Month: September 2022

My memory can get a little fuzzy, but I remember on Election Night in 2020, there came a point, probably a bit after midnight, that I was supremely confident that Joe Biden had won the election. Part of it was definitely that the Fox News election desk had called Arizona for Biden, but it was more rooted in being satisfied that once all the mail-in ballots were counted, especially in Pennsylvania, that there was no way that Trump could win. It wasn’t even going to be close. My analysis was correct and, although I hadn’t really been overly worried, my relief was tremendous. Trump had lost, and that’s all that mattered to me. I noted some disappointing results elsewhere but these hardly dented my elation.

And then Trump came out at 2:21 am and started talking about all the states he had won, as if it mattered.

I kind of laughed at him when he said they had been all ready to have a huge celebration and then “Poof” his lead just disappeared. I wasn’t even shocked when he refused to concede and claimed a bunch of fraud had taken had place. I never expected him to concede. When he told the nation he had won Pennsylvania by “a lot,” I knew otherwise.

To be honest, I can’t say I was alarmed or disappointed by Trump’s performance because alarm and disappointment had been my default setting for the four years of his presidency. But I did worry a bit that we could be headed into choppy waters and that the transition might not be smooth and orderly. I wondered if the military would have to haul him out, but I had no doubt that they would if it became necessary.

As the ensuing weeks unfolded and Trump’s lawyers put on an absolute clown show in courtroom after courtroom, I was mostly just amused that he was showing so little dignity. The highlight of it all was Rudy Guiliani’s appearance at “the Four Seasons” in Philadelphia, which was timed perfectly to the election officially being called for Biden.

I noted, because it’s my job, when all the other boxes were scheduled to be checked. I knew when the Electoral College would meet in the respective states, and I knew that January 6 was the day that Congress would count the votes. I also understood that January 6 was the last possible chance Trump might have to do something crazy, and I noticed that he asked his supporters to show up and protest.

But none of this gave me the slightest worry that Biden might not actually become president at noon on January 20.

Yet, in the fever swamp that Republicans occupy, the picture was quite different.

“A week before Jan. 6, on a Zoom call organized by far-right Christian Nationalists seeking to reinstall Donald Trump in the White House, a man with a booming baritone voice bowed his bald head and began to pray,” Rolling Stone reports.

Said the man: “We remember the promises of old… We know we overcome Satan by the blood of the Lamb and the word of our testimony and not loving our lives unto death.”

He added: “God I ask you that you help us roll in these dark times, that we fear not the darkness, that we will seize our Esther and Gideon moments. We’re surrounded by wickedness and fear, and dithering, and inaction. But that’s not our problem. Our problem is following Your lead…. I pray that… we’ll seize the power that we had given to us by the Constitution, and as well by You, providentially. I pray for the leaders also in the federal government, God, on the Sixth of January that they will rise up with boldness.”

That bald-headed man with the booming baritone voice was Pennsylvania state senator Doug Mastriano who is now the Republican Party’s candidate for governor in the Keystone State. A week before January 6, he was absolutely fixated on the date. It was the day he hoped to “seize the power.”

His performance is caught on video tape.

It’s not an exaggeration to compare this to having a video tape of John Wilkes Booth meeting with Samuel Arnold, George Atzerodt, David Herold, Michael O’Laughlen, Lewis Powell and John Surratt to plot the kidnapping of President Abraham Lincoln.

On March 17, [1865] Booth and the other conspirators planned to abduct Lincoln as he returned from a play at Campbell General Hospital in northwest Washington. But Lincoln did not go to the play, instead attending a ceremony at the National Hotel.

Booth later caught up with Lincoln on April 14 at the Ford Theatre. On April 26, Booth was shot in the neck and killed while resisting arrest. Thankfully, he never became a gubernatorial candidate, let alone for Lincoln’s own Republican Party.

As a citizen of Pennsylvania, I find it outrageous that an outright insurrectionist and coup-plotter could conceivably become my governor. A self-respecting nation would smash this man and his movement, not let them take their chances at the ballot box. The 14th Amendment says that Mastriano should be ineligible to serve in any office in the United States.

Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, adopted during Reconstruction to punish members of the Confederacy for taking up arms against their country in the Civil War, declares that “no person shall” hold “any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath” to “support the Constitution,” had then “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.”

On Tuesday, August 9, 2022, Mastriano appeared before the U.S. House of Representatives’ committee investigating the January 6 attacks and refused to answer any questions.

Trump ally Doug Mastriano’s virtual appearance Tuesday before the House January 6 committee only lasted about 15 minutes and “he didn’t answer a single question,” according to a source familiar with the matter.

Mastriano’s attorney cut off the virtual appearance soon after it began, the source said. His lawyer, Tim Parlatore, took issue with several procedural matters related to the deposition, and raised questions about the legality of the subpoena that Mastriano received from the panel, the source added.

On January 6, Mastriano illegally stormed the Capitol grounds, although he did not enter the building itself and has not been charged with a crime. In truth, he was a major organizer of the mob that attempted to “seize the power” that day, which is why the committee wanted his testimony.

Campaign finance records show that State Sen. Doug Mastriano’s campaign spent thousands of dollars on charter buses ahead of the Washington D.C. rally that ended with supporters of President Donald Trump violently storming the halls of Congress last week during an insurrection.

He took an oath the defend the Constitution and then used his own campaign funds to finance a wholly unlawful and ultimately deadly effort to keep Trump in office despite having lost his bid for reelection.

And he did it in the name of the Constitution and in the name of Jesus.

I wasn’t too concerned about Trump’s childish refusal to lose with dignity, but I take Mastriano very seriously. He engaged in both sedition and blasphemy, and for the former reason he should not be appearing on Pennsylvania’s ballot.

The word for “old man” in Latin is “senex.” An assembly of old men is a “senate.” The U.S. Constitution is not too insistent on this point, demanding only that members of the U.S. Senate be at least 30 years of age when they take office. Notably, our current president Joe Biden was only 29 when elected to Congress but turned 30 before January 3, 1973, when he was sworn in. A lot of time has passed since then. In November, Biden will turn eighty.

And, yes, Biden is showing his age a bit. We can see it in his posture and gait. We can sense it in a new hesitation before he speaks. His mind is clear, but it’s not quite as sharp as it once was. The Republicans know that Americans are concerned about Biden’s age and they like to exaggerate his decline, often using another “sen” word to describe him: senile.

A just-released CBS News poll shows that voters overwhelmingly (73 percent to 27 percent) support an age limit for elected officials, with the most common cited cutoff being 70 years. If enacted, it would preclude about a third of the current U.S. Senate from seeking reelection. We would not see a repeat of the 2020 election, not only because Biden will be almost 82 on Election Day in 2024, but because Donald Trump will be seventy-eight. For what it’s worth Hillary Clinton will be 77 and Bernie Sanders will be eighty-three.

Ancient Rome was not unique in utilizing a body of elders as advisers. It’s a common feature of many cultures, including many Native American tribes. In general, experience brings wisdom, and long after our bodies betray us and we can no longer be effective hunters, gatherers or laborers, our minds can be an enormous societal asset. If nothing else, it’s way to earn one’s keep. If an individual elder slips into senility, it doesn’t have much effect on the body of elders. At any given time, both the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House usually have at least one or two people serving who really ought to retire because they’ve become cognitively impaired.

That’s not a luxury we can afford in the presidency, however. It’s not a good idea on our courts, either, and we might want to revisit the whole concept of lifetime judicial appointments.

When it comes to Congress, at least with the Senate, we shouldn’t ignore that the entire concept is rooted in the wisdom of elders. Voters are capable of evaluating congressional candidates and I see no need for a hard and fast age rule. It’s reasonable to prefer a younger candidate because you want a youthful perspective, or to oppose an older candidate who appears to be faltering. But I think people in their seventies make perfectly fine senators and congresspeople. It’s probably best to have mix of people from both ends of the age spectrum, just as it’s best to have people from a variety of different ethnic and religious backgrounds. How better to truly reflect and represent our society?

An age restriction is more compelling when it comes to the presidency, and to judges. But even in these cases, I think 80 is a much better cut-off then seventy.

