MAGA has one move

MAGA always doubles down, no matter what. They double down so much that the compulsive gambler’s term is now part of everybody’s vocabulary in this great land. Doubling down is their signature move, since they never back down or reconsider any position, although they change public positions quite nimbly because they’re “transactional” like their fearsome leader.

When MAGA was in the White House and had the bully pulpit, which they took quite literally, their other signature move was to angrily accuse others of the same malice and self-dealing corrupt intent that they had, and then to double down on the attacks. The DOJ under Sessions and then, to an even greater extent, under Barr, was weaponized to protect F POTUS’s friends and intimidate his enemies. They did this quite publicly. Now, of course, they accuse the current Department of Justice of having been weaponized by radical leftists, like AG Merrick Garland.

As their mad leader was being forced from office by majoritarian tyranny, (another thing they hate in MAGA world), Mitch McConnell made sure to ram through a few last Federalist Society judges. One he got appointed after F POTUS lost reelection was the extremist who’d sit on the federal bench in F POTUS’s new district when he relocated to South Florida.

I suppose Aileen Cannon, a lawyer with no experience as a judge, was chosen specifically for her Federalist Society orthodoxy, brazenness and willingness to do whatever fucking F POTUS might need her to do in the future. So far, so good.

She doubled down yesterday on her completely unsupportable ruling in Donald J. Trump v United States, a hare-brained civil suit Trump brought to block prosecutors from investigating his criminal acts in relation to stolen government property, much of it classified and very valuable/dangerous. She also halted the FBI’s review of illegally retained classified and top secret documents found five weeks ago pursuant to a legal search warrant.

Canon doubled down yesterday, as if nothing was wrong with her first decision, although it was mocked and harshly criticized by lawyers of every political orientation. (“Did they not also mock our Lord and Savior?” she’s probably thinking — the Federalist Society cult is dominated by extreme right wing Catholics.)

Yes, she notes, the government argues that they classified the materials that F POTUS illegally took, but you can’t trust the government, and their extreme bias against F POTUS is well-known! So-called National Security means nothing compared to the reputation of one of the greatest of American brands.

She has surely consulted with experienced judges and lawyers in her cult. She knows that federal trial court judges are given great deference in the finding of fact. She also knows that the Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, where she sits, has a majority of judges also appointed by F POTUS. Clarence Thomas, naturally, oversees the 11th Circuit. So why not roll the goddamn dice, she figures, what better way to get to the top of the short list to join Amy Coney Barrett and her fellow frat members on the highest court of the most powerful country in the world?

And it’s not as if anything in her extreme opinion could lead to her impeachment from her lifetime post. It’s called a judicial opinion, asshole, so sue me! Oh, right, you can’t sue me for my opinion as a federal judge since we are presumed to act in good faith and you won’t be able to show corrupt intent or any kind of quid pro quo. Even if you could, we’d just double down. It’s not like you can prove that I deliberately aided the president in his transparent obstruction of justice attempt . Y’all have a blessed day!

Do Not Forget — sometimes the narrator is unreliable

If a deeply damaged person, a huckster or a psychopath, tells you a story, from their point of view and in a way that seems to make perfect sense, don’t forget Boof Kavanaugh’s mother’s sound advice for judges:  what comports with common sense, what sets off your sniff detector, what does the storyteller have to gain, and lose, by telling the story the way he told it?

If you steal boxes of classified documents, some of which are eventually seized in a legal search by the FBI, proving that you have been lying in your negotiations with DOJ and that your lawyers swore, incorrectly/falsely, months earlier, that everything had been returned, although they prevented agents at that time from checking.   Not a promising scenario in court — unless you change the story to one that makes more sense to your needs.  

Here’s one: the FBI is lying, because of personal and political animus, another smelly, baseless partisan witch hunt, these people are vicious monsters who illegally stole MY stuff and won’t give it back.  Protecting my good name means much more than a bunch of spies being killed, or nuclear secrets of the US or our allies being sold, and the irreparable harm to ME is the most terrible thing ever, nobody’s ever seen harm like that before.

Or, in the case of a person no longer speaking to you:  YOU stopped speaking to me when you deliberately ended our friendship for no reason, you vicious, relentless fuck.

