WILL THE SOFT LANDING EVEN BE NOTICED?

 

A year ago, when inflation seemed out of control and the economy was overheating, Federal Reserve chairman Jerome H. Powell started slowly but surely raising interest rates to slow down economic growth and reduce inflation.  Many economists feared that this would inevitably lead to a recession, just as it did back in the 1980's, the last time inflation was out of control.

But recent numbers have revealed that country may be in for what's called a soft landing, that just right mixture when higher interest rates reduce inflation without causing the country to fall into an outright recession.  Powell recent comments show that he believes inflation, which has fallen from 9.1 percent in 2022 to 3.1 percent, is now under control and that no further raising of interest rates will be needed anytime soon.  Those rates may even be lowered sometime next year.  All of this is happening while the country's unemployment rate remained at a historically low 3.7 percent.  The good news saw the stock market rally to new heights. 

But will this good news sink in with the American people?  Recent polls that show Donald Trump defeating Joe Biden in next year's election show not only Republicans but also independents and a significant number of Democrats trusting Trump over Biden on economic issues.  Some polls give Trump a whopping ten percent edge on economic matters.  The Biden administration has tried in vain to push Bidenomics as a good thing, but the country's sour mood on the economy doesn't seem to be shaking.

The reason seems to be clear: increased job and gross domestic product  growth are not things that the average American can really see in their lives.   But inflation?  It's always there, at the gas station and the grocery store.  And it's human nature to blame that inflation on the Biden administration, even though its roots lie in the days of the pandemic lockdown when Americans stayed home and bought goods online, driving up  demand while supply lines were often compromised by covid.  

The hope here is that by the time the election roles around, the public will get used to the higher prices (which won't be increasing at an alarming rate anymore), and Biden will start getting some credit for the economy.  This was the same winning formula that Ronald Reagan had back in the 1980's, when the recession ended just in time for him to win reecletion in a landslide.  That combined with Trump's legal troubles and the backlash against Republicans since the overturning of Roe Vs. Wade may be enough to win Biden a second term.  Considering Trump's dangerous rhetoric about his desire to be a dictator, I certainly hope that that will be the case.  Biden may be old, but I would vote for Methuselah before I vote for Trump.

IT'S GETTING HARDER AND HARDER TO DEFEND ELON MUSK

 Two days ago marked the one year anniversary of my getting a Tesla.  I was planning to blog about this by saying how much I loved the car, with all its high tech doo dads like auto steering and doggy mode.  And how I was able to easily travel from San Francisco to Los Angeles and Las Vegas  without a problem thanks to the many readily available high speed charging stations there are.  Plus I also wanted to mention how much I don't miss stopping at gas stations.  (I never knew how much I hated the smell of gasoline until I didn't have to inhale it anymore!)

Yes, I was ready to talk about all of that.  And then Tesla CEO Elon Musk responded to a tweet a few days ago.  Now I've already blogged about my feelings about Musk way back in 2021 (you can read that here), but at that time he seemed just another unlikeable billionaire.  But then in October of 2022, just a month before I got the Tesla that I ordered, Musk bought the social media site Twitter and his extreme views started trickling out as the company floundered under his erratic control.  From changing its name to X, to going back and forth on charging for blue verification boxes, his unruly leadership may have reduced the company's value by as much as 90% according to Fortune magazine.

This all came to a head when a November 15th post from some fool named The Artist Formerly Known as Eric said:  "Okay.  Jewish communties(sic.) have been pushing the exact kind of dialectical hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them.   I'm deeply disinterested in giving the tiniest shit now about western Jewish populations coming to the disturbing realization that those hordes of minorities that support flooding their country don't exactly like them too much. You want truth said to your face, there it is."  Musk responded the same day with "You have said the actual truth."  With that one simple phrase, Musk is endorsing one of the most insidious anti Semitic conspiracy theories out there, known as The Great Replacement Theory.  It claims that a wealthy Jewish cabal support replacing white people with minorities all over the Western world.  This wasn't the first time that Musk seemed to flirt with anti Semitism, as he has defended the surge in anti Semitic posts that have appeared on X since he took over by criticizing the  human rights group the Anti-Defamation League for mentioning that surge.  He's even threatened to sue them.

But this time he has gone too far, and the fallout out from his offensive endorsement has been swift, with companies like IBM and Apple pulling their advertising from the already reeling X.  But the sad fact of the matter is that, in the long run, none of this will really matter to Musk.  Oh sure, he may be humiliated if X goes bankrupt, as it appears it may, but he will always be one of the richest men on the planet, and his other companies will always generate revenue for him.  Just look at Space X: as the New York Times has pointed out, even as the Joe Biden administration has condemned  Musk's views, the government has just confirmed that they will give over a billion dollars to Space X for launching Pentagon satellites next year.  The sad fact of the  matter is that Space X has a virtual monopoly on valuable satellites and is a privately held company, giving Musk a stranglehold on space exploration that the government won't be able to break anytime soon. So no matter how offensive Musk's views are, he will never face any real fall out from them.

In a way, Musk represents the problem with raw capitalism: here is a man who holds no political office but, through the sheer power of wealth, holds sway over every American citizen (and pretty much everyone in the world).  He's the living embodiment of our need for a wealth tax, but that's a pipe dream.  And shaming him doesn't seem likely to phase him.   Dustin Moskovitz, a co founder of Facebook, has called for him to resign "from everything", a sentiment that I agree with, but what good will it do?

Which brings us back to me and my Tesla. Is it wrong for me to keep it given what Musk has endorsed? Trading my car in for a different model would be a hassle, and I do love it. So I've decided to keep it for now, hoping that the Tesla company, (which unlike Space X is not privately owned) might be able to force Musk out.  (The possible belly flop that the upcoming Tesla Cybertruck could take might also do the trick).  If I could get in a time machine, I'd go back and buy a Polestar instead of a Tesla, but for now, I seem to be stuck  in the odd position of loving my car and hating the leader of the company that makes it.

IS TRUMP GOING FULL ON FASCIST?

                        ver·min

/ˈvərmən/

noun

1. wild animals that are believed to be harmful to crops, farm animals, or game, or that carry disease, e.g., rodents.

   • parasitic worms or insects.

     "his clothes are infested with vermin"
   • people perceived as despicable and as causing problems for the rest of society.

     "the vermin who ransacked her house"

         

Last Saturday,  during a speech that was supposed to be about Veteran's Day, former President Donald Trump said this "In honor of our great Veterans on Veteran’s Day, we pledge to you that we will root out the Communists, Marxists, Fascists, and Radical Left Thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our Country, lie, steal, and cheat on Elections, and will do anything possible, whether legally or illegally, to destroy America, and the American Dream."  He posted the same words later on social media.  This is important in that this was not one of his infamous ad libs, this was a definite message that was crafted  beforehand for him to announce in a holiday speech.  In other words, this is the message he and his advisors wanted to make.  To make matters worse, when his reference to calling political opponents "vermin" clearly seemed to echo the kind of arguments of former fascist dictators like Adolph Hitler and Benito Mussolini,  Trump Campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said, “Those who try to make that ridiculous assertion are clearly snowflakes grasping for anything because they are suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome, and their sad, miserable existence will be crushed when President Trump returns to the White House.”  Not exactly the most reassuring words coming from someone who advises the man who may be the next president.

