't he go out like a huge asshole?

Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) announced Thursday he would not seek reelection in 2024, setting back Democrats’ plans to hold onto their Senate majority in 2024 and raising their fears that he could get involved in the presidential race as a third-party candidate.
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“After months of deliberation and long conversations with my family, I believe in my heart of hearts that I have accomplished what I set out to do for West Virginia,” Manchin said in a video posted to X. “I have made one of the toughest decisions of my life and decided that I will not be running for reelection to the United States Senate.”

Manchin, 76, had defied political gravity by holding onto his seat in a deeply red state but would have faced long odds against either Gov. Jim Justice or Rep. Alex Mooney (W.Va.), who are running in the GOP primary next year. The veteran politician had run the coal country state as governor, but West Virginia’s rightward turn in recent years had left him the only Democrat in statewide office.

Faced with what he knew would probably be the race of his life, Manchin was weighing retiring from politics altogether or running for president as a third-party candidate backed by the centrist group No Labels.

Manchin’s announcement video suggests he has not chosen the retirement path just yet, as he said he planned to travel the country to gauge “if there is an interest in creating a movement to mobilize the middle and bring Americans together.”

Democrats fear such a bid would hurt Biden’s chances of reelection at a time when polls show him losing swing states to former president Donald Trump, and when several other candidates are also launching third-party runs.

Manchin spokeswoman Sam Runyon declined to comment on whether he planned to pursue a presidential run, and a No Labels spokeswoman said the group won’t decide until early 2024 about whether to nominate a ticket and who will be on it.

“The Senate will lose a great leader when he leaves, but we commend Senator Manchin for stepping up to lead a long overdue national conversation about solving America’s biggest challenges, including inflation, an insecure border, out-of-control debt and growing threats from abroad,” said No Labels spokeswoman Maryanne Martini.

Oh but it would get far worse if Manchin challenged Biden in 2024, or worse, he went full No Labels as a third party spoiler. I wouldn't put it past him, either.

We'll see.

Last Call For Retribution Execution, Con't

The Trump 2024 people are screaming from the rooftops that they will make mass arrests of Democrats and their voters in 2025 and at this point I have to assume that a whole lot of your friends and neighbors are going to spend the next year trying to get on Team Fascism so that they don't end up on the pogrom lists.

 

Donald Trump and his allies have begun mapping out specific plans for using the federal government to punish critics and opponents should he win a second term, with the former president naming individuals he wants to investigate or prosecute and his associates drafting plans to potentially invoke the Insurrection Act on his first day in office to allow him to deploy the military against civil demonstrations.

In private, Trump has told advisers and friends in recent months that he wants the Justice Department to investigate onetime officials and allies who have become critical of his time in office, including his former chief of staff, John Kelly, and former attorney general William P. Barr, as well as his ex-attorney Ty Cobb and former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Gen. Mark A. Milley, according to people who have talked to him, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations. Trump has also talked of prosecuting officials at the FBI and Justice Department, a person familiar with the matter said.

In public, Trump has vowed to appoint a special prosecutor to “go after” President Biden and his family. The former president has frequently made corruption accusations against them that are not supported by available evidence.

To facilitate Trump’s ability to direct Justice Department actions, his associates have been drafting plans to dispense with 50 years of policy and practice intended to shield criminal prosecutions from political considerations. Critics have called such ideas dangerous and unconstitutional.

“It would resemble a banana republic if people came into office and started going after their opponents willy-nilly,” said Saikrishna Prakash, a constitutional law professor at the University of Virginia who studies executive power. “It’s hardly something we should aspire to.”

Much of the planning for a second term has been unofficially outsourced to a partnership of right-wing think tanks in Washington. Dubbed “Project 2025,” the group is developing a plan, to include draft executive orders, that would deploy the military domestically under the Insurrection Act, according to a person involved in those conversations and internal communications reviewed by The Washington Post. The law, last updated in 1871, authorizes the president to deploy the military for domestic law enforcement.

The proposal was identified in internal discussions as an immediate priority, the communications showed. In the final year of his presidency, some of Trump’s supporters urged him to invoke the Insurrection Act to put down unrest after the murder of George Floyd in the summer of 2020, but he never did it. Trump has publicly expressed regret about not deploying more federal force and said he would not hesitate to do so in the future.

Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung did not answer questions about specific actions under discussion. “President Trump is focused on crushing his opponents in the primary election and then going on to beat Crooked Joe Biden,” Cheung said. “President Trump has always stood for law and order, and protecting the Constitution.”

The discussions underway reflect Trump’s determination to harness the power of the presidency to exact revenge on those who have challenged or criticized him if he returns to the White House. The former president has frequently threatened to take punitive steps against his perceived enemies, arguing that doing so would be justified by the current prosecutions against him. Trump has claimed without evidence that the criminal charges he is facing — a total of 91 across four state and federal indictments — were made up to damage him politically.

“This is third-world-country stuff, ‘arrest your opponent,’” Trump said at a campaign stop in New Hampshire in October. “And that means I can do that, too.”

Special counsel Jack Smith, Attorney General Merrick Garland and Biden have all said that Smith’s prosecution decisions were made independently of the White House, in accordance with department rules on special counsels.

Trump, the clear polling leader in the GOP race, has made “retribution” a central theme of his campaign, seeking to intertwine his own legal defense with a call for payback against perceived slights and offenses to right-wing Americans. He repeatedly tells his supporters that he is being persecuted on their behalf and holds out a 2024 victory as a shared redemption at their enemies’ expense.

 

Again, Trump is promising that he'll arrest Democrats and their supporters, maybe tens of thousands or more, and that he'll deploy the US military against Americans, and your friends and neighbors and co-workers are not only okay with this, they're actively rooting for it to happen.

And if the polls are any indication, a whole lot of people are considering being on the side that supports the coming fascism rather than resisting it. 

President Biden is trailing Donald J. Trump in five of the six most important battleground states one year before the 2024 election, suffering from enormous doubts about his age and deep dissatisfaction over his handling of the economy and a host of other issues, new polls by The New York Times and Siena College have found.

The results show Mr. Biden losing to Mr. Trump, his likeliest Republican rival, by margins of three to 10 percentage points among registered voters in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania. Mr. Biden is ahead only in Wisconsin, by two percentage points, the poll found.

Across the six battlegrounds — all of which Mr. Biden carried in 2020 — the president trails by an average of 48 to 44 percent.

Discontent pulsates throughout the Times/Siena poll, with a majority of voters saying Mr. Biden’s policies have personally hurt them. The survey also reveals the extent to which the multiracial and multigenerational coalition that elected Mr. Biden is fraying. Demographic groups that backed Mr. Biden by landslide margins in 2020 are now far more closely contested, as two-thirds of the electorate sees the country moving in the wrong direction.

Voters under 30 favor Mr. Biden by only a single percentage point, his lead among Hispanic voters is down to single digits and his advantage in urban areas is half of Mr. Trump’s edge in rural regions. And while women still favored Mr. Biden, men preferred Mr. Trump by twice as large a margin, reversing the gender advantage that had fueled so many Democratic gains in recent years.

Black voters — long a bulwark for Democrats and for Mr. Biden — are now registering 22 percent support in these states for Mr. Trump, a level unseen in presidential politics for a Republican in modern times.

Add it all together, and Mr. Trump leads by 10 points in Nevada, six in Georgia, five in Arizona, five in Michigan and four in Pennsylvania. Mr. Biden held a 2-point edge in Wisconsin.

In a remarkable sign of a gradual racial realignment between the two parties, the more diverse the swing state, the farther Mr. Biden was behind, and he led only in the whitest of the six.

Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump are both deeply — and similarly — unpopular, according to the poll. But voters who overwhelmingly said the nation was on the wrong track are taking out their frustrations on the president.

 

We're about to hand this country back to an autocratic crook who will take endless revenge on anyone and everyone in sight in a massive purge of anyone even remotely critical of him backed by lethal military force, but it's okay because Joe Biden is old LOL.

 

Excusing the voters as ignorant doesn't work anymore. Trump is absolutely saying on a nearly weekly basis at rallies that he's going to hurt people. And the majority of the American people want it to happen. 

 

Biden needs to get his ass in gear and run like he's 10 points down.

 

Because right now?

 

He is.

Voters, by a 59 percent to 37 percent margin, said they better trusted Mr. Trump over Mr. Biden on the economy, the largest gap of any issue. The preference for Mr. Trump on economic matters spanned the electorate, among both men and women, those with college degrees and those without them, every age range and every income level.

That result is especially problematic for Mr. Biden because nearly twice as many voters said economic issues would determine their 2024 vote compared with social issues, such as abortion or guns. And those economic voters favored Mr. Trump by a landslide 60 percent to 32 percent.

The findings come after Mr. Biden’s campaign has run millions of dollars in ads promoting his record, and as the president continues to tour the country to brag about the state of the economy. “Folks, Bidenomics is just another way of saying the American dream!” Mr. Biden declared on Wednesday on a trip to Minnesota.

Voters clearly disagree. Only 2 percent of voters said the economy was excellent.

"At least Trump made the trains run on time"is gonna be the epitaph of this country at this rate. And the kids? The kids want to go back to Trump.

Voters under 30 — a group that strongly voted for Mr. Biden in 2020 — said they trusted Mr. Trump more on the economy by an extraordinary 28 percentage-point margin after years of inflation and now high interest rates that have made mortgages far less affordable. Less than one percent of poll respondents under 30 rated the current economy as excellent, including zero poll respondents in that age group in three states: Arizona, Nevada and Wisconsin.

“I actually had high hopes for Biden,” said Jahmerry Henry, a 25-year-old who packages liquor in Albany, Ga. “You can’t be worse than Trump. But then as the years go by, things happen with inflation, the war going on in Ukraine, recently Israel and I guess our borders are not secure at all.”

Now Mr. Henry plans to back Mr. Trump.

“I don’t see anything that he has done to benefit us,” said Patricia Flores, 39, of Reno, Nev., who voted for Mr. Biden in 2020 but won’t support him again in 2024.

 

"You can't be worse than Trump", but they're going to vote for him anyhow. We really are going to hand this place back over to Trump for a second go and he'll finish the country off. The psychopathy and despair are real. The Zoomers who will never be able to afford a house are willing to roll the dice on the autocrat again. Hey, maybe he'll crash the housing market so they can buy cheap.

Of course, Biden siding America with the country openly asking why they can't nuke a civilian population because there are "no non-combatants in Gaza" doesn't exactly put him with the good guys, either, as awful as Trump is.

The rest of us have a lot of work to do in convincing others that's not the case. We know he's going to destroy the place.  Trump going to prison before the election might be the only thing that saves us.

On the other hand, having said all this...

Let's remember that the NY Times can definitely be wrong on this election.

And we've been down before a year out.

The larger point is we have an entire year. Let's not waste it.

 

Trump Cards, Con't

If the oral arguments in last week's Minnesota's Supreme Court case involving removing Donald Trump from the ballot in the state over January 6th are any indication, there's little chance he'll be kept off the ballot in the Land of 10,000 Lakes.

 

Minnesota Supreme Court justices appeared skeptical Thursday that states have the authority to block former President Donald Trump from the ballot, with some suggesting that Congress is best positioned to decide whether his role in the 2021 U.S. Capitol attack should prevent him from running.

Justices sharply questioned an attorney representing Minnesota voters who had sued to keep Trump, the early front-runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, off the state ballot under the rarely used “insurrection” clause of the U.S. Constitution. Citing Congress’ role in certifying presidential electors and its ability to impeach, several justices said it seemed that questions of eligibility should be settled there.

“And those all seem to suggest there is a fundamental role for Congress to play and not the states because of that,” Chief Justice Natalie E. Hudson said. “It’s that interrelation that I think is troubling, that suggests that this is a national matter for Congress to decide.”

The oral arguments before the state Supreme Court were unfolding during an unprecedented week, as courts in two states were debating questions that even the nation’s highest court has never settled — the meaning of the insurrection clause in the Civil War-era 14th Amendment and whether states are even allowed to decide the matter. At stake is whether Trump will be allowed on the ballot in states where lawsuits are challenging his eligibility.

The Minnesota lawsuit and another in Colorado, where a similar hearing is playing out, are among several filed around the country to bar Trump from state ballots in 2024 over his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack, which was intended to halt Congress’ certification of Democrat Joe Biden’s 2020 win. The Colorado and Minnesota cases are furthest along, putting one or both on an expected path to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Minnesota’s went directly to the state Supreme Court, where five of the seven justices heard the arguments on Thursday after two recused themselves. The justices consistently questioned whether it was appropriate for states to determine a candidate’s eligibility to run for president. Hudson also said she was concerned about the possibility “for just chaos” if multiple states decided the issue differently.

She said even if the court had the authority to keep Trump off the ballot, “Should we is the question that concerns me the most.”

The former president is dominating the Republican presidential primary as voting in the first caucus and primary states rapidly approaches.

An attorney representing Trump, Nicholas Nelson, said states’ roles in determining candidates’ eligibility for president was limited to what he called “basic processing requirements,” such as determining whether they meet the age requirement.

He addressed the chief justice’s concern about the potential for chaos that could result from states deciding differently on the issue.

“Petitioners would like this to be a one-off case, but we are a 50-state democracy,” he said.

The question of whether Trump should be barred from the ballot under the insurrection section of the 14th Amendment should not even be before the court, he said, calling it a political question.

“There’s nothing for the courts to decide about the eligibility question,” Nelson told the justices.

Trump’s team asked the court to dismiss the lawsuit.

 

I don't expect the case to be dismissed, but I don't expect Trump to lose here, either (or in Colorado for that matter.)

 

No, this question is headed for SCOTUS as soon as it's able, and they will rule in favor of keeping Trump on the ballot, if not a unanimous vote.  This is not quite a colossal waste of time, but it's close.

Even if Trump is convicted before the election somehow, that won't change a thing as far as eligibility for the Oval Office. Not with this SCOTUS.

We'll see what happens, but Trump's almost certainly going to have to be defeated by the voters, and tens of millions of them want him back in charge...for good.

Last Call For Mitch Better Have My Money, Con't

GOP Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell has long-controlled the big campaign money for Senate Republicans, and with Missouri GOP Sen. Josh Hawley waiting in the wings to dethrone him, McConnell is suddenly facing a fight with Hawley that Democrats are all to willing to engage in.

 

Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell bluntly warned Republican senators in a private meeting not to sign on to a bill from Sen. Josh Hawley aimed at limiting corporate money bankrolling high-powered outside groups, telling them that many of them won their seats thanks to the powerful super PAC the Kentucky Republican has long controlled.

According to multiple sources familiar with the Tuesday lunch meeting, McConnell warned GOP senators that they could face “incoming” from the “center-right” if they signed onto Hawley’s bill. He also read off a list of senators who won their races amid heavy financial support from the Senate Leadership Fund, an outside group tied to the GOP leader that spends big on TV ads in battleground Senate races. On that list of senators: Hawley himself, according to sources familiar with the matter.