Hi everyone. It’s another busy midweek. I’ve been a fan of Bjork for a long while now. She was the lead singer for The Sugarcubes when they had their breakout hits around the end of the 1980s. That band was a breath of fresh air. Her solo work since is nothing short of fascinating. For now, I just want to share with you a video of Bjork describing the inner workings of a standard TV set from the late 1980s. It’s certainly whimsical.

Cheers!

I have always thought Friedrich Nietzsche’s first serious foray into philosophy, The Birth of Tragedy, is a rather amateurish effort. Having said that, his distinction between Apollonian and Dionysian human traits is useful. In the simplest formulation, Apollo represents reason, form, and order, while Dionysius represents emotion, revelry and chaos. The tension between these is both destructive and procreative. A person, or even a society or culture might value one pole more than the other, but they’re inextricable parts of human nature. How they work together will tell you a lot, but they can’t be isolated from each other.

In this context, I often think of the Amish practice of Rumspringa.

When Amish children turn 16, the rules change. They’re encouraged to experiment and explore. The idea is that teens will come back to the church after tasting the modern world. For most, this means a tentative foray — a trip to the local movie theater, or driving lessons. But for some, the experience, called rumspringa, is all about sex, parties and fast cars.

The Amish live a restrictive life, and they recognize that teenagers will be rebellious. Moreover, they know it’s best if their children freely choose their anti-modern lifestyle, and to make a true choice they need some direct experience with what they’ll be missing. But what’s really going on is that they’re letting their kids set aside the Apollonian for a spell and have a go with the Dionysian.

A key feature of Rumspringa, however, is that it comes to an end. Eventually, the youth will either be baptized or leave the faith.

Sometimes I feel like the whole Donald Trump political phenomenon and movement is like a Rumspringa for people who harbor an unnatural amount of resentment. They were given a pass on the standards of behavior and decency normally expected of them, and allowed to delve into a kind of ecstatic freedom to be unapologetic assholes. Of course, unrestrained assholes cause a lot of hurt and damage, but there’s a sense in which it could be cleansing if it were to come to an end where people look around and say to themselves that it’s a false freedom–that as restrictive as the old way of life was, it’s better to follow in the steps of their parents.

In the Dionysian sense, it’s like the orgiastic bacchanalia described by Livy. Periodically, people come together with the intention of abandoning reason and restraint, to dance and drink to excess and be promiscuous. Without this, the life of order and reason becomes sterile and oppressive.

But Livy also described the bacchanalia as a cult that threatened the state. Here he quotes Spurius Postumius Albinus, the Roman consul in 186 BCE.

Whatever villainy there has been in recent years due to lust, whatever to fraud, whatever to crime, I tell you, has arisen from this one cult. Not yet have they revealed all the crimes to which they have conspired. Their impious compact still limits itself to private crimes, since as yet it does not have strength enough to crush the state. Daily the evil grows and creeps abroad. It is already too great to be purely a private matter: its objective is the control of the state.

Of course, Trumpism did briefly somewhat control the state, albeit not without a great degree of Apollonian resistance (call it “the Deep State,” if you will). It aspires to control it again, and with more thoroughness.

I believe President Joe Biden long regarded the influence of Trumpism within the Republican Party in something like these terms–as a fever that must eventually break. In this sense, it could even be curative, like leeching the poison out of a suppurating wound of long suffering grievance.

But this only works if the thrill of anti-woke transgression burns out and the wanderers return to the fold, strengthened in their sense that the original rules contained wisdom and a better course.

If only Trumpism could be regarded as merely a teenage rite of passage- a sowing of oats before family and responsibility take hold.

Apollonian Rome found it necessary to crack down on Dionysian excess, and it seems the Apollonian District of Columbia is currently attempting the same. Maybe the pendulum really is swinging back from unreasoning excess to light and order. Balance between the Apollonian and Dionysian is never guaranteed, but neither side can ever truly prevail over the other.

Older people tend to vote in elections at a higher rate than younger people. This is because when you’re rooted in your community, you have more incentive to take an interest in it. It’s also because the more wealth and assets you have the more you pay in taxes, and the more you pay in taxes the more interest you have in how various governments allocate their resources.

