Hours wrestling with relentless bots…

Computers and their ilk operate on a yes/no, black/white, on/off system. They tolerate no mistakes, you must input exactly what they require, fair enough, their entire operating system is binary, based on yes or no. Much like our modern corporate entities in that way.

In this black and white machine world I felt like I was arguing with Alito over the meaning of “Originalism”. Alito: it’s whatever fucking I say it is, heretic. Me: you previously said all your judicial decisions are based strictly on the original intent of the framers. Alito: fuck you, cuck.

I spent several frustrating hours setting up a required payment plan, jumping through one hoop after another on a third party website, revealing personal and financial information, in order to publish my second post on Substack. Two hours of full-throated Tourretic cursing I hope the neighbors weren’t around to hear. I finally complied with every request, in the form they required, with the help of the lightning fast, generally helpful Substack bot.

Anyway, here’s today’s post, recycled from a recent one here. Check it out

Happy Independence from tyrants day

We live in a nation that declared its independence from a tyrannical king (he ruled by Divine Right so it was impossible, by definition, that he could be a tyrant) by stating the “self-evident” truth that “all men are created equal.” So far so good.

Now, 248 years later, a small group of wealthy men who are more equal, more important, wiser, more deserving, infinitely more powerful, have loudly declared their own self-evident truth: power and wealth equals moral superiority and the right to impose that superiority on all inferiors.

Since the 1954 Supreme Court ruling that racist separation of people is inherently unconstitutional, these enraged, supremely entitled fuckers have been on the warpath against “activist” judges expanding constitutional rights. They have created their own powerful network of orthodox, doctrinaire, true believing activists united into a movement by a set of “conservative-libertarian” principles and the many well-funded influential “think tanks” that promote them. This network includes the Federalist Society, a judicial appointment machine, which has six of their fiercest proven culture warriors on the Supreme Court.

Not long ago it would have been unthinkable that “originalist” justices who can find no support in the original writings, debates and intent of the sacred Founding Fathers, no support in the Constitution or in judicial precedent, would create new binding law wholly out of their belief that their unappealable interpretation of the will of Jesus Christ and their mandate to protect vast wealth are, justly or unjustly, the last, final, unappealable verdict on all issues in democracy.

These proven activist “conservative-libertarian” members of a doctrinaire, political/moral ideologically-driven judicial fraternity have the last word in what is lawful and what is not. The scientists at the Environmental Protection Agency, a public protection outfit created by well-known Marxist Richard Nixon, do not get the final word on what is harmful to humans, the Federalist Society does. Women and girls have no constitutional right to bodily autonomy. The president, if he conspires to commit crimes with his official advisors in the room, may never be prosecuted if his VP, AG or Chief of Staff is one of his co-conspirators in the crime now protected, by six Federalist Society judges, as an official act — the Federalist Society will now decide if a given president is acting officially when he kills a political rival. Abortion is not healthcare, there is no environmental emergency, democracy is whatever we say it is, women and girls are not a protected class of citizens, go to hell libtard cucks, atheists and feminazis, we are overturning decades of totally unfair and sick radical Left activism!

July 4th is a day to take heart, my friends. The colonists’ rebellion against the will of the infinitely more powerful King of England, who rightfully owned the colonies, was launched with little hope for easy victory. The cause looked doomed early on and for most of the war of independence.

American authoritarians have been hard at work for seventy years to bring about this historical moment when they could turn back the clock to the days when insatiable white Robber Barons were great — no regulation of polluting industry, no labor laws, no bodily autonomy for females (even raped ten year-olds), no laws against the human right to be racist, even violently so, no fixing the environmental crisis we face, unlimited assault weapons for angry, even insane, white men, no voice of the masses of American voters in deciding matters of public urgency, no more “majoritarian tyranny”!!!

I say to my fellow Americans today, on the anniversary of the launching of our always delicate experiment in democracy and striving toward human equality: fuck those fucking putos. This is a moment for courage and true patriotism, all hands on deck.

In this perilous moment, faced with choosing problematic democracy or American Nazism, we must all fight to preserve the freedoms we have and recover the ones recently taken from us by six unelected members of a radical right judicial fraternity who were selected by their fellow fanatics (and five of six appointed by presidents who lost the popular vote) for their proven devotion to their anti-democratic cause. Fuck those fucking putos.

Stay strong and don’t lose your focus. Happy July 4th!

Who runs this country, really?

Top news, baby, as of 3 pm today. CNN, Clinton News Network, needs a clever new translation of its acronym reflecting its key role in MAGA. The New York Times has gone full Nazi, even if unintentionally. The polls don’t lie, even if they are often completely wrong. Biden OLD, OLD, OLD!