McConnell has long been a chief opponent of tighter campaign finance restrictions. But there’s also no love lost between McConnell and Hawley, who has long criticized the GOP leader and has repeatedly called for new leadership atop their conference. Just on Tuesday, Hawley told CNN that it was “mistake” for McConnell to be “standing with” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, in their push to tie Ukraine aid to an Israel funding package.

Hawley’s new bill, called the Ending Corporate Influence on Elections Act, is aimed at reversing the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision that loosened campaign finance laws – an effort that aligns the conservative Missouri Republican with many Democrats. Hawley’s bill would ban publicly traded corporations from making independent expenditures and political advertisements – and ban those publicly traded companies from giving money to super PACs.

In an interview, Hawley defended his bill and said that corporate influence should be limited in elections.

“I think that’s wrong,” Hawley told CNN. “I think it’s wrong as an original matter. I think it’s warping our politics, and I see no reason for conservatives to defend it. It’s wrong as a matter of the original meaning of the Constitution. It is bad for our elections. It’s bad for our voters. And I just think on principle, we ought to be concerned.”

 

Now, this is far less about corporate influence in elections as it is Josh Hawley trying to critically damage Mitch McConnell's power in Senate GOP politics. But there should be 51 Democratic votes for Hawley's bill on principle, and I'm betting Hawley can find 8 other Republicans to beat a filibuster. Mitch is betting he can too, hence the warning. 

Still, if Hawley's willing to chokeslam dark money over a grudge against Mitch, Democrats should be scrambling to get this bill passed in both the House and Senate and put it on Biden's desk ASAP.

The Earl Of Rose City Retires

Long-time Oregon Democratic Congressman Earl Blumenauer, who has represented Portland and environs for a quarter-century, is hanging up his bike shoes and retiring.

 

“I have dedicated my career to creating livable communities where people are safe, healthy, and economically secure,” Blumenauer, 75, said in a Facebook post announcing his upcoming retirement. “This mission has guided my involvement on a wide range of issues that have been very rewarding for me and productive for our community. Now, it is time to refocus on a narrower set of priorities.”

In a half a century of public service — roughly two-thirds of his life — Blumenauer has also served as a state legislator, county commissioner and city council member in Oregon. He was first elected to Congress in a special election in 1996 to succeed then-Rep. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), who had been elected to the Senate.

Known for his signature bow ties and bike lapel pins, Blumenauer has been a policy advocate for public transportation, housing, sustainability and marijuana reforms. He currently serves as a member of the House Ways and Means Committee, and is the ranking Democrat on the Subcommittee on Trade. He also founded the Congressional Bike Caucus, which advocates for safer streets and other pro-bicyclist policies.

Blumenauer’s congressional district, which includes Portland and Mount Hood, has been a Democratic stronghold and he is expected to be succeed by another Democrat.

Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) tweeted that Blumenauer has long “been a powerful force in the policy and politics of Oregon and America.”

“He is a national leader on issues from urban transportation and housing to climate and cannabis. I so thank him for his over 50 years of public service,” Merkley said.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) credited Blumenauer with helping craft key legislation.

“As a senior Member of the Committee on Ways and Means, he was an architect of the single largest investment in addressing climate change in our nation’s history,” Jeffries said in a statement, adding that “as Chair of the Subcommittee on Trade, Earl ensured that the bipartisan United States Mexico Canada Trade Agreement protected American workers.”

“Earl and his bicycle pins will be greatly missed after the conclusion of this term and I wish him and his family the best as he begins this next chapter,” Jeffries said.

 

"From cycling to cannabis" is a hell of an epitaph for a career. Blumenauer has certainly seen both expand nationwide to the benefit of millions of Americans.

 

The good news is this being a safe seat for the Dems, that we can see a new generation of progressive faces represent Rose City, and hopefully they'll do just as good a job or better.

 

Last Call For Vote Like Your Country Depends On It, Con't

Yet another 2022 GOP state redistricting gerrymander struck down as unconstitutional for disenfranchising Black voters, and this time the state in question is Georgia.

 

A federal judge ruled Thursday that Georgia’s district lines must be redrawn to ensure adequate representation of Black voters in Congress and the General Assembly, finding that the state’s maps illegally weakened their political power.

The decision could result in the election of additional Black representatives next year, with Democrats hoping to gain a seat in the U.S. House, where Republicans currently hold a 222-212 majority and control nine of 14 Georgia congressional seats. Before the General Assembly’s 2021 redistricting, the GOP held an 8-6 advantage in Georgia.

U.S. District Judge Steve Jones concluded that the Republican-controlled General Assembly violated the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which prohibits racial discrimination in elections.

Jones’ order requires legislators to create an additional majority-Black congressional district west-metro Atlanta by Dec. 8. His ruling also calls for two more state Senate districts and five more state House districts with Black majorities in the Atlanta and Macon areas.

“Georgia has made great strides since 1965 towards equality in voting,” Jones wrote in his 516-page order. “However, the evidence before this court shows that Georgia has not reached the point where the political process has equal openness and equal opportunity for everyone.”

Georgia Democratic Party Chairwoman Nikema Williams called Thursday’s ruling a “resounding victory” for democracy.

“Republicans knew they couldn’t win on their ideas, so they resorted to redrawing the maps in their favor instead,” she said.

Josh McKoon, chairman of the Georgia Republican Party, called Jones a “partisan Democrat ally.” Jones was appointed to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia in 2011 by then-President Barack Obama.

“It is simply outrageous that one far left federal judge is invalidating the will of the elected representatives of the people of Georgia who drew fair maps in conformity with longstanding legal principles,” he said.

 

If by "conformity with longstanding legal principles" you mean "the centuries-long history of Southern states disenfranchising Black folk" then yes, Goergia's GOP is definitely conforming.  

Black voters in Georgia accounted for nearly half of the state’s sharp population growth — over 1 million new residents during the past decade — but state legislators shaped districts in a way that resulted in Democrats losing a seat in Congress during last year’s elections. Black voters overwhelmingly support Democrats while most white voters back Republicans.

Bishop Reginald T. Jackson, who leads more than 500 African Methodist Episcopal churches in Georgia and was a witness in the redistricting trial, said Thursday’s order was a “long march to justice.” His organization, the Sixth District of the A.M.E. Church, was a plaintiff in the lawsuit.

“It is unfortunate that, decades after the Civil Rights Movement, we still need to defend and promote the right for the African-American community to vote (but) make no mistake that we will continue to fight for these causes, not only because the facts and the law are on our side, but because democracy is our country’s most important tenant and is always worth fighting for,” Jackson said.

 

You're damn right they are worth fighting for.

 

Black Lives Still Matter.

The Auto Loan Crisis Is Back, Too

High interest rates, chip shortages, and high auto prices are resulting in the worst auto loan market in three decades.

 

Higher car prices and rising interest rates are hindering car owners’ ability to afford their vehicle payments, as 6.1% of subprime auto borrowers are at least 60 days past due on their loans, the highest percentage in data dating back to 1994, according to Bloomberg, which cited Fitch Ratings.

The 6.1% of borrowers behind on auto loans last month marks a surge from the 2.6% reported in May 2021, after the federal government significantly lowered interest rates in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Higher vehicle prices and borrowing costs—along with continued higher than usual inflation—have fueled the rising number of Americans behind on their auto loans, a problem that might persist given forecasts from Federal Reserve officials who believe high interest rates will continue through 2026.

Margaret Rowe, a senior executive at Fitch, told Bloomberg subprime borrowers can be the first indication of “where we start to see the negative effects of macroeconomic headwinds.”

Generation Z and millennials may account for a significant amount of the borrowers behind on their auto loans, as the two generations recorded auto loan delinquency rates last year that were significantly higher than pre-pandemic levels, according to an NBC News report that cited TransUnion.

