Infinite Quack

In dissent from Monday’s order, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, said the majority had ignored a federal law that requires due process. ... Justice Sotomayor wrote that the majority had endorsed lawlessness. "The government has made clear in word and deed that it feels itself unconstrained by law, free to deport anyone anywhere without notice or an opportunity to be heard," she wrote. Here's a paywall-free link to the New York Times article .  Due process, also known as habeas corpus , is a fundamental right. Without it, we don't have a system of laws: we have an authoritarian system . If habeas corpus is quelled, the rule of law is threatened or extinguished because it removes the fundamental safeguard against arbitrary detention, allowing the state to imprison individuals without legal justification or accountability. Democratic Representative Al Green of Texas recently introduced articles of impeachment against Pre...

Franklin described our system as “A Republic… if you can keep it.” Any system of government only survives if it proves able to stand up to the endless series of challenges. If it fails those challenges, it doesn’t die or disappear; it mutates into something else. The Stormy Daniels case against Donald Trump isn’t about to topple America’s democratic institutions overnight, but it could, depending on its outcome, deepen some pre-existing cracks in the foundation. The details of the case aren’t terribly relevant here. It’s not about the events of January 6th. It’s not about Trump’s attempts to “find” more votes, or putting pressure on public officials whose job is to determine the outcome of an election. Nor is it about suggesting to the President of Ukraine that he “do [Trump] a favor” by digging into his political rival. All of those actions are much more central to the operation of our democracy. The Stormy Daniels case isn’t really about the porn star, or paying for sex. It’s about c...

Thought it time to revisit this . I wrote it several months before Covid-19 emerged. At least we did tackle #7: 7) Vote Trump out on his ass in 2020. He represents the poisonous idea that we can just lie about our problems instead of facing them honestly. He has fixed nothing, he has no skills apart from conning people, and he has no respect for our system of laws. These are basic principles, without which we cannot consistently reward practices that work and phase out those that don't. His very presence in the highest office signals that the powerful, corporations included, are free to keep cheating the rest of us without fear of consequences. Electing Biden might just send a better signal. But anyone who thinks the worst is over... is not paying attention. Trump made an epic fail out of his term in office, and we can all breathe a sigh of relief that that's over -- he can no longer do the same level of damage. (He can still do some, for as long as people keep listening to hi...

Trump’s Attempts to Overturn the Election Are Unparalleled in U.S. History This article illustrates how bad things have become. Imagine you're holding an election on a spaceship. The votes have been cast, and one side has a clear majority. But the other side is so intent on winning, by any means, that they start opening airlocks to flush ballots out into space. Not only is this obviously an illegitimate tactic, it's also dangerous. You're throwing away precious oxygen. You're risking not just the election's integrity, but the safety of the whole crew. This is what the Grifter Oligarchy Party is doing. They're playing to win at any cost, and the cost now extends to basic norms of behavior. A system of laws stops working when a significant part of the population just decides to ignore them, and do whatever they feel like. The cost extends to making bald-faced lies, planting ideas in the heads of disgruntled Trump voters -- who have been primed, over the course of ...

‘Reach Out to Trump Supporters,’ They Said. I Tried. I Give Up. Don’t waste your time reaching out to Trump voters like I did. Instead, invest your time organizing your community, registering new voters and supporting candidates who reflect progressive values that uplift everyone, not just those who wear MAGA hats, in local and state elections. Work also to protect Americans against lies and conspiracy theories churned out by the right wing media and political ecosystem. The right-wing conspiracy theory funhouse of Alternative Facts is essentially a cult. People who are happy listening to that day after day... they aren't about to be talked out of those ideas by rational arguments. What would  talk them out of it? Perhaps, nothing. People have to realize the truth on their own, sometimes. They will leave the cult only when they're ready. But don't wait for them. Try to make progress despite  them, progress that will benefit the whole society including  them. Someday, once...

‘The Far Left Is the Republicans’ Finest Asset’ The Democratic Party represents an enormous group of competing constituencies, running the gamut from trade unionists to feminists, from minorities to environmentalists, from secular Americans to LGBT advocates, a list that can be extended to multiple pages, with many people in the party answering to several of these descriptions, further complicating matters. Yeah, that's a challenge. Because we have just two parties that matter in the US today. One party is batsh*t crazy, greedy and selfish to the point of nihilism, has abandoned all pretense of having a value system, and has now shown willing to burn the country down (or at least its democracy, its heart and soul) rather than surrender control over it. And on the other side, we have the Democrats. The party of everyone who isn't crazy . Well, you can't put all the rational people under one roof and expect them to agree on everything. This problem partly exists because the G...

