P.M. Carpenter

The presidential-candidate publishing industry

Mark your calendar. On Feb. 28, Gov. Ron DeSantis' obligatory memoir of presidential worthiness, The Courage to Be Free in a Totalitarian State: Florida's Blueprint for America's Revival, shall be available for purchase. 

Fox News — "first" and proudly honored with a copy of the book from the reactionary vender Broadside — writes that "the publishers highlight that the autobiography will cover key moments in DeSantis’ life:

"Growing up in a working-class family, playing in the Little League World Series, working his way through Yale University and Harvard Law School, volunteering for the Navy after 9/11, serving in Iraq, curing cancer, authenticating the Bible, battling Mighty & Mickey Mouse wokesters, and helping little old Republican ladies across the street.'"  

The presidentially preening onslaught is well underway. Mike Pence is huckstering So Help Me God, Because That Prick of a Former President Sure Didn't. Nikki Haley is hawking If You Want Something Done: Leadership Lessons from Bold Women and South Carolinian Kneepads. And this January, Mike Pompeo shall be peddling Never Give an Inch: Fighting for the America I Love, and Other Bullshit. 

Democratic wannabes, on the other hand, are merely poised over their keyboards, waiting for word from Joe.

The first of the leading thugs takes a fall - "the" fall?

Shocking that such a gentle-looking soul would be found guilty of attempting to overthrow the United States government. Nevertheless, yesterday a federal jury convicted Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes, along with his lieutenant, Kelly Meggs, of seditious conspiracy in the 6 Jan. 2021 attack on the Capital Building, as legislators — most of them, anyway — were also attempting to certify the presidential election of Joe Biden.  

Three others were convicted of obstructing Congress as it convened to do its Constitutional duty. The Washington Post notes that "both offenses are punishable by up to 20 years in prison." The Post additionally notes that Rhodes' prosecution came after "an internal debate" at the Justice Department "over whether the magnitude and organization behind the Capitol attack merited bringing seldom used seditious conspiracy charges."

The potential handicap for Justice was that the defendants' intent to actually, materially overthrow the government had to be proved in court, as opposed to proving the lesser charge of conspiracy to obstruct a congressional proceeding. The former involved crawling into the defendants' minds and demonstrating their intentions beyond a reasonable doubt. Given that the conspirators labored for months and on the record to organize the assault, well, that helped.

Their defense was that they went to Washington only as peacekeepers. Here is the key passage in their defense argument, again from the Post: "[They brought] firearms only in case Trump met their demand to mobilize private militia to stop Biden from becoming president." It would seem, however, that the "peacekeepers" had a fairly high confidence level that the sitting president would do just that: that he would meet their demand to violently prevent an orderly transition of power, if need be. 

Where would they get such an idea? Were they inspired only by Trump's "Stop the Steal" speech on Jan. 6, in which he told the Oathkeepers and others that "if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore." He added that "all of us here today do not want to see our election victory stolen by emboldened radical-left Democrats, which is what they’re doing."

He went on. "We will never give up, we will never concede. It doesn’t happen. You don’t concede when there’s theft involved ... Our country has had enough. We will not take it anymore and that’s what this is all about … We will stop the steal ... You’ll never take back our country with weakness, you have to show strength and you have to be strong."

Which is to ask, Were the defendants acutely inspired? Was it merely Trump's heated words on that day — balanced, here and there, by softer, cooler phrasing — that convinced them of radical-left Democrats' intransigence; that anything short of violence would only cost them their country?

Of course not. They traveled to Washington as well-armed predators because Trump had for months — years, even — told them that radical-left evildoers would steal the 2020 election, just as they had tried to steal the 2016 election. The press has helpfully curated Trump's fighting words of Jan. 6, but I know of no source that has compiled the entirety of his spearheading, yearslong calls to action to keep him in power, notwithstanding the voters' will.

In brief, Stewart Rhodes & Friends may be excessively hormoned and spectacularly stupid, but they're also something of fall guys. The ringleader of the Jan. 6 attempt to overthrow the government of the United States remains free in Florida, organizing a presidential campaign, staging rallies, and poisoning jury pools.

Attorney General Merrick Garland praised the verdict against Rhodes et al. "Today the jury returned a verdict convicting all defendants of criminal conduct, including two Oath Keepers leaders for seditious conspiracy against the United States," he said. "The Justice Department is committed to holding accountable those criminally responsible for the assault on our democracy on January 6, 2021."

Garland's appointment of Special Counsel Jack Smith has not foreclosed accountability, but the appointment needlessly postponed it — thus weakened it. The attorney general's public reasoning for naming a special counsel — that that would alleviate suspicions of Justice's politicization — has only widened the window and expanded the vista for the right to politicize the investigation of Trump for seditious conspiracy.

The longer the wait for Trump's prosecution, the shorter the odds not only for his conviction.    

The Post adumbrates the Justice Department's thinking: "The verdict in Rhodes’s case likely will be taken as a bellwether for two remaining Jan. 6 seditious conspiracy trials set for December against five other Oath Keepers and leaders of the Proud Boys, including the longtime chairman Henry 'Enrique' Tarrio." No mention of prosecuting Jan. 6's actual leadership. That job has been subcontracted.

