Aug 28, 2024
Permission
Permission to think for yourself, and then to vote according to what you think, unencumbered by the negative peer pressure and the sometimes venomous rhetoric.
My ex-Mom-in-Law came for a visit in the fall of 2012, and I asked her who she was going to vote for. She told me she hadn't decided yet because she didn't know who all her friends were going to vote for.
Every yard sign, every bumper sticker, every casual conversation at the bar or the grocery store or the barber shop will have some impact on how people vote. Maybe not on the ones you're talking to, but the ones who overhear what you're saying.
Thank You For Smoking - The Ice Cream Scene
Aug 27, 2024
This Fuckin' Guy
This man. This ex-president. This "exemplar for the people":
- Do you think he's ever cooked a meal for any of his wives?
- Baked cookies with his kids?
- Made deviled eggs for a picnic?
- Has he ever driven an hour to help a friend with car trouble?
- Helped a neighbor move some heavy furniture?
- He has 5 kids - has he ever changed a diaper? Swaddled? Sat up with whooping cough?
- Dozed off on the couch with one of his kids asleep on his chest?
- Has he ever fed the dog? Does he have a dog? Any pets at all?
- Has he ever tended a flower garden or even watered a house plant?
- Has he worked up a household chores schedule with roommates?
- Has he ever built or fixed anything with his own hands?
- Worried about making rent?
- Stood vigil at the bedside of a dying relative?
- Sat around a campfire and told ghost stories or sang songs?
- Hiked up to tree line?
- Cleaned up after a party?
- Been moved to tears by music or other great art?
- Lost sleep worrying about a friend?
- Been in love?
- Has he lain on his back and gazed at the sky?
Is there even the slightest hint of tenderness, or honor, or human decency anywhere in him?
Don't Make Me Look
I ask myself what it is I want done about "the homeless problem"?
- How do we house everybody?
- Can we house everybody?
- How do we identify the causes &/or the remedies?
- and and and
When I hear somebody either fretting about "those poor people", or spouting off about "lazy bums", I don't know if they want to do something positive about it, or if they just don't want to see it - like they want to sweep up "the undesirables" and dispose of them.
These problems of homelessness - and migration - and the cycle of poverty, ignorance, and crime are just going to get worse.
In fact, these problems are starting to accelerate as Climate Change picks up the pace.
And as the problems driven by migration due to Climate Change increase, so will the political desire for a "strong hand to keep it all in line."
Weirdly, as efforts to solve problems become more dependent on collective action, we get more resistance from the "rugged individualist" crowd, while at the same time, they push for a strong leader to bring us all together to make the bad things go away - or something like that. It's all very contradictory, and the harder I try to make sense of it, the more it hurts my brain.
Crisis is the surest way to get people to give up their individuality and knuckle under to top-down authoritarian rule.
Seems pretty clear that's why we hear Republicans telling us about
- Crisis at the border
- Crisis of crime
- Crisis of illegal immigrants
- Crisis of National Debt
- Crisis of inflation
- Caravans
- Fentanyl
- Cartels
- MS13
- Dangerous vaccines
- Antifa
- 5G mind control
- Weather weapons
- (go to #1 above)
We hear about nothing but one crisis for a few days, and then it's on to next, and then on to the next, and on and on and on, until the rubes are ready to start it over.
Enough of this crap already. I'm sick to fuckin' death of this attempt at Government By WWE Promo - we tried that - it's bullshit.
Given me calm, competent, believable leadership, along with an opposition party that can offer something other than cruelty, immiseration and death.
Paraphrasing Bill Clinton:
These are our problems.
Can you help us solve them?
These are our opportunities.
Can you help us seize them?
These are our fears.
Can you help us ease them?
These are our dreams.
Can you help us achieve them?
Today's Belle
The claim that no one was killed (or even shot at) for an 18-month stretch under Trump is not true.
And it doesn't matter whether it was an oversight or a straight up lie. People were killed, and Trump ignored it.
To pump himself up, he erased people. He denied they even existed.
Aug 26, 2024
The Trump Scam
Republican Donors, Do You Know Where Your Money Goes?
We long ago blew past any meaningful controls on political giving in American elections. Now we should focus on the rules governing political spending, which are in equally terrible shape. For that we can blame the Trump campaign and the federal government’s feeble enforcement efforts.
Anyone who has spent time reviewing Donald Trump’s campaign spending reports would quickly conclude they’re a governance nightmare. There is so little disclosure about what happened to the billions raised in 2020 and 2024 that donors (and maybe even the former president himself) can’t possibly know how it was spent.
Federal Election Commission campaign disclosure reports from 2020 show that much of the money donated to the Trump campaign went into a legal and financial black hole reportedly controlled by Trump family members and close associates. This year’s campaign disclosures are shaping up to be the same. Donors big and small give their hard-earned dollars to candidates with the expectation they will be spent on direct efforts to win votes. They deserve better.