And he's not just saying these things, his advisors have said that if he wins, he  plans to purge the federal government of any workers that he deems not sufficiently loyal.  Then he wants to use the justice department as his personal hit squad against  any of his political opponents.  He has already pledged to go after the "Biden crime family" even though he won't say what for, or how his administration would somehow find crimes committed by the Bidens that the House of Representatives hasn't been able to find in their own impeachment inquiry into President Biden.  Again, it's not even about successful prosecutions, it's about hurting anyone who disagrees with him, despite political disagreements being one of the cornerstones of any democracy.  But then, he just wants to be a fascist dictator anyway.

And then there's his plans for immigration: Trump's attempt to carry out mass deportations as president was mostly thwarted by courts and lack of enforcement.  But he and his cohorts plan to come out running if he wins, with head immigration advisor (and famously xenophobic bigot) Stephen Miller hoping to have a conservative supreme court allow the Trump administration to use not only  Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents but allow the police and the national guard to conduct raids on businesses hiring undocumented immigrants.  The immigrants would then be placed in camps on the border and then mass deported by the millions.  Trump also wants to end birthright citizenship (which is in the constitution, but he doesn't care) and perhaps even bring back the unpopular child separation  policy  at the border and revive his Muslim ban.  The justification for all this is that the second Trump administration would be doing what President Dwight Eisenhower did back in the 1950's when a mass deportation of undocumented immigrants was public policy.  What the Trump people  leave out is that Operation Wetback (yes, it was really called that!) was infamous for its brutality, with over 80 deportees dying from being left without food or water in staggering heat.

This would all be morally reprehensible, with terrible conditions being enforced, families being torn apart, and inevitably American citizens regularly being targeted by authorities and even being wrongly swept up into the camps.  It would also devastate the economy, with numerous companies losing thousands of workers all at once.   But it would also play into the hatred of immigrants (especially the ones from Mexico) that have driven Trump's base since day one.

None of this is new, Trump has had fascist tendencies since the very beginning, as he has praised undemocratic leaders like Vladimir Putin and Kin Jong Un because he sees them as "strong" instead of brutal dictators that censor unfavorable media and  have their political opponents killed.  The difference was that in his first term Trump tried to be a fascist and was blocked by laws and members of his own administration.  If he gets a second term, the conservative supreme court he created and the sycophants he will surround himself with will remove most of those blockades.   In other words, saying that American democracy is at stake in the next election is not just a campaign slogan, it's the truth.

IS AMERICA REALLY GOING TO ELECT TRUMP AGAIN?

 

All recent polls of the highly likely rematch between Donald Trump and Joe Biden show that President Biden may be in big trouble.  In crucial swing states, Trump is beating Biden, with voters trusting Trump more on the economy and thinking that Biden is too old.  Trump even may be eating away at the usual big lead that Democrats have with minority voters.

Now it's still early, the election is more than a year away, and a lot can happen.  But the idea that Americans may be signing on for 4 more years of Trump's chaos and corruption makes me want to bang my head against a wall.  Has the country suffered from collective amnesia?  Do we not remember that shameful day when Trump fired up an angry mob that beat police officers and stormed the nation's capital?  Have we forgotten how horribly he handled the covid crisis? Does the fact that Trump is currently facing 4 criminal indictments mean nothing to them?  What about howTrump's guilt in the E. Jean Carroll defamation case, which  means that the jury believed that he did sexually assault her?  (We can now take the word "alleged" away we call Trump a sexual predator).

Look, I get it, the country is in the post pandemic doldrums. and while the economy is strong (unemployment is actually lower now than it was under Trump), there has been  heavy inflation that effects the average person more than economic growth does, and the president, rightly or wrongly, is going to get the blame for those high prices  Meanwhile, the crisis on the border continues, with more refugees seeking solace and conservative Governors bussing those refugees to places like New York City or Martha's Vineyard.  Plus there's a lot of terrible things going on in the world today, what with the war in Ukraine grinding on and  Israel invading Gaza in response to cruel terrorists attacks.  

And yes, Biden is old, the oldest president ever, and I do agree that his stepping down and letting someone else run would be a good thing.  But he's determined to run, and I think he's mentally sharp enough to handle the presidency.  And I'm infuriated that Trump's recent verbal stumbles don't seem to hurt him in this regard, and somehow the fact that he's only 3 years younger than Biden doesn't sink in with the public.  (Much of that has to do with the constant media narrative that focuses more on Biden's age issues than Trump's).

So yes, things are stressful both nationally and globally right now.  But the idea that Trump will somehow calm all of that is absurd (he can say that the invasion of Ukraine and the terrorist attacks in Israel would never have happened if he were president, there's certainly no evidence of that).   Hopefully, the recent interest rate increases by the Federal Reserve will slow the rise of inflation without tipping the country into a recession, and a strong economy will finally be felt by the general public next year, helping Biden's chances.  I certainly hope that that's the case, because another Trump term would be nightmarish for this country, from his denial of climate change to his ending aid to Ukraine that would tip the balance of that conflict to Trump's pal Vladimir Putin, to his calls to purge the federal government of any workers who don't share his vision for the country, to so many other horrible things that he would do, another 4 years of Trump is a terrifying prospect.

THE HOUSE'S CHOICE

 

In the weeks long chaos that it took to finally elect a Republican Speaker of the House, there was a brief, shining moment when the small, sane part of the party might have prevailed.  Jim Jordan, who was roundly endorsed by former President Donald Trump, was shot down by Republican House members who didn't want to vote for someone who denied that Joe Biden won the 2020 election.  Instead, Tom Emmer, a Minnesotan moderate was ready for a vote.  While I certainly don't agree with Emmer on much, he did vote to certify the 2020 election for Biden.  Sadly, that's what did him in, as Trump took to social media and branded Emmer as a "RINO", and his name was withdrawn without a vote (perhaps because an open vote would have allowed Democrats to vote for Emmer, outweighing the conservative votes against him).  Oddly, Trump didn't have enough clout to get Jordan elected, but he did enough to get Emmer tossed.

In any event, after Emmer the House went back to the drawing board and elected someone just as extreme as Jordan.  Oh sure, eventual winner Mike Johnson may not be as outspoken as Jordan, nor does he have Jordan's checkered pre political past (google "Jim Jordan's wrestling coach career  controversy" to read the jaw dropping charges), but when it comes to election denial and conservative views,  he's even worse.  Ignoring the rejection of Jordan, Trump crowed on social media that Johnson should be called "MAGA Mike" because he not only voted against certifying Biden's victory, he has been called one of the chief congressional architects in Trump's attempt to undo the election.