If you think highly influential corporate persons do not have easily bruised feelings too, in addition to a ruthless bottom line, you are sadly mistaken. USA! USA!!!

A frustrated citizen, shouting into the silent darkness

My fourth attempt to reach the Senate committee that oversees the operations of the US Post Office.

Federal Voter Suppression Scheme, under color of law, in full effect

fourth attempt to reach your committee

Partisan megadonor Louis DeJoy preps the federal agency he heads to suppress millions of targetable ballots against the candidate he’s made massive donations to.  There is a quorum of governors in place to replace him (two vacancies being Tubervilled?).  Not even their Election Mail Committee seems concerned about the inexplicably long nationwide delays in mail service ahead of what is expected to be an unaccountably close election. 

I would like to send you the letters I sent to the USPS Board of Governors with details about this terrifying reality that nobody, including the Senate committee that oversees the Post Office, seems at all concerned about.   HOW DO I DO THIS?

Is there any way to get a response to my query?   I have had only silence, and an automated reply, from my two senators, my congressman, your committee.

Is democracy worth fighting for, or is the radical right’s position that “majoritarian tyranny” has put this failing country in a fix only autocracy can save us from the more intelligent assessment of the challenging moment we face as a nation?

I decided, and I think wisely, not to add “what the fuck is wrong with you useless fucking fucks? Are you all already preparing to transition to full Nazi rule, you goddamned mercenary mother abusers?”

I also didn’t trouble them with the damning fact that within two months of DeJoy’s appointment in June 2020, he had already ordered 671 high volume mail processing machines dismantled.  He also ordered the removal of mail boxes across the country (guess which zip codes were affected). 

Trump refused, in August 2020, as the pandemic raged, to release funds ($3,000,000,000, approved by Congress) needed to get the Post Office up to full speed before the election and ensure the timely delivery of ballots cast by mail. Instead DeJoy’s post office sent letters to millions of voters informing them that their mail in ballots might not be available in time for them to vote by mail. The Post Office Inspector General apparently did not find that DeJoy, who predicted additional Post Office cutbacks and massive delivery delays before Election Day, had done anything unethical, or maybe not.

Here is the Postal IG’s report. The Inspector General concluded that there was no ethical conflict with the Trump megadonor and his wife, Dr. Aldona Wos (Trump’s nominee to be US Ambassador to Canada) owning between $30,100,000 and $75,000,000 in assets in Postal Service competitors like UPS and trucking company J.B. Hunt as DeJoy met all ethics requirements regarding disclosure, divestment and recusal from decisions in which he may have a conflict.

Of course Trump’s Postal IG found that. [1] Why wouldn’t he, or if you prefer, why would he? Recall Trump’s imbecilic retraction of his statement about Putin meddling in the 2016 election. The world’s most prolific liar said, with the straightest of faces, that he’d obviously meant exactly the opposite of what he said, as one does.

It turns out that the Trump “megadonor”, who is nowhere near a billionaire (net worth a puny $600,000,000) gave a piddling $2,500,000 to Trump and the RNC in the last election cycle or two. Here is the website for Louis Dejoy and Aldona Wos’s charitable foundation.

[1] From the IG’s report:

On July 21, 2020, and August 3, 2020, DeJoy provided written memoranda to the Board of Governors (the Board) and Ethics recusing himself from participating in matters involving the remaining 14 company holdings identified by Ethics. In the memoranda, DeJoy also instituted a screening process to avoid participating directly or indirectly in any matters involving those identified holdings. DeJoy took these preventative measures within the three-month period required by federal ethics regulations.

Trump megadonor Postmaster General has the ability to halt delivery of millions of mail-in ballots from selected zip codes

While most people I know are crushed by despair at the seeming inexorable grip Nazis have on our problematic, vulnerability riddled democracy, and fretting about Biden’s widely propagandized inability to continue as a highly effective president [see video below for a reality check], I am taking action. When Nazis are preparing to come for you, don’t stand there worrying aloud about how strong, brutal, contemptuous and undefeatable they are, find every way in your power to stop the weak-minded, true-believing, goose stepping fanatics.

As I wrote to several nonresponsive elected officials I voted for, and today several media outfits (and friends in various states and electoral districts to send to their senators and representatives):

I know I can’t be the only American voter aggravated that Trump megadonor Louis DeJoy is still in charge of mail delivery.  He has routinized long, random, inexplicable delays in mail delivery and has the ability to target individual zip codes to not deliver mail from, in a nation where 43% of votes in the last presidential election were cast by mail.  A small number of uncounted ballots in strategic districts equals Electoral College victory.  DeJoy has the ability to make sure tens of millions of likely anti-Trump votes are never received and never counted.