Interest rates for used cars are 13.5% on average for those with fair credit but can rocket up to around 21% for those with the worst credit, according to Bankrate.

Rising car prices have in part been caused by a pandemic-induced computer chip shortage, and some chip shortages could continue into 2024, according to J.P. Morgan.

I know we've managed to avoid a recession so far with this week's stellar GDP report and we have more protections in place than we did fifteen years ago, but I'll be damned if this doesn't all feel like the Great Recession is coming. More likely, the massive economic damage from Trump and Covid is only playing out now and the medicine is painful, but the alternative really is another Great Recession, and if we don't stop the guy who got us into this mess in 2019 and he wins in 2024, we are absolutely sunk as an economy.

We've avoided the crack-up for now, but it's going to take years to dig ourselves out of the Trump mess. If we put ourselves back in it, we're not coming up for air.

Last Call For A Pence-ive Retreat

Former VP Mike Pence has dropped out of the 2024 GOP primary contest, to the surprise of nobody, and to the loss of no great value.

 

Former Vice President Mike Pence suspended his 2024 presidential campaign Saturday, with his campaign running low on money and the Republican Party moving in a different direction than the longtime Indiana conservative.

He made the unexpected announcement at the annual Republican Jewish Coalition convention in Las Vegas.

"I came here to say it’s become clear to me this is not my time. So after much deliberation I have decided to suspend my campaign for president effective today," he said onstage. "I have no regrets. The only thing that would have been harder than coming up short would have been if we never tried at all."

His spokesperson Devin O’Malley said Pence chose the convention for the announcement because “the conflict in Israel is a microcosm of what Pence has been evangelizing regarding populism and traditional conservative values."

“RJC provided him one last opportunity to make that case and do so in front of a supportive audience," O'Malley added.

Republican candidates praised Pence following his announcement. "He’s been a good man of faith. He’s been a good man of service," said former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis tweeted: “Vice President Mike Pence is a principled man of faith who has worked tirelessly to advance the conservative cause."

 

For all the (unfair) flak that current VP Kamala Harris gets about people not liking her (which is untrue) it's important to remember that Pence's party is currently eulogizing him even though he's you know, still alive.

 

His political career is quite dead however, and I'm sure he'll get a lobbyist job somewhere soon where he can be on the letterhead and give speeches where a whole 16 people will show up. Maybe he can hang out with Dan Quayle some more.

Nobody really cares, and good riddance to a man who took Trump's 30 silver in order to betray the country.

Bye.

Last Call For Ridin' With Biden, Con't

There are still plenty of warning signs ahead in the housing, auto loan, and student loan sectors, but for now, not only is America's economy growing under Bidenomics, it's skyrocketing.

 

The U.S. economy grew by an annual rate of 4.9 percent in the third quarter, the strongest pace since 2021, as spending — by families, businesses and the government — accelerated, even in the face of fast-rising borrowing costs.

New government data released Thursday by the Bureau of Economic Analysis shows that gross domestic product expanded between July and September, capping five straight quarters of growth and eluding a long-feared recession.

The economy’s resilience is a product of a strong job market and extra pandemic savings, which have made it possible for people to keep spending despite inflation and rising interest rates. Robust government hiring — including 214,000 new jobs between July and September — also added to overall strength.

“It’s enough to knock me over with a feather,” said Diane Swonk, chief economist at KPMG. “We’ve had the most aggressive credit tightening from the Federal Reserve since the 1980s and, guess what, the economy’s accelerating. We really underestimated how much consumers could keep spending."

That spending was broad-based in the third quarter, with U.S. households doubling down on both necessities, such as housing, utilities and prescription drugs, as well as luxuries including dining out, hotel stays and recreation. Businesses and the federal government also continued to spend, though GDP was dragged down by lower non-residential investments.

Overall, the latest spike in GDP is more than double the previous quarter’s annual growth rate of 2.1 percent.

What isn’t clear yet is whether higher borrowing costs could reverse some of these gains in the months to come. Economists say that acceleration in economic growth is likely to slow later this year, as pandemic-era savings dry up and millions of households resume student loan payments. Fears of a government shutdown, ongoing strikes by actors and autoworkers, and worsening wars in Ukraine and Gaza are also adding to the uncertainty.

“The U.S. consumer has so been hanging tough and powering the economy forward, but I expect much slower growth the rest of the year,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, who expects economic growth to slow to an annualized rate of 1 percent in the fourth quarter. “There are a lot of headwinds out there.”

In Cincinnati, Dominique Walker just made her first student loan payment in more than three years — which means she’s rethinking all sorts of other expenses, including manicures, massages and morning coffees. She’s packing her lunch a lot more and expects to spend less this holiday season than she has been.

“I’m having to rebalance things,” said Walker, 32, a data management specialist at a hospital. “That extra $305 a month, that has to come from somewhere.”

 

The bad news is that voters think the economy is the worst they've seen in decades.

 

The Fed has lifted borrowing costs 11 times since March 2022, with the goal of slowing the economy enough to stabilize prices. Mortgage rates, at 7.6 percent, are at a two-decade high, and the housing market has all but come to a standstill. But economists say that has freed up Americans to spend elsewhere. Expenditures at restaurants, movie theaters and sporting events have all risen in the past few months, helping support continued hiring in those industries.

Meanwhile, inflation has moderated — to 3.7 percent from last summer’s peak of 9.1 percent — though it remains far higher than the Fed would like.

The spate of growth is welcome news for the White House, which has invested heavily in infrastructure as part of its “Bidenomics” plan. But despite $302 billion in spending, it has struggled to convince voters that its economic policies are working for them. Biden’s ratings on economic matters are lower than ever, with just 32 percent of Americans saying they approve of the president’s handling of the economy in a recent CNBC poll. 

 

The disconnect is staggering. Giving the economy back to Trump would be catastrophic. But tens of millions of Americans want to do just that.

 

These Disunited States, Con't

A new PRRI poll finds a majority of Americans now believe that the country was better off before the Civil Rights era.

 

Fewer Americans believe that American culture and way of life has mostly changed for the better (44%) than changed for the worse (55%) since the 1950s. Republicans (73%) are more likely than independents (57%) and Democrats (34%) to believe it has mostly changed for the worse.

Nearly nine in ten Americans who most trust far-right news (89%), seven in ten Americans who most trust Fox news (71%), and nearly six in ten Americans who do not watch TV news (58%) believe American culture and way of life have mostly changed for the worse. Under half of Americans who most trust mainstream news (45%) believe the same.

Majorities of white Christians — including white evangelical Protestants (77%), white mainline/non-evangelical Protestants (60%), and white Catholics (57%) — believe American culture and way of life has mostly changed for the worse. Hispanic Catholics, Black Protestants, and non-Christian religious Americans are more divided. By contrast, religiously unaffiliated Americans are less likely to say American culture and way of life has changed for the worse (43%) than for the better (57%).

While younger Americans are not optimistic, they remain less likely than older Americans to believe that American culture and way of life have mostly changed for the worse: 49% of Generation Z and millennials, 58% of Generation X, 60% of baby boomers, and 67% of the Silent Generation.

The majority of white (58%) and Hispanic Americans (54%), and nearly half of Black Americans (47%), agree that America’s culture and way of life have mostly changed for the worse.

Americans without a college education are more likely than college-educated Americans to believe that America has changed for the worse, including 61% with some college and 60% with a high school education or less, compared with 46% of college graduates and 43% of postgraduates.

Americans in urban areas are divided on this question (50% better vs. 49% worse), compared with majorities of those who live in suburban (55%) and rural (67%) areas who believe that America’s culture and way of life have changed for the worse.

 

It gets a lot more disturbing when Americans are asked about how to fix things.