Along with endorsing Trump's election lies, here are some of the other political views that Johnson is well out of the mainstream on:  He's compared abortion to the Holocaust.  Wrote that “Experts project that homosexual marriage is the dark harbinger of chaos and sexual anarchy that could doom even the strongest republic.” in 2004.  In 2006 said this about the left:  “In the space of a few decades, they have managed to entrench abortion and homosexual behavior, objectify children into sexual objects, criminalize Christianity in the popular culture, and promote guilt and self-doubt as the foremost qualities of our national character.”  He is on the record as wanting to increase the retirement age and decrease Social Security and Medicare spending along with other social safety net programs.  In 2016 he blamed no fault divorce, abortion and feminism for school shootings.  And he's not just a Christian, he's a fundamentalist who thinks that the earth is only around 6000 years old.

Yes, despite his mild mannered, soft spoken demeanor, Johnson is an extreme right winger who should never have been given the power of being Speaker of the House.  Amazingly, he still may prove to not be extreme enough for some House Republicans, who may wind up resenting any kind of upcoming deal he makes to avoid a government shutdown in the coming weeks.  Yes, the modern Republican party is so ungovernable, with a vocal,  far right wing that thinks that a federal government shutdown is a good thing, that even Johnson may wind up being tossed out like McCarthy was after he "betrayed" the right and cut a deal with the Democrats to keep funding the government.  The best thing that can happen here is that next year all those moderate Republicans serving in districts that Biden won in 2020 will lose and the Democrats will run the house again.  As imperfect as they may be, at least the Democrats don't want to blow up the federal government.

REMEMBERING YITZHAK RABIN

 

The terrorist group Hamas recently lead what was the deadliest attack on the state of Israel in over 50 years.  (Indeed, it appears that the attack was made to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the Yom Kippur war.)  The attacks were well coordinated and utterly brutal, with civilians, including children, targeted and hostages taken. 

It appears that the group's motive was an attempt to stop a normalization process that is currently being negotiated between Israel and Saudi Arabia.  Also, the recent chaos in the Israeli government, with prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu facing corruption charges while he's also trying to controversially overtake the country's judicial system, may have lead to an image of perceived Israeli weakness.  Of course, the attacks have only unified the Israeli government behind  Netanyahu.

Israel now is readying a full on military assault into the Gaza Strip, and it is already telling civilians to flee away from the northern area of the Strip, where they are preparing to invade.  While I certainly support Israel's right to exist and defend itself, I do fear that the force of the attack may result in such heavy civilian casualties that it will further inflame the hatred of Israel in the Muslim world.  And such a war may not necessarily be easily won, not when Hamas is willing to use both civilians and hostages as human shields.

Given all the sadness and horror going on, it's hard not to reflect on how things might be very different right now if Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin hadn't been assassinated back in 1995.  At that time Rabin had begun a peace process with then Palestinian Liberation Organization leader Yassir Arafat known as the Oslo Accords, that would have returned some  territories occupied by Israelis  to the Palestinians.  While the accords were inevitably controversial in both Israel and Palestine, it seemed then that Rabin truly wanted peace and was willing to compromise to get it.  He was even awarded a Nobel Peace Prize in 1994.

In 1995 Rabin was shot and killed by Yigal Amir,  a right wing Israeli who felt that Rabin was selling out Israel.  The killing was a double tragedy, in that it not only ended Rabin's life, it also pushed Israel to the right politically, with every prime minister since pursuing an aggressive stance with Palestine and the idea of compromise being forgotten.  While there's certainly no way of knowing just what the Middle East would be like now if Rabin had never been assassinated, in the wake of a horrific terrorist attack, it's hard to believe that things could be worse if Rabin had lived.  I see him as truly heroic man who's killing set both the Middle East region and the world backwards.

THE BRIEF REIGN OF KEVIN MCCARTHY

 The Republican party showed just how much it is run by its most extreme members when they booted Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy out of his leadership position just a few days ago.  While I have no sympathy for McCarthy, the difficulty of his position reveals how far to the right the party is today: yes, the man who said that Trump won in 2020, bowed down to him just days after the January 6th riot, and pushed for an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden wasn't conservative enough for some House members.  His sin (to them) was his recent willingness to cut a deal with Democrats to keep the government open another 45 days without demanding draconian spending cuts to the budget.  And, because of his bowing to the right, no Democrat was willing to to support him, leaving him a man without enough support in his own party to get the votes to remain speaker.  It's really remarkable, but not surprising, that a minority of the Republican party, which only currently controls only one branch of congress, thinks that they should have undue influence in the running of our government, without making any attempt to compromise, or even accept that they are in the minority. 

It should be pointed out that the voting out of a house speaker is something that has never happened before in the entire history of our country.  Yes, another terrible precedent has been broken by the Donald Trump wing of the government.  And don't kid yourself, Trump was part of this.  He has both privately and publicly stated that he wants Biden impeached, forcing McCarthy to push for an impeachment investigation without evidence.  Trump also seems to think that the house can somehow rescind his two impeachments.  He even posted on social media that he thought that shutting down the government would somehow end the criminal trials that he's facing.  And to top it off, some congresspeople think that Trump himself should be elected speaker, something he hasn't completely dismissed.    And the idea that a one term, twice impeached former president facing multiple felony charges could be voted in as leader  of the House of Representatives, putting him in charge of the phony Biden impeachment investigation, shows just how completely loony tunes our politics have become since Trump entered the scene.

All of this madness comes with the backdrop of recent polls showing Trump tied with or ahead of Biden in next year's presidential election.  Now while those polls are early, and a lot of could happen between now and then (for one thing, Trump's court trials will be taking place), it is horrifying that a corrupt criminal sociopath like him could even get one percent of the vote.    But, as always, the strength of the Trump cult and its hold over a surprisingly significant percentage of the population is seems unbreakable, no matter how many crimes he has obviously committed. 

THE ABSURDITY OF THE BIDEN IMPEACHMENT INVESTIGATION

Ever since he announced his candidacy with a racist speech, Donald Trump has been lowering the standards of American politics both in terms of corruption and basic decent behavior.  The latest thing that he has undone is impeachment proceedings against a sitting president.  Once upon a time in this country, an impeachment investigation against a sitting president (or any elected politician) was seen as a drastic step. one that could only be taken carefully and with definite evidence of wrong doing.  With former presidents Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton, there was no doubt that they were lying, and there was also no question of illegality with Trump's two impeachments, despite what he may have said.  But now the Trump enthralled Republican party is pushing for an impeachment investigation into President Joe Biden without any evidence at all.  And make no mistake about it, it may have been Republican Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy that announced the investigation, but it was Trump who was behind it.  He has pushed for the investigation publicly in speeches and on social media and privately in conversations with House Republicans like Marjorie Taylor Greene.