Attached is my hair on fire letter (re: ability of Trump megadonor Postmaster to indefinitely delay delivery of and void millions of mail in ballots) to the governors of the US Postal Service.  I send it to you in hopes that you can help get this outrageous situation public attention and scrutiny, and that democracy can then take the needed steps to combat this insidious voter suppression plan being carried out under color of law.

I’m alarmed that it’s not a major news story, not even being reported on:  

Partisan megadonor preps the  federal agency he heads to suppress millions of targetable ballots against the candidate he’s made massive donations to.  There is a quorum of governors in place to replace him (are the two vacancies being Tubervilled?).  Not even their Election Mail Committee seems concerned about the inexplicably long nationwide delays in mail service ahead of what is expected to be an unaccountably close election.

Blah, blah, blah. I feel as old as Biden looked as he shambled out onto that CNN “debate” stage the other night to face down our own American Hitler, with no moderator present. You object to the comparison to Hitler because there are no death camps? Give the Orange Turd a chance, he’s already got plans drawn up for massive concentration camps. Hitler didn’t open the death camps overnight. Took almost ten years in power. Give MAGA time! Auschwitz wasn’t built in a day, boys and girls. 

Here’s the inarticulate dotard Biden, pretending not to be senile. Take heart, and as Mary Trump wisely said the other day, if you’re in a panic and feeling desperate, don’t make public statements until you calm the fuck down:

Nazis 6 Democracy 3, again

When I say Nazi this is what I mean: a supremely ambitious person with a doctrinaire set of beliefs, the advancement of which, and their unappealable imposition on everyone else, is justified by any means necessary including violence and lawlessness. These obedient mymirdons derive their intoxicating power from an all-powerful leader whose will and actions in accordance with that will may not be questioned, except on pain of death.

After all, Führerwortes haben Gesetzeskraft (“the Führer’s word has the force of law.”)

NY Times posts one letter critical of their pro-Trump editorial

After noting that the Times editorial board’s “To Serve His Country, President Biden Should Leave the Race” is still on its homepage, you peruse the letters to the editor.    You have to read a few letters that agree with the NY Times position that the Democrats must create a process to make Biden step down before you get to this one, followed by several more agreeing Biden must step down (a sampling the Times no doubt considers a “preponderance of the evidence”).  The NY Times, at its best:

To the Editor:

So let me get this straight. A presidential candidate who is a convicted felon gives a debate performance that is often incoherent, consists primarily of obvious lies, and includes a refusal to unconditionally commit to accepting the results of the presidential election, and your editorial is filled with histrionic calls to remove the other guy who’s run the country ably and ethically for almost four years because he had an off night on the stage?

You really should have consulted with your theater critics, who can school you in the many ways the run of the show ultimately matters more than the blips in previews. Your failure to focus your outrage on Donald Trump’s truly bizarre and bewildering statements in favor of such an overwrought and shortsighted response to Mr. Biden lets the real danger to our democracy off the hook.

Judith Hamera
Pennington, N.J.

Nicely done, Judith.

And this nice, self-evident bit from one of our nation’s greatest winners, a billionaire:

Profile in trembling cowardice

I have many bones to pick with the New York Times.  It is often hard to tell, based on their moral suppleness in presenting propaganda and spin right next to plain, old-fashioned fact, how the Times editorial board differs from that of any Rupert Murdoch rag.   The Times ran dozens of articles, including, and especially, today, about questions over Biden’s age (81) and now, the predictable “we told you so” editorial.  

Here is their latest, about which, in spite of the Grey Lady’s vast influence and my vexation over its complicity in right-wing spin, I am also philosophical. The essential status quo embracing spinelessness of the journal of record just got demonstrated again. Here’s a sample:

As it stands, the president is engaged in a reckless gamble. There are Democratic leaders better equipped to present clear, compelling and energetic alternatives to a second Trump presidency. There is no reason for the party to risk the stability and security of the country by forcing voters to choose between Mr. Trump’s deficiencies and those of Mr. Biden. It’s too big a bet to simply hope Americans will overlook or discount Mr. Biden’s age and infirmity that they see with their own eyes.

Let’s parse a little bit of this bullshit.   

Reckless gamble?  More reckless to leave this helpless, doddering, ancient fossil on the ballot after his bad night in a TV debate format his handlers never should have signed on to (no fact checks, no moderator intervention, one minute to respond to Trump’s many lies) than to create a process to oust your candidate, make a last minute change, admitting your incumbent president/candidate is unqualified for reelection, in spite of his many accomplishments in the face of unified MAGA resistance? 