Take the sniff test on each of these scenarios.  Blow your nose.  Smell something you like.  Forget about it, but, of course, do not forget that many times when we are told a dodgy story, the narrator is unreliable.

philosophical

Decades ago, in an ancient, narrow brick building on City College’s south campus, Wagner Hall, I think, an annex to the grand Mott Hall, if I recall correctly, (both most likely demolished and replaced by now) I took some philosophy courses.  In one of these classes the professor told us that to get into the philosopher’s club in ancient Athens a person was required to stand on a certain corner and, for one hour, not think of a polar bear (I never stopped to think how ancient Athenians would have known about polar bears).   The point was that this was a test to see if your mind was mature and disciplined enough to contemplate more important things and not be distracted by trivia, such as a random distraction it was useless to think about.  It was this kind of thing that drew me to philosophy, though, I have to say, of all the things I have read, philosophy was always the most poorly written.  Of course, philosophical treatises are full of uniquely complicated ideas badly translated, I never read Plato in the Greek or Kant in German.  It would have all been Greek to me anyway, as they say.

I’m thinking about this today because I’ve had some recent conversations during which, so long as I don’t ask the wrong question, often a very obvious one, everything is jolly and carefree.  I offer the example of a talk I had after the recent death of my old friend Les.   I’ll be writing and posting a little homage to Les soon.   Meantime, I learned of his death from some texts and emails the other night, sent and forwarded by an estranged friend, the widow of my dear friend Howie Katz, who died in 2010, shortly before my mother did.   It was Les, in fact, who called to give me the awful news about Howie.  In contrast to my mother’s long decline and struggle against death, Howie went out in a moment, painlessly, in his prime, like a candle flame winking out in a soft breeze.  While waiting at a red light at the bottom of a ramp a moment after exiting a freeway in East Bay.

I spoke to his wife fairly often in the weeks, months and years after Howie died.  It was my way of honoring my friendship with a beautiful soul, doing my best to help look after the person he loved the most, his wife Jackie.  She was in great pain and we would speak for hours at a time.  I live almost 3,000 miles from her (2,575), so these long phone calls were the closest I could come to visits.  Her pain focused on her isolation, how all of their good friends seemed to be avoiding her, as well as her ongoing, worsening troubles at work.  I listened with sympathy, condemning the friends she was angry at, agreeing that her longtime rival at work, Craig, was an evil bastard and that the rest of the hierarchy there who took his side, and kept promoting him, were spineless weasels.  Our talks kept to this format, after a quick back and forth about what was new in our lives I’d settle into listening to her detailed grievances and giving her support.

I was unable to be at Howie’s funeral, but I made sure to be at his unveiling (the ceremony in which the deceased’s gravestone is “unveiled”) a year later.  I helped Jackie shop for and prepare the food that would be served afterwards.  Exhausted after a short night’s sleep the night I arrived, I got up early, went on a shopping trip and helped out the best I could.  Preparing cucumbers and tomatoes for an Israeli salad (also known as a Lebanese salad, Palestinian salad, Turkish salad, etc. — just add minced garlic amd lemon juice) I sat in a chair in her kitchen.   She told me real chefs don’t sit, they stand, and then critiqued the size of the cubes I was cutting, way too big!  Howie found pleasure in serving and helping others, doing whatever they needed to feel comfortable.  I don’t have Howie’s grace, and probably muttered as I stood up, after protesting that I was not a real chef, and cut each of my cubes into four.  Aside from that, she was gracious about my help, I suppose.

Where Howie was gregarious, Jackie is mostly private.  Where Howie was outgoing, irreverent and sometimes hilarious, Jackie is not prone to reaching out to or entertaining others.  I’ve seen the kind of isolation in widowhood Jackie went through with other couples, including my parents.  After the death of the more socially adept partner, friends of the couple begin drifting away.   I did not want Howie’s wife to feel this distance from me.  I’d been their guest many times, loved Howie, had always had a good relationship with Jackie, who is very smart and used to have (at any rate, I remember it) a good sense of humor and a hearty laugh.

Over the years, it got harder and harder.  One thing that grated on Sekhnet (who also loved Howie and accepted Jackie for the sake of Howie) was Jackie’s ingratitude, or to put it more charitably, her difficulty expressing gratitude.   The hardest I ever worked was the week I spent before her daughter’s wedding, playing the guitar seven to ten hours a day to come up with arrangements, and making sure I was able to execute all the parts flawlessly every time, to be a one man band behind my friend who was playing the melodies on harmonica or sax.  The music came off great on the day of the wedding.  The bride, who’d asked us to play, which honored us greatly, hugged us and thanked us afterwards.   Jackie never said anything.  I understood finally that she is probably on the Asperger’s spectrum.  Eventually, after several more attempts to keep our relationship alive over the next few years, I succumbed to the numbness of unrequited friendship.