The investigation is centered about Joe Biden's son Hunter, and his use of his family's name when his father was vice president to make millions for himself, appear,  I will admit, morally dubious. And he has been charged with tax evasion and lying on a form when he purchased a gun.  But there is no proof that Joe Biden himself interfered in his son's business dealings or took any kind of bribes or illegal kickbacks from them, as Republicans are asserting.  Crucially, the recent testimony of Hunter's former business partner Devon Archer,  which Republicans said would blow the lid off the investigation, revealed that Hunter would only occasionally have his father join in brief conversations with them that were never about business.  When asked point blank if he  was "aware of any wrongdoing by Vice President Biden?” Devon replied "No, I'm not aware of any."  Normally this would have ended any kind of impeachment proceedings right there, but the modern Republicans are miles away from the ones that admitted that Richard Nixon was guilty and would have voted to remove him from office if he hadn't resigned.  

Look, Hunter Biden is clearly a troubled man who, even  before his struggles with addiction, had to deal with the death of his mother and sister in an auto accident in 1972  and then had his brother Beau die of brain cancer in 2015.  And yes, it's also clear that Hunter has gotten rich mainly off his father's position.  But how is that news?  Being related to a person with political power can make for a lucrative career, as all of Trump's family know well.  

At the end of the day, this is all pure politics: even the most extreme element of the House Republicans know that there's no way that 60 Senators will vote to remove Biden from office even if the House does impeach him.  But having a long, drawn out investigation in which all manner of allegations will be made against Joe Biden during an election year could hurt Biden and fire up the Republican base while also drawing attention away from Trump's own criminal trials (which, unlike Biden's, actually do have evidence of Trump's criminal behavior).  In other words, get ready for the overblown accusations of extreme right wing House Republicans like Greene and Lauren Bobert to be broadcast all over conservative media, no matter how absurd they may be.  2024 may turn out to be an even uglier campaign than the last two.  Buckle in.

LOSE THE CROWDS

The influence of political candidate debates on election outcomes is hard to gauge: while millions of Americans often watch them, whether or not they actually change the opinions of those voters isn't always clear.  Remember that Presidents George W Bush and Barack Obama both had poor showings in their first reecletion debates, but they both still went on to win.  And the rise of televised debates have lead to a certain shallowness in their effect; the first televised presidential debate was in 1960.  Famously, people who just heard the debate thought that the Republican Richard Nixon defeated the Democrat John Kennedy.  But people who watched it thought that Kennedy won, partly because Nixon appeared to have a line of sweat under his upper lip!

And there are too many debates, in my opinion, especially when it comes to the presidential primaries, because then you have candidates who agree on 90% of the issues trying again and again to stand out from the others.  And when there are a high number of candidates, like the 17 that ran for the Republican nomination back in 2015, it becomes hard to tell most of them apart.

All that said, debates are still a good thing for the country, they can effectively sell a new candidate to the public (the debates in 2008 helped turn Barack Obama from upstart to contender), and  issues and differences can be discussed in a more honest format than those annoying political ads.  But there's still a change that I think needs to be made: stop holding the debates in front of live audiences.

 The first Republican primary presidential debate happened two days ago, and it provided a good example of what I'm talking about: at one point, Chris Christie started to criticize Donald Trump, and the chorus of boos that resulted saw him retreat from the subject.  Other moments brought more raucous reactions from the crowd, which got so unruly that the moderators had to tell them to quiet down more than once.  While disruptive crowd responses are nothing new in debates, like everything in politics, things have gotten worse since Trump arrived in 2015.  Since then, braying, booing crowds egging on Trump's worst statements have become the norm, trickling down into a debate that he wasn't even part of.

Personally, I think the best debate I've ever seen was the one between Mitt Romney and Barack Obama in 2012 in which the two candidates were seated on chairs next to a table the whole time, with a moderator sitting in between them.  There was no crowd, so there was no playing to them, no attempt to come up with the best zinger or put down, there was just a frank discussion of the issues.  Now part of this is because Obama and Romney are both decent men who understood the concept of taking turns, and I'm not foolish enough to think that Trump wouldn't say anything horrible without a audience, but I still think it would tone down the chaos he brings to everything if there wasn't a crowd there goading him on.

Sadly, I can't imagine that the kind of more serious debate that I'm hoping for will ever become a reality in this country.  The sad fact of the matter is that candidates insulting each other while a crowd cheers is more exciting TV than a more restrained atmosphere.  So for ratings sake. we have to get used to more craziness and less seriousness in our debates pretty much forever.  But I do wish we could lose the crowds.

DONALD TRUMP UNFILTERED

 While I think that former President Donald Trump is a fool, there is one thing that he does that's smart: he never communicates with his political or business associates by email or text.  Like the mob bosses he is so often compared to, Trump realizes that having a trail of his communications with others could lead to revealing possible criminal behavior.  So when former Trump aides and associates repeat things that he may have said that are crazy (like say, using nuclear weapons to stop a tornado) or possibly criminal (suggesting that border patrols shoot  at undocumented immigrants coming over the border), we just have to take their word for it.

There is, however one way  that have heard  Trump's unvarnished opinions in the past few years: secret audio recordings.  Now saying something unwise when you don't know that you're being recorded is not a new problem for politicians: back in 2008 Barack Obama made an offhand comment when he didn't know he was being recorded about midwest voters  holding onto "guns or religion", that may have hurt him politically.  Also, Mitt Romney in 2012 disparaged people in America who pay no income tax at a fund raiser when he didn't know that he was being recorded, which made him look even more out of touch with the average American than he already was.

But it's Trump's secret recordings that really show what kind of man that he is: the first was, of course, the Access Hollywood tape back in 2016 in which he bragged about sexually assaulting women and getting away with it. Somehow he overcame the fallout from that recording to win the presidency, but other recordings may still lead to his downfall.   The second important secret recording of Trump came shortly after the 2020 election when Brad Raffensperger, the former Secretary of State in Georgia, recorded a phone call with Trump in which the then president pushed Raffensperger to "find" him votes.  Trump even implied that  Raffensperger himself could face some kind of legal problem for not finding those votes. (The tone of the call is interesting in that Trump's manner is mostly jovial, but his threatening stance still shines through.)  It should be no surprise that this recording is a part of the criminal charges recently brought against Trump by special council Jack Smith.  The last important Trump recording is about his holding of unclassified documents in his Mar O Lago home in Florida after his presidency.   Here, he clearly states that he is showing someone without security clearance classified documents, even remarking that he could have declassified them as president but didn't.  (Again, the tone is interesting in that he seems to want to impress the young woman that he's talking to in the recording, and they even joke about how Hillary Clinton got in trouble for much the same thing!).  And, as with the call to Raffensperger, this recording has become the basis for criminal charges made against Trump regarding his holding on to those secret documents.  So, putting it bluntly, there are 3 secret recordings of Trump that we have heard, the first of which has him bragging about committing a crime and getting away with, and the other two record the actual moment in which he commits a crime!   It's important to note that Trump is using a freedom of speech defense when it comes to his attempt to overturn the 2020 election.  But, as Smith's summary of charges points out, it was perfectly legal for Trump to lie about the election result and challenge it in court.  The crimes comes when he went beyond that by doing things like pressing Raffensperger to find him votes, or setting up an "alternate" set of electors, or trying to persuade then Vice President Mike Pence to reject the electoral vote count in the Senate, all of which would have illegally disenfranchised the  votes of the over 80 million Americans who went for Joe Biden.

