PMC Commentary

A Georgia state senator fears his election loss, not a "civil war"

Georgia state Senator Colton Moore, a Republican, of course, told Steve Bannon yesterday that he's working legislatively to defund Fulton County D.A. Fani Willis' prosecution of Trump. She is "not upholding her oath to the Constitution," said Moore. But only minimal hermeneutic powers are required to see that that is not what's worrying him. In the Bannon video — its Twitter/X iteration has been removed; see instead YouTube's capture, first 1 min., 13 secs — the senator says:     

"My goodness how many people in my district question that election. I mean now we've got 19 people who are facing the rest of their life in prison because they spoke out against an election? 

"I mean, you know, I told one senator, I said listen, I said we’ve got to put our heads together and figure this out. We need to be taking action right now. Because if we don’t, our constituencies are gonna be fighting it in the streets. Do you want a civil war? I don’t want a civil war. I don’t want to have to draw my rifle. I want to make this problem go away with my legislative means of doing so."

This violence-prone, narrative-twisting, skulduggery-scheming Georgia pol said it all when he spoke sympathetically of the "many people in [his] district" who are trapped in the Trumpian rabbit hole of election denial. The senator asks not if they could be disabused of their foolishness, nor does he suggest that he knows of denialism's foolishness. He posits instead that electoral imbecility must be the guiding force of legislative intent — that is, to defund Willis, to shut down a duly-appointed grand jury's indictments, to altogether dismiss the rule of law.

That, says the senator, will make "this problem go away"; the problem, he claims, of a "civil war" — not his political future if he fails to upend the law, his constituents' desire.

Yet if a civil war were his authentic worry, he'd be just as nerve-racked about constituents everywhere taking to the street, should diabolical politicians see that Trump et al. are never tried. Sen. Moore seems to believe that responsible citizens throughout the republic will accept the overthrow of America's system of justice as quietly and peacefully as they accepted the Supreme Court's overthrow of democracy in 2000. The senator is badly mistaken.

But let's face it. He doesn't care about civil war. He cares only about his local reelection by petty constituents on behalf of a vastly criminal president.          

Some Moscow natives are dangerously restless

The Institute for the Study of War reports on Russian military bloggers ("milbloggers") and the summer of their discontent.

"A Kremlin-affiliated Russian milblogger claimed that the Ukrainian strike on the Peskov airfield indicates that Russian air defenses have not adapted to defend against repeated Ukrainian drone strikes.... The milblogger also criticized Russian authorities for not keeping expensive military aircraft in hangars."

The complaints continued. "Another prominent Russian milblogger expressed concern that there will be no safe places in western Russia due to Ukraine’s growing technical capabilities and suggested that Russian forces need to take this into account when securing military and strategic facilities."

The more interesting, and potentially lethal, disgruntlement: "Russian sources also challenged the Russian [defense ministry's] recent censorship efforts by noting the need for truth and honesty in reporting about Ukrainian strikes on Russian territory, including one Russian milblogger who criticized official Russian television channels for not reporting the Ukrainian strikes."

But far more Russians watch the Fox Newslike Vladimir Solovyov — the television anchor of "Evening with Vladimir Solovyov" and host of the "Moscow. Kremlin. Putin" show — who has "expressed his outrage in response to the drone strike and criticized Russian elites who are calling on the Kremlin to freeze the war in Ukraine and negotiate to save Russia’s economy." 

Unless the Western press is suppressing news of these unhappy Russian "elites," Mr. Solovyov is taking the Putinesque-Trumpian tack of simply making shit up. I've read of no influential Russians — in-country — pressuring the Kremlin to freeze the war and save the economy, both of which Putin says are doing just fine. For others to say otherwise night be courageous, but also inconveniently suicidal.

