Author: A.T.

Trump Is Explaining Exactly How Wild And Extreme His Second Term Would Be

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Red, White, and Royal Blue is yours free if you have Amazon Prime.  Fun.

Not free, especially if you like popcorn — and not exactly fun, but ten stars out of ten — is Oppenheimer, which you’ve probably already seen but that I just saw yesterday.  So worth the time.

As you may have read, CREW is suing in Colorado to keep Trump off the ballot:

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Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, also known as the Disqualification Clause, bars any person from holding federal or state office who took an “oath…to support the Constitution of the United States” and then has “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.”

On January 20, 2017, Donald Trump stood before the nation and took an oath to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” After losing the 2020 presidential election, Donald Trump violated that oath by recruiting, inciting and encouraging a violent mob that attacked the Capitol on January 6, 2021 in a futile attempt to remain in office.

“If the very fabric of our democracy is to hold, we must ensure that the Constitution is enforced and the same people who attacked our democratic system not be put in charge of it,” CREW President Noah Bookbinder said. . . .

. . . [L]ast year CREW represented residents of New Mexico who sued to remove county commissioner Couy Griffin from office, the only successful case to be brought under Section 3 since 1869. The judge in that case determined January 6th was an insurrection under the Constitution and that someone who helped to incite it–even if not personally violent–had engaged in insurrection and was disqualified from office.

“Spending 19 years as a state legislator and serving in leadership gave me the opportunity to work across the aisle and to always work to protect the freedoms our Constitution has given us as citizens,” said former [Republican] Colorado Senate Majority leader Norma Anderson. “I am proud to continue that work by bringing this lawsuit . . . ”

“In my decade of service in the House of Representatives, I certified multiple presidential elections and saw firsthand the importance of ethics, the rule of law and the peaceful transfer of power in our democracy,” said former Republican member of Congress Claudine Schneider. “This lawsuit is crucial to protecting and fortifying those fundamental democratic values, and I’m honored to be a part of it.”

While the stakes surrounding Donald Trump’s disqualification in Colorado are greater than in the Griffin case, the law and many underlying facts are the same. Based on its laws, the calendar, and our courageous set of plaintiffs and witnesses, Colorado is a good venue to bring this first case, but it will not be the last.

“As a longtime Republican who voted for him, I believe Donald Trump disqualified himself from running in 2024 by spreading lies, vilifying election workers, and fomenting an attack on the Capitol,” said conservative columnist for the Denver Post and Republican activist Krista Kafer. “Those who by force and by falsehood subvert democracy are unfit to participate in it. That’s why I am part of this lawsuit to prevent an insurrectionist from appearing on Colorado’s ballot.”

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I think CREW will win; and that when it gets to the Supreme Court, at least five Justices will vote to affirm.

Those who say the Court shouldn’t decide whether he can be president, the people should, may be forgetting that the people did, by a margin of 7 million; but that he refused to accept their verdict and, instead, conspired to overthrow it.  Why do they think he would accept it this time?

Those who say knocking Trump off the ballot will make it harder for Democrats next year are probably right — but we’ll just have to win anyway.  And I think we will.

Have a great weekend!

Yesterday’s The Daily about the 100,000+ immigrants who’ve flooded New York brought home what a human tragedy / political nightmare this all is and how skillfully the MAGA Republicans are exploiting it.

Even before MAGA — way back in 2013 — Republicans blocked bipartisan Comprehensive Immigration Reform.

It had passed the Senate 68-32.

A wide majority in the House was on board.

Obama was eager to sign.

(Here is a really good narrative about what it would have achieved; its widespread conservative support; and why the House Republicans blocked it.)

Had the Hastert rule not been invoked (named after later-imprisoned Republican House Speaker Dennis Hastert), the bill would have become law.

None of this is new.

Nearly two million Irish arrived in the 1840s to escape starvation (U.S. population at the time: 20 million.)

It led to formation of the Know Nothing Party (sound familiar?) — and to violence.

Quoting from the previously-recommended The Hard Hat Riot: Nixon, New York City, and the Dawn of the White Working-Class Revolution:

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In 1850s New York City, nine in ten laborers and seven in ten domestic servants were Irish-born. The majority of the city‘s poorhouse, as in Philadelphia and Boston, were Irish as well.…  In 1844 Philadelphia, a Protestant mob killed fourteen. In 1855 Louisville, an anti-Catholic riot murdered at least twenty. Still they came.  By 1860, New York City’s, Irish population exceeded Dublin‘s. At least one in four New Yorkers and Bostonians was Irish born.

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There are those who would say that — bad as we would surely have felt for the starving Irish — we should have let them starve.

We can’t solve all the world’s problems.

If we allowed open borders (which we clearly do not, and which no elected Democrat advocates), we would be overwhelmed.

What made it worse in the 1840s is that the U.S. was mired in a depression that lasted halfway through the decade.