Just under four in ten Americans (38%) agree with the statement, “Because things have gotten so far off track in this country, we need a leader who is willing to break some rules if that’s what it takes to set things right,” while 59% disagree.

About half of Republicans (48%) agree with the need for a leader who is willing to break some rules, compared with four in ten independents (38%) and three in ten Democrats (29%). Majorities of Americans who most trust Fox News (53%) or far-right outlets (52%) agree that we need a leader who breaks the rules, compared with smaller shares of those who do not trust TV news (40%), or who most trust mainstream news (32%). Republicans with favorable views of former President Donald Trump are notably more likely than those with unfavorable views of Trump to agree with the need for a leader who is willing to break some rules (54% vs. 32%).

A slim majority of Hispanic Catholics (51%) agree with this statement, along with nearly four in ten religiously unaffiliated Americans (38%), white evangelical Protestants (37%), white mainline/non-evangelical Protestants (37%), non-Christians (37%), white Catholics (36%), and Black Protestants (35%). White Americans who attend religious services weekly or more (29%) are less likely than those who attend monthly or a few times a year (39%) or those who seldom or never attend services (37%) to agree with the need for a leader who is willing to break some rules.

Americans who believe that the country has changed for the worse since the 1950s are substantially more likely than those who say that it has changed for the better to agree with the need for a leader who is willing to break some rules (43% vs. 31%).

 

And more and more Americans are ready to turn to violence to try to solve the country's political problems, especially Republicans.

Disturbingly, support for political violence has increased over the last two years. Today, nearly a quarter of Americans (23%) agree that “because things have gotten so far off track, true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country,” up from 15% in 2021. PRRI has asked this question in eight separate surveys since March 2021. This is the first time support for political violence has peaked above 20%.

One-third of Republicans (33%) today believe that true American patriots may have to resort to violence to save the country, compared with 22% of independents and 13% of Democrats. Those percentages have increased since 2021, when 28% of Republicans and 7% of Democrats held this belief. Republicans who have favorable views of Trump (41%) are nearly three times as likely as Republicans who have unfavorable views of Trump (16%) to agree that true American patriots may have to resort to violence to save the country.

Americans who believe that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump are more than three times as likely as those who do not believe that the election was stolen from Trump — 46% to 13%, respectively — to agree that true American patriots may have to resort to violence to save the country.

Over three in ten white evangelical Protestants (31%), along with 25% of white mainline/non-evangelical Protestants, 24% of Black Protestants, 23% of non-Christians, 23% of religiously unaffiliated Americans, 21% of Hispanic Catholics, and 20% of white Catholics agree that true American patriots may have to resort to violence to save the country. Among white Christians, there are no differences by church attendance on this question.

Americans who believe that the country has changed for the worse since the 1950s are more than twice as likely as those who say that it has changed for the better to agree that true American patriots may have to resort to violence to save the country (30% vs. 14%).

 

Again, one-third of Republicans believe in resorting to political violence. That number jumps to nearly half among people who believe the 2020 presidential election was "stolen". These numbers are only going to go up the closer we get to the November 2024 election, or to any real legal consequences in Trump's trials. 

Be careful out there.

Last Call For That Poll-Asked Look, Con't

Polling from this summer indicated that RFK Jr.'s spoiler third-party run was drawing more Trump voters than Biden voters, but this time a poll from Harvard/Harris finds RFK Jr. is throwing the race to Trump.

 

Former President Trump is leading President Biden and Democrat-turned-independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in a three-way race, a new poll found.

The Harvard CAPS-Harris Poll survey, shared with The Hill, showed Trump receiving 39 percent support, Biden receiving 33 percent support and Kennedy receiving 19 percent support in a three-way race. A separate 9 percent of voters said they did not know or were unsure.

When those who were unsure were asked who they would vote for if they had to choose, Trump received 42 percent support, Biden received 36 percent and Kennedy received 22 percent.

In a two-way race, Trump holds a 5 percentage point lead over Biden, with the former president receiving 46 percent and Biden receiving 41 percent. Fourteen percent of respondents said they were unsure or didn’t know.

The survey noted that Biden gained 1 percentage point since a similar survey was conducted in September, while Trump gained 2 percentage points.

Biden still leads Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) and former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley in separate head-to-head match-ups.

Between Biden and DeSantis, Biden received 44 percent support while DeSantis received 40 percent. Between Biden and Haley, the president sat at 42 percent while Haley received 38 percent support.

The survey also indicated that Trump received the highest percentage of support when GOP voters were asked who they would vote for if the 2024 Republican primary were held today. Trump received 60 percent while DeSantis received 11 percent; all others received less than 10 percent, according to the poll.

“Trump’s polling continues to defy gravity both in the primary and the general election. Kennedy right now doesn’t change the result — an election held today would elect Donald Trump,” Mark Penn, the co-director of the Harvard CAPS-Harris Poll, said. “There is a lot of time and events to go, but Trump has a significant edge at the starting line.”

 

Again, a poll 12 months out from an election is about as predictive as a bucket of warm spit, but it continues to show that Trump facing 90+ counts in four separate criminal trials doesn't matter to half the country and that they'll vote for him anyway.  The polls have consistently shown him with a 40-50 point lead in the primaries despite the dozens of felony charges, to the point where I believe being indicted has actually helped him, not that Ron DeSantis or Nikki Haley would have a chance in hell even without the criminal charges.

 

Trump continues to have a 46-point lead in the GOP primaries in the latest USA Today/Suffolk U poll, too.

Former UN ambassador Nikki Haley has surged nationally in a new USA TODAY/Suffolk University Poll, challenging a faltering Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis as the top alternative to Donald Trump for the GOP presidential nomination.

Haley's support has risen to 11% of registered voters who plan to vote in GOP primaries or caucuses, up from 4% in the USA TODAY/Suffolk poll taken in June and just one percentage point below DeSantis. His 12% standing was a steep fall from his 23% support four months ago.

Trump continues to dominate the field, backed by 58%, up 10 points.

 

However, the USA Today/Suffolk U poll shows again that RFK Jr. would turn a tie into a one-point Biden lead.

One in four voters, 26%, said they would seriously consider supporting a bipartisan ticket of a Republican and a Democrat that a centrist group called No Labels may field. Another 23% said they might consider it, depending on who the nominees were. Biden voters were more likely than Trump voters − 28% compared with 18% − to say they would take a serious look.

The poll of 1,000 registered voters, taken by landline and cell phone Tuesday through Friday, has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.

Not since billionaire businessman H. Ross Perot drew 19% of the vote in 1992, enabling Bill Clinton to defeat President George H.W. Bush with just 43% of the popular vote, has the prospect of independent bids threatened to upend the standard two-party calculations of campaigns.

Without Kennedy in the mix, Trump would edge Biden by 41% to 39%, a lead within the survey's margin of error, with West at 7%. Without West in the mix, Biden would edge Trump by an even narrower margin, 38% to 37%, with Kennedy at 14%.

With neither Kennedy nor West on the ballot, Biden and Trump would tie at 41%-41%.

 

Polls aren't accurate this far out, but they are consistent, and there's more than enough polling data to show that the real problem is that Trump is anywhere close to winning, and that a good 40%+ of Americans are still willing to vote for the guy given the last seven years.

 

Trump's the symptom, sure. The root cause remains the people who still support him.

Spoilers Ahead, Con't

I'm still convinced RFK Jr. is running to put Trump in the White House by hurting President Biden, but apparently the people falling for such an obvious con are MAGA voters themselves in the latest NPR/PBS/Marist poll.