And, at least for people who are retired, whose children are grown, they have fewer things competing for their attention and time.

One reason Democrats have struggled in midterms and local elections in recent decades is because their base of support is younger than the Republicans’ base of support. Presidential elections are so high profile that most people get themselves to the polls without much prodding, so the Democrats’ relative difficulty in turning out their base tends to make a bigger difference in lower profile elections.

The Biden administration’s college loan forgiveness program was largely aimed at firing up their younger (not to mention, more educated) base. But another way to skin the cat is to actually win the elder vote.

Democrats in key races around the country are making an aggressive push for older voters, a key bloc in lower-turnout midterm elections, citing both their own work to lower prescription drug costs and hammering the GOP for suggesting changes to Social Security.

The Republicans’ strongest pitch is on inflation, which hits elders on a fixed income particularly hard. But the GOP is vulnerable on prescription drug costs and the sanctity of Social Security.

Social Security and prescription drug costs provide two potent issues for the party. The AARP survey found 82% of voters over 50 years old in key congressional districts said Social Security would be an important factor in their vote, and 69% said the same of the cost of prescription drugs.

And nearly 9 in 10 said they were more likely to vote for a candidate who supported allowing Medicare to negotiate the cost of prescription drugs or a candidate who protects Social Security from cuts.

.

Hello again painting fans.

This week I will be continuing with the painting of the Hudson River scene. The photo that I’m using (My own from a recent visit.) is seen directly below.

I’ll be using my usual acrylic paints on a 5×7 inch canvas panel.

When last seen the painting appeared as it does in the photo seen directly below.

Since that time I have continued to work on the painting.

I have now added to the left side foliage and foreground. Not one of my best.

The current and final state of the painting is seen in the photo directly below.

I’ll have a new painting to show you next week. See you then.

On the first full day of Joe Biden’s presidency, Astead Herndon wrote about accountability in the New York Times. He was thinking about the January 6 riots two weeks prior, but also about the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. It was then-President Trump’s “good people on both sides” response to the murder and violence of that rally that convinced Biden to once again seek the White House for himself.

The Capitol attack and Mr. Trump’s handling of it felt eerily familiar to many residents of Charlottesville, where the 2017 Unite the Right rally not only forever tied the former president to violence committed by white extremists, but also inspired Mr. Biden to run for president and undertake “a battle for the soul of this nation.”

It should be clear that Biden joined the “battle for the soul of this nation” because he saw Trump as a unique threat. But apparently it’s not clear.

Here’s an excerpt from the New York Times’ coverage of Biden’s Thursday speech from Independence Hall, where he explained that confronting the threat is “the work of my presidency, a mission I believe in with my whole soul.”

Mr. Biden’s appeals to national unity have found little traction. Some Republicans have argued that his efforts to build consensus were fainthearted at best, while some Democrats complain they were excessive.

Either way, they have made little difference in the national conversation. And so with the midterm congressional campaign getting underway in earnest, Mr. Biden has dispensed with the unity message, at least for now, reaching into the 2020 file cabinet and bringing out the call to win ‘a battle for the soul of this nation’ that was the cornerstone of his successful election.

The immediate strategy is self-evident. Rather than a referendum on his own presidency, which has been hurt by high inflation and low public morale, Mr. Biden wants to make the election a choice between ‘normal’ and an ‘extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic,’ as he put it on Thursday.

The obvious implication here is that Biden is more cynical than sincere. On the one hand, he makes sounds about unity but talks in partisan political terms, and on the other hand, he only trots out language about battle at election time. Calls for unity are a sham, and actual fighting spirit is just for show. I’d argue that the New York Times’ take is far better example of cynicism than anything Biden has done as a president or a candidate.

Then there’s Rich Lowry of the National Review who I would not expect to be fair or impartial. But it’s possible he actually believes the analysis he presents here:

Trump and Biden compensate for each other’s problems, and they are effectively working together to get Trump nominated — which Trump wants because it’s the necessary precondition for winning a second term and Biden wants because Trump would be the riskiest GOP candidate in a general election.

It’s not the most edifying relationship. Indeed, it’s a de facto partnership toward a demoralizing rerun of 2020. But neither Trump nor Biden is as likely to get where they want to go without the other.