The interesting thing to consider is that, if we have now heard Trump commit crimes on tape, how many other illegal things has he done in his life that we don't know about?  The mind boggles.  And given the fact that 26 different women have accused him of sexual assault or rape, it certainly likely that he has broken laws in the past.  Hopefully, now, for the first time in his life, he may actually be held accountable for his crimes.  We'll see.

WHAT WE CAN LEARN FROM HUNTER BIDEN

 

The Republican party has been gunning for Hunter Biden, the 52 year old son of president Joe Biden, for years now, trying to link Hunter's legal and personal troubles with his father.  While what Hunter has been formally charged with are relatively minor offenses (being late on paying taxes and "illegally owning a gun while a drug user", meaning that he lied about his drug use on a form while purchasing a gun), the accusations have been way over the top.  The Republicans have turned a laptop computer that Hunter supposedly once owned into a scandal involving emails on that computer that prove crimes committed by both him and his father. The laptop is currently being held by the FBI, and the fact that its contents haven't been released to the public has allowed congressional Republicans to allege all kinds of malfeasance.  The fact that Hunter has admitted to using crack cocaine in the past has fueled many of their allegations, with some right wingers deriding him as a "crackhead." 

To me the whole Hunter Biden thing shouldn't be looked at as criminal corruption by the father and son but instead as yet another example of someone from a rich family having a problem with an illegal drug who never faces jail time.  In this scandal, Joe Biden comes across as a likable and  sympathetic parent who is understandably concerned with his son's addiction.  But is it fair that Hunter's problems with crack, which has lasted on and off for decades, is seen by his family as just a problem to be dealt with when so many other families in America have children with similar problems that wind up in jail?  Hunter has said that the wealth that his family's position has brought him has been part of the problem for him, with that money, as he put it, allowing him to " spend recklessly, dangerously, destructively. Humiliatingly. So I did."  But that wealth also cushioned him, letting him spend time in rehab instead of prison.  Putting it bluntly, isn't Hunter  Biden a symbol of our country's misguided war on drugs that lets rich people like him avoid punishment while sending poorer people to jail?  Especially since his addiction problems have lasted so long and he has relapsed several times?

To put it in perspective, according to the Prison Policy Initiative, there are currently 350,000 Americans incarcerated for illegal drug use.  A large number of them are nonviolent consenting adults who have been locked up for a crime that threatened no one but themselves.  In other words, people who are no more criminals than Hunter Biden is, but who are not lucky enough to have a wealthy family that pay for their trips to rehab.  And let's face it, they are also disproportionately poor people and people of color who have been targeted by police and who will, even when they get out of jail, be consigned to worse living and job opportunities because of their criminal record.  Or, as the rapper Boots Riley once put it, "Is there a war on drugs, or just a war on my community?". 

Of course, I have no personal animosity towards Hunter Biden, I wish him well and hope that he recovers, just as I hope the same thing for all people who struggle with addiction.  But it does bother me that his wealth and privilege have cloaked him from facing the same consequences that so many people who aren't lucky enough to have been born rich face in this country.  We need to stop treating drug addicts like criminals  and start treating them like alcoholics in this country, which getting them help instead of jailing them.

CAN ONLY CONSERVATIVES STOP TRUMP?

 Recently, Fox News interviewer and host Brett Baier did something that is almost never seen on that network: an honest interview with Donald Trump in which he asked real questions, came prepared with notes and pointed out Trump's own contradictions in his policies.  In other words, the kind of interview that he should have had to go through years ago, but rarely has.  At one point Baier pointed out that in 2016 Trump  said that new would surround himself with the "best people", and then read off a list of 12 different people that he once chose to work for him that he has now broken with (often by using an immature nickname for them).  It was a devastating moment showing how much complete loyalty he expects while providing so little in return. (Although it barely scratched the surface of people who had fallen out with him after working with him, such a list would be very long,  stretching back decades!).  While it remains to be seen if this interview will have any actual effect on Trump and the polls (some foolish comments he made may well be used against him in his missing documents trial), the fact that it happened at all is surprising.  Usually, Trump's visits to Fox involve fawning hosts asking him puffball questions, and the fact that he looked genuinely flustered at one point shows that he certainly didn't expect the kind of grilling from Baier that he got.  While this interview may be an anomaly, it could portend a possible break with Trump for the network.  We'll see.

This tough interview with Baier coincides with the entrance of former Republican New Jersey Governor Chris Christie into the presidential race.  Christie has had an odd political career: his term as Governor from 2010-2018 saw him go from a 77% approval rating for his handling of Hurricane Sandy to a measly  15% in the wake a scandal about unnecessary traffic stoppages that caused big traffic jams.  In 2018 he unsuccessfully ran for the Republican Presidential nomination, and later was one of the first Republicans to endorse Trump.  Although he never had an official role in the Trump administration, he did often advise the former president, especially regarding his presidential debate with the  candidate Joe Biden.  Christie, who's bullying personal nature has often been seen publicly, advised Trump to interrupt Biden as a way to bring out his former stutter.  So it's Christie we have to blame for Trump's behavior in that utterly shameful first presidential debate in which Trump barely let Biden start a sentence.  (It was an example of a big bully advising an even bigger bully to be a super bully!)

But it was in that preparation for that debate that the seeds of Christie's falling out with Trump were sown.  Shortly after that meeting, Christie got a case of covid so bad that he was near death.  He is convinced that it was Trump himself who gave it to him, saying that the former president was the only person that he knew was infected that he came in contact with without a mask. Christie had assumed that Trump was negative because he was not told about Trump's positive test, (and, of course, Christie wasn't the only person that Trump dangerously exposed) and to make matters worse, Trump called Christie while he was sick and asked him if he was going to tell people that he was the one who gave it to him.  

So, yes, for Christie, opposing Trump for the nomination is really more personal than political.  So far, Christie poll numbers have been lousy, but he still is doing something that no other Republican running against Trump is doing: calling him out by name.  While other candidates like Nikki Haley and Tim Scott seem to be angling to be Trump's vice president pick by mostly saying nice things about him, Christie is laying down the truth.  He's called Trump  "a petulant child.”, said  his behavior was "vanity run amuck" and called the charges against him in the missing documents case "devastating". (And I for one must admit that I love seeing a bully get bullied!) Now Christie certainly isn't the first Republican to take on Trump (remember Mitt Romney's sad attempt to pull back his party in 2016?), he is the first who used to be a professional prosecutor who isn't afraid to get down in the muck that Trump lives in.  Hopefully, Christie's verbal attacks will wound Trump in the primaries, even if Christie himself doesn't benefit from them.  (He could be Ron DeSantis's best friend).  Christie knows that the best place to attack Trump will be on stage at the Republican primary debates, but whether or not he will get there is another question, given that he needs 15% approval in the polls to qualify to be there.  Even then, the cowardly Trump may just refuse to join in the debate because he will probably be way ahead of the nearest contender, so all it could do is hurt him.  (He's probably right about that).

Still, Christie will be able to spread his attacks against Trump into areas that most Republican voters caught in their conservative media bubble won't be able to ignore.  And with Fox News possibly starting to turn on Trump, not to mention the criminal charges piling up against him, it's possible that America may finally be through with the man who has been trashing American politics, and  the office of the presidency, since 2015.

STUPID?

“I do whine, because I want to win, and I’m not happy about not winning, and I am a whiner, and I keep whining and whining until I win.” (Trump: CNN, August 11, 2015)

 Now that former President Donald Trump has been formally indicted with 37 criminal charges by Special Council Jack Smith concerning the former president's holding on to classified documents, one thing is clear: the absurd idea that Trump is a smart man must be abandoned by anyone with any level of honesty.  Because Trump is about to face criminal charges for crimes that he appears to have committed for no reason other than plain stupidity and a complete lack of understanding of just what the office of the presidency is and how our government works.  And the important thing to understand here is that these documents were classified for a a reason; some of them contain the names of American agents in hostile foreign countries whose lives would be in danger if the wrong people were to see them.  In other words, files that shouldn't be stored in a bathroom.

“Nobody knew health care could be so complicated.” Trump: Washington Post, 27/2/17

Remember the timeline here: Mar-o-Largo was raided back in August of last year, and at first it seemed to have come out of nowhere.  But over time we were told that Trump had been contacted repeatedly by the government concerning the classified documents that he took out of the White House after he left.  And we now know that he only returned some of the documents and appears to have lied about what he held on to.  And in new information that has come out, we have discovered that he kept the documents in random places in Mar-o-Lago, like in a bathroom, and  a ball room.   Along with Trump, his aide, Walt Nauta, has also been charged for moving boxes of documents around  and later lying about it to investigators (it sounds like he was seen  moving them on a security camera before saying he didn't).

“The day I realized it can be smart to be shallow was, for me, a deep experience.” (Trump: Think Like a Billionaire, 2004)

The question that arises here is simple: why did he do this?  What reason did he have to hang on to classified documents when he could have very easily  returned them?  While it is possible that he held on to them for nefarious reasons, like selling them to a foreign government, the more likely reason seems to be that he just likes having them to show off to people, to remind them that he used to be president and  got important briefings.  Like a small child, Trump assumes that every document he ever got while he was in office is his to do whatever he wants with forever.  He's a grown man shouting "MINE! MINE!"

“I’m speaking with myself, No. 1, because I have a very good brain and I’ve said a lot of things. … My primary consultant is myself.” (Trump: MSNBC, March 16, 2016)

Is this kind of behavior really so unexpected?  To me Trump is worst kind of fool: one who is utterly convinced of his own intelligence, and who was lucky enough to be born into a family of enormous wealth and raised around people who never told him he was wrong,    So, to him it makes sense that he can call himself a smart businessman while stumbling into 6 bankruptcies and being bailed out by his father to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars in unpaid loans.  A list of his failed business ideas include steaks, vodka, bottled water, a magazine, vitamins, an airline, a board game and, of course, a so called university that was such a blatant con that he had to pay a 25 million dollar class action settlement to people who had been scammed by it.   A list of Trump's stupid ideas would be a long one, here's some of them: that the sound from windmills cause cancer, that climate change is a Chinese hoax to destroy the American economy, that joking about sex parties he used to go to was a good topic to bring up at a Boy Scouts Jamboree, that we could prevent forest fires by raking the forest floor, that injecting bleach is a way to cure covid, and, he may have even possibly suggested that nuking a hurricane could be a good way to stop it!  He also appeared to once crudely use a marker to alter a weather map to conform to a tweet he earlier made, and then proudly held it up for the TV cameras to show that he was right. And more seriously, he completely mishandled the outbreak of covid and held a masks optional  rally in Tulsa Oklahoma during the height of the pandemic. And now, it appears that Trump not only held on to classified documents after being told to return them, he allegedly openly showed them to visitors without any kind of security clearance.   A transcript of a recording has been released in which Trump once held up a secret document to some visitors and said , "This is secret information! Look!  Look at this!"   On that same recording he even admitted that the document was still classified because he didn't declassify it as president.  In other words, this fool of a man admitted to committing a crime while being recorded.  That's going to be hard to defend in court.

"Testing is a double-edged sword. When you do testing to that extent, you’re going to find more people, you’re going to find more cases, so I said to my people ‘slow the testing down please’."(Trump: speech, June 2020)

Yes, Trump's life is the perfect example of one of the worst things about America: that it's better to be born rich than smart or talented.  I only hope that he may finally have found the one thing he can't get away with, no matter how much money he has.

"My father gave me a small loan of a million dollars."- Trump Campaign speech, 2015.

THE DEBT CEILING DANCE

 President Joe Biden negotiating and then signing the debt ceiling today after it was passed by congress gives credence to his 2016 campaign's assertion that  Biden was going to be a good deal maker with congress, given his decades of experience in the Senate.  And while I'm glad that the deal was passed and the government can go back to its usual gridlock without the global economy being threatened, the whole debt ceiling drama is a manufactured, absurd dance.  

The debt ceiling is, basically, the amount of money that the country can borrow to pay off its debts; without it, government bonds, salaries, and payments to contractors would not be honored, with dire consequences for both the nation's economy and the world's.  The national debt really began to grow in the late '80's, after years of massive defense spending and tax cuts for the rich under Ronald Reagan found the nation falling into debt.  The number really climbed during the early part of the 20th century, as then President George W Bush fought two wars and created the Department of Homeland Security without raising taxes or cutting enough other spending to cover those costs. 

At the time congress passed the debt ceiling with little to no serious discussion.  But then when the Tea Party movement saw Republicans win the majority of The House of Representatives in 2010, they seized on it as a political issue, threatening then President Barack Obama with economic calamity if he didn't overturn his signature piece of legislation, The Affordable Care Act. Republicans, like Representative Paul Ryan, gave interviews in which they claimed that they were only concerned about reducing the deficit calling it an existential threat. The essential dishonestly of that stand was shown a few years later when Republicans not only voted to pass the debt ceiling when Donald Trump was President, they also, led by Ryan himself, eagerly passed Trump's massive corporate tax cut that added more to the same deficit they were so worried about when Obama was President.

While the debt ceiling that was just signed was passed by a congressional bi partisan vote, with both right and left wing politicians disappointed in it, the only reason it was a problem in the first place was Republican obstinacy; you would think that a party that only bare won the House and lost seats in the Senate in the midterms would not have been so brazen, but that's what happened.  And if they really supported lowering the deficit, they would at least consider raising taxes on the rich or lowering defense spending, but of course those possibilities were never even discussed by them.   

Now that this manufactured crisis is behind us, the question arises as to how to handle the debt ceiling in the future. Many pundits have said that the 14th Amendment of the Constitution, which states that "The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned", could be interpreted to mean that Congress cannot actually suspend the debt limit. But if Biden had tried that approach and basically done nothing about the debt, the validity of that argument would have inevitably been settled by a conservative Supreme Court who very well may have ruled against Biden, even if economic chaos was the result.  So, in the name of avoiding an unnecessary economic crash, Biden negotiated a deal, with the debt ceiling issue put off until 2025 and who knows what congress and The White House will be like by then?  Either way, the debt has been kicked down the road again, and that's mostly a good thing, although the country still needs to get serious about raising taxes on the rich in my opinion.

WILL 2024 BE ANOTHER 2016?

 After the Republican party had a weak mid term showing in 2022, it looked like perhaps the party was ready to move on from Donald Trump, given that his hand picked candidates faired poorly and his overall influence on the party hurt them in the election.  That poor showing, combined with the then ascendant rise of Florida Governor Ron De Santis as a 2024 candidate, seemed to indicate a possible change in the future of the party.

What a difference half a year can make!  The criminal charges brought against the former president regarding his Stormy Daniels pays off before the 2016 election rallied the party faithful around him, and made his primary opponents have to issue statements of support for him against the charges.  Meanwhile De Santis was in the tough position of somehow beating Trump in the primary without losing the support of his loyal base, while Trump could hammer away at him with impunity.("Ron Desanctimonious" is the typically childish and stupid nickname that Trump has picked for the governor), The result has been a huge drop in support for  De Santis in the past few months.  While he is still likely to announce his candidacy sometime soon, it already appears that De Santis's chances of winning the nomination are slim to none.  

Personally, I feel a bit torn about the whole De Santis Vs Trump thing; on the one hand, as much as I despise De Santis's politics, I think he would be a better president than Trump, given that he's not a wildly  corrupt sexual predator like Trump is.  So part of me wants De Santis to win just to put Trump in the country's rear view mirror.  But on the other hand, I think De Santis would be a stronger opponent to President Biden than Trump, given that De Santis is only 44, and he could hammer Biden on the age issue, which clearly is on the mind of voters (even a majority of Democrat voters think that Biden is too old to run again).  So part of me wants Trump to win the primary, given that Biden beat him before and should be able to  do so again.  But, that was also my thinking back in 2016 when Trump was mowing down his Republican opponents in the primaries; oh sure, I thought, the Republicans may love this guy, but there's no way he'll win in the general election.  Obviously, I was wrong, and Trump somehow winning in a 2024  Biden Vs Trump rematch certainly isn't an impossibility, especially given the Republican advantage in the Electoral College. 

Recent events have shown that there's just no limit to how low Trump can go and how much the Republican base love him for it.  Just watch his deplorable recent town hall meeting on CNN, in which the crowd cheered Trump's every lie and deflection, even as he repeatedly insulted E. Jean Carrol, the woman who had just won a 5 million dollar suit against him for defamation of character after he denied her allegations that he raped her in a dressing room back in the 90's.  (His comments were so vile that Carrol is considering suing him again!).  Although the town hall's moderator, Kaitlan Collins, vainly tried to fact correct him, the jeering crowd of his supporters helped him bully her into submission, and the night appeared to be mostly a win for Trump, who now seems to be inevitably barreling his way into the Republican nomination.  Somehow,  a twice impeached one term president facing multiple criminal charges (with more likely on the way) could be president again.  And that's a true national disgrace.

EVEN FOX NEWS HAS A BREAKING POINT

 

It took paying out a settlement for $787 million dollars and a host of damaging private messages, but Fox News finally did the right thing and fired their most popular TV host, Tucker Carlson.  While there are any number of good reasons why Carlson should have been fired in the past few years, from his racist, xenophobic comments (he once said that immigrants make America "dirtier") to his crazy, seemingly contradictory conspiracy theories (he recently edited footage of the January 6th riot to make it look the protestors were peaceful, this after previously implying that the whole thing was a false flag operation by the FBI!), to one of his top writers being fired for posting racist, sexist and homophobic comments  for years online under a pseudonym, Carlson clearly played up to white supremacist ideas without actually endorsing white supremacist groups, who got the message and flocked to his show.

He's not the first Fox News on air personality to be suddenly fired; Bill O'Reilly, who, like Carlson, was the host on the network with the highest ratings, was forced out in 2017 because of a large payment made by the network to women he had sexually harassed.  Glenn Beck, another popular host, was let go in 2015 after he called then President Barack Obama a "racist" and once joked about poisoning Nancy Pelosi.  

Still, Carlson's firing was sudden, given that he wasn't even given a chance to say goodbye on his show.  Now I wish that his firing was in reaction to his horrible comments, or the allegedly misogynistic  work environment that fostered on the show, but it really sounds like the breaking point was that, during the recent legal case that Fox was in with the Dominion voting machine company, private messages of Carlson's were revealed to his bosses that showed a lack of respect for Fox News owner Rupert Murdoch and other network leaders.  Carlson clearly thought that, as the number one host on the network, he could express negative views about his bosses to his coworkers without risk.  Obviously, he was wrong.  I think his mistake was assuming that conservative audiences cared more about personalities than content.   Carlson was the number one host on Fox News because he was the one who pushed his hateful rhetoric to the brink of acceptability. (The New York Times ran a heavily researched study of his show in April of 2022 that revealed that many of his stories got their start in white supremacist chat rooms).  Who he was didn't really matter to the viewers, it was what he said.

Now while I would love nothing more than for Fox News to change its tone and do more actual reporting and less crazy commentary about the dangers of "woke" M and M's, I'm not getting my hopes up.  Yes, I'm happy that Carlson got the boot, just as I was happy when O'Reilly and Beck did too, but did those two earlier firings change the nature of Fox News?  No.  The simple truth of right wing media is that there will always be someone who will tell their mostly white, mostly old and mostly male audience what they want to hear along with conspiracy theories and ideas that will make them mad, even when those ideas don't make sense.  (A right wing relative of mine once assured me that the Green New Deal would have banned airplanes!).  In other words, Carlson may be gone, but the sexism, bigotry, homophobia and xenophobia he spewed can always be spewed by somebody else.

Hating the One Percent

“Gender-affirming care is medically-necessary, evidence-based care that improves the physical and mental health of transgender and gender-diverse people.”-The American Medical Association

 It was one of the more defining moments of Trump's 2016 campaign: during a question and answer period with an audience, one middle aged white man stood up and said that "we have a problem in this country called Muslims", he then accused then President Barack Obama of being one, and then went even further by saying that there are "training camps growing, where they want to kill us."  In typical Trump fashion, he failed to correct the man about his crazed conspiratorial beliefs, and instead remarked  that "A lot of people are saying that."  While his inability to correct this man was deplorable, why was he asking such an extreme question in the first place?  

Because during  Obama's presidency, the right wing media, building on beliefs that the president himself was a Muslim, began spreading lies about how Muslim Americans were going to impose Muslim Sharia law in the US.  These fears were fanned by the conservative think tank the Center for Security Policy, which promoted lies about Muslims "infiltrating" the US government and imposing their beliefs on the rest of us.  

The was, not surprisingly, based on an  argument that clearly misunderstood what  Sharia law is (as New York Times investigative reporter Andrea Elliott put it in a 2011 interview, "One of the key points that is missing in this debate is that for Muslims living in non-Muslim countries like the United States, there is a broad agreement that Shariah requires them to abide by the laws of the land in exchange for the right to worship freely."),  but none of that mattered.  Sharia law was a scary sounding term that could whip up the conservative base into a frenzy when it was repeated on right wing media outlets and that's what happened.

The result of that frenzy was a spate of anti Sharia laws that, by 2014, were passed in Alabama, Arizona, Kansas, Louisiana, North Carolina, South Dakota and Tennessee.  Along with that fact that there were no Muslim officials ready to go on the record as saying that America must abide by Sharia law, there was another ridiculous part of this whole thing: Muslims only make up one percent of the country.  The idea that somehow one percent of the country is going to pass laws that the other ninety nine percent don't want is, of course, absurd, but then fear is often irrational.  

Having dealt with that "threat", the right wing media recently turned their gaze to a new enemy: trans people.  It's hard to say exactly when conservatives decided to single out trans people, but demonizing them has become the new animating force on the right. And once again, the fear of trans people "taking over" has been absurdly exaggerated, with trans people only making up around one percent of the population. More importantly, polls have shown that the vast majority of trans people are glad to have transitioned despite all the hatred and discrimination coming their way.  They are, simply, just trying to live their best lives. 

And while things like puberty blockers may be new, the concept of people not falling into societal gender norms is thousands of years old; as rabbi Elliot Kukla pointed out in a recent New York Times editorial, ancient  writings in Judaism spoke of four different genders.  While in the modern world, The American Academy of Family Physicians  states that it "recognizes that diversity in gender identity and expression is a normal part of the human existence and does not represent pathology. The AAFP supports access to gender-affirming care for gender-diverse patients, including children and adolescents."

 While those anti Sharia state laws from the last decade were terrible, they were also purely symbolic; taking a stand against something that didn't even exist as a way to score political points.  The current anti Trans bills however, which have been passed in 10 states recently, are hurting real people.  Often, the same Republicans who cry for parent's rights when it comes to banning books in schools, are all for taking away the rights of parents who support their children's desire to use puberty blockers and other gender affirming care.  Sadly, this is in a community where suicide rates are higher than normal.

The crucial element in the success of this fear mongering is that the right wing media and politicians are spreading fear of groups of people that most Americans have never met.  Put simply, it's easy to demonize people that you don't know.  And most people (especially people  in rural areas) have never met a Muslim or trans person.  So when right wing media figures spread hatred of them, it's sadly easy for them to believe it.

While most polls show most Americans support equal rights for trans people, and that, along with the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the American Psychological Association  also support gender affirming care,  but this issue excites the Republican base.   And that goes double for  Fundamentalist Christians who are still smarting from losing on gay marriage 8 years ago, and that  means that it will not go away as a political issue any time soon. Unfortunately , it appears that the spinning wheel of conservative hatred is now set on trans people, and it will stay there until there is another one percent of the population for to spread hatred of.

THE FIRST TRUMP INDICTMENT

 

Well, it's official!  Today, for the first time ever, criminal indictment charges were made against Donald Trump, making him the first ex president to ever be indicted in American history.  And the amazing thing is that there are probably more on the way.

There's a certain inevitably to this: anyone who has read honest media reports about Trump for the past decade knows that he is a man who has always lived on the edge of legality, who acts (and talks!) more like a mob boss than a businessman or politician.  And like a mob boss who avoids prison while his underlings take the fall for him, Trump is surrounded by criminals who often have been caught committing crimes on his behalf.  From Trump's former lawyer and convicted criminal Micheal Cohen, who's hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels just before the 2016 election started this whole mess for Trump, to former campaign advisor George Papadopoulos who was convicted of lying to the FBI, to Trump's long time accountant Allen Weisselberg who was recently convicted of tax fraud, some of the closest people to Trump have broken the law.  It's hard to believe that he himself would never  face some kind of charges.

The interesting thing about this indictment is that it may be the weakest of the 4 potential criminal charges that may be brought against him.  To get a felony conviction here, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg will have to prove to a jury that Trump both falsified business records while violating campaign finance laws. While this may be difficult, clearly Bragg thinks that he has enough evidence to make a case.  We'll see.

The second possible criminal charge against Trump, (and the one that seems to be the  strongest),  is the one coming from the state of Georgia.  As we all now know from a recorded conversation, after losing the election, Trump called former Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and asked him to "find" him votes.  He even implied that Raffensperger himself might face some kind of charge if he didn't find those votes.  The fact that this call came after the state had already recounted the votes twice without changing the outcome meant nothing to Trump, and his behavior certainly seems criminal here, even if was still the president when he made that call.

Then there's a Justice Department investigation over whether Trump's stirring up of the mob on January 6th counts as a criminal incite to riot.  This is a bit tricky, since freedom of speech is important and Trump did use the word "peacefully" while addressing the crowd.  On the other hand, he had the power to stop the riot while it was going on and he delayed doing that for hours.  He even sent out a tweet condemning Mike Pence as the riot was taking place, further inflaming the crowd.  Plus there was testimony during the House of Representatives's January 6th investigation that said that he wanted metal detectors removed from the rally because the protestors were  "not there to hurt me.”

Finally, there's the stolen document scandal, in which Trump's refusal to turn over classified documents after leaving the White House prompted an FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago that resulted in over a hundred secret documents being found.  The crazy thing about this possible crime is that it reveals just how immature and downright stupid Trump is: he was told that he needed to turn over all the secret documents he had taken with him after leaving the White House, and he only returned some of them, leaving the rest in a closet in his resort/home.  All he had to do was hand them over, but, like a small child crying finders keepers, he refused, seeming to believe that any document he got as president was his forever.  If this is the crime that finally nails Trump, he'll be guilty of criminal stupidity.   

Inevitably, there's some worry in the media that this unprecedented step will galvanize Trump's supporters into some kind of violence, and while that fear is understandable, there is no doubt that it  right thing to do.  Every American who commits a crime should face charges for it, no matter who they are.