In a potential presidential re-match, President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump remain competitive with Biden scoring just three points more among registered voters nationally. However, when Robert F. Kennedy Jr. factors into the equation, Biden opens up a 7-percentage point lead over Trump among the national electorate. Kennedy’s presence erodes Trump’s lead among independents and cuts into his support among Republicans. Trump’s loss among his base is double the loss Biden experiences among Democrats.

Biden (49%) and Trump (46%) are well-matched among registered voters nationally in a hypothetical 2024 contest. This is little changed from earlier this month when 2 percentage points separated Biden (49%) and Trump (47%).

Partisan allegiances are strong. Among independents, though, Trump (49%) is ahead of Biden (43%) by 6 percentage points.

In a three-way contest with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. running as an independent, Biden opens up a 7-point lead over Trump. 44% of registered voters support Biden. 37% back Trump, and 16% are for Kennedy.

Kennedy’s presence in the contest makes the race competitive among independents who break 34% for Trump, 33% for Biden, and 29% for Kennedy.

With Kennedy in the race, Biden’s support dips 5 percentage points among Democrats while Trump loses 10 points among Republicans.

“Although it’s always tricky to assess the impact of a third-party candidate, right now Kennedy alters the equation in Biden’s favor,” says Lee M. Miringoff, Director of the Marist College Institute for Public Opinion. “What this does speak to, however, is that about one in six voters are looking for another option especially independents.”

 

This is wild to me, but let's remember that before RFK Jr. decided to run as an independent, Team Trump was happily telling people that he was a good guy in order to hurt Biden.

 

Apparently this backfired incredibly. We'll see for how long.

These Disunited States, Con't

Divisions between supporters of President Biden and Donald Trump are getting deeper, and it's starting to look pretty grim out there in the irreconcilable differences department in the latest survey from UVA and Sabato's Crystal Ball.

 

In a head-to-head race between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump, 52% said they plan to vote for Biden and 48% for Trump, mirroring 2020 outcomes. Respondents reported similarly negative views of both candidates, with 40% approving and 50% disapproving of Biden’s job performance, and 39% approving and 53% disapproving of Trump. Voters split 40%-35% in favor of at least probably supporting Democratic candidates over Republican candidates in the 2024 congressional elections, with 25% opting for a middle ground, prioritizing qualifications over party affiliation.

Those who intended to support one candidate expressed a great deal of suspicion toward supporters of the other side, expressed in roughly even proportions among both Trump and Biden voters:

— A staggering majority of both Biden (70%) and Trump (68%) voters believed electing officials from the opposite party would result in lasting harm to the United States.

— Roughly half (52% Biden voters, 47% Trump voters) viewed those who supported the other party as threats to the American way of life.

— About 40% of both groups (41% Biden voters, 38% Trump voters) at least somewhat believed that the other side had become so extreme that it is acceptable to use violence to prevent them from achieving their goals.
Playing with fire

When rated on a scale from 0 (completely disagree) to 100 (completely agree), 69% of respondents at least somewhat agreed (defined as a response of 61 or higher on the 100-point scale) with the statement, “Democracy is preferable to any non-democratic form of government.” However, nearly half of the overall sample frequently expressed opinions that veered towards authoritarianism.

A significant share of respondents also expressed doubts about both the future of democracy and even the United States as it is currently composed. Roughly two in five (41%) of respondents leaning towards Donald Trump in 2024 at least somewhat agreed with the idea of red states seceding from the Union to form their own separate country, while 30% of Biden supporters expressed a similar sentiment, but for blue states. Disturbingly, nearly one-third (31%) of Trump supporters and about a quarter (24%) of Biden supporters at least somewhat agree that democracy is no longer a viable system and that the country should explore alternative forms of government to ensure stability and progress.

Respondents were also presented with a range of statements suggesting using state power to achieve certain outcomes, gauging the respondents’ willingness to employ authoritarian methods for partisan aims.

Those who intend to vote for Biden in 2024 were likelier than Trump voters to express support for the following (percentages shown are those who expressed at least some agreement with the statement):

Freedom of speech and rights: 31% of Biden supporters, in contrast to 25% of Trump supporters, at least somewhat agreed with limiting certain rights, including freedom of speech, to safeguard the feelings and safety of marginalized groups.

Regulation of discriminatory views: A significant 47% of Biden voters, as opposed to 35% of Trump voters, believed the government should regulate or restrict the expression of views deemed discriminatory or offensive.

Firearms control: There’s a pronounced divide regarding gun control, with 74% of Biden supporters favoring restrictions on the quantity and types of firearms, irrespective of constitutional interpretations. In contrast, only 35% of Trump supporters felt the same.

Wealth redistribution: Addressing income inequality by redistributing all wealth over a certain limit to address income inequality garnered support from 56% of Biden voters, compared to 39% from Trump voters.

Corporate diversity: A substantial 69% of Biden voters believed in mandating policies requiring corporations to ensure diversity at all levels of leadership. This sentiment was shared by 43% of Trump voters.

When examining the sentiments of those leaning towards Trump in the upcoming 2024 elections, the following preferences emerged:

National symbols and leaders: 50% of Trump voters, compared to 32% of Biden voters, at least somewhat agreed that laws should be enacted to require citizens to show respect for national symbols and leaders.

Suspending elections: In times of crisis, 30% of Trump supporters felt that elections should be suspended, with a slightly smaller proportion (25%) of Biden supporters echoing this sentiment.

Patriotism and loyalty: 37% of Trump voters, versus 24% of Biden voters, believed in enacting laws to restrict the expression of views deemed unpatriotic or disloyal.

Presidential powers: Concerning national security decisions, 37% of Trump voters were in favor of giving the president the authority to bypass Congress, while 31% of Biden voters shared this perspective.

Protest regulations: 45% of Trump supporters, against 30% of Biden supporters, felt that laws should be enacted that limit demonstrations and protests that the government deems potentially disruptive to public order.

An almost identical number of Biden (37%) and Trump (36%) voters at least somewhat agreed on the need for certain religious groups to be subjected to government monitoring and limitations to ensure national security.

“We stand on the precipice of a developing emergency,” said Larry J. Sabato, director of the Center for Politics. “Dislike of the other side combined with a pervasive disregard for the fundamental freedoms contained in the U.S. Constitution poses a grave threat. If these sentiments go unchecked and grow, our nation could face disastrous division.”

 

Here's the thing, though: Democrats/Biden supporters want things like gun control, income equality and laws protecting minority views. Republicans/Trump supporters want a militaristic patriotic dictatorship where elections are suspended in "times of crisis".

These two things are not the same level of authoritarian fascism, folks.

The House GOP Circus Of The Damned, Con't

 Meanwhile, Democrats figure they're ready to pick a fight with Jordan from day one.

 

Democrats are already crafting a strategy to use Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, as a political weapon against Republicans in the next election if he becomes the next House speaker.

In a memo to House Democrats, first shared with NBC News, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee urged party members and candidates to portray the entire GOP as beholden to radicals should Republicans hand him the speaker's gavel.

There are “no more moderates left in the Republican conference,” the DCCC said in the memo, adding that Jordan will win only if “so-called ‘moderates’” opt to “cave” and elect him.

“Every Republican who votes for Jordan for Speaker is simply following Trump’s marching orders,” the memo said.

The memo comes in anticipation of a House vote as early as Tuesday afternoon to elect Jordan as speaker. He will need votes from 217 of the 221 Republicans in the House to secure a win. It’s not clear he has the votes, but numerous GOP critics have been coming around to him.

The two-page memo included a list of what the DCCC described as “key examples of Jordan’s extremism,” citing his attempts to block the certification of President Joe Biden’s victory in 2020, his noncompliance with a subpoena by the now-defunct House Jan. 6 committee, his role as a co-founder of the far-right Freedom Caucus, his opposition to bipartisan bills on immigration and his support for aggressive tactics that Democrats say caused “multiple government shutdowns.”