When all the texts and emails came in from her about Les being in his final hours the other night (she’d also waited til Rom was in a coma to inform me, by text, that he was in the hospital) I began responding to Jackie’s “this is not good” text when I hit dial instead and a moment later was speaking to her.   

We commiserated about our friend until, about five minutes in, Jackie began telling me of her recent struggles and sorrows, she’d had a stroke — which I hadn’t ever inquired about, or even seemed to know about — and then she told the detailed story of her father’s death, at 99, how badly he’d wanted to make it to 100 and how much harder it was for everybody that his death happened during Covid.  The pain to her sister, who’d been forced to attend the funeral over Zoom, was something she and her sister were having a very hard time with.   We spoke for about a half hour, or rather, she spoke and I responded sympathetically.  It was as if we’d talked the week before.

The polar bear popped into my head and I asked the obvious question:  We’re having a perfectly amiable chat, why is it that we haven’t talked in more than five years?

“You stopped talking to me,” she said.

I recounted the half dozen attempts I’d made to show her friendship in recent years.   Exerting myself to meet her whenever she was in NY, in spite of only finding out about each of her trips once she was days from leaving NY.   Making plans, two weeks in advance, to stay with her for a couple of days during my last visit to San Francisco, plans she cancelled as I was literally blocks from her house with my overnight bag.

“I don’t remember any of that, because of the stroke,” she said.

“So what gives you the idea that I stopped talking to you?” I asked.

“Because you stopped talking to me.  Marilyn told me that you stopped talking to me,” she said.

If I hadn’t asked the obvious question, I’d never have known, or even suspected, that it was me, once more, completely in the wrong.

Big Lie equals Big Grift

The most successful business venture Donald Trump has ever launched, with a 500% return on investment [1], that is, investing the initial money obtained in the grift and having it grow five fold, was monetizing the infuriating white lie that a powerful bipartisan cabal of pedophile cannibals and RINOs illegally deprived him of rightful reelection in 2020.

We now know that the DOJ is investigating this scam. 40 key players in the grift have recently been subpoenaed, a few have had phones seized. The DOJ is apparently not fooling around.

But what should not be overlooked is that F POTUS has proved that his genius is in mass marketing. He should be given kudos for that, along with his criminal indictment.

Greg Sargent writing in today’s Washington Post:

But the Times also reports this:
For months, associates of Mr. Trump have received subpoenas related to other aspects of the investigations into his efforts to cling to power. But in a new line of inquiry, some of the latest subpoenas focus on the activities of the Save America political action committee, the main political fund-raising conduit for Mr. Trump since he left office.
The Associated Press adds more, reporting that subpoenas have been issued to seek “information about the political action committee’s fundraising practices.”
This is of interest because the Save America PAC’s “fundraising practices” seem to represent the moment when the “big lie” monetized itself into the “big grift” in spectacular fashion.

https://wapo.st/3U9LG8k

[1] I base this profit margin on the uncontradicted statement by Eric Swalwell, at F POTUS’s second impeachment trial, that the Trump campaign spent $50 million dollars on advertising the lie that the election had been stolen. That 50 million investment resulted in an estimated 250 million fund. Not bad, Trumpie!

Lesson in American values — baseball edition

A lesson to boys and girls who love the NY Yankees and particularly their modest superstar Aaron Judge.  It’s a business, kids.  Don’t get too attached to your favorite player.  Even if he’s a humble, cool giant and almost always gets the big hit when the team needs it, robs somebody of a homerun or throws out a runner at the plate in a close game.  Even if he arrived in the Major Leagues after a career in the Yankees’ minor league system (“farm system”) and has always expressed his desire to play his whole career for the Bronx Bombers.

Judge, a superstar player at the peak of his powers, is going to be a “free agent” at the end of this season, his seventh with the NY York Yankees.  He is having a season for the ages, is the leading candidate for Most Valuable Player in the American League and has added a phenomenal base stealing percentage (16 out of 18) to his major league leading offensive skills (he leads everyone in home runs, RBIs, runs scored, slugging percentage, total bases, WAR, and is in the top ten in batting average).  He is also an excellent defensive player. 