Behind Trump’s Yearslong Effort to Turn Losing Into Winning This crap makes me furious. It wasn't a surprise when it arrived; Trump has been broadcasting for a long while, to anyone who would listen, that he was going to do all he could to cast doubt on the integrity of the election in an effort to retain his hold on power if he lost. But anticipating it doesn't mean any of us should stand for it. The expectation that we will choose our leaders through a voting process is baked into our Constitution, and has been since its beginning. But like any legal system, operated by fallible humans, it relies on a basic expectation of decency, on good-faith attempts to discern what is true and what isn't. Going around sowing doubt in the integrity of the voting process -- it's the kind of thing that is effective due to some inbuilt tendencies we all have, to form beliefs based on insufficient evidence. It's a con. Trump isn't good at much, but he is good at conning people....

As Biden Plans Transition, Republicans Decline to Recognize His Election “It’s important for the cause of democracy and freedom that we don’t allege fraud and theft and so forth, unless there’s very clear evidence of that,” Mr. Romney said. “To date, that evidence has not been produced.” Trump was clear about laying the groundwork to contest the election if he lost, saying back in September he could only lose if the election was "rigged". That would be like me saying I can only lose my next game of Monopoly if the dice are rigged. Like much of what Trump says about himself (and he cares about nothing else), it's pure self-aggrandizement divorced from any sense of reality. He's simply delusional. Most other Republicans continue to back him up, though not because they believe the election was stolen, nor that they particularly like Trump. They're just concerned that being seen to contradict him will cost them politically. Folks like Romney, with integrity and politi...

I hope everyone reading this, who hasn't voted early, is planning to do so today. Susan and I voted. We filled out our ballots a few weeks back, though due to how things were going health-wise, we didn't get it done until past the point where the experts recommended mailing it. I made a point of driving both ballots to the nearest drop box -- in our case, about a 40 minute drive, each way -- while she was still hanging on. Her ballot envelope is the last thing she was able to legibly sign. When she later consented to care by hospice, she only managed to make some confused squiggles on the page. It's been just over a day since she left us. If she's able to witness the election's outcome, it will only be because she's managed to snag a window seat in Heaven, and a telescope. Whatever happened, I really wanted to be able to discuss it with her. She cared about the state of this country, every bit as much as I did. When Donald Trump was running in the 2016 GOP pri...

Total SCIF Show: The GOP's Raid Puts National Security at Risk I defended Snowden when he broke the rules to leak classified information. He stated clearly why he had done so: he had a moral explanation (whether you agree with the decision or not). He also suffered for his decision almost immediately, and is still paying for it; he can't return to this country without being arrested. By contrast, this was an act with clear risks, and no clear goal. It doesn't change any facts in the case being investigated. It was pure theater, a show, put on by the GOP to distract from the real questions... because they can't come up with any actual defenses of the Trump Administration's behavior, which he's already publicly admitted to. Instead, they demonstrate a careless disregard for the rules, in the name of "win at any cost" and "obstruct whenever things aren't going our way". Apparently that is now the GOP playbook. At one time, it was about ...

R.I.P., G.O.P. This aligns pretty closely with what I've been saying. The GOP used to be a party with a set of values at its core. I didn't often find those values matched mine, but I can respect a value system I don't agree with. These days, the party acts as if it cares about just one principle: "We wanna win." Not preserving democracy or defending against authoritarianism. Not defeating racism or sexism. Not protecting the country against threats, like this pandemic, that affect everyone regardless of political affiliation. Not even doing what's best for the economy. They are now the party of "win at any cost", even when the cost is the soul of the country. Donald Trump becoming their party leader has made this clear: they back him up whatever he says, and he exemplifies a person who makes decisions without referencing a value system. He didn't start this transfo...

America, we need to talk about how the multiple crises we're facing are interconnected. There are so many to choose from, and two that are probably foremost in the reader's thoughts recently, but I want to discuss five of them. (There are others. I’m not even including climate change.) Let's dub 2020 the Year of the Disaster-Plex, shall we? For many of us, the year the scales fell from our eyes. This lousy year hit us with the Covid-19 crisis first. Viruses happen, and the worst ones are the plagues: when viruses jump from other species into ours (1) . So long as we live in close proximity to animals and have less-than-perfect sanitary practices, this will keep happening from time to time. It's bound to be more common now that there are several billion of us, and we keep flying around the world in metal boxes. This one is unusually nasty because it's a stealth virus. When a plague can spread through multiple people who catch it and cough it along, without even knowi...

Is It Time To Call Trump The F-Word? Contemporary scholars of fascism caution against explicitly labeling Trump a fascist. But they point to the erosion underway during his presidency... I wonder, what are these scholars waiting for Trump to do, what line does he have to cross, before they're willing to apply the word in earnest? You can argue about exactly what "fascism" means, and people have. You can argue about whether your favorite definition exactly describes Trump and his tactics, and those of his supporters. But whatever you call that, it ain't democracy, and I can't immediately think of a term that is a better fit. "We are still in a democracy and he cannot get away with it but he seems to keep trying," Federico Finchelstein, a historian at the New School and author of A Brief History of Fascist Lies , told Today’s WorldView. I like that. "We are still in a democracy". By what standard? It's only a democracy so long as most people...