And yet they came, were allowed to stay, and the U.S. is arguably the better for it.

House speaker Kevin McCarthy and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, both with Irish roots, likely think so.  (And don’t forget: there’s no one as Irish as Barack Obama!)

It’s in our interest to do more to address the conditions in countries from which people flee, so fewer do.

And it’s in our interest to agree on a sensible system of legal immigration — and enforce it.

Fareed Zakaria asserts this can be done:

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Immigration can be fixed.  So why aren’t we doing it?

In May, it seemed obvious that the United States was going to face an unmanageable border crisis. . . .

. . . In fact, as it turned out, there was no crisis.

The number of encounters with migrants at the southern border actually dropped by a third [after the COVID rule expired] . . .

It seems that the Biden administration’s plan worked. It put in place a series of measures designed to deal with the impending problem, chiefly a stiff penalty for crossing the border illegally (deportation plus a five-year ban on any reentry), coupled with expanding ways to apply for legal asylum in the migrant’s home country. It was a welcome case of well-designed policy making a difference.

But this success does not change the fact that the U.S. immigration system is broken. . . .

The migration crisis is being exacerbated by politics on both sides.

The MAGA right, of course, demonizes migrants and asylum seekers and prefers no solution because a crisis helps it politically.

But the far left routinely attacks any sensible measures aimed at curbing the influx as cruel, inhumane and illegal. . . .

The laws and rules around asylum must be fixed so that immigration authorities can focus on the small number of genuine asylum seekers while compelling the rest to seek other legal means of entry. At the same time, it’s important to note that the United States is facing a drastic shortfall of labor and must expand legal immigration in many areas for just that reason. We urgently need to attract the world’s best technically skilled people so that they can push forward the information and biotech revolutions that are transforming the economy and life itself. With unemployment rates around 50-year lows, it is obvious that we need more workers in many sectors of the economy, from agriculture to hospitality. If this is done in a legal and orderly manner, Americans will welcome the new workers.

Biden has tried to work with Republicans on several issues, and he has even had a few successes. He should propose an immigration bill that is genuinely bipartisan and forces compromises from both sides. It would be one more strong dose of evidence that policy can triumph over populism.

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Amen.

WHO’S THE TOUGH GUY?  WHO’S THE PUPPET?

Conservative columnist Max Boot:  “If you want to know the differences on national security between Democrats and MAGA Republicans, it all boils down to one word: Helsinki.”

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Trump came to Helsinki to kowtow to Putin. Biden came to stand up to him.

. . . “I’ve been doing this a long time. I don’t think NATO’s ever been stronger,” Biden said during a meeting with Finnish President Sauli Niinisto. He’s right, and he deserves a world of credit for that achievement. Biden has shown more skill at marshaling an international coalition than any U.S. president since George H.W. Bush during the 1991 Gulf War. . . .

. . . The very real possibility that Trump could win back the presidency in 2024 fills U.S. allies with dread — and offers hope to U.S. enemies. John Bolton, who was Trump’s national security adviser, has said Trump came close to pulling out of NATO in 2018 and would do so if elected to another term. . . . Indeed, the very prospect that Trump could return to office encourages Putin to prolong the conflict.

Dmitry Medvedev, former president of Russia and vice chairman of Putin’s security council, said in May that Trump “is a good guy but cowardly” and that “historically, it has always been easier to work with Republicans.” Medvedev acknowledged that, from the Kremlin’s perspective, “the main thing” is that Biden not win reelection.

So, if you believe in making America, rather than Russia, “great again,” it’s imperative for Biden to win in 2024 . . .

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‘Ghostbuster’ Bill Barr was the ‘Who Ya Gonna Call?’ guy for 3 treasonous GOP presidents

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. . . The depth and breadth of Bill Barr’s possible crimes against democracy are just now coming into clearer focus. We shouldn’t be surprised: like Ghostbusters, Bill Barr has been the “Who ya gonna call?” guy for Republican presidents committing treason for 30 years.

Most people know that when the Mueller investigation was completed — documenting ten prosecutable cases of Trump personally engaging in criminal obstruction of justice and witness tampering to prevent the Mueller Report investigators from getting to the bottom of his 2016 connections to Russia — Barr buried the report for weeks while lying to the American people about its content.

But what’s coming out now is far more sinister: the Trump campaign and Paul Manafort were working with Russian oligarchs Oleg Derapaska and Konstantin Kilimnik to prevent Secretary of State Hillary Clinton — who they believed was an anti-Putin hardliner — from becoming president. Their combined efforts succeeded and Barr, when he learned about it, appears to have helped cover it up. . . .

. . . The CIA then alerted spies around the world that their identities had probably been compromised, apparently by the president himself. . . .

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And so much more.

Worth reading in full!

BONUS

Here’s what he was like in high school.