Sure, go ahead, lock 'em up, the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys and all the other unhinged, violent crackpots. Justice — both meanings — demands it. But the attorney general's actions (and non-actions) to date have made some of us rather doubtful about the supreme villain's ultimate(?) prosecution. Garland's heart doesn't seem to be in it.   

Putin's vicious Wagner Group is now using foreign prisoners - from Africa - to fight in Ukraine

Already widely reported is that President Putin, desperate for bodies to fight his illegal war in Ukraine, has permitted Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the notorious paramilitary Wagner Group, to recruit Russian prisoners, including rapists and murderers.   

The prisoner project began in July. Prigozhin visited prisons to recruit, but he went beyond that. So imperative were more men on Ukrainian battlefields, Putin's pal and oligarch pressured potential recruits from Russia's penal colonies to enter the killing fields in exchange for clemency and a salary between $1,500 and $3,000 monthly. One such Progozhin pep talk was captured on video.

The Daily Beast relates that Prigozhin, in Russia, "has reportedly recruited over 6,000 prisoners to fight in Ukraine." There is no known accounting on the number of deaths that have ensued.

DB now reports that the Wagner Group is recruiting in the Central African Republic, where a civil war has raged for years and where Prignozhin's mercenaries have supported President Faustin-Archange Touadéra in his fight against rebel forces, a fight that has involved, as you might imagine, many human rights abuses.

"They [members of the Wagner Group] have been walking into military and police cells and releasing rebels, including those held for attacking Bokolobo village [in southern CAR] in May and for raping women and girls,” said a military officer who works in CAR’s capital, Bangui. "Nobody can stop them because the government has given them so much power to act the way they want," said the officer.

Further notes DB:

"Many of CAR’s high-risk criminals, particularly rebels accused of harming, raping, and killing civilians are held in military and police cells rather than in understaffed and poorly secured conventional prisons. Although the detainees are under the custody of local forces, Wagner mercenaries—who’ve been active in CAR since the government turned to Russia for help in securing arms and paramilitaries in 2017—continue to exert influence over the Central African nation’s security agencies."

And now the raping, child-killing criminals are headed for Ukraine — courtesy the world's most prominent criminal, Vladimir Putin.  

Why would any rational American want Trump to go away?

It's nearly time for the media's tedious "The Year in Review" features, in which we're cruelly reminded of every event we just spent months trying to forget. The year has been distressing enough, especially for those of us who otherwise thrive on presidential politics. 

In that category, the most distressful development has been the sagging, pathetic, downright execrable re-debut of Donald Trump. At the year's beginning, sensible Democrats had high hopes that he would sweep his party's nomination, thus dooming Republicans' White House aspirations. But it's all falling apart.

If I were hired to design a Trump campaign with the primordial objective of sabotaging it, I could do no better than he has already done.

I would first advise that he spend the year talking ... and talking ... almost exclusively about the election he lost — a guaranteed yawner within two months. I would then suggest that he locate and endorse other real losers all around the country, just to upset the easily winnable midterms. I would stress the sublime importance of delivering the most lackluster presidential campaign announcement in the last hundred years.

And then I'd tell Trump that he simply must invite a couple of exuberant antisemites to dinner! This advice, one would think, would be the final solution for the perfect destruction of a presidential campaign, which the candidate would promptly recognize and thus sternly decline. 

Not so, however, for our man Trump — the very model of pluck, vision, and a political death wish. And with it, Democratic hopes of the undeniably worst imaginable, Republican presidential nominee.

A last touch? I'd counsel Trump's spokeswoman, Liz Harrington, to go on a national broadcast to insist that "Trump is not going to shy away from meeting with Kanye West" — a psychotic, black Adolf Eichmann — and to further insist that any criticism of his supping with white supremacist and Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes is "absolutely ridiculous." 

What can be salvaged from Trump's latest buffoonery? His party's response. The NY Times' Jonathan Weisman writes that "not all Republican leaders have spoken out," which is a curious way of observing that scarcely any Republican leaders have spoken out. Weisman cites Sens. Bill Cassidy and Susan Collins as having named Trump in their criticisms; The Washington Post's Karen Tumulty found two others — Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson and Mike Pence.

Perhaps there were others, but by and large Republican commentary on Trump's white-hooded dinner party somehow neglected to name the host, the Grand Wizard of all things racist — because, of course, Republican pols rely on their racist base to keep them in office. Hence mum's the word when it comes to the party's champion racist. Democrats should be thankful that the opposition persists in its enabling acts.  

Trump and his fellow white supremacists may believe there were "very fine people on both sides" in Charlottesville, Va., but one thing no one can say honestly about American politics is that both parties embrace them.  

One other uplifting aspect of the GOP's Trumpian self-sabotage will be the speakership of The Honorable Kevin McCarthy, as it were. Among his first official acts will be the reinstatement to House committees of the Also Honorable Marjorie Taylor Greene and Paul Gosar, both of whom came out of the antisemitic closet long ago. Indeed, they even hobnob with the likes of Mr. Fuentes. God bless Kevin McCarthy, who can always be counted on to do the really dumbest unthinkable thing. 

This morning I read an op-ed by Patti Davis, née Reagan, in which she offered an unspeakable recommendation. "What if there was a collective pledge among responsible news organizations to take Donald Trump off the front pages, to not talk about him every single day? He would huff and puff and try to blow the house down, but no one would be paying attention." 

Precisely. His absence is also precisely the best thing that could happen to the Republican Party, the worst party in American history. Every conscientious citizen should want Donald Trump as front-page news once every day and twice on Sunday. He's the GOP's swaggering time bomb, a poison pill, an odious blackguard of pez-dispensing voter disaffection. And I love the guy for it.  

Against all odds, I shall keep rooting for our man Trump. 

Putin is now using the charge of "high treason" as a personal weapon against dissidents

In an article titled "High Treason, Stalin-Style." the Center for European Policy Analysis writes: "If there were any doubt at all that the Putin regime is now fighting the most desperate war in its history, it has now been removed." 

The authors, Russian investigative journalists Irina Borogan and Andrei Soldatov (who are also senior fellows at CEPA), observe that "in Russia, high treason has never been a legal concept; it is an ideological and highly emotional notion tracing its roots to the Soviet times."  

And President Putin has now ushered in "a deep shift in the Kremlin’s view of the world," argue Borogan and Soldatov. "Loyalty to the state and loyalty to the regime are being merged," they write. This was made possible by a change in law, and then a change in Putin's behavior. 

In 2012, after the 2011-12 Moscow protests of questionable election results, which "rattled the Kremlin," Putin had the Russian parliament extend the definition of high treason to include "granting financial, technical, consulting or other help" to those supposedly threatening Russia's security, including its "constitutional system, sovereignty, territorial and state integrity." 

Note CEPA's authors: "From then on, anyone — a journalist, or expert, sharing information with foreign organizations, including other journalists, could be charged with treason. But even then, Putin stopped short of using treason charges against his political enemies – activists and politicians."

What changed Putin's approach to prosecutions for treason? The war in Ukraine, of course, which has been responsible for virtually all of Russia's monumental changes — for the worse. With new "high treason" prosecutions of domestic dissidents, write Borogan and Soldatov, "the Putin regime has taken a significant step in returning to the Soviet definition of loyalty as allegiance not to the state itself but to those who run it."

The authors highlight the case of Vladimir Kara-Murza, a long-time Putin critic and "anti-Kremlin lobbyist." The Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) has poisoned him twice, in 2015 and again in 2017, but the FSB botched the assassination attempts. Meanwhile, Kara-Murza persisted in attacking Putin and his regime — spreading "false information," said the state — for which he was jailed.

Last month, however, the state leveled the fresh charge of high treason against him. Because he had spoken against the war in Ukraine at public events in Finland, Portugal and the United States, and because two of these nations are NATO members, "Kara-Murza is deemed to have cooperated with NATO." The authors further note that "that came as a shock even for trained Russia watchers: Putin was upping the stakes once again against his political opponents."

Other high treason cases are being brought, including one against a 21-year-old student of architecture and civil engineering at Astrakhan State University. The FSB claimed he had attempted to pass secret information to foreign security agencies, which, write the authors, "at first sight looks ridiculous; students do not habitually have access to classified secret material in Russia." 

Conclude Borogan and Soldatov: "Russia is once again a state claiming to represent the people, but terrified of their anger." Perhaps the public bomb is ticking. 

Trump is toast. The numbers prove it.

Politico: "Donald Trump’s lackluster campaign announcement was one thing. His real problem is fast becoming the collective shrug Republicans have given him in the week-plus since." 

The shrug is as quantifiable as it is unqualified. Said Bob Vander Plaats, the profoundly influential evangelical preacher in Iowa, "The people talking about [Trump’s announcement] in my circles, it’s almost like it didn’t happen. That, to me, is what is telling, where people believe we probably need to move forward, not look in the rear view mirror."

Trump's hope was that by announcing early he would intimidate potential competitors. That hope was immediately met by a super PAC ad — running in Iowa — for Gov. Ron DeSantis.

Trump’s announcement was also met by a host of challengers appearing at the Republican Jewish Coalition conference, including Mike Pompeo, Chris Christie, Nikki Haley, Chris Sununu and DeSantis. 

"It’s shocking, in the sense that I think he felt that he could scare everybody out of the field and become the presumptive nominee, and it just didn’t work,” said Saul Anuzis, the former chair of Michigan's Republican Party. "The excitement’s just not there."

The sentiment is reinforced by the quantifiable. Although Trump is still referenced by the press as the party's frontrunner, the numbers are telling a different story.

Nationally, a 15 November Morning Consult poll did show that Trump was leading DeSantis by 14 points (47-33) among Republicans and Republican-leaning independents. Yet those figures also reveal tremendous erosion in Trump's support over the past year. 

On a state-by-state basis, the news is even worse for Trump. A recent poll by Club for Growth — once a powerful Trump ally, the organization has turned on him — found DeSantis leading Trump by double digits in Iowa (11 points) and New Hampshire (15 points). In Florida, DeSantis led by 26 points. Even a biased, privately commissioned poll would be unlikely to skew the numbers this far.

Trump's early-announcement strategy was fatally flawed from the start. Again, he had hoped to narrow the field by swinging his cajones early. And yet the larger the field the much better for Trump, which, it seems, he overlooked. The fracturing of the 2016 primary vote was what elevated him, and his only slim hope in 2024 is a repeat of the fracturing. By now, however, it most likely won't be enough.   

Take, for instance, this poll of likely primary voters in Texas. They were asked, "If the upcoming 2024 Republican Primary for president were held today, and the candidates were Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis, Tim Scott, Mike Pompeo, Nikki Haley and Mike Pence, for whom would you vote?" An astounding plurality of 43% said they would vote for DeSantis; for Trump, 32%. The significance of this poll is that even in a crowded — that is, fractured — field, DeSantis topped Trump. 

In fact the Florida governor is racking up so much early support  — which can be a negative; it invites loads of media scrutiny —  my guess is that the Haleys and Pompeos will remain in the race, but they'll be running only as vice-presidential carrots for the now-presumptive nominee, Ron DeSantis. 

My one question is: When will the press stop calling Trump the frontrunner? One or two polls showing him ahead of DeSantis nationally mean virtually nothing, for they also show him slipping badly. And polls in key primary states show him doing terribly. Trump lost this race before he announced.    

Is China on the brink of revolution?

First, a backstory.

A few years ago my wife and I befriended a Chinese couple who were residing in the United States for an academic year. The husband was here on a PhD fellowship. The four of us became quite close, even traveling the Midwest together. I wanted them to see rural America as well as the more commonly attended urban centers.

They were among the most charming people I have ever met, The wife made Chinese dumplings for us; at a poker game with some of my university friends, the quadrilingual husband, having won several hands, declared ironically with especial delight in English, "I'm winning money, and I am a communist!"

One day, while the four of us were on the road coming back from another state, I mentioned the Tiananmen Square incident and asked the husband what his thoughts were. The what incident? was his reply. I reviewed its brief history and the news it made worldwide. The husband not only denied all knowledge of Tianammen, he denied it ever occurred. I assured him it did, but he again nodded no and I left it at that, not wanting to embarrass him.

I did not believe — I do not believe — that he was lying. He honestly had never heard of Tiananmen Square; the news blackout in China had been that effective. Plus the husband — who aspired to a high-level position in the Chinese government, which is why I have elided names — had been raised on the Beijing party line, that the foreign press was prone to invent stories about China's sociopolitical problems. He was presupposed to agree.

Flash forward to the present. "Protests erupted in cities and on campuses across China this weekend as frustrated and outraged citizens took to the streets in a stunning wave of demonstrations against the government’s 'zero covid' policy and the leaders enforcing it." The Washington Post adds that "such demonstrations are extremely rare in China, where authorities move quickly to stamp out all forms of dissent. Authorities are especially wary of protests at universities, the site of pro-democracy demonstrations in 1989 that spread across the country and ended in a bloody crackdown and massacre around Beijing’s Tiananmen Square."

Even though the 1989 demonstrations themselves "spread across the country," news of the Tiananmen Square incident reached only a small portion of the Chinese population. Most citizens, such as our visiting friends, never heard or learned of the incident. Chinese news blackouts are that efficient. And if the blackout fails to impose quiet, the government's "bloody crackdown" will.

Which brings me to this. Yesterday I came across this tweet by Mr. Wittes, a Brookings senior fellow in governance studies whom I follow also because of his Lawfare site.

Regime change: China.

— Benjamin Wittes (@benjaminwittes) November 28, 2022

Wittes's tweet was the most economical among the many I had seen predicting a revolution. But his tweet especially stood out because its author is a scholar of government studies. And yet even he appears to believe that Xi Jinping's enhanced technological artistry in censorship and imminent brutal crackdown will fail to quell China's unrest.

My personal story is but anecdotal, I grant you that. But the experience made me appreciate what two utterly different worlds the Chinese people and we "others" live in. I don't know how many among China's population of 1.4 billion people are aware of today's protests in Shangai and the like, but I'd wager the number is minuscule, speaking relatively. And of those who are aware, an even tinier fraction is likely to brave a bloody crackdown, which, I imagine, President Xi is now planning and shall soon execute.

Would that it were not so. I join Wittes et al. in hope, however the hope is colored by realism — shades of Stalin's reflection on potential social unrest leading to revolution: "How many divisions does the pope have?"    

Someday, perhaps. Not today, though.            

The Japanese culture impresses the globe

The FIFA World Cup was a bit off about one of Japan's "greatest wins" — they lost to Costa Rica 1-0 — but the team's fans attending the game certainly won the hearts of the world afterward. They cleaned up their section of the stadium.

Tidying up after one of their greatest #FIFAWorldCup wins 👏

Huge respect to these Japanese fans 🙌 #Qatar2022 pic.twitter.com/RVwLwykPeq

— FIFA World Cup (@FIFAWorldCup) November 24, 2022

Said Eiji Hattori, from Tokyo: "It’s a sign of respect for a place. This place is not ours, so we should clean up if we use it. And even if it is not our garbage, it’s still dirty, so we should clean it up."

Added the team's coach, Hajime Moriyasu: "For Japanese people, this is just a normal thing to do. When you leave a place, you have to leave it cleaner than it was before."

Wow.

The new House Republican committee chairs: Government by investigation

The Times' headline reads: "Meet the House Republicans Who Will Wield Power in the New Congress." But that's not quite right, not if by power the TImes means governing power. They'll wield bludgeons, bats and blackjacks, yet their power to actually get things done will be nil. A Democratic Senate and White House, plus a small, Republican subset voting with House Democrats, will decimate the committee chairs' wishful ability to legislate the U.S. back to the Stone Age.

One wonders how much they'll even "bedevil President Biden on a litany of issues," as the Times writes. The chairs and their backbenching committee majorities hoping to make a look-at-me splash back home will be a nuisance to Biden, for sure. Outside of the Republicans' core base, however, Americans will likely yawn at their increasingly tedious poo-throwing in the monkey cage. 

Meanwhile the base will gradually become disillusioned with the committees' absolute power to do absolutely nothing, governing-wise. Manifold investigations will produce nada of substance and the Holy Grail of impeachments — that of Mr. Biden — will fall flat, thanks to the few purpled Republicans voting with the near 50-50 House Democrats.

Somewhere along the line, reigning committee chairs and the Republican caucus will have no choice but to keep the federal government operational, notwithstanding opposing demands from the nihilistic Neanderthals in the reddest of congressional districts. As always, there shall be Social Security checks to be mailed, Medicare bills to be paid, a defense department to be funded, and unignorable discretionary spending to be met.

After two or three months, we'll barely even notice the House is in the hands of the nation's finest crackpots, such as Ohio's Jim Jordan, Kentucky's James Comer and Washington's Cathy McMorris Rodgers, whose primary mission as the Energy and Commerce Committee's chairwoman will be the dismissible defamation of Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, (former) chief medical adviser to President Biden and fulltime bogeyman of the right. 

Accompanying Ms. Rodgers as an example of womanly degradation will be Rep. Kay Granger of Texas, who said in 2015 that Trump "definitely should not be" president — a rather loose conviction, turned out. She's slated to take the reins of the powerful Appropriations Committee — a bullseye for those in the GOP caucus who wish to burn it all down. But whatever her legislative headwinds, she'll still be in charge of gaveling all government spending, so we can expect an F-35 to soon be in every American garage. For the costly fighter jets are badly made in her district.  

As for Rep. Comer, he's been "eagerly awaiting his chance to lead" the Oversight Committee, notes the Times. And one can see why. For starters he'll be the chief combatant in the Hundred Years War against America's #2 foe, Hunter Biden. Better yet, reports the Times, at a recent news conference he and Mr. Jordan "detail[ed] their plans to take the inquiry’s focus beyond the younger Mr. Biden. 'This is an investigation of Joe Biden,'" said Comer. He'll be a busy boy, since he'll also be in charge of investigating "the administration's handling of the southern border, the origins of Covid-19, the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan and whether there was mismanagement of pandemic relief funds, among other things." (Italics, my editorial touch.)

Which brings us to that human extravaganza of investigative excitability, Mr. Jim Jordan, discreet wrestling coach, founding chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, and quite possibly a psychotic. As chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Jordan will sic the raw-meated Justice Department and FBI like an underfed chihuahua. To give you some idea of the substantive findings to come, the Times observes that "his staff recently released a 1,000-page report on the subject, but it was mostly a collection of letters the panel sent."

In cahoots with Comer, Jordan will also lead an investigation into Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. Said incoming Speaker Kevin McCarthy — seriously, I think — the twosome will "determine whether to begin an impeachment inquiry." The articles are likely already written.  

The one laudable chairmanship will be that of Mike McCaul, of the Foreign Affairs Committee. McCaul has been a dedicated supporter of military aid to Ukraine, and as such he'll shut down the panel's Trumpian isolationist cries of severed assistance. (McCarthy, who knows better privately, will be glad McCaul is there to offset his silly cancellation of a "blank check.") To balance his Republican credentials, McCaul will investigate the Afghanistan withdrawal, too. 

In general, the new committee chairs will make a lot of noise, but go nowhere in terms of changing government. There shall be plentiful saber-rattling and brinkmanship on the debt, to be sure, but not much more than that. In short, the Republican House will be a sideshow. The main attractions will be Trump and Gov. Ron DeSantis.  

America's gun laws are fascistically shutting down peaceful public events

The new gun laws in America do have one advantage. For example, in 2021, when an armed Proud Boy was chasing antifa members during a covid-lockdown protest in Olympia, Wash., he shot himself in the foot. Perhaps next time he'll fire about two meters higher.

Otherwise, our Pandora Box of a Supreme Court has opened up precisely what one would expect:

"This month, armed protesters appeared outside an elections center in Phoenix, hurling baseless accusations that the election for governor had been stolen from the Republican, Kari Lake. In October, Proud Boys with guns joined a rally in Nashville where conservative lawmakers spoke against transgender medical treatments for minors.

"In June, armed demonstrations around the United States amounted to nearly one a day. A group led by a former Republican state legislator protested a gay pride event in a public park in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. Men with guns interrupted a Juneteenth festival in Franklin, Tenn., handing out fliers claiming that white people were being replaced. Among the others were rallies in support of gun rights in Delaware and abortion rights in Georgia." (Bold mine.)

An analysis by The New York Times "of more than 700 armed demonstrations found that, at about 77 percent of them, people openly carrying guns represented right-wing views, such as opposition to L.G.B.T.Q. rights and abortion access, hostility to racial justice rallies and support for former President Donald J. Trump’s lie of winning the 2020 election."

States are finding that the adoption of newly "constitutional" gun restrictions is nearly impossible because of a 2020 Supreme Court decision. In New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, the Court, almost unbelievably, ruled that "Not only must a modern gun restriction have a historical analog, the time period matters. The relevant period ... is from about 1791 — when the Second Amendment was ratified — to about 1868 — when the 14th Amendment, which the Supreme Court has interpreted to apply the Bill of Rights to the states, was ratified." 

The passage is from The Trace, "The Real Significance of the Supreme Court's Gun Decision."  The website's article notes that "Even then, the analogs need to be well-established — the existence of a regulation in history can be ignored if the regulation wasn’t adopted by enough states." To pass a rational gun law, states must clear hurdles atop hurdles atop hurdles.   

On behalf of right-winging gun nuts, America's gun laws are doing their intended work. Said Kevin Thompson, executive director of the Museum of Science & History in Memphis, Tenn., which had to cancel an L.G.B.T.Q. event in September because of armed protesters, "It’s disappointing we’ve gotten to that state in our country. What I saw was a group of folks who did not want to engage in any sort of dialogue and just wanted to impose their belief."

There's a word for this: fascism. 

In one post, the Russian economy of corruption, inefficiency, recession, shortages. resistance, lost revenue, and a disastrous mobilization

The Russian president's smugness is at an end. After denying for months that Western sanctions were marring his economy and inhibiting his war effort, Vladimir Putin has established an economic coordination council as a "necessary" measure to enhance production, he conceded Thursday.

His principal challenge is that of gearing up for an anticipated — indeed, essential — spring offensive in Ukraine. He's "concerned he needs to interfere to make sure supplies will be available," said Sergei Guriev of France's Sciences Po, a research university, to The Washington Post. "He is concerned that sanctions have really hit the ability to produce goods."

Added Nikolai Petrov, a senior research fellow at the London think tank Chatham House, "The main problem ahead of the Kremlin is the question of when the army will be ready to begin new military action in Ukraine, and the preparation of arms and ammunition and so on will determine these plans." Should his newfound economic council falter, so shall his spring offensive.

Ukrainian, British and U.S. intelligence have speculated that were it not for missiles and drones supplied by Iran and North Korea, even Russia's current, war-crime assaults on Ukrainian civilians and their energy structures would have been hampered — its own arsenal has shrunk that low. In desperation, Putin is also using air defense missiles offensively to compensate for domestic shortages.

But from a larger economic perspective, Putin is trapped in even more trouble. "All objective indicators show there is a very strong drop in economic activity," said Vladimir Milov, a former Russian deputy energy minister now in exile. "The spiral is escalating, and there is no way out of this now."

After a relatively painless summer, "the situation has worsened considerably," reports the Post. Russia's finance ministry revealed last week that "a key economic indicator — tax revenue from the non-oil and gas sector — fell 20 percent [over a year] ... while the Russian state statistics agency Rosstat reported that retail sales fell 10 percent."

Putin's gas revenues have taken a self-imposed hit through his retaliatory restrictions on European supplies. Added to that economic harm will be Europe's price cap on Russian oil. Further squeezing Putin's economy are sanctions on technology imports, whose effects reverberate throughout Russian industry. Putin has also exacerbated labor shortages by conscripting more than 300,000 Russian men to die in Ukraine, while an equal number have fled the country to avoid that fate.

Warned Russia's central bank this month, GDP — as best it can be gauged in such a chaotic environment, it should be noted — will contract by more than 7 percent in the fourth quarter, after falling for two preceding quarters. The Russian economy has dropped into recession, said the bank's chairwoman, Elvira Nabiullina. What's more, the gloom is just beginning. "We really need to look at the situation very soberly and with our eyes open. Things may get worse," she said.

Affecting Russian industry as well is its tradition of pervasive corruption. As the Atlantic Council observed earlier this month, "Ever since the fall of the USSR, Western commentators have noted the debilitating impact of corruption at every level of the modern Russian state. In recent decades, some have branded the Putin regime a 'mafia state,' where the boundaries between the authorities and organized crime are blurred. Corruption has flourished under Putin amid a climate of stagnation inherited from the late Soviet era."

Russian businessmen are not pleased by Putin's creation of a coordination council. One confided to the Post that "many entrepreneurs" have been coerced into producing supplies for the Russian military at heavily discounted prices; understandably, they're afraid to raise objections. Even though a "quiet mobilization" has been in place for some time, said the businessman, the Russian press has complained about severe equipment shortages for new draftees.

In October, the Russian daily Kommersant reported "huge shortages in ammunition and uniform supplies for conscripts with manufacturers citing difficulties securing the necessary materials due to sanctions." Businessmen at large are saying that Putin’s catastrophic Ukrainian adventure has at last "exposed the huge inefficiencies and corruption in Russia’s military industrial complex." Said one banker, "There are huge questions over where all the trillions of rubles of the past decade have been spent."

Nevertheless, come spring this train wreck of an army is what Putin intends to deploy — mere cannon fodder, more cannon fodder. Realistically he has no options but one: the radioactive, whether a genuine nuclear weapon or a barrage of dirty bombs. Ukraine isn't about to yield, no matter how many innocent civilians he murders — and neither shall Putin retreat in disgrace.

Russia may be a chaotic amalgam of corruption, inefficiency, internal resistance and insolvency, but in its morbid disarray there still lies the nuclear. We must ask ourselves: Given the empirical horrors of Ukraine, is there yet any barbarity for which Vladimir Putin will not reach?    

The stench of Elon Musk is getting worse: Twitter is his Putinesque Ukraine

Having already staged one statistically meaningless "poll" to justify encore garbage from the likes of Marjorie Taylor Greene and Project Veritas, a disinformation machine of astoundingly deceptive tactics, Elon Musk was at it again this week, asking "Should Twitter offer a general amnesty to suspended accounts, provided that they have not broken the law or engaged in egregious spam?"

No one knew what "egregious spam" meant, but what the hell, allowances must be made for men who have no idea what they're doing. Neither was anyone surprised that more than 72% of respondents said yes, let's further stink up Twitter with the sparkling genius of yet more Kanye Wests. Thus, wrote Mr. Musk, "Amnesty begins next week."

To whom does this matter? Does it matter? Should it matter? "Should" is something of an ethical question, which for the moment we'll overlook. As for the easier question of to whom Twitter matters, here are some facts about its usage in the United States, which I assume are comparable worldwide. 

According to Pew Research, about one-in-five adults (23%) say they use the social-media platform, a bit more than I thought — and more Democrats (32%) than Republicans (17%), which did surprise me.  

But what the right lacks in numbers, it makes up for in volume. "The top 25% of users by tweet volume produce 97% of all tweets," reports Pew. Perhaps it's just the algorithmic vicissitudes of my feed, but right-wing tweets dominate by far. Which leads to this: "Around one-in-five adult Twitter users in the U.S. have experienced harassing or abusive behavior on the platform." (I've tried gentle "engagement" with the right. It doesn't work.)

Finally, "a third say they see a lot of inaccurate or misleading information there." The other two-thirds must be dozing. Twitter is frontloaded, backloaded and overloaded with inaccurate or misleading information. It's everywhere, it's inescapable, and it's one of the reasons I glance at it. I find value in seeing what fallacies and fantasies the right is pumping out. Know your enemy.

Would that Twitter's malodorousness stopped at stink, and not proceeded to stench. Which is to say, "inaccurate or misleading information" is the least of Twitter's putrefaction. The other day I was too flippant in writing, "free speech on the right, to the right, means a poke in the eye — yours. At the same time, it is harmless, and rather humorous" — for this morning, The Washington Post disabused me of Twitter's amusement value.

The paper quotes one Alejandra Caraballo, of Harvard Law's cyberlaw clinic: "What Musk is doing is existentially dangerous for various marginalized communities. It’s like opening the gates of hell in terms of the havoc it will cause. People who engaged in direct targeted harassment can come back and engage in doxing, targeted harassment, vicious bullying, calls for violence, celebration of violence. I can’t even begin to state how dangerous this will be."

Said Nora Benavidez, director of a civil rights advocacy group: "Musk, under the auspices of democracy, is legitimizing decisions that will have deeply dangerous consequences in the real world.... You have journalists, activists in authoritarian regimes in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia who are now at the mercy of even more vicious trolls with no ability to fight back. It’s literally life or death for people."

And wrote Hopewell Chin'ono, a journalist in Zimbabwe: "This would be a major disaster especially in Africa where State sponsored Ghost accounts were suspended for endangering human rights activists & journalists. You would have allowed vile people to put our lives in danger as journalists! You will have blood on your hands @elonmusk."

There is no amusement in these words. My unfortunate judgment lay in thinking U.S.-centrically; here, we've no theological regime calling for the harsher oppression of women; no organized gangs of homophobic cutthroats rambling the streets; no state-sponsored "ghost" accounts agitating for the murder of journalists. Unlike Ms. Benavidez, I neglected the "deeply dangerous consequences in the real world." 

As did Elon Musk. There's an upside to that guy, though: He is pissing away $44 billion. Where, for instance, shall his advertising revenue come from in the madman mecca of the world, America? As Media Matters' president, Angelo Carusone, notes, here at home Twitter will be treating us to the wit and wisdom of the American Nazi Party and "a whole bunch of 8chan, 4chan, conspiracy theorists who engage in harassment and abuse.” Racism and antisemitism will abound, "turning Twitter into a one-stop shop for operationalizing doxing and harassment, and an engine of radicalization."

Show of hands: How many believe AT&T will wish to adverstise that? Someone observed on Twitter the other day that at the rate Elon is going, the MyPillow dude will be his only sponsor. This, happily, is no exaggeration. Either Musk will flush tens of billions of dollars, or he'll revert to a moderation scheme. There is no middle path.

So there is a Plan B: time. I suspect he's already looking to unload Twitter along the lines of Vladimir's heavily discounted oil price.    

To my American readers, Happy Thanksgiving. I nearly forgot. As a bachelor living alone I'll be having my usual peanut butter and mayo sandwich, but with 10 fig newtons, a chocolate pudding cup and some mint chocolate chip ice cream — in other words, the traditional Pilgram fare. Or was it the Wampanoag?

***

Britain urges Ukraine to hit Russia hard - now!

Contrary to the incomprehensible advice of U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark Milley — that Ukraine use winter's potential slowdown in fighting as a "window" for negotiations with Russia — Britain's Secretary of State for Defence Ben Wallace is smartly encouraging President Zelensky's armed forces to strike - to "keep up the pressure, keep up the momentum," and thus capitalize on their recent counteroffensive successes.

Said Wallace in an interview with the Daily Beast:

"Given the advantage the Ukrainians have in equipment training and quality of their personnel against the demoralized, poorly trained, poorly equipped Russians, it would be in Ukraine’s interest to maintain momentum through the winter. They have 300,000 pieces of arctic warfare kit from the international community."