“A Speaker Jordan means extremism and far-right priorities will govern the House of Representatives,” the memo said. “It is imperative that our caucus makes clear to voters just how extreme Congressman Jordan is and how his Speakership would negatively impact working families across the country, threaten democratic norms, and weaken relationships with our allies.”

 

All this is certainly true, and if anything I've said Democrats need to make this more clear.

 

But as Steve M. points out, a majority of Republicans, if not voters in general, want to see the House stop working, because it means the Congress that most Americans despise can't screw anything else up. 

 

The problem with comparing the contemporary Republican Party to other fascist or fascist-leaning parties is that the Republican Party -- like much of the American public -- doesn't want the government to function efficiently. Remember Ronald Reagan's dictum: Government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem. If you believe that, as nearly all Republicans do (as well as many non-Republicans), you might not believe that it's imperative to throw sand in the gears of government, but you certainly don't believe it's a bad thing when the gears become inoperably sandy.

Americans who believe Reagan's simple-minded pronouncements about government are rarely consistent -- they want the government to punish street criminals and immigrants, as well as women seeking abortions and sexual minorities -- but apart from that, they assume we'd all be better off if government weren't fuctioning at all ... or at least that's what they believe until they have problem getting VA healthcare or going to a national park. But even then they cling to the principle that government is bad (and government under a Democratic president is worse), so the current leadership struggles of the House GOP won't turn them against Republicans. The fact that Republicans can't run the government is a feature, not a bug, for much of the country.

 

In fact, I'd go further down that route: a solid plurality of Americans want government to stop working specifically to hinder those people who count on the government to help them.  They're okay with sabotage, and if they suffer some pain because of a government implosion like the one we're seeing, they are safe and comfortable in the knowledge that others folks whom they hate are suffering even more.

So yes, this needs to be said because it's true, that Republicans are chaos gremlins who want everyone to suffer some, and those at the bottom to suffer more. But I don't think it's going to be a convincing argument in an election cycle to move voters away from the GOP.

No, I see voters being okay with the House and maybe even the Senate being a check on Biden's second term. Voters have loved gridlock for decades now and have actively voted for it. That's not going to change one bit in 2024. Maybe they don't want Trump back in charge, but it doesn't mean they won't leave the House GOP Clown Show going for years to come.

Last Call For Trump Cards

 For a guy constantly complaining about "rigged elections" it seems Donald Trump is doing everything he can to ensure total victory in GOP primary races, with multiple states changing their primary rules in order to, well, rig the elections for Trump's win next spring.

Not long after the new chairman of the Republican Party in Hawaii was elected in May, he received a voicemail from none other than Donald J. Trump.

“It’s your all-time favorite president,” Mr. Trump told the chairman, Tim Dalhouse. “I just called to congratulate you.”

The head of the Kansas G.O.P. received a similar message after he became chairman. The Nebraska chairman had a couple of minutes and a photo arranged with the former president during an Iowa stop. And the chairman of the Nevada Republican Party, Michael McDonald, who had served as a fake elector for Mr. Trump after the 2020 election, was among a group of state party officials who were treated to an hourslong Mar-a-Lago meal in March that ended in ice cream sundaes.

Months later, Mr. McDonald’s party in Nevada dramatically transformed the state’s influential early contest. The party enacted new rules that distinctively disadvantage Mr. Trump’s chief rival, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, by effectively blocking the super PAC he relies upon from participating in the state’s new caucus.

Mr. McDonald has tilted the rules so significantly that some of Mr. Trump’s opponents have accused the party of manipulating the election for him — and have mostly pulled up stakes in the state entirely.

As Mr. Trump dodges debates and is regularly seen on his golf courses in branded white polo shirts and red MAGA hats, it can seem that he is bypassing the 2024 primary fight entirely. He has done relatively few public campaign events until recent weeks. But Mr. Trump and his political team have spent months working behind the scenes to build alliances and contingency plans with key party officials, seeking to twist the primary and delegate rules in their favor.

It amounts to a fail-safe in case Mr. DeSantis — or anyone else — scores a surprise victory in an early state. And it comes as Mr. Trump faces an extraordinary set of legal challenges, including four criminal indictments, that inject an unusual degree of uncertainty into a race Mr. Trump leads widely in national polling.

“They’ve rigged it anywhere they thought they could pull it off,” said Ken Cuccinelli, a former Trump administration official who founded Never Back Down, the pro-DeSantis super PAC that was essentially ousted from the Nevada caucus.

The maneuvering is the type of old-school party politics that Mr. Trump, who cut his teeth in the machine politics of 1970s and 1980s New York, relishes and knows best: personal calls and chits, glad-handing, relationships and reprisals. Advisers say that in contrast to some tasks, getting him to make those calls is a breeze. Plus, the seemingly arcane issue of delegate accumulation — tallying up formal support in the states to secure the nomination at the party convention next summer — is deeply personal to Mr. Trump after he was outflanked in exactly this fight in 2016.

Then, a better-organized Senator Ted Cruz of Texas worked Trump-skeptical state parties to win more delegates even in some places where he had lost at the ballot box. Mr. Cuccinelli was one of Mr. Cruz’s top delegate hunters at the time. Now, surrounded by a more experienced team and the authority of a former president with loyalists entrenched nationwide, Mr. Trump is doing to Mr. DeSantis exactly what he once accused Hillary Clinton of doing to Bernie Sanders: bending the system in his favor.

Mr. Trump’s backroom campaign reveals the extent to which he has become the establishment of the Republican Party.

“This is the kind of stuff that’s not talked about in the news,” said Scott Golden, the chairman of the Tennessee Republican Party, who was invited to speak briefly in private with Mr. Trump when the former president visited his state this spring. “This is important stuff. It is ultimately about making sure your person is the nominee.”

The primary rules in the early states leading up to Super Tuesday, and the biggest sSuper Tuesday prize of them all -- California -- have put entire bodies on the scales in Trump's favor, to the point where his opponents are literally refusing to spend money in those states at all anymore.

Short of Trump having a massive health issue in the next three months, the 2024 GOP primary is already over. 

Last Call For Spoilers Ahead, Con't

As we were warned last week, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is trashing his family's legacy one last time in order to run as a third-party presidential spoiler.

Environmental lawyer and presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced on Monday his independent candidacy for president, officially ending his effort to defeat President Joe Biden in the Democratic primary in favor of a long-shot general election bid.

“I’m here to declare myself an independent candidate for president of the United States,” Kennedy said in remarks in Philadelphia.

Kennedy’s announcement comes after several weeks of speculation about his future in the 2024 field. CNN previously reported Kennedy met with the chair of the Libertarian Party earlier this year to discuss their common beliefs. And last week, a super PAC supporting Kennedy’s presidential campaign released the results of a poll they conducted testing Kennedy’s strength in a hypothetical three-way race between Biden and former President Donald Trump.

The campaign will host a series of events in Texas, Florida and Georgia later this month, a campaign official told CNN, pledging to travel “everywhere” in the lead-up to next year’s general election. The official said the campaign is confident they’ll gain ballot access in every state ahead of November 2024.

Independent and third-party candidates have struggled in the past to garner substantial support in presidential elections. In 1992, Texas businessman Ross Perot mounted one of the most successful independent presidential candidacies in recent history, which ended with him receiving 8% of the vote in the general election that was ultimately won by Bill Clinton.

Kennedy’s campaign as an independent could further complicate a general election race that’s already expected to be closely contested. A Reuters/Ipsos poll of a hypothetical three-way race between Biden, Trump and Kennedy conducted last week among likely voters found 14% of voters supported Kennedy, with 40% supporting Trump and 38% supporting Biden. With over a year until the general election, it’s unclear whether the Kennedy campaign can translate that level of support into votes in November 2024.