Don’t Blow Your Horn At Old People — 90 seconds.

The videos tab — the ultimate self-indulgence, an old guy blowing his own horn — is now more or less complete, including the one with David Letterman before he got famous.  (Thanks to my unsung web mistress, Summer Sights, for the site upgrade and much else!)

And now let’s talk about that riot.

“Have a great Labor Day weekend and remember this holiday is brought to you by Democrats.”

So read the subject line of an email blast I got yesterday.

I’ve been reading The Hardhat Riot: Nixon, New York City, and the Dawn of the White Working-Class Revolution and, boy, is it relevant 53 years later.

Pro-union Democrats have done so much for the working man — overtime! worker safety! the minimum wage! unemployment insurance! weekends! Medicare! Social Security! — with Republicans fighting every bit of it.

Yet we’ve badly blown getting that message across, starting more than half a century ago, as this book vividly recounts.  (Read Chapter 9!)

Our policies have been mostly terrific for the white working class — and deservedly so.  But the “deservedly so” part has failed to take its rightful place in our rhetoric (and perhaps in our consciousnesses), so focused have we been on righting the injustices suffered by women, people of color, LGBT+ people, Native Americans, poor children, and others dealt a particularly bad hand.

White working guys, who did and do so much to build our roads and skyscrapers, the McMansions of the rich and the dorm rooms of privileged college kids — the farmers and truckers and dockhands and mailmen and grocers and tradesmen without whom white collar folks like me would be totally lost — these guys have been made to feel disrespected, looked down on, and unappreciated.

Rarely on purpose, but that’s how they feel, and we are guilty of allowing it to happen.  Again: not with our policies, which show MUCH greater respect for working white guys and their families than Republican policies do.  But with some of the things we say — and some of the things we too often forget to say.

Which the Right emphasizes at every opportunity.

That Trump “loves the poorly educated” is only half their formula.  The other half is their constant drumbeat that we are the party of “the elites.”

It’s Trump — who stiffs contractors and under-pays undocumented workers at Mar-A-Lago — it’s Princeton and Harvard Law graduates like Ted Cruz — who are true friends of the white working class.  Or so they have managed to persuade millions of good people.

We need to honor those workers Monday and throughout the year, letting them know — and perhaps reminding ourselves — how much we respect their skills and value their hard work, often much harder than our own.

Happy Labor Day!  Have a great weekend.

Texas quickly metes out a five-year prison term to a Black woman for (inadvertently) casting one illegal provisional ballot (that was not counted).

Trump obstructs justice, steals top-secret files, conspires to invalidate 81 million votes, fails to defend the Capitol from attack — incites that attack — and . . . nothing.

This could finally be changing.

Eastman’s likely disbarment has much bigger ramifications.

I think I’ve fixed the broken videos issue.  Young readers will not know who Johnny Carson was, let alone Merv Griffin, Tom Snyder, or Dinah Shore.  But it was fun.  (On Dinah, the guy plugging Wendy’s stock is Danny Thomas — Marlo’s dad, a Wendy’s board member and significant shareholder, which he perhaps should have disclosed; but the founder of St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital, so who can complain?)

[A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.]

You could read Michael Waldman’s The Second Amendment: A  Biography (“With wit and erudition, Michael Waldman tells the story of how the Amendment’s meaning was turned upside-down and inside-out.” — George W. Bush speechwriter David Frum).

Or Thom Hartmann’s Hidden History of Guns and the Second Amendment (“A brief but powerful analysis of a searing national crisis.” — Booklist) . . .

But if you’re a slow reader like me, you may appreciate the analysis your fellow subscriber, Jim Burt of Ft. Worth, Texas, just sent me.

(Jim had read the entire World Book Encyclopedia by the age of 8; became a 1966 Presidential Scholar out of high school; and then — yada yada yada — a successful attorney.)

I’d love to find a a day or two to read the Waldman and Hartmann books, but here’s the six-minute nutshell:

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Self-proclaimed “originalists” tend to use their alleged doctrine as a fig leaf for enacting their prejudices.  In addition to the subject of reproductive autonomy, that’s especially in evidence, it seems, with regard to the Second Amendment.  The Supreme Court actually has a set of rules for legal interpretation which enshrines a version of “originalism.”  While this interpretation manual actually departs from the traditional standard of legal interpretation concerning “originalism” – the traditional standard says that if a law appears to have meaning on its face you may not scrounge through legislative history or other “parol evidence” (outside evidence) to try to read the minds of the enactors – its item #3 says that “Every word within a statute is there for a purpose and should be given its due significance.”  With respect to the Second Amendment, this means that interpretations that don’t apply the language concerning “A well-regulated Militia” are facially invalid.  Take that, Clarence Thomas!  And if you really want to see what the Framers thought about that, we have James Madison’s notes:

Mr. MADISON. The primary object is to secure an effectual discipline of the Militia. This will no more be done if left to the States separately than the requisitions have been hitherto paid by them. The States neglect their Militia now, and the more they are consolidated into one nation, the less each will rely on its own interior provisions for its safety & the less prepare its Militia for that purpose; in like manner as the militia of a State would have been still more neglected than it has been if each County had been independently charged with the care of its Militia. The Discipline of the Militia is evidently a National concern, and ought to be provided for in the National Constitution. [Emphasis added.]