Climate deniers and the games they play

Yesterday The NY Times ran a headline on the "falsehoods, misattributed videos, recycled lies and warped fears" of climate change deniers. Scattered throughout the article were specifics of the four afflictions. But rather than combing through the piece for evidence of each, I thought it would be more impressive to read them all in one fantastically perverse collection. Like this:    

Some claimed falsely that the record-smashing heat waves blistering parts of North America, Europe and Asia were normal, and that they had been sensationalized as part of a globalist hoax. Others made up tales that cloud-seeding airplanes or a nearby dam, rather than torrential rains, had caused the unusually intense flooding in northern Italy (and in places like Vermont and Rwanda).... Social media that racked up millions of views blamed the [Maui] blaze on a "directed enemy weapon" (the evidence: years-old footage not recorded in Hawaii).... Fears that predatory developers would swoop in after the fire quickly warped into unsupported claims that wealthy real estate investors had caused the blaze. Video of Hawaii’s governor saying the state might acquire land in Lahaina to protect it for locals was manipulated and offered as misleading proof that his plan was to buy land to create a technologically advanced "smart city." One YouTube video shared unfounded claims that Oprah Winfrey had a hand in starting the inferno on the island, hoping to seize land from Indigenous residents. As proof, the video’s host noted that Ms. Winfrey had recently bought a sizable plot on Maui (she has lived part time on the island for 15 years) and that her holdings had escaped this month’s inferno (her home was miles away from the closest blaze). The host added another supposed red flag: In one interview about the fire, Ms. Winfrey failed to appear sufficiently sad. One TikTok user said that "some people caught pictures of the lasers coming down and starting the fire on Maui." As evidence, she shared two images: one from the SpaceX Instagram account showing the company’s Falcon 9 rocket launching from California in 2018, the other from a five-year-old photo posted to Facebook after a controlled flare from an oil refinery in Ohio. (Other images claiming to capture a "direct energy weapon" at work in Maui show transformer explosions in Chile and Louisiana.).... As Florida braced this week for Hurricane Idalia, some people claimed incorrectly online that such storms are not affected by fossil fuel emissions.... The Black Lives Matter movement and antifa protesters were scapegoats when wildfires erupted in California, Oregon and Washington in 2020. By the time Canada faced its own wildfires, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was being baselessly linked to eco-terrorist activity.... This year, researchers found ads from retailers, electronics manufacturers and airlines accompanying YouTube videos that falsely claimed that the rainforest was too humid to catch fire or that the world was cooling. (YouTube has said it removes ads from videos denying climate change.) A report this month from Pomona College found that, within six months of Elon Musk’s taking over Twitter, nearly half of users who had regularly discussed the environment were no longer active. Scientists and other climate change experts are being besieged by personal attacks, including claims that they are shills for a globalist cabal or other shadowy forces.... This summer, conspiracy theories about climate change followed familiar patterns. Deniers described it as a tyrannical control tactic— an effort to relocate rural residents to cities to be better monitored, to compel people to isolate indoors or to force a shift to renewable energy by sabotaging the fossil fuel industry.

Importantly, the article notes the parental genesis of this garbage. Some of it began with the oil and gas industry — "billions of dollars [spent] waging a coordinated and highly technical campaign to influence public opinion against climate science, and then climate action." But of late there's been a tactical change, or "evolution," say experts who study denialism. "Conspiracy theorists and extremists have operated in a more decentralized way, generating revenue through deceptive clickbait about global warming."

Contributing to the public's confusion are conservative pundits — see, for example, George Will — and idiot politicians such as Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, who during last week's GOP debate called climate change a "hoax." Others are too numerous to cite. Says Jennie King, a climate researcher at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue: "Those two universes of actors" — conspiracy theorists and demagogues — "have collided with each other in the online space.... You have the informal and the formal, the traditional and the very digital now occupying the same ecosystem and ramping it up to new extremes."

Of special interest is that only 15% of Americans disbelieve in a warming Earth, according to polling conducted by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication and the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication. The problem is that 28% believe the warming is merely a natural occurrence — again, a belief derived from conservative politicians and professional propagandists such as George Will. Put another way, nearly one of every three people you pass on the street is convinced that extreme, devastating climate changes that once took tens of thousands of years to execute are now occurring within one hundred years.

Roughly one in three. Of no coincidence whatsoever is that the same ratio applies to Trumpian versus informed, rational minds.      