His contract with the Yankees is up, meaning that as soon as the season ends he can test the “market” and get the money his skills command.   The contract he signed a few years ago underpaid him, in terms of today’s ridiculous major league baseball salaries for star players.   Judge is a superstar, and can expect to be offered, at age 30, after a ridiculously great year, the highest contract ever for a baseball player.  When the Yankees did not sign him during Spring Training (ESPN reports: Judge declined the Yankees’ seven-year, $213.5 million extension offer earlier this year and figures to land a more lucrative deal thanks to his potentially record-setting 2022 season) he put thoughts of his future record contract out of his head and put in one of the great baseball seasons of all-time, greatly upping his market value.   

When he asked for a million dollars more than his contract called for, during negotiations before the season, the Yankees made him submit to arbitration where they wound up splitting his claim with what they offered.  Seriously?   As a show of good faith?

It’s a business, kids.  A million bucks is a million bucks.

Rap mogul, billionaire JZ, decided a few years ago to represent baseball players, as a way to make more money.  He was the agent to the stars who told then Hall of Fame-bound Yankees superstar Robbie Cano that the Yankees were disrespecting him by offering him only about $200,000,000 to remain with the team.  Cano repeated this statement about disrespect in the media and signed with the highest bidder, for about $40,000,000 more, on his way to oblivion.   He spent the rest of his declining career probably regretting JZ’s advice, although Agent JZ no doubt grabbed several million more on the additional forty million he negotiated for Cano.  Money talks, yo.

The Yankees president declared recently that Judge is an “all-time Yankee” and that they will be “competitive” in the attempt to keep him on the team.   Don’t be taken in by that PR, kids, another team will offer Judge more money and, in all likelihood, Judge will take it, and kill the Yankees for years to come.   Don’t let this shit break your hearts, kids, it’s a game, but it’s a business.   The business of America, as we all know, is business.   No reason to get sentimental when it comes to the bottom line.  Suck up the heartbreak that your hero can be bought and sold.  It’s the country we live in, kid, it’s what American heroes do (see Robert DeNiro’s classy credit card commercial).

Judge could do a remarkable thing, like take a few million less to remain with his team, but expecting the remarkable is a ticket to disappointment.  Don’t set yourself up for it, kid.

Propaganda 101

You take a political disaster for your side — say your man has illegally taken classified documents, some very sensitive, after leaving the White House, and they caught him lying about it, they have the actual evidence.   Say he also has hundreds of millions of dollars in debt coming due.  Say he also has a lifelong history of being transactional, doing anything to profit himself at the expense of suckers.   Somebody ratted to the FBI on him that he hadn’t returned all the classified documents his lawyers swore he turned over a month after the subpoena for the remainder of the documents.  Suppose empty top secret document folders were seized in a legal search, along with a hundred other unreturned classified documents.  The FBI search and seizure confirmed the probable cause that he had retained the illegally taken material.

Here’s what you do.  1) put the shoe on the other foot — why did the FBI take personal, private stuff that was mixed in with the classified documents?   That’s his stuff — why did the FBI seize HIS STUFF?   Explain that, FBI! DOJ!

2) the claims his lawyers came up with in federal court have never been litigated before, so you see, there are many complex legal issues that a team of genius lawyers has raised for the first time that will take a long time to analyze, though Judge Cannon did a brilliant job, under great time pressure.  Legally complex, since never litigated, you see?

3) the judge is only trying to provide transparecy, which is what the nation wants

4) The FBI taint team may have been tainted, because this is a partisan DOJ, unlike Bill Barr’s scrupulous DOJ

I only made it through the first two minutes, but I’m sure there are many more excellent examples of counterfactual “opinion” propaganda spread with an absolute straight face and an authoritative tone.  

The biggest question is what documents does F POTUS still have at Ivana’s private cemetery at Bedminster, at his Tower on Fifth Avenue, and who has paid big bucks, very big bucks, for some of the most valuable top secret intelligence and military information in the world?

Or, as Fox might put it, what right does the FBI have to take his personal collection of Playboy magazines just because there might have been a couple of empty classified document folders in there?

The real issue, aside from the DOJ’s suspicious lack of transparency, is why is the DOJ resisting a fair Special Master and meanwhile giving him the stuff they stole from him back and why are all these radical Left lawyers prejudging a case so complicated only the Supreme Court is really fit to rule on it? That’s why we need Special Master John Durham.