The national experience with militia in the recently concluded war for independence had been grossly unsatisfactory, with the state militias being ill-armed, ill-disciplined, and unable to stand in the line of battle.  Washington lost most of his battles (though he won the war), but most of those lost battles were lost because the militia was bloody useless.  In those days, a “well-regulated militia” needed to show up when called, carry a standard weapon which standard ammunition would fit, and be able to engage in volley fire with their fellow militiamen.  This means that they had to use and “keep” a weapon that conformed to an Army standard. And in most states every able-bodied male between 16 and 60 was considered to be in the militia, which meant in turn that when the Second Amendment refers to the “right to keep and bear arms” it confides that right to “the People”, not to “persons”.

That’s another key word in the 2nd Amendment that is defined by context in the Constitution but tends to mean something else today: “people”. Every time the word “people” appears in the Constitution, it is used as a collective noun meaning the population corporately, and in this specific context, the population incorporated as a “well-regulated militia”, which is to say under discipline and subject to such other regulations as the leadership of the militia and the political leadership above them might prescribe. “People” as used in the Constitution never means a plural noun synonymous with an unassorted number of individual persons. Where the latter is meant, the Constitution uses the word “persons” or “citizens” or “the accused”.  You might try as an exercise to find every reference to “people” in the Constitution.  It’s always used as a collective noun.

Yet another phrase that meant something specific in the 18th C. that it seems not to mean today is to “bear arms”. That was not synonymous in the 18th C. with “to pack heat”. Again, it meant bearing arms in a military context for a military purpose.

I’m okay with finding, per the 9th Amendment, an implied right to keep, and perhaps under some circumstances carry, a firearm for purposes of self defense. Self defense is a common law right of great antiquity, not specifically stated in the Constitution but certainly as implicit as a person’s right to bodily autonomy. It’s not an unlimited right, nor is it free from regulation, but it exists, has not been explicitly abrogated, and falls within the ambit of the 9th Amendment reserving unenumerated rights to . . . “the people”. The 2nd Amendment, though, simply was not intended to address in any way the individual right of self defense, or any other individual right.  Of course, if we’re going to start talking about “implied rights”, that’s a matter of substantive due process, like individual bodily autonomy and a right to privacy.  Hmmm.

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As I’ve written before, it’s not practical to confiscate the hundreds of millions of weapons Americans already own — almost all of them, responsibly.  No one is proposing that.

It is practical to sensibly regulate future sales of both guns and ammunition.

And to empower local communities to impose the same kind of safety measures that Wyatt Earp , et al,  imposed in the wild West.

What could be more red-blooded American than that?

Sing it with me!

HOUSKEEPING:

You may notice this page looks a little different, except for my picture, which never changes, now decades out of date.  Thanks to my trusty web mistress for conforming to the new WordPress requirements.

As I was playing with it, I noticed that the amateur videos from 1978-1987 don’t load.  We’ve grayed those links while I try to figure out some way to reinstate them without having to pay NBC, et al.

I also saw the much improved archives tab and, just for fun, went back to the very first post, back when I was paid to do them.  An Ode to ATMs.  (I found a typo and corrected it, lo these 27 years later.)

It was harmless enough so — not planning to read through all 6,815 of them, but maybe one or two more — I went on to #2, an Ode to ALMs.

“Automatic Loan Machines are the future,” I asserted, “just as Automatic Teller Machines were the future 20 years ago.”

Oops.

Then again, you get what you pay for on this site.  Thanks for your readership!

Here are 2-minute “introductory videos” from Floridians out to unseat Rick Scott:

→ Debbie Mucarsel-Powell

→ Phil Ehr

Click here to tell me which candidate you prefer — and which you think stands the better chance of winning.

Thom Hartmann may overdo it a bit on a couple of points (e.g., not sure you can blame lax anti-trust enforcement for the demise of mom-and-pop stores), but the line he draws from Nixon to Reagan to Bush to Trump — Is Trump to the GOP like a Parasitic Wasp to a Caterpillar? — strikes me as spot on.  Worth a read.

APE / AMC

So APE is now AMC, and AMC has reverse-split one for 10, closing Friday at $12.43 ($1.24 pre-split), down 68% in a week.  Those who were long APE and short AMC finally got their payday.  Those more cowardly — us! — who only bought APE, selling it last week for a double, did okay, too.

Have a great weekend!