This is bad; the Senate minority leader as Dianne Feinstein

BREAKING NEWS: Sen. Mitch McConnell appearing to have another scary episode in the media gaggle in Covington today. Aides had to step in to help him out and repeat questions. He was eventually lead away. We'll have the full video on @WLWT pic.twitter.com/q9ex5MHxLV

— Hannah Thomas (@HannahPThomas) August 30, 2023

"Leader McConnell felt momentarily lightheaded and paused during his press conference today," said a spokesman. His head was more than "light." It was a vacuum, as everyone could see. And he didn't "pause." He froze. But it would be folly to expect honesty from a political spokesman.

"Partisan schadenfreude" and you: an academic take on the obvious and untrue

Steven Webster, political scientist at Indiana University-Bloomington; Adam Glynn, political scientist in quantitative theory, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia; and Matthew Motta, Department of Health Law, Policy & Management, Boston University School of Public Health — these are the authors of an August 2023 study titled "Partisan schadenfreude and candidate cruelty." Who could resist a scholarly "headline" like that? I couldn't, and neither could The Bulwark's Jonathan Last, who provides an excellent breakdown of the Political Psychology article. 

We'll settle for the abstract:

"We establish the prevalence of partisan schadenfreude—that is, taking 'joy in the suffering' of partisan others. Analyzing attitudes on health care, taxation, climate change, and the coronavirus pandemic, we find that a sizable portion of the American mass public engages in partisan schadenfreude and that these attitudes are most expressed by those who are ideologically extreme. Additionally, we find that a sizable portion of the American public is more likely than not to vote for candidates who promise to pass policies that 'disproportionately harm' supporters of the opposing political party, and we demonstrate experimental evidence of demand/preference for candidates who promise cruelty among those who exhibit high amounts of schadenfreude. In sum, our results suggest that partisan schadenfreude is widespread and has disturbing implications for American political behavior."

I've a terminal degree in American political and cultural history but only an undergraduate, double-majored degree in political science. I'm also so glad I went on in my study of history, and not the latter. Political science was once known as political economy — that was a time when its professional practitioners wrote their academic findings in plain English. Today one needs advanced musings in statistics and mathematics to comprehend political science's "quantitative theories and methods," which has done as much harm to the discipline of politics as econometrics has done to the discipline of economics. The fundamentals and even more recondite areas of these studies can be worded straightforwardly. But then, or so believe their practitioners, anyone could benefit and that would be the end of the specialists' claim to superior intellects.

But back to the abstract. Do I, do you, do many of us on or to the left take "joy in the suffering" of partisan others?" Doubtless there's a quantitative answer to that question, although it's probably misleading or wrong. Slapping a precise percentage on necessarily loosely defined emotional manifestations such as "joy" and "suffering" is a foolish political scientist's errand. Plus the authors express an inevitability, I think, when they add that partisan schadenfreude is "most expressed by those who are ideologically extreme." Virtually any psychological disorder — I, for one, would classify genuine schadenfreude as such — is prone to lie on the "ideologically extreme" side.  

The academic trio also write that "a sizable portion of the American public is more likely than not to vote for candidates who promise to pass policies that 'disproportionately harm' supporters of the opposing political party." This one stumped me. I could think of no Democratic pol who promises or has promised to pass policies that "disproportionately harm" the Republican population. In fact, no Democratic politician promises harm to anyone. Indeed, President Biden — the very avatar of the modern Democracy — has gone out of his way to stress the good that his policies do for rural, red regions.   

Closely related to the concept of "taking joy in the suffering" of others is the authors' contention that partisan schadenfreude — e.g., former U.S. rep Madison Cawthorn tweeted "Cry more, lib," when he was elected; talk-radio host Dan Bongino "recently proclaimed that his entire life is 'all about owning the [liberals]'" — is not only "widespread" on the right, it exists "on the political left as well." Observes The Bulwark's Last: "Note the asymmetry here: Cawthorn was an elected member of Congress and Bongino is a former TV personality who hosts a reasonably popular podcast. On the liberal side we have . . . randos on Twitter." Mr. Last read the entire article, so his criticism is better informed than mine. Something so academically sloppy as the authors' preceding passage is just mind-blowing, at least to this former academic. Was "widespread," right and left, quantitatively arrived at? Or was it — rhetorical Q. warning — merely a stab at oh-so conscientious nonpartisan balance?     