His advice is as commonsensically smart as it is welcome. Ukrainian troops virtually danced through Russian "defenses" in the northeast — the Kharkiv region — and more recently they captured Kherson, President Putin's prize of an occupied city which he briefly, officially fancied as a part of Russia. For Ukrainian forces to let up now against the "demoralized, poorly trained, poorly equipped Russians" would be a damnable instance of military malpractice.

Wallace commented further on the deplorable state of the Russian army in Ukraine:      

"A Russian unit was recently deployed with no food and no socks, and not many guns. That is catastrophic for a person going in the field... The Russians have scale, but are not very good. Well, most of the good ones are dead. They are a meat grinder—they shove them in the meat grinder—and use massive quantities of artillery. Only a nation that does not care for its own people could send 100,000 of its own people to be either dead, injured, or deserted."

This is the army to which General Milley wished to provide a "window"? And negotiate with its commander in chief, Vladimir Putin? What is there to negotiate? Either Russia voluntarily removes itself from all of Ukraine's territory, including Crimea and the Donbas' entirety, or Ukraine must force it back to its borders. If Ukraine and Europe desire a permanent peace, this is the only acceptable term.  

In part because negotiating with Putin is like making an unsigned deal with the devil. He would use any peace settlement as mere biding time; a "window" to rebuild his military as best he could — and back to Ukraine he would go. In his mind Russia is still a formidable military power; he'll never capitulate to "little" Ukraine in any lasting way. As well, any land-for-peace settlement would only reward Putin's aggression.  

Fortunately, Zelensky "has declared that he will not negotiate with Russia while Putin remains in power," as the Daily Beast reminds us. He has also declared that any settlement must meet the conditions outlined above. Zelensky realizes that as long as Putin is president, "settlement" = "military resolution."     

We must also thank Britain's Ben Wallace for acknowledging what, again, is incomprehensively missing in Gen. Milley's thinking. 

Mike Pence and the short arm of the law

Here's an above-the-fold update on the imperial presidency — and that of all the president's men — via executive privilege:  

"The Justice Department is seeking to question former Vice President Mike Pence as a witness in connection with its criminal investigation into former President Donald J. Trump’s efforts to stay in power after he lost the 2020 election....

"Mr. Pence ... is open to considering the request."

If you had been present at the creation of the greatest crime in American history, imagine the guffaws echoing from the marbled halls of the Department of Justice after you told its prosecutors that you might be "open" to meeting their request to appear as a witness.   

Ah, but you weren't vice president of the United States at the time, thus eligible to claim executive privilege — or for the former president to do it for you. Mike Pense was vice president, hence no guffaws. 

On the other hand, in the United States v. Nixon, the Supreme Court ruled that in cases of criminal conduct your executive privilege claim would be no more valid than that of an "average" citizen. So cough it up.  

Such has been the law for nearly a half-century. And yet an ex-president and those within his closest circle persist in claiming executive privilege even in this case of the most outrageously obvious criminal conduct. Constitutionally, said the Court, the privilege is nonexistent. Nonetheless, official deference is paid. Indeed executive privilege has become much like the Senate filibuster: One need only utter the words, and "the system" backs down.  

It should be a matter of public astonishment that Vice President Pence, who quarreled with Trump about the president's insistence that he violate the Constitution, has never been officially interviewed about the events surrounding Jan. 6. "Despite Mr. Pence being a witness to a range of Mr. Trump’s actions in office," writes The NY Times, "an interview of the former vice president would be the first time that he has been questioned in a federal investigation of Mr. Trump."

Neither was Pence ever questioned during the Mueller investigation, even though he was also at the creation of Trump's obstruction of justice efforts. Pence "was in the room for many of the key events examined by Mr. Mueller in the obstruction investigation, but Mr. Pence’s lawyer at the time managed to get him out of having to testify." The lawyer simply informed Mueller "that Mr. Pence believed Mr. Trump had not obstructed justice." And that was that, for "privilege" would ensue.

No one disputes the legitimacy of executive privilege per se. It has primordial roots in America's constitutional system of government. George Washington was the first to invoke it; the House wanted documents pertaining to the Jay Treaty with London, but Washington refused, saying treaties are within the purview of the Senate only — to which he did provide the documents. 

President Eisenhower is known for having established the modern and more expansive form of executive privilege, during the Army-McCarthy hearings. In a DOJ memo he forbade the "provision of any data about internal conversations, meetings, or written communication among staffers, with no exception to topics or people." Before concluding his White House tenure Eisenhower went on to invoke the claim nearly four dozen more times. The idea was that "candid" exchanges among White House personnel were no one's business but theirs.  

This, President Nixon tried to take to criminal heights, but the Supreme Court shut him down. That, it would seem to most any reasonable mind, should have been the end of it — "it" being the invocation of executive privilege in presidential cases of criminal conduct. But, the law being the law — reams of byzantine language designed to evade straightforwardness — Trump has managed to gum up the works through virtually endless assertions of privilege. And WH Trumpers have done the same.

Executive privilege has become a go-to defense for obstruction of justice. After years of litigation, the privilege is often denied, but at times it seems DOJ has become too wearied for yet another, almost infinite court battle.

So Mike Pence can imperiously state that he "is open to considering" a Department of Justice request that he act as an eye witness to the greatest crime ever committed in American history.

And that's the way it is — Walter Cronkite, CBS News