During the 2020 election, almost $516 million of the over $780 million spent by the Trump campaign was directed to American Made Media Consultants, a Delaware-based private company created in 2018 that masked the identities of who ultimately received donor dollars, according to a complaint filed with the F.E.C. by the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center. How A.M.M.C. spent the money was a mystery even to Mr. Trump’s campaign team, according to news reports shortly after the election.
All but 18 of the 150 largest expenditures on a Trump campaign’s 2020 F.E.C. report went to A.M.M.C. None of the expenses were itemized or otherwise explained aside from anodyne descriptions including “placed media,” “SMS advertising” and “online advertising.” F.E.C. rules require candidates to fully and accurately disclose the final recipients of their campaign disbursements, which is usually understood to include when payments are made through a vendor such as A.M.M.C. This disclosure is intended to assure donors their contributions are used for campaign expenses. Currently, neither voters nor law enforcement can know whether any laws were broken.
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A.M.M.C.’s first president was reported to be Lara Trump, the wife of Mr. Trump’s son Eric. The New York Times reported that A.M.M.C. had a treasurer who was also the chief financial officer of Mr. Trump’s 2020 presidential campaign. Mr. Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner signed off on the plan to set up A.M.M.C., and one of Eric Trump’s deputies from the Trump Organization was involved in running it.
Ms. Trump is now a co-chair of the Republican National Committee, which, soon after her arrival, announced it would link up with the Trump campaign for joint fund-raising. The joint entity prioritizes a PAC that pays Mr. Trump’s legal fees over the R.N.C., The Associated Press has reported, making assurances from Mr. Trump’s campaign co-manager that R.N.C. funds wouldn’t be used to pay Mr. Trump’s legal bills seem more hollow.
This election, the Trump campaign and four of its PACs have paid Red Curve Solutions, another private company, at least $18 million. The Campaign Legal Center says Red Curve appears to pay Mr. Trump’s legal bills and then gets reimbursed by the PACs. (The law is murky on what types of legal bills can be paid by campaigns, but some are allowed.) The head of Red Curve also serves as the treasurer for the Trump campaign as well as the affiliated PACs.
What percentage of donor contributions go to lawyers defending Mr. Trump? It’s impossible to know.
In June, NBC revealed the existence of a new mystery company, called Launchpad Strategies. Launchpad took in almost $15 million in Trump political cash via the Trump Save America Joint Fundraising Committee and the Trump National Committee. Little is known about this new group. It was created in 2023 and the Trump campaign says it is related to fund-raising. We don’t know who owns it, who runs it or where the $15 million went.
It seems likely Mr. Trump is keeping close tabs on donations flowing through campaign vehicles controlled by family members and loyalists. But from early March through July of this year, the Biden and now Harris campaign outspent the Trump campaign three to one on advertising. By late May, the Democratic campaign had opened 200 field offices and hired 1,000 staff members in key states. The Trump campaign didn’t open its first office in the crucial battleground of Pennsylvania until June. The Biden campaign had 24 there in April.
Mr. Biden’s campaign also spent donor cash on legal bills, though apparently in far smaller quantities. It paid over $1 million for attorneys during a special counsel probe of the president’s handling of classified documents, The Associated Press reported in April.
Maybe the Trump campaign is saving up for a post-Labor Day blitz to the finish line. Or perhaps Brad Parscale, whose strategy firm took in $94 million from Trump-affiliated groups in the 2016 campaign, spent every cent of that to re-elect the president. We know he seems to have paid himself handsomely. He bought a $2.4 million Fort Lauderdale waterfront property, a BMW X6, a Range Rover and a Ferrari. When Mr. Trump learned of Mr. Parscale’s high-rolling lifestyle, he reportedly exclaimed, “That’s my money!” according to Michael Bender’s book on the Trump campaign. Concerns about Mr. Parscale reportedly drove Mr. Kushner to ensure A.M.M.C. was fully controlled by the Trump family and trusted lieutenants.
Donors should demand more information about how their money is spent. But that would most likely offend the Trump family and confidants running the campaign. And the whole point of donating to Mr. Trump is to get on his good side.
And — just hypothetically, of course — if Vice President Kamala Harris opens up her lead in the polls and the odds fall that Mr. Trump could win, who would be surprised if the unknown owners of the mystery companies paid themselves more while the campaign spigots are blasting cash and the future uncertain?
The Federal Election Commission should demand that all campaigns disclose recipients of more than $200 in campaign cash. At least that’s what the law says. Campaign Legal Center tried to get the F.E.C. to enforce disclosure rules on the Trump campaign. The commissioners voted 3 to 3 to dismiss the matter, and federal courts have declined to step in. The legal center has appealed the case to the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
The commission, long famous in Washington for its dysfunction, now seems incapable of its most basic enforcement role. The agency reportedly had only three open investigations in June despite the proliferation of hundreds of new campaigns and PACs. Congress should demand it better police the recipients of campaign contributions. And if the law is inadequate, Congress should make new ones.
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