If by "schadenfreude" the political scientists mean the tendency of just about any human on the left or right to bark Good! when he or she hears of something wicked that way going to one's political enemies, then yes, we're all schadenfreuders. Are we honestly supposed to say That's a damn shame?

In the quantitative analysis of all human dishonesty and risible hypocrisy, that would score high on the STFU meter. 

A top Trump apparatchik's first loss in court

Politico:

"A federal judge ruled [today] that [the bibulous, debauched, loathsomely criminal] Rudy Giuliani is legally liable for defaming two Georgia election workers who became the subject of conspiracy theories ... amplified by Donald Trump in the final weeks of his presidency."

Pardon the chiché. Well, duh.

This went to a judge? It must have been the fastest summary order ever executed by a federal court. 

One trusts the defamed election workers are, as well, suing Giuliani's wetted pants off of him, along with his shirt. Trump's, too. [Sorry, the election workers had already filed a suit; the judge summarily found in their favor.] 

Of course Rudy hasn't much money left, if any, since the man he's been doggedly defending has stiffed him like a corpse. I keep waiting for Mr. Giuliani to flip on the blackguard, but by now he may be besotted beyond recovery.

If not, his flipping would be undemanding, uncomplicated, straightforward:

Arizona's former Speaker of the House, Rusty Bowers, "told the Jan. 6 committee that Trump and his lawyer Rudy Giuilani initiated an extreme pressure campaign immediately after the election, urging Bowers to use his powers as House speaker to substitute Biden electors with electors loyal to Trump to change the Electoral College count. During a phone call, Bowers said, he pressed the duo for their evidence of voter fraud, but they provided none. 'We’ve got lots of theories, but we don’t have the evidence,' Giuliani ultimately admitted."

As for the election workers whom Giuliani defamed, one other, in Arizona, "did not directly cite the prolonged attacks against him, his wife and three daughters as the basis for his decision to not pursue another four-year term to represent the county. The threats, doxing and online harassment that began during the pandemic and continue today have at times prompted him and his family to flee their home.

"In May 2021, [he] sought professional help from a therapist and, soon after, learned he was experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder, triggered by the strain of his public fight against falsehoods about the county’s election-related work."

An authoritarian Trump government - and a massive stupidity to follow

With dunderheaded guidance by the Heritage Foundation, former Trump administration officials have a vision for American government. Kill it with authoritarian love. 

Known as "Project 2025" and buttressed by a resurrected Schedule F, a second Trump administration would assault the "deep state" by sacking up to 50,000 federal employees, each replaced by a loyal neofascist. (Currently, only about 4,000 federal workers are political appointees.) Any career civil service worker who failed to toe the party line would be fired.

The overhauled "administrative state" begins with the Department of Justice, whose independence would be gutted. The FBI would be barred from fighting the spread of toxic misinformation. The Pentagon would see its "woke" initiatives abolished. All this is in contained in "Project 2025." Its measures would be but the beginning of a federal government created in Trump's malevolent image. 

Says Philip Wallach, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, "Some of these visions, they do start to just bleed into some kind of authoritarian fantasies where the president won the election, so he’s in charge, so everyone has to do what he says — and that’s just not the system the government we live under." It would be. 

One — merely one — of Trump's authoritarian fantasies would quickly become an American, indeed a global, nightmare. When I first read this Washington Post piece a week ago, I was aghast — almost to the point of disbelief. Is it possible for anyone to be this stupid? I asked myself. Then I remembered. We're talking about Trump.   

How stupid? Consider some of the "economic advisers" he consulted: the always wrong Larry Kudlow, the severely intellectually stunted Stephen Moore, and the wholly political Newt Gingrich. And what idea did they come up with? A "universal baseline tariff" on just about every U.S. import, to the devastating tune of 10 percent.