Democratic leaders better equipped (to acquit themselves better in a 90 minute televised campaign battle called a debate?) — which ones?   Does this ability qualify them to defeat Donald Trump and the reactionary billionaire backed MAGA movement?

No reason for the party to risk not changing their candidate in the weeks before their convention?   Just because there is no process for it and the very few times it was tried, this close to an election, the replacement candidate was trounced, just because it would show hysteria and cowardice, and confirm MAGA propaganda– while also guaranteeing Trump’s election, to do so now?

Another morsel:

Ending his candidacy would be against all of Mr. Biden’s personal and political instincts. He has picked himself up from tragedies and setbacks in the past and clearly believes he can do so again. Supporters of the president are already explaining away Thursday’s debate as one data point compared with three years of accomplishments. But the president’s performance cannot be written off as a bad night or blamed on a supposed cold, because it affirmed concerns that have been mounting for months or even years. Even when Mr. Biden tried to lay out his policy proposals, he stumbled. It cannot be outweighed by other public appearances because he has limited and carefully controlled his public appearances.

The president’s performance cannot be written off as a bad night?

It can’t be outweighed (not by his record, the respect of his fellow democratic leaders worldwide, the many good decisions he continues to make, his bearing on the world stage) by other public appearances because he has limited them in the past?

The Grey Lady finally spoke some plain, indisputable truth, buried toward the very end of a piece urging Democrats to create a process to force their candidate to voluntarily step down:

It is a tragedy that Republicans themselves are not engaged in deeper soul-searching after Thursday’s debate. Mr. Trump’s own performance ought to be regarded as disqualifying. He lied brazenly and repeatedly about his own actions, his record as president and his opponent. He described plans that would harm the American economy, undermine civil liberties and fray America’s relationships with other nations. He refused to promise that he would accept defeat, returning instead to the kind of rhetoric that incited the Jan. 6 attack on Congress.

Followed by:

Democrats who have deferred to Mr. Biden must now find the courage to speak plain truths to the party’s leader. . .The clearest path for Democrats to defeat a candidate defined by his lies is to deal truthfully with the American public: acknowledge that Mr. Biden can’t continue his race, and create a process to select someone more capable to stand in his place to defeat Mr. Trump in November.

The courage to cower, the clearest path, create a process, indeed… so simple when laid out with the authority of the NY Times editorial board. 

Conclusory, opinionated, cowardly, stupid, ill-reasoned, ahistorical, serving not democracy but Trumpism.  Aside from that, and making references to propaganda promoted in its own pages as proof (dozens of articles about Biden’s alleged decrepitude and semi-senility) this shameful editorial is a very fine piece.  Read it for yourself.

Grey Lady Editorial Board

Trauma produces empathy or sadism

When a person survives trauma, particularly early in life, at the hands of family, the people who are supposed to protect the child, there seem to be only two responses. Some people emerge hurt, damaged and empathizing with others who are hurt and damaged. These people can heal to a large extent, with sufficient help, determination and luck. Tragically, many people emerge from childhood trauma hurt and damaged and intent on never being hurt again, convinced that they can never be at fault for anything, recruiting admiring allies and preying on people they perceive as weaker than them. These people are trapped in a lifetime cycle of abuse they will pass on to the next generation and beyond.

You come out of trauma either more fully human or a kind of bullying monster. I have no idea what the deciding factor in this outcome is, beyond some loving adult in position to support the abuse victim and help them through their pain at crucial moments in the young person’s development.

Everybody knows the only thing that stops a bully is the equivalent of a hard punch in the face. It stops them in their tracks, every time. They will not fight somebody once they are afraid of being beaten to a pulp, looking bad, being exposed for their cowardice.

Nothing is more terrifying to a bully than the thought of “losing”. When this happens they whine, threaten, claim to be the victim, lie, make excuses, change their story wildly, completely stop making sense in any way we can understand, beyond being the predictable, desperate shuffle these creatures always do when they feel terrifyingly disoriented and threatened.

Application in Politics

Bullies who unite under a banner of religious faith, patriotism and “exceptionalism”, who have unlimited money to influence political outcomes, and a smart, unappealable way to obtain more and more power (say by arranging to have six of nine members of the country’s highest court members of its doctrinaire, activist conservative-libertarian-Christian judicial fraternity) are very hard to beat. You can’t step up to a political movement and punch it in the face. This is particularly true of a movement steeped in intoxicating mob violence and relishing any chance to unleash the deadly force of the state.

Fascists can only be defeated by the united courage of every citizen who opposes the rule of a few indomitable psychopaths, prone to any excess you can imagine. Very few original Nazi party members signed on gleefully imagining the day when millions of Jews would be killed, along with all political opponents, “degenerates” and other inferior “races”, in enormous, mechanized death centers. It was not their dream, though they all accepted it when it became reality because that’s what this type does. Murder of “enemies” is the predictable outcome when a party in power blindly follows the unquestionable will of a madman leader they have sworn an oath of loyalty to, on pain of death, which is always the case in fascism.

Joe Biden, who began the debate looking 130 years old, got rolled last night. His handlers agreed to a ridiculous format — two minutes to talk fast and one minute to rebut countless lies that were not fact-checked or questioned by CNN moderators, who then moved on to an unrelated topic/talking point. The format allowed for no nuance, virtually no back and forth on complex subjects — and no intervention by “moderators” no matter how outrageous the lie told was. I even heard one of the two corporate shills mention, right before Biden’s 60 second rebuttal, that seven states do seem to allow abortions even on the day of delivery, supporting one of Trump’s steamiest lies about Democrat [sic] infanticide.

It was a format that favored a compulsively lying con man over a thoughtful man who is also a lifelong stutterer. Biden looked so bad, so weak and doddering, rushing to answer a barrage of unchecked lies in 60 seconds and getting confused, that we had to shut the debate off a few minutes in. I understand that he found his footing later, and delivered some excellent points, and that virtually everything his confident, increasingly incoherent opponent said was a lie, but the first few minutes gave right wing media every clip and sound byte they could have dreamed of deep faking.

Before the debate it looked like a mute switch would squelch Trump’s pernicious tactic of talking over people, advantage Biden (wrong, the muted mic made Trump look restrained). The lack of an audience was seen as a major coup, as Trump feeds off his adoring crowds, advantage Biden, in theory. The format… uh… on a cable station that had moved to the right (falsely calling it the “center”) and allowed Trump a national “town hall” to spout his usual lies virtually unchallenged? What could go wrong? It was apparent three minutes in.

I thought Biden should have agreed to a drug test immediately prior to the debate. Biden clearly had not had so much as a cup of espresso before taking the stage. Trump, in contrast, spoke calmly and with unaccustomed focus and clarity (for him, anyway), even as virtually everything he said was a demonstrable lie. Every cognition and focus enhancing drug Trump’s surrogates baselessly accused “jacked up” Biden of taking — Provigil, Adderall, caffeine, cocaine, steroids, diet Mountain Dew, was undoubtedly injected into Trump’s ass (he wasn’t sniffing like a coke fiend this time) before he took the stage. I’d have loved to have seen Biden call Trump’s bluff on the drug test. How might the results of that test have changed today’s headlines calling for Biden to step down?

The sickening farce of the CNN debate will leave a stink for a while, and clips will be played continually during the campaign as Biden is portrayed as an ancient, weak, doddering, foolish, vain idiot incapable of accomplishing any of the many significant things his administration has objectively accomplished. The articles counting Trump’s lies, which probably number in the hundreds, will come out, and be met with yawns about Trump being Trump. We knew he was a snake when we took him in, as he likes reminding people.

This is the politics of our time, corporate mass media framing everything to its exacting profit-driven standards. Lying used to disqualify a candidate, as Biden himself was once booted for delivering lines as his own that were somebody else’s words. Lying is fine now in American politics, as long as it’s not under oath, and if it is ruled perjury, simply attack the law, the courts, the crooked judges, the rigged jury, the deep state, The Department of Injustice, the communists, the fascists, a Jewish billionaire, pedophile cannibals, criminally insane illegal immigrants, Muslims, Blacks, disloyal Jews who’d better shape up, intellectuals, elites, transsexuals, ten year-old rape victims, etc.

The work is still ahead of us and the job remains the same. Get the truth out to everybody who is still, somehow, “undecided”. Biden fell short on a night when he was determined to face down evil, a modern day Hitler if there ever was one. The only book the incurious very stable genius Trump ever cracked was the compendium of Hitler speeches he kept next to his bed.

Imagine the burden on Joe Biden, whose popularity based on his achievements should be very high, instead of at Trump level, standing alone against a dictatorial devil intent on unchecked power to punish his enemies, who was allowed to do his thing, with no interference from the “moderators”, determined to prove he was up to the task of wrestling Hitler to the ground and pinning him. How many of us would not appear a little shaky the first time a torrent of confident lies was spouted at us and we had sixty seconds to respond, without stuttering, without hesitating?

As always, Heather Cox Richardson has a brilliant analysis, today it is of the historic CNN debate.