In this telling, Biden is deliberately doing all he can to make Republicans rally around and support Trump. Some Democrats worry that Biden is doing this inadvertently, but few agree that it’s a deliberate strategy. For Lowry, a speech delivered to proclaim that “equality and democracy are under assault” by MAGA Republicans is actually an effort to hand the Republican nomination to and put him back one-step from the presidency. It’s hard to think of a more cynical take.

I’m not suggesting that Biden isn’t campaigning. He’s clearly saying that Americans need to vote against the Republicans, particularly MAGA Republicans, in the upcoming midterm elections. But he’s saying it for the exact same reason he said it on the campaign trail two years ago. He sees the white nationalism on display in Charlottesville and every Trump rally as an existential threat to the people of our country, and to the world.

I don’t think Biden is a tremendously complicated man. He wears his emotions on his sleeve and he tends toward plain talk. He’s capable of guile and deep strategy but these aren’t natural tendencies or gifts. I think if he is consistent over time in saying his “mission” and his “work” is to protect the country from what he saw at Charlottesville, that he’s sincere in his beliefs.

He also wants to bring the country together. But he can only begin to do that by beating his political opponents. This isn’t the contradiction so many seem to perceive, but an unavoidable constraint. The threat won’t dissipate if it gains institutional power. No duh.

Election season is not the time to emphasis unity. It’s a time of debate and choosing. The unity Biden wants now is the kind that accepts the integrity of our elections, as well as their outcomes. If that’s an alienating message to Republicans, that’s not Biden’s fault but evidence he has correctly identified the problem.

It was almost exactly two and a half years ago that long-time Trump Organization hatchet man Michael Cohen testified before Congress that his former boss is a massive tax cheat who (among other things) lowballs his worth when paying taxes and exaggerates it when seeking loans.

On March 20, 2019, dear, departed former House Government Oversight chairman Elijah Cummings initiated an effort to see for himself. He asked Trump’s accounting firm, Mazar’s, to turn over documents. A legal brawl ensued.

Trump lost at every level of court. He lost in District Court, the District Appeals Court (three-judge and en banc), the Supreme Court and the District Appeals Court, again. In the meantime, he lost reelection, initiated a coup attempt, launched a failing social media site, and got busted hoarding top secret documents.

That’s a lot of losing and now comes another blow, as explained by current (and outgoing) House Government Oversight chairwoman Carolyn Maloney:

“After numerous court victories, I am pleased that my Committee has now reached an agreement to obtain key financial documents that former President Trump fought for years to hide from Congress. In April 2019, the Oversight Committee issued a lawful subpoena for financial records as part of our investigation into President Trump’s unprecedented conflicts of interest, self-dealing, and foreign financial ties. After facing years of delay tactics, the Committee has now reached an agreement with the former President and his accounting firm, Mazars USA, to obtain critical documents. These documents will inform the Committee’s efforts to get to the bottom of former President Trump’s egregious conduct and ensure that future presidents do not abuse their position of power for personal gain.”

I guess Trump saw no profit in going back to the Supreme Court one final time only to get spanked, otherwise I can’t imagine why he finally relented. Tellingly, the decisive ruling found that Congress had established its inquiry had several legitimate purposes:

On July 8, 2022, the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled that the Committee is authorized to obtain certain financial records and communications from former President Trump and his business entities covered by the Committee’s subpoena.  The Court held that former “President Trump’s financial information would advance the Committee’s consideration of ethics reform legislation across all three of its investigative tracks,” including presidential ethics and conflicts of interest, presidential financial disclosures, and presidential adherence to Constitutional safeguards against foreign interference and undue influence.

With luck, we won’t have to deal with a future president hosting foreign dignitaries and lobbyists in his downtown DC hotel, or have them charging outrageous fees to house the Secret Service at their golf resorts. Maybe we won’t have to wonder what kind of financial hold a foreign country has over our president that might explain his otherwise inexplicable behavior. And maybe it will significantly harder for a conman to become president in the first place.

As to Trump, we’ll be able to fill in more of the blanks and answer some of the most confounding questions of his presidency.