The Post: "On Fox Business [two weeks ago], the former president called for setting this tariff at 10 percent 'automatically' for all countries, a move that experts warn could lead to higher prices for consumers throughout the economy and could lead to a global trade war." Strike the "coulds," insert would or will.

A 10-percent import duty would erase thousands of import-related jobs while also doing immense injury to foreign-export employment. It would hike prices for consumers and cost businesses considerably more (they of course would pass their added costs on to consumers). It would catapult the world's economic retaliation. 

Adam Posen of the Peterson Institute for International Economics called Trump's tariff idea "lunacy" and "horrifying." Paul Winfree, who served on Trump's Domestic Policy Council and is now president of the Economic Policy Innovation Center, said "a tariff of that scope and size would impose a massive tax on the folks who it intends to help." Chris Clarke, a Washington State University economist, said "on net, this would harm the American economy substantially [and] gum up our whole production process."  

Michael Strain, an economist at American Enterprise Institute, was the pithiest: "It would be very, very bad."

Although a brilliant authoritarian, Stalin never quite got the hang of macroeconomics. Also gifted with a consummate autocratic mind, Hitler, however much he botched Germany's economy, well, he at least made the trains run on time.

Trump, however, is as dumb as granite, both dictatorially and economically. Even worse, he'd have L. Kudlow and S. Moore whispering sour stupidities in his orange ears.

Who would pay for Trump's authoritarian clusterfuck and macroeconomic cluelessness?

Yep, you got it.  

Russia's woes: drone strikes and inflation

Ukraine launched dozens of drones overnight and early Wednesday into the Moscow, Kaluga, Orel, Ryazan, Bryansk, Tula and Pskov regions and Crimea, reports The Wall Street Journal. While most were shot down, "the attack on Pskov, more than 400 miles from Ukraine, proved to be among the most significant Ukrainian strikes on Russian soil since Moscow started the war 18 months ago." (The cited distance is incorrect. On a Google map, Pskov is 775 miles, or 1,250 km, from Ukraine.)

Either four or six military transport planes were damaged or destroyed. Local Russian media reported that a special forces base was also hit by a drone. Maria Zakharova, a spokeswoman for Russia's foreign ministry, said the drone strikes demonstrated "the terrorist nature of the Kyiv regime."

As Zakharova was speaking of Kyiv's "terrorist nature," Russian missiles were raining down on the capital city — the debris from downed missiles hitting several buildings, a park and a school. Reuters reports this was "Russia's largest air strike on Kyiv since spring," causing "a fireball that fell out of the night sky into a part of the Ukrainian capital close to a supermarket." In brief, Ukraine hit military installations; Russia targeted residential areas. 

Meanwhile, Putin is struggling with a falling ruble and rising inflation. Because of sanctions on exports and the G-7's price cap of $60 a barrel on crude, Russia's currency has lost of more than a third of its value. Sanction, caps and Europe's severely limited purchases of Russian gas are strangling Putin's revenues — "with income from energy exports falling 47 percent the first half of 2023," writes The Washington Post.

Inflation, says Russia's Central Bank, will hit 6.5% by 2023's end. Economists are more pessimistic, predicting the ruble's swift devaluation could well push inflation to double digits over the next three to six months. The Central Bank's key interest rate is already in double digits, at 12%. Even minor purchases are being affected; Russians are cutting spending on items such as "toothpaste and washing powder."  

Putin has managed to put the Russian economy into the black this year — its GDP anywhere from 0.7% to 2.5% — but at a huge cost. Massive military expenditures have fueled the economy so far, yet they've also caused "a huge imbalance." Full-scale defense operations have created labor shortages, which in turn are contributing to inflation.   

For the Russian people, it's a good thing they're supportive of Putin's insane war. Because from drone strikes to inflation to a falling ruble, they're paying for it. And the costs will only go higher.  

Trump and the House's Grand Exalted Velociraptors, pushing for tit-for-tat impeachment of Biden

 

From the nuthatch, his latest, foaming obsession:

 

"I NEVER HAD AN IMPEACHMENT INQUIRY, I HAD AN IMPEACHMENT, WHICH I WON! IT WAS STARTED IMMEDIATELY, NO MEETINGS, NO STUDY, NO DELAYS."

