Month: July 2023

The first time Brendan Skwire and I sat down to do a podcast, after months and months of preparation, we did about a 45 minute show and discovered that I’d forgotten to hit record. The second time we sat down, a few days later, we prepared a completely different show and got about halfway through when suddenly Brendan’s mic started sending off all kinds of distortion and we had real problems identifying and solving the problem. The third time we gave it a go, it seemed to be a success but then the file suddenly vanished when Brendan was a third of the way through editing it. This is my way of saying that we’re novices at this genre of entertainment. We’re both writers and editors, and he’s a musician, which are challenging fields, but podcasting is more challenging. Having said that, it feels like all the struggles we went through made the reward more satisfying when we finally jumped through all the hoops.

Of course, we had one last hoop we never expected. We published the first Progress Podcast on Saturday after a lengthy final edit, and then ‘poof,’ nothing happened. We couldn’t find a link anywhere, and we both had other obligations for the rest of the day. So, on Sunday we had to get back together and figure out what we did wrong. I’m not even sure what we did wrong but one of our attempted fixes worked and now can you listen at Spotify. Hopefully, Apple will pick it up soon. Please give it a listen and follow/subscribe/comment.

I don’t want to provide any spoilers but we talk about how we met 18 years ago at the Philadelphia chapter of Drinking Liberally, which was then a hotbed of antiwar writers and bloggers. Then Brendan discusses he recent trip back to Nashville where he lived for four years and we get into the scandal surrounding Jason Aldean’s hit song and video Try That In A Small Town. And we finish up talking about a topic I wrote about on June 21, which is my dismay that Donald Trump is even allowed to run for president after attempting a coup and being an overall disgraceful scoundrel.

Hopefully, longtime readers of Booman Tribune, Political Animal and the Progress Pond will enjoy hearing the sound of my voice for once. Over the last 18 years, I have done a decent number of radio appearances, but I don’t know how many of you ever listened to one of them. Overall, I’ve been aggressively private, especially after my son was born in 2010. Brendan, of course, goes on stage and sings as often as he can, which is usually two or more times a week. He’s also a legendary talker best known for calling up congressional staffers and writing up their efforts to defend the indefensible decisions of their bosses. But he’s good at letting me a get a word in edgewise.  Were definitely not at the level of Driftglass and BlueGal yet, but I think we collaborated well and had good chemistry in the first episode. I know that will only grow as we get a better feel for when to switch off and not talk over each other.

The most important thing for me is that I discovered that podcasting and working with Brendan is downