Go, Jimmy Go

Jimmy Carter is a man of kindness and grace - a man who's done well at living his values - and apparently, he's one tough motherfucker.

The Surprising Greatness of Jimmy Carter

• Carter brought more positive change to the Middle East than any president in the decades before or since
• He signed more legislation than any post–World War II president except LBJ
• He warned of the dangers of climate change before the threat even had a name
• His human rights policy played a huge and largely uncredited role in the collapse of the Soviet Union - more so, perhaps, than any policies enacted by his successor Ronald Reagan.

Jimmy Carter condition: ‘No change,’ says his grandson

• Jason Carter updated his grandfather’s condition
• Nobody expected this long in hospice care, he said
• Carter not always conscious, but still talks to family

(NewsNation) — Former President Jimmy Carter has been in hospice care for 15 months, and his grandson says there is “really no change” in his condition.

Jason Carter, the oldest of Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter’s 22 grandchildren, updated the former president’s status for Southern Living magazine. He said the 99-year-old is “experiencing the world as best he can as he continues through this process.”

The average hospice stay is around 70 days, although for many it may only be a couple of weeks. Carter entered hospice care in February of 2023.

“God had other plans,” Jason Carter said about his grandfather unexpectedly hanging on for so long. Rosalynn Carter died last November. The two were married for 77 years.

“After 77 years of marriage… I just think none of us really understand what it’s like for him right now,” Jason Carter said.

The younger Carter says his grandfather isn’t awake every day, but still talks to his relatives when he is awake.

Jason Carter recently visited his grandfather, who is receiving care at his modest home in his tiny hometown of Plains, Georgia. He says the two watched an Atlanta Braves game and talked about The Carter Center, as well as the family.

“I said: ‘Pawpaw, you know, when people ask me how you’re doing, I say, ‘Honestly, I don’t know.’ And he kind of smiled and he said, ‘I don’t know, myself.’”

“It was pretty sweet,” he said.

POTUS Rankings

Presidents ranked by people who know about such things

1. Lincoln - 93.87%
2. FD Roosevelt - 90.83%
3. Washington - 90.32%
4. T Roosevelt - 78.58%
5. Jefferson - 77.53%
6. Truman - 75.34%
7. Obama - 73.8%
8. Eisenhower - 73.73%
9. LB Johnson - 72.86%
10. Kennedy - 68.37%
11. Madison - 67.16%
12. Clinton - 66.42%
13. J Adams - 62.66%
14. Biden - 62.66%
15. Wilson - 61.8%
16. Reagan - 61.62%
17. Grant - 60.93%
18. Monroe - 60.15%
19. GHW Bush - 58.54%
20. JQ Adams - 55.41%
21. Jackson - 54.7%
22. Carter - 54.26%
23. Taft - 51.67%
24. McKinley - 51.23%
25. Polk - 49.83%
26. Cleveland - 48.31%
27. Ford - 46.09%
28. Van Buren - 45.46%
29. Hayes - 41.15%
30. Garfield - 40.98%
31. Harrison - 40.64%
32. GW Bush - 40.43%
33. Arthur - 39.61%
34. Coolidge - 39.38%
35. Nixon - 36.41%
36. Hoover - 34.08%
37. Tyler - 32.99%
38. Taylor - 32.97%
39. Fillmore - 30.33%
40. Harding - 27.76%
41. Harrison - 26.01%
42. Pierce - 24.6%
43. Johnson - 21.56%
44. Buchanan - 16.71%
45. Trump - 10.92%

Today's WTF

The judge in Denver found that Trump did indeed engage in an insurrection, but somehow, she opines that doesn't disqualify him under the 14th amendment.

A face that will live in infamy

WTF, lady!?!

I think I kinda get it. Sometimes, the courts are saying "You guys in the legislature have to fix this shit so we can help you", but goddamn - this sounds like such a fucking cop out.

Donald Trump can appear on Colorado’s 2024 Republican presidential primary ballot, judge rules

Similar lawsuits have been filed in other parts of the country, none of which have been successful

Donald Trump incited an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, but he can still appear on the Republican presidential primary ballot in Colorado next year, a Denver District Court judge ruled Friday in a case that could have national consequences.

Judge Sarah B. Wallace’s 102-page ruling comes in a lawsuit filed by a liberal political nonprofit based in Washington, D.C. It argued that Trump’s role in the deadly Jan. 6 riot disqualifies him from running for president under the 14th Amendment and that he shouldn’t be allowed to appear on Colorado’s presidential primary ballot.

Section 3 of the amendment bars “officers of the Unites States” who took an “oath … to support the Constitution of the United States” and then “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof” from holding federal or state office again.

Wallace found that while Trump “incited an insurrection … and therefore ‘engaged’ in an insurrection,” the 14th Amendment “does not apply to Trump” because he is not an “officer” of the United States.

“Part of the court’s decision is its reluctance to embrace an interpretation which would disqualify a presidential candidate without a clear, unmistakable indication that such is the intent of Section Three,” she wrote.

Sorry not sorry, but saying Trump isn't "an officer of the government" may be true now - on Nov 17, 2023 - but on Jan6 he was President Of The United Fucking States. So your whole premise is total fucking bullshit.

Wallace’s ruling came after she heard five days of testimony, including from police officers who were at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, two congressmen and constitutional experts.

While Trump is unlikely to win the general election in Colorado in 2024 if he is the GOP nominee — he lost to President Joe Biden, a Democrat, by 13 percentage points in the state in 2020 — the ballot-access case could still have major consequences on the national stage.

The nonprofit that brought the lawsuit, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics, which doesn’t disclose its donors, is likely to appeal the ruling. The Colorado GOP, which fought the lawsuit, said it expects Wallace’s finding to be challenged.

Legal experts believe the questions of whether Trump should be allowed to run for president again will eventually land before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Similar lawsuits have been filed in other parts of the country, none of which have been successful.

On Tuesday, Michigan Court of Claims Judge James Redford said deciding whether an event constituted “a rebellion or insurrection and whether or not someone participated in it” are questions best left to Congress and not “one single judicial officer.” A judge, he wrote, “cannot in any manner or form possibly embody the represented qualities of every citizen of the nation — as does the House of Representatives and the Senate.”

Last week, Minnesota’s Supreme Court rejected another effort to block Trump from appearing on Minnesota’s GOP primary ballot next year.

The Colorado lawsuit was brought on behalf of a group of Republican and unaffiliated voters. The defendant was Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, a Democrat whose office took a neutral stance on the case.

“The court determined that Donald Trump is eligible to be placed on the Colorado ballot in the March presidential primary,” Griswold said in a written statement on Friday. “This decision may be appealed. As secretary of state, I will always ensure that every voter can make their voice heard in free and fair elections.”

Colorado’s presidential primary will be held March 4.

Aaaaaargh!!!

Again?

Jesus H Fuq. Pretty goddamned sloppy.

Can we please stop fucking up the whole State Secrets thing?

It has to be obvious now that several somebodies in various places at various levels of government either aren't paying attention, or are actively fucking with things they're not allowed to fuck with.

Classified Documents Found at Pence’s Home in Indiana

The documents were “inadvertently boxed and transported” to the former vice president’s home at the end of the Trump administration, Mr. Pence’s representative wrote in a letter to the National Archives.

Aides to former Vice President Mike Pence found a small number of documents with classified markings at his home in Indiana during a search last week, according to an adviser to Mr. Pence.

The documents were “inadvertently boxed and transported” to Mr. Pence’s home at the end of President Donald J. Trump’s administration, Greg Jacob, Mr. Pence’s representative for dealing with records related to the presidency, wrote in a letter to the National Archives.

The letter, dated Jan. 18, 2023, said that the former vice president was unaware of the existence of the documents and reiterated that he took seriously the handling of classified materials and wanted to help.

Mr. Jacob wrote that Mr. Pence relied on an outside lawyer after classified documents were found in recent days at the residence and former private office of President Biden. Mr. Jacob also said the lawyer could not specify anything more about the documents because the lawyer had stopped looking once it was clear the documents had classified markings.

The disclosure adds more questions about how classified material is handled at the top levels of government at a moment when Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump are both subjects of special counsel investigations on the matter.

Mr. Trump has been under federal investigation for nearly a year for how hundreds of documents with classified markings, as well as hundreds of pages of presidential records, wound up at his private club and residence, Mar-a-Lago.

Mr. Trump resisted the urging of aides to give boxes of documents with unknown contents to the National Archives. When he eventually turned over 15 boxes, archives officials found hundreds of pages with classified markings. Mr. Trump later faced a grand jury subpoena to turn over any remaining documents, and one of his lawyers wrote a statement saying everything had been turned over. When investigators found evidence that was not the case, the F.B.I. searched his club in August.

Mr. Biden, by contrast, has cooperated since the discovery of documents at his nonprofit offices and then his home. Mr. Jacob, who was Mr. Pence’s general counsel while he was vice president, stressed cooperation in the letter to the National Archives.

Still, aides to Mr. Pence had previously said they were confident that the vice president had not retained any classified documents after he left office.

Teddy Roosevelt, POTUS #26

On April 23, 1910 - a year after leaving office - Theodore Roosevelt gave what would become one of his greatest rhetorical triumphs.

The most famous section of his speech still resonates and inspires.

It is not the critic who counts.

A Reminder

Zachary Taylor (November 24, 1784 – July 9, 1850) was an American military leader who served as the 12th president of the United States from 1849 until his death in 1850. Taylor previously was a career officer in the United States Army, rose to the rank of major general and became a national hero as a result of his victories in the Mexican–American War. As a result, he won election to the White House despite his vague political beliefs. His top priority as president was preserving the Union. He died sixteen months into his term, having made no progress on the most divisive issue in Congress, slavery.

As president, Taylor kept his distance from Congress and his cabinet, even though partisan tensions threatened to divide the Union. Debate over the status of slavery in the Mexican Cession dominated the political agenda and led to threats of secession from Southerners. Despite being a Southerner and a slaveholder himself, Taylor did not push for the expansion of slavery, and sought sectional harmony above all other concerns. To avoid the issue of slavery, he urged settlers in New Mexico and California to bypass the territorial stage and draft constitutions for statehood, setting the stage for the Compromise of 1850. Taylor died suddenly of a stomach disease on July 9, 1850, with his administration having accomplished little aside from the ratification of the Clayton–Bulwer Treaty. Fillmore served the remainder of his term. Historians and scholars have ranked Taylor in the bottom quartile of U.S. presidents, owing in part to his short term of office (16 months), though he has been described as "more a forgettable president than a failed one".

Happy Anniversary

We can have a long hot vociferous discussion about his presidency - whether or not he did OK, or if the fact that he didn't start any shit with any other countries was a good thing or a weak thing, or if he deserved the blame for this or that, or credit for something else, or whatever.

But there's no debating the fact that Jimmy Carter is a good and decent man.

...or that he got lucky and married well.

The Rankings Are In

It seems weird, but 45* does not come last in the survey of Best Presidents.

They put him at 41st - just 3 places from the bottom.

A note, if you please: Remember that while there have been 46 "presidencies" (including Biden now), there have been only 45 men who've served as president. Grover Cleveland occupies 2 slots because his terms weren't consecutive.

C-SPAN Survey Results

Anyway - WaPo: (pay wall)

Historians just ranked the presidents. Trump wasn’t last.

Despite being impeached twice, former president Donald Trump is not the worst president in U.S. history, according to 142 presidential historians surveyed by C-SPAN, the results of which were released Wednesday.

But the survey doesn’t give Trump much to brag about either. He ranked lower than William Henry Harrison, who was only president for 31 days, and John Tyler, the only former president buried in a coffin draped with the Confederate flag.

So who ranked worse than Trump? According to the historians, presidents Franklin “Bleeding Kansas” Pierce, Andrew “First to Be Impeached” Johnson and James “Failed to Stop the Civil War” Buchanan, who came in last.

To be clear, this was an informal survey whose respondents were selected by C-SPAN, not a scientific poll. Dozens more historians were invited to complete the survey this time than in years past. C-SPAN said this was to reflect “new diversity in race, gender, age and philosophy,” but that also makes it harder to compare it to previous surveys.

Still, the respondents are all distinguished presidential historians covering a broad range of perspectives, and there are insights to gain from their collective opinions.

Even with all the new historians participating, the top and bottom rankings remained unchanged. Since 2009, the top four presidents have been: 1) Abraham Lincoln 2) George Washington 3) Franklin D. Roosevelt and 4) Theodore Roosevelt. (Washington and FDR switched places in the 2000 survey.) The bottom three have been always been Pierce, Johnson and Buchanan, in that order.

The survey is conducted only when there is a change in administration, so that each presidency can be evaluated in its entirety. The historians do not rank the presidents themselves. Instead they are asked to rate each president from 1 to 10 on 10 leadership categories; the averages of all of the ratings are then ranked. The 10 categories are public persuasion, crisis leadership, economic management, moral authority, international relations, administrative skills, relations with Congress, vision/setting an agenda, pursuit of equal justice for all and performance within the context of the times.

Trump got his best average rating on public persuasion, in which he came in 32nd. On moral authority and administrative skills, however, he came in dead last.

Alexis Coe is one of the historians invited to do the survey for the first time, after her well-regarded 2020 book “You Never Forget Your First: A Biography of George Washington.” In her newsletter, she said she “jumped for joy” when she received the survey, then “agonized over every rating” for months. What about vision/setting an agenda for James K. Polk, who brought enslaved people to the White House and also annexed Texas? Warren G. Harding certainly rates low on moral authority, she wrote, but how low for his policies and how low for cheating on the first lady?

“I’ve yet to study a president who’s a perfect 10,” Coe wrote.

The president whose reputation has improved the most in the past two decades? That’s Ulysses S. Grant, who started at No. 33 and is now ranked 20th. Grant has had a number of sympathetic biographies in recent years, and these days gets more credit for Reconstruction and his diplomacy than condemnation for his alleged corruption.

No president has fallen quite as much as Grant rose in the same period; but Trump-favorite Andrew Jackson fell the most, from No. 13 to No. 22. It is perhaps a reflection of changing attitudes in the public. Soon Jackson may fall right off the $20 bill.

Other interesting patterns reveal themselves in the rankings. The five presidents from 1933 to 1969 — FDR, Harry S. Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson — rank in the top 11, making it the best stretch of presidents historians say America has had. The worst stretch came from 1837 to 1869, with the notable exception of four-time champion Lincoln.

In 2017, former president Barack Obama entered the ranking at No. 12, though Howard University historian Edna Greene Medford warned The Washington Post at the time that “historians prefer to view the past from a distance, and only time will reveal his legacy.” Four years later, a little distance seems to be doing Obama’s legacy good — he is now ranked No. 10.

President Biden will not be included in the C-SPAN survey until he has left office.

C-SPAN is not the only outfit conducting presidential rankings, and other recent surveys have included Trump before he left office. In 2018, when Boise State University surveyed presidential scholars for its Presidents & Executive Politics Presidential Greatness survey, Trump came in last. And that was before the two impeachments, the coronavirus pandemic and the Capitol insurrection.

Read more Retropolis:

The 10 worst presidents: Besides Trump, whom do scholars scorn the most?
‘A hack job,’ ‘outright lies’: Trump commission’s ‘1776 Report’ outrages historians
The 10th president’s last surviving grandson: A bridge to the nation’s complicated past
‘His Accidency’: The first president to die in office and the constitutional confusion

AKA: Consciousness Of Guilt

Glenn Kirschner, on Bill Barr's interview in The Atlantic:

And be sure to catch the Mitch McConnell piece of it (starting at about 6:50).

These guys crooked as fuck. I'll go ahead with a blanket condemnation, saying all politicians are first and foremost concerned with gaining and keep and wielding power. The cliche is true - you can't do as much if you don't win the election.

OK fine, but when you have to stay in power in order to stay out of prison, you've taken things just a few steps too far.

How We Got Here

Joe Biden is one of those guys who sees the shit that goes on and tries to do something about it.

If he can be faulted for anything, it's that his sense of indignation-spurring-immediacy has made him a little over-reactive in the past.

I think his instincts are good, especially those for peace-making, but he can come off as a little impetuous, and as a painter of blue skies and rainbows.

And if he manages to stay out of the trap where you end up totally uncool for having tried to be cool, then he's got a real shot.

The really good news so far is that he's able to choose his gang from a huge talent pool of qualified professionals who're eager to jump in and serve.

We'll see.

NYT: (pay wall)

Susan Bro recognized the palpable anger and open bigotry on display in the mob that attacked the United States Capitol this month. It reminded her of the outpouring of hate that killed her daughter, Heather Heyer.

That was in 2017, when white supremacists, self-avowed neo-Nazis and right-wing militias marched on Charlottesville in the name of intolerance — and former President Donald Trump — and one of them drove a car into a crowd, fatally injuring Ms. Heyer. More than three years later, Ms. Bro and other Charlottesville residents say they have a message for the nation after the latest episode of white violence in Washington, and for President Biden, who is emphasizing themes of healing and unity in the face of right-wing extremism.

Healing requires holding perpetrators accountable, Ms. Bro said. Unity follows justice.

“Look at the lessons learned from Charlottesville,” she said. “The rush to hug each other and sing ‘Kumbaya’ is not an effective strategy.”

The Capitol attack and Mr. Trump’s handling of it felt eerily familiar to many residents of Charlottesville, where the 2017 Unite the Right rally not only forever tied the former president to violence committed by white extremists, but also inspired Mr. Biden to run for president and undertake “a battle for the soul of this nation.”

After the rally and Ms. Heyer’s death, Mr. Trump declared that there were “very fine people on both sides” of the conflict and defended the actions of the right-wing mob. It was all a harbinger of things to come: the mix of misinformation and prejudice that Mr. Trump had inspired among a segment of Republicans; the reliance on false equivalency with progressive protesters; the willingness to use the bully pulpit of the presidency to inflame tensions; and the continued episodes of violence.

Charlottesville also showed the electoral backlash that Mr. Trump’s actions inspired, and how a movement to affirm multiracial democracy has grown in response to threats. Locally, a surge of activism helped elect the city’s first Black female mayor, Nikuyah Walker, and changes have been instituted like the creation of a civilian review police board.

Mr. Biden regularly invoked Charlottesville during a campaign in which he reclaimed five states that Mr. Trump had won in 2016. And though Mr. Biden nodded to the violence here and at the Capitol during his inaugural address on Wednesday, he framed the solutions in the sort of terms that Ms. Bro questioned, demonstrating a belief that kindness and compassion could overcome systemic discrimination.

“I know speaking of unity can sound to some like a foolish fantasy these days,” Mr. Biden said. “I know the forces that divide us are deep and they are real. But I also know they are not new. Our history has been a constant struggle between the American ideal that we all are created equal, and the harsh, ugly reality that racism, nativism, fear and demonization have long torn us apart.”

Mr. Biden’s tone was echoed by several other inaugural speakers, who delivered a clear and unified message: Democracy was tested in Mr. Trump’s administration, through events like the mob violence in Charlottesville and Washington. They argued that Mr. Biden had been elected to directly confront it — and that he knew the gravity of the challenge.

“We can join forces, stop the shouting, and lower the temperature,” Mr. Biden said. “For without unity, there is no peace — only bitterness and fury.”

But in interviews this week, Charlottesville activists, religious leaders and civil rights groups who endured the events of 2017 urged Mr. Biden and the Democratic Party to go beyond seeing unity as the ultimate political goal and prioritize a sense of justice that uplifts the historically marginalized. When Mr. Biden called Ms. Bro on the day he entered the presidential race in 2019, she pressed him on his policy commitments to correcting racial inequities. She declined to endorse him, she said, focused more on supporting the antiracism movement than any individual candidate.

Local leaders say this is the legacy of the “Summer of Hate,” as the white supremacist actions and violence of 2017 are known in Charlottesville. When the election of Mr. Trump and the violence that followed punctured the myth of a post-racial America, particularly among white liberals, these leaders committed themselves to the long arc of insulating democracy from white supremacy and misinformation.

Knives Knives Everywhere

So we kinda saw what was probably supposed to be the big push for plutocracy.

The shit Qult45 pulled (and didn't pull off) in DC on Jan6 is putting a lot of Republicans at odds with each other.

I haven't sorted it out yet, and I'm not expecting I'll every get it all sorted out, but this from National Review is basically a full on declaration of the internal war(s) that we should be watching the GOP struggle with for a while.

NRO:

Witless Ape Rides Helicopter

Well, that sucked.

Memo to MAGA and all its myriad fellow-travelers: Maybe Death of a Salesman as presented by Leni Riefenstahl just wasn’t the show Americans were dying to tune into this season.

And, while we’re at it, maybe turning your party over to Generalissimo Walter Mitty, his hideous scheming spawn, and the studio audience from Hee-Haw was not just absolutely aces as a political strategy.

Think on it, Cletus. I know this whole thing still sounds like your idea of a good time — how’s that working out for you?

Let me refresh your memory: On the day Donald Trump was sworn in as president, Republicans controlled not only the White House but both houses of Congress. They were in a historically strong position elsewhere as well, controlling both legislative chambers in 32 states. They pissed that away like they were midnight drunks karaoke-warbling that old Chumbawumba song: In 2021, they control approximately squat. The House is run by Nancy Pelosi. The Senate is run, as a practical matter, by Kamala Harris. And Joe Biden won the presidency, notwithstanding whatever the nut-cutlet guest-hosting for Dennis Prager this week has to say about it.

Donald Trump is, in fact, the first president since Herbert Hoover to lead his party to losing the presidency, the House, and the Senate all in a single term. Along with being the first president to be impeached twice and the first game-show host elected to the office, that’s Trump’s claim to the history books. Well, that and 400,000 dead Americans and the failed coup d’état business.

As for the ratings Trump fears and worships, ask the Third Lady: Melania Trump departs the scene the most unpopular presidential wife in recorded statistical history.

You Trumpish Republicans sneered that Joe Biden was too corrupt and too senescent to win a presidential campaign, that he was one part mafioso and one part turnip.

That turnip kicked your dumb asses from Delaware to D.C.

So you rioted. Real smart move, Cletus.

Five Americans are dead. Barricades have been erected around the Capitol. Thousands of federal troops have been deployed to the streets of Washington. State capitols have been obliged to prepare for siege. Americans blame you for this — and they are not wrong.

“Trust the plan,” the QAnon cultists say. Is this what you were planning? I know you are stupid, but you are not that stupid.

“Oh, but he fights!” you’ll say — over and over and over. He didn’t fight — he tweeted. He’s ten feet tall on social media and a pushover in real life. Trade deficit: up. Unemployment rate: rising. Abortion rate: rising. Beijing: rising. The coronavirus body-count: rising.

But he sure did tweet a lot!

And he pardoned Roger Stone — at least he took care of that pressing national priority.

“But the judges!” you protest. Fair point: Trump’s absurd attempts to overturn the election through specious legal challenges were laughed out of court by the very men and women he appointed to the bench. Even his judges think he’s a joke.

Everybody has figured that out. Except you.

And so, goodbye, Donald J. Trump, the man who wanted to be Conrad Hilton but turned out to be Paris Hilton. Au revoir, Ivanka and Jared, Uday and Qusay — there’s a table for four reserved for you at Dorsia. So long, Melania — it’s still not entirely clear what you got out of this, but I hope it was worth it. A fond farewell to Ted Cruz’s reputation and Mike Pence’s self-respect, Lindsey Graham’s manhood and Fox News’s business model. In with “Dr.” Jill Biden, out with “Dr.” Sebastian Gorka.

Good night, ladies, good night, sweet ladies, good night, good night.

I’m sure we’ll all meet again. But I’d really rather we didn’t.

Election Update

Still a ways to go - there will be tantrums and lawsuits and possibly violent outbursts - but we're gettin' there.

And btw - we just elected the first-ever woman Veep, and the first-ever POC Veep.

And I'm tickled all to pieces to say, 

disregard all that shit down there.

Where We At?

Simple answers: We don't know where we're at. We only know we're not where we need to be, but we might have a bead on it, and there are some faint glimmering indications that we're moving slowly in the right direction.

We think.

We hope.

Maybe.

Dunno yet.

The AP has made the call for Biden in Arizona, but no one else has joined them in that one.

The prospects that North Carolina will flip are very dim, and nobody knows what the fuck Alaska's doing.

So that gives us 3 states to concentrate on: Pennsylvania, Georgia and Nevada.

Let me just take a short moment right here to reiterate my thinking on how much the Electoral College sucks.

I'm all for protecting the rights of minority parties, but the EC (and the Senate) have been unduly and unfairly and dishonorably weaponized to make them tools of oppression when the GOP is in power, and an effective bagful of sand that an asshole like Mitch McConnell can pour in the gearbox when they aren't.

This shit has to change.

Anyway, Biden is up, and even though we're going to have a shitty time of it for a while, eventually he's going to be President-Elect Joe Biden.

Prob'ly.

Did everybody notice the cutesy bullshit of Nevada actually putting "none of the above" on their ballot?

You want better candidates? Fine - me too. But you know what - maybe you could get up off your fucking ass and go find one for us. I've got zero patience for that whiny-butt bullshit.

Show up or shut up.

Speaking of Showing Up: There're 210 million adults here in USAmerica Inc, and while this election turned us out in big numbers, Voter Participation still came in under 70%.

Once Upon A Time

...in a land quickly fading from our memory, there was a real president. But we grew stoopid and lazy, and 61,000,000 of us got snookered into believing that a guy who had never succeeded at anything but being a game show host was a good choice to lead the biggest baddest bestest country on Earth.

And here we are.

The Lines Become Clearer

We're in a fight that is determining whether we continue degrading the republic - while pretending it's still a democracy - and slide full-bore into The Daddy State, or figure out a way to reclaim our little experiment in self-government, and get back to an effort at making some nominal progress towards that more perfect union thing we love to talk about while almost totally (and maybe intentionally) misunderstanding.

JD Mortenson, Law Prof, Univ of Mich, in The Atlantic:

Is the president a king? The question may sound absurd, but you’d be surprised: A great many lawyers, politicians, judges, and policy experts think the U.S. Constitution builds from exactly that starting point. Their argument relies on the first sentence of Article II, which gives the president “the executive power.” That phrase, they claim, was originally understood as a generic reference to monarchical authority. This means, they say, that the American president must have been given all the prerogatives of a British king, except where the Constitution specifies otherwise. The foreign-relations scholar Philip Trimble states their conclusion plainly: “Unless the [Article II] Vesting Clause is meaningless, it incorporates the unallocated parts of Royal Prerogative.”
That last bit - about how the Vesting Clause includes Royal Prerogative - is nine kinds of fucked up, and it's the big tell when it comes to figuring out what the Radical Right is up to.

What it says:
The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.

What it means to normal humans (what we were all taught in Junior High School Civics class):

The Legislative Branch (the Article 1 guys; the 1st-among-equals guys) will deliberate about how the country should operate; they'll make laws; and they'll hire a guy to run it for them - an executive guy - a guy who'll hire other guys to make sure the will of the people (as represented in Congress) is being faithfully and fairly applied to the daily goings-on in the United States Of America. And even though POTUS can veto a law, Congress can override that veto if they're working together, and that means the president and congress have to work together too -if they wanna get anything done.

That is the conservative take on things. ie: Checks and Balances - trying to make sure not too much government power is in too few hands, and fostering a workable relationship pointed at keeping everybody accountable.

What it means to the Radical Right: (what they've been pimping at us for 40+ years)

Our guy got "elected", and he can do whatever he thinks is OK and if you want something different - well fuck you, we won, get over it.

That's an extraordinarily liberal interpretation of "Executive Power".

- more from Professor Mortenson's piece -

After years of research into an enormous array of colonial, revolutionary, and founding-era sources, I’m here to tell you that—as a historical matter—this president-as-king claim is utterly and totally wrong. I’ve reviewed more than a thousand publications from the 17th and 18th centuries for each instance of the word root exec-, and have read most of those texts from cover to cover with the topic of presidential power squarely in mind. I’ve read every discussion of executive power and presidential authority that appears in the gigantic compilation of archival materials known as the Documentary History of the Ratification of the United States Constitution. And with the help of a team of research assistants, I’m most of the way through flyspecking the full records of the Continental Congress—including committee reports, floor debates, and delegate correspondence—with the same question in mind.

All this work has left me with both the confidence to share this conclusion and the sense of obligation to do so as bluntly as possible. It’s just not a close call: The historical record categorically refutes the idea that the American revolutionaries gave their new president an unspecified array of royal prerogatives. To the contrary, the presidency that leaps off the pages of the Founders’ debates, diaries, speeches, letters, poems, and essays was an instrument of the law of the land, subject to the law of the land, and both morally and legally obliged to obey the law of the land.

"...the presidency...an instrument of the law of the land, subject to the law of the land, and both morally and legally obliged to obey the law of the land."

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...The constitutional text doesn’t actually authorize the president to do very much. It enumerates the veto, appointments, and pardon powers. It grants the president “the executive power” and the office of commander in chief. It authorizes the president to receive foreign ambassadors, demand reports from his subordinates, and deliver a State of the Union address. But aside from a few miscellaneous process authorities, that’s just about it.

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“The executive power” granted at the American founding was conceptually, legally, and semantically incapable of conveying a reservoir of royal authority. The real meaning of executive power was something almost embarrassingly simple: the power to execute the law. Overwhelming evidence for this point pervades both the Founders’ debates and the legal and political theory on which their discussions drew.

Today's Tweet

Imagine a president.

Today, I saw a video clip of @PeteButtigieg playing classical piano. Another were he speaks in Spanish. And this one, were he tells Parisians, he shares their pain -in French. Just imagine having a President whose intellect exceeds that of a root vegetable...for a change. https://t.co/X9ZT0CrXMk

— Ana Navarro-Cárdenas (@ananavarro) April 16, 2019

Today's Tweet

And an answer from another deeply unpopular president who understood something important about not trying to force himself on us.

It is part of the price of leadership of this great and free nation to be the target of clever satirists. You have given the gift of laughter to our people. May we never grow so somber or self-important that we fail to appreciate the humor in our lives.” --LBJ
(in a letter to the Smothers Brothers show upon their cancellation by CBS partly because POTUS had called the network and complained)

Nothing funny about tired Saturday Night Live on Fake News NBC! Question is, how do the Networks get away with these total Republican hit jobs without retribution? Likewise for many other shows? Very unfair and should be looked into. This is the real Collusion!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 17, 2019

Today's Today

As of 11-9-16, on the 3rd Monday in February, we take the day off in honor of 97.8% of our presidents.

A Random Thought

There's been a whole long string of PolToons like this one - a happy reunion for Poppy and Babs in the afterlife and blah blah blah.

I think I get it, but I have to let Cynical Asshole Mike come out and play for just a minute:

1. Doesn't the background in this cartoon look a bit like flames?
2. "Welcome home"? Like "Glad you're dead, George - wanna dance"?

Charlie Tells The Truth

Charlie Pierce is a national treasure.

"Battlefield courage and political courage can be quite different things"

His piece on Poppy Bush at Esquire:

However, as Bush rose in the Republican Party, its power base swung south and west. It slowly embraced empowered radical religious fundamentalism. And, most significantly, in the wake of the Civil Rights Movement, it made a conscious decision to energize itself through the splintered, but still powerful, remnants of American apartheid. 

Bush never appeared comfortable with these developments, but he never could quite bring himself to denounce them, and he had very little compunction about using them when he needed to do so. Because of this, and because of the starchy aloofness of his basic mien, he struggled mightily against the impression that he was inauthentic. He did not often win that battle.

My lord, the man enlisted to fight in World War II when he was still underage and he came back a genuine hero. (Say what you will about those old WASP families, but there are a lot of their names on the wall in Memorial Hall and in the Memorial Church at Harvard.) Why did he feel that, to be president, he had to butch it up against Dan Rather, or tell an audience after his debate against Geraldine Ferraro that he’d “kicked a little ass last night.” Why did he feel he had to flip flop on reproductive choice as baroquely as he did? He felt he had to act in this ridiculous fashion, and he wasn’t strong enough to fight against his own ambition. Battlefield courage and political courage can be quite different things.

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He could have been one of the most powerful voices against the slide of Republicanism into movement conservatism, religious fanaticism, and irrationality in general. Maybe nobody could have stopped it. (Even his son, George W. Bush, made a kabuki stab at it. Remember “compassionate conservatism”? But, because he was a Bush, W handed this phantom philosophy over to Karl Rove, who had been too much of a ruthless ratfcker for the elder Bush. We ended up as a nation that tortures.) But he could have tried. His stature would have counted against it.

But he could never muster enough political gumption to overcome his own ambition.