 

A bit later:

 

"The Republicans in Congress, though well meaning, keep talking about an Impeachment 'Inquiry' on Crooked Joe Biden.... You don’t need a long INQUIRY to prove it, it’s already proven. These lowlifes Impeached me TWICE (I WON!), and Indicted me FOUR TIMES - For NOTHING! Either IMPEACH the BUM, or fade into OBLIVION. THEY DID IT TO US!"

Soooo, from CNN, the nuthatch's congressional retinue flutters into action.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and top Republicans have begun to strategize about how to move forward with an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden this fall – the latest sign that the House GOP is seriously laying the groundwork to initiate rare proceedings against the current president.

In recent weeks, McCarthy has privately told Republicans he plans to pursue an impeachment inquiry into Biden and hopes to start the process by the end of September.... While McCarthy has already publicly threatened to launch an inquiry if allegations from IRS whistleblowers hold up or if the Biden administration does not cooperate with requests related to House Republicans’ Hunter Biden probe, sources say that McCarthy has sent even stronger signals about his intentions behind closed doors.

But leadership recognizes that the entire House Republican conference is not yet sold on the politically risky idea of impeachment.

CNN's third paragraph explains Trump's first rant. For God's sake, whatever you clowns do, do not hold a floor vote on whether to proceed with President Biden's impeachment. Because it will fail. Because McCarthy has yet to unite his caucus on soldiering ahead with, for some members, a politically toxic maneuver.

"Skipping the formal vote," writes CNN, "would allow Republicans to get the ball rolling on an inquiry while giving leadership more time to convince the rest of the conference" — the so-called "moderates" — "to get on board with impeachment." 

Another, ahem, problem facing McCarthy is that the very members demanding Biden's rickety trundle and immediate guillotining are also insisting on shutting down all government this fall. This would put the kibosh on, well, all government — including the Judiciary Committee's "investigative" onanism, chaired by the lobotomized but over-testosteroned Jim Jordan.     

Thus Kevin is in a bit of a pickle. Every which way he turns he is met by competing demands from his insane and semi-sane members, but above all, from the sociopathic guttersnipe way down in Florida's swamp.   

Me? I'm for whatever will help nominate Trump, and anything that will screw the hell out of Kevin's moderates. 

The odds of a non-Trump nominee are looking more favorable, because ... INDICTMENTS

An Atlanta Journal-Constitution/University of Georgia poll (B/C) of likely Republican primary voters finds that they "overwhelmingly believe the charges filed against Donald Trump in Fulton County this month are politically motivated.... But about half of Republicans surveyed say the charges against him are serious." Actually, exactly half, and nearly two-thirds if you include "not too serious."   

This finding, however, spells a whole lot of potential trouble for Trump: "A sizable minority are concerned the charges could make him a weaker candidate in a rematch against Democratic President Joe Biden."

The "sizable minority" are 36% of those surveyed. Combine them with the roughly 50% of primary voters already opposed to Trump and you get a robust anti-Trump phalanx. Now obviously there is overlap betwixt the 36 and 50 percents. But even if we whack that 86% figure by, let's say, a third, we still get a majority opposing Trump.

His most unyielding base is estimated at 30-35%. As the seriousness of the four indictments becomes more evident to likely primary voters at large, Trump's voters will begin to approach that bottom-line percentage. But even his most expansive hardcore base will leave him vulnerable to a strong non-Trump candidate, who, assuming a narrowing of the field, might approach the 40% range.  

Such has been my thinking all along. Time and incremental defections (because of the indictments) will dig into Trump's now-favorable, seemingly unbeatable numbers. He's not nearly as safe as the political press is presuming.          

Parenthetically, here's another interesting finding from the Journal-Constitution's poll: "a whopping 94% said they think politics played a role in District Attorney Fani Willis’ decision to indict him and the other defendants." 

Absolutely politics played a role; just not in the sense the respondents meant.

Only the election of an honest president and his appointment of an honest attorney general followed by his appointment of an honest, businesslike special counsel could have brought criminal charges against Trump.

That is to say, although the charges themselves are not political, only the fortuitous politics of 2020 permitted justice to be sought.   

Trump's "winning" record: from bankruptcies to sexual assaults to massive fraud

For those keeping score, an update:

Still subject to change are the first and fifth entries, the numbers of criminal charges and indictments.

Trump's "fake electors" scheme extended to seven states: Georgia, Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Georgia, as we know, is now aggressively pursuing criminal charges against him and his 18 fraudulent playmates.   

Little reported is that Arizona may join Georgia in pressing charges against "a group of 22 Republicans, including the Republican Party chair and multiple state legislature members."

Georgia was able to focus on Trump because he was dumb enough to make a recordable call to Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger begging for a fraudulent act. The myriad other ways in which Georgia's Fulton Country district attorney has linked Trump to an orchestrated fake electors scheme, however, may inspire Arizona's attorney general, Kris Mayes, to follow with similar charges against Trump, in addition to the aforementioned 22. 

The Hill reports that Mayes "ratcheted up her investigation into the group in July, requesting records from involved figures. The investigation is in its early stages."  

And so, entirely outside of his winning political histories of 2020 and 2022, Trump is far from done in other winning adventures. Aside from Arizona and some really serious criminal charges, his number of bankruptcies is likely insecure at six. And the lovely E. Jean Carroll — whom Trump raped, said a judge — is again suing him for defamation.

Only reticent prosecutors and civil-suit attorneys know how much more pounding of Trump is in store. May it be unrelenting, remorseless and mammoth.    

Vivek Ramaswamy: Lord, what a fool this mortal be

By the right of primogeniture, the GOP's firstborn Vivek Ramaswamy should inherit Donald Trump's priestly mantle of the party's spiritual protectorship. He's every bit as "annoying" as Trump, notes the Times' Michelle Goldberg. Writing for CNN, S.E. Cupp added that Ramaswamy is “obnoxious," "disrespectful," "inexperienced" and "conspiratorial" — all of which, again, are Trumpian assets.  

Since The Washington Post's Marc Thiessen is insufferably obnoxious himself — thus apparently unwilling to bash others for their obnoxiousness — he opted to label Ramaswamy as "criminally stupid" instead. This, too, is as Trumpian as it gets. Having read some of Vivek in print, Thiessen went on to observe that the 38-year-old's thinking reflects "a freshman foreign policy paper. Utterly disqualifying."  

A bit of Google surfing also, and rather quickly, reveals Ramaswamy as "an idiot," "grotesque," and similar epithets. The principal motivation for casting such pejoratives appears to be his less than sterling performance at last week's GOP debate, as well as a few things he has written. For instance, Vivek is prepared to embrace Vladimir Putin's control of the territory he illegally occupies in Ukraine "in exchange for Russia exiting its military alliance with China," which doesn't exist. (He would also quash Ukraine's NATO aspirations.)

But let us return to Michelle Goldberg's "annoying" Ramaswamy. "It's Why He's Surging in the Polls," blares her headline. She writes: "Of all the descriptors attached to Vivek Ramaswamy ... the most common one seems to be 'annoying.' After the Republican presidential primary debate on Wednesday, a Politico headline quoted a party strategist about Ramaswamy’s performance: 'It just got to be annoying.'" True enough. Goldberg says that because of this attribute he's "enjoying a bizarre surge in the Republican primary race for second place."

Not according to the much-respected polling (A-) by Emerson College, whose latest was conducted post-debate. The results: Trump, 50%; DeSantis, 12%; Ramaswamy, 9%. InsiderAdvantage (B) showed Trump at 45%, DeSantis at 18% and Ramaswamy at 7%. Reuters/Ipsos (B-): Trump, 52%; DeSantis, 13%; Ramaswamy, 5%. The only interesting facet of Vivek's "surge" is Goldberg's "bizarre" interpretation of it.

This is not to say that the annoying, obnoxious, inexperienced Ramaswamy is unloved by the GOP's faithful. Of course he is loved. And he's loved for the same reason they love Trump: he's annoying, obnoxious, vastly inexperienced in the ways of government and criminally stupid about foreign affairs. 