“Voters should not be deceived by anyone who pretends to have conservative values. The fact is that RFK has a disturbing background steeped in radical, liberal positions,” Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung said in a statement that criticized Kennedy over his positions on China, guns, the environment and abortion. “… A RFK candidacy is nothing more than a vanity project for a liberal Kennedy looking to cash in on his family’s name.”

 

And of course as I've said many times previously, Kennedy is trying to put Trump back in office for his own reasons, and Trump is pretending Kennedy is a threat to him and not Biden, and it's all a very nice little kabuki act all the way around.  

We'll see how much damage he can do to America in the year ahead.

GOP Goes Down Mexico Way

At this point multiple GOP candidates for President are promising to commit acts of outright war in Mexico in order to try to stop the flow of drugs and migrants into the US, and even if somehow Trump isn't the candidate by some miracle, the also-rans are more than willing to run on invading our southern neighbor.

Ron DeSantis wants suspected drug smugglers at the U.S.-Mexico border to be shot dead. Nikki Haley promises to send American special forces into Mexico. Vivek Ramaswamy has accused Mexico's leader of treating drug cartels as his "sugar daddy" and says that if he is elected president, "there will be a new daddy in town."

Donald Trump, the Republican front-runner for the 2024 nomination and long the person who has shaped his party's rhetoric on the border, has often blamed Mexico for problems in the United States and promises new uses of military force and covert action if he returns to the White House.

Many of the GOP presidential candidates say they would carry out potential acts of war against Mexico in response to the trafficking of fentanyl and other synthetic opioids. More than 75,000 people in the U.S. died last year from overdoses of synthetic opioids, an annual figure more than 20 times higher than a decade ago.

The candidates' antagonism toward Mexico is welcomed by some families who have lost loved ones to fentanyl and have argued that Washington has not done enough to address the worst drug crisis in U.S. history. However, analysts and nonpartisan experts warn that military force is not the answer and instead fuels the racism and xenophobia that undermine efforts to stop drug trafficking.

"You've got politicking on this side. And then on the Mexican side of the border, you've got a president who is turning a blind eye to what's going on in Mexico and who has completely gutted bilateral collaboration with the United States," said Arturo Sarukhan, Mexico's ambassador to the U.S. from 2007 to 2013. "That's a very combustible mixture."

Andrea Thomas' daughter died at age 32 after taking half of a counterfeit pill laced with fentanyl that looked like her prescription pills for abdominal pain. Thomas started the foundation Voices for Awareness in Grand Junction, Colorado, to raise the alarm about fentanyl.

Thomas says people she knows are interested in what the candidates are proposing and feel that President Joe Biden's administration has not properly responded to the crisis. In a letter to the presidential candidates, Thomas and an assembly of other groups urge the politicians to do "all that can be done" to stop the manufacturing and smuggling of the drug.

"This drug is like no drug we have ever seen before," she said. "We need some strong measures. We have no more time to waste."

Democrats also face immense political pressure on border issues heading into next year's election. The White House has funded national programs to reduce fentanyl overdoses and sanctioned Chinese companies blamed for importing the chemicals used to make the drug.

Mexico has failed to address its problem with fentanyl production and trafficking. Mexican President Andres Manuel López Obrador repeatedly denies his country is producing the synthetic opioid despite enormous evidence to the contrary.

Border agents seized nearly 13 tons (12,000 kilograms) of fentanyl at the U.S.-Mexico border between September 2022 and August, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

At the second GOP primary debate late last month, candidates reiterated that they would use military forces to go after drug gangs in Mexico.

"As commander in chief, I'm going to use the U.S. military to go after the Mexican drug cartels," said DeSantis, the Florida governor. He has promised that people suspected of smuggling drugs across the southern border would end up "stone cold dead." That raises the prospect of border agents being authorized to shoot people on sight before any investigation into whether those people were carrying drugs.

Of course if DeSantis, Trump, Haley and the rest really want to stop drugs from Mexico, we need to go after Americans, not Mexicans...

U.S. government data undercuts the claim that people seeking asylum and other border crossers are responsible for drug trafficking. About 90% of fentanyl seizures were made at official land crossings, not between crossings where people entered illegally. At a hearing in July, James Mandryck, a CBP deputy assistant commissioner, said 73% of fentanyl seizures at the border since the previous October were smuggling attempts carried out by U.S. citizens, with the rest being done by Mexican citizens.

Something tells me that the next Republican administration really will shoot first and ignore questions, or at least ignore answers that questions might raise. 

Last Call For No Solving For X

As we come up on the one-year anniversary of Elon Musk taking over X/Twitter/Whatever, Miles Klee at Rolling Stone documents the atrocities as the once-premiere social media platform is now a toxic neo-Nazi-filled trash fire destined for the wrecking ball.

ON OCT. 26, 2022, Elon Musk enjoyed his first and last good day as the head of Twitter (now X). Following a $44 billion acquisition he tried to scuttle but was legally forced into closing, he attempted a bit of prop comedy — entering the company’s headquarters with a porcelain sink while flashing a mischievous smile. It was all the setup to a groaner of a pun announcing his arrival: “Let that sink in!” he declared in the video caption of his entrance. It was a master class in cringe.

Entering Twitter HQ – let that sink in! pic.twitter.com/D68z4K2wq7— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 26, 2022

Nearly a year later, you’d be hard pressed to name a single improvement to the site under Musk’s direction. His biggest ideas have all blown up in his face: An $8 monthly subscription fee for a blue check that verified users then needed the option of hiding to avoid mockery. The abandonment of a valuable brand name and logo in favor of the meaningless “X,” which prompted a trademark lawsuit and led to the installation of a garish metal X structure on the roof of Twitter’s office — city inspectors had it removed just days later. Musk’s latest move is to have headlines stripped from article links, leaving only an image and media source, which he seems to believe looks better and will keep users scrolling. But for those who follow news on the app, it makes X that much more pointless.

i love clicking on a stock Getty image and having no clue what the article is going to be about, great job https://t.co/vYpw9aYgIZ— rat king 🐀 (@MikeIsaac) October 4, 2023

Of course, these mistakes pale in comparison to the rancid vibes Musk has cultivated by reinstating right-wing extremists and peddlers of misinformation previously banned from the platform, amplifying their conspiracy theories, and ensuring their garbage posts are shoved into “For You” feeds by Twitter’s algorithms. He buys into white supremacist propaganda, panders to anti-LGBTQ hate accounts, and, with advertisers fleeing these intolerable conditions, found a way to blame the catastrophic loss of revenue on a Jewish civil rights group that combats antisemitism.

How much longer can this wreckage of a formerly semi-functional website stay afloat? Although it has shed millions of daily active users since Musk started tinkering with it, the endgame is more likely to come down to money. Seven banks led by Morgan Stanley hold some $13 billion in debt after backing Musk’s blockbuster deal last year, and the company itself is presumably worth much less at this point — even according to his own math. If X can’t keep making its $300 million quarterly interest payments, the financial firms may repossess it in order to recoup a fraction of their losses.

 

I'm still in the camp that says Elongated Muskrat is doing this on purpose, that he spent tens of billions on Twitter in order to destroy it ahead of the 2024 elections in order to sow chaos going into the 2024 elections. With Facebook/Threads/Whatever now out of the election integrity game, there's little hope to stop voters from being targeted with voting disinformation to a degree that it could throw the entire ballgame to the GOP and Trump's promised authoritarian takeover attempt of the federal government.

 

Whether or not voters can see the light in all this coming darkness, well, we have to try to light the way.