What's curious about Goldberg's piece, though, is that having asserted (incorrectly) Ramaswamy's "surge," she also notes that in post-debate polling by The Washington Post, FiveThirtyEight and Ipsos, his "favorability rating rose from 50 percent to 60 percent, even though his unfavorability rating rose even more, from 13 percent to 32 percent" among likely Republican primary voters. So nearly a threefold increase in unfavorability, while only a 20% increase in the other. Michelle, I'm perplexed.

And more than a little worried. In Emerson's polling, I looked beyond Vivek Ramaswamy — and saw this: "In a hypothetical matchup between Trump and Biden, 46% would vote for Trump and 44% Biden." I appreciate there's a long, long way to go to the general. But hyperpartisan consistency should be cracking by now, after Trump's four indictments. Emerson's executive director of polling, Spencer Kimball, said "support for Donald Trump in a hypothetical matchup against Joe Biden increased two points since last week’s poll."

Incidentally, Cornel West's Green Party candidacy does significant, outside-of-the-margin-of-error damage to Biden. With "West added to the ballot test, 44% support Trump, 39% Biden, 4% West, and 13% are undecided." West is seen kindly by 7% of independents, 8% of blacks and 7% of Hispanics — "key demographics that drove Biden’s 2020 victory," observed Kimball. 

As for Ramaswamy's future? If Trump fails to get crushed in '24, no doubt The Ohio Kid will remain a darling of the right, notwithstanding perhaps an unhappy third. And he'll be pumped for '28 (assuming a presidential election is held). Because Vivek is just like the Donald.  

No way.

With Trump's return to Twitter, I'm leaving. Musk was bad enough. 

All the GOP clowns in one comedian's car

I had not heard of Matt Friend until recently. But what a find.

A moment with ChatGPT

I thought it would interesting to tell ChatGPT to look at an example of my writing and then, in my style, write a short piece on last week's GOP debate. (This would also spare me from having to write something myself while on a brief vacation in SW Missouri, visiting family. So, you got it: I'm cheating.) Here's what ChatGPT spit out in one, perhaps two, seconds:    

[In Wednesday] night's debate, a striking contrast in personalities emerged between Vivek Ramaswamy and Donald Trump. Ramaswamy's performance left an indelible impression, revealing a nuanced and calculated demeanor. Limited exposure to his interviews prior to this event hadn't adequately prepared us for the depth of his air of confidence. However, it is essential to tread carefully when using the term "airhead" to describe him, as his mastery of rhetoric suggests a deliberate manipulation of language.

The 38-year-old billionaire displayed a shrewd maneuver during the debate by strategically appealing to Trump's insurrectionist voter base. His call for an "American revolution" was a masterstroke—crafted with a subtlety that was both cunning and ambiguous. It aimed to resonate with the sentiments of the pro-January 6th crowd, yet remained just distant enough from endorsing violence explicitly. This ability to navigate the political landscape with such precision underlines his acute awareness of audience and context.

In contrast, Ramaswamy shares an uncanny resemblance to a prominent trait in Trump's personality—the appearance of a limited understanding of global affairs. This is a quality that should ideally disqualify a candidate from the U.S. presidency but paradoxically resonates with a segment of the GOP base. His interpretation of the Russia-Ukraine conflict's implications for Western welfare was notably deficient. This parallel between Ramaswamy and Trump underscores the baffling allure that such an attribute can hold within certain political circles.

In essence, the debate not only showcased Ramaswamy's calculated rhetoric and his ability to tap into specific voter sentiment, but it also shed light on the curious attraction that a particular brand of political naivety can exert. As the political landscape continues to evolve, understanding these nuanced personalities becomes imperative in comprehending the dynamics that shape our world.

In playing around with ChatGPT, I noticed that one element of its writing is its attraction to clichés, such as "a striking contrast," "an indelible impression," and "uncanny resemblance." I hate clichés — as Bill Safire once observed, they should be avoided like the plaque — but ChatGPT failed to pick up on that. The result was something akin to a crowd-sourced Wikipedia piece. I also trust that I would never write an execrable phrase like "the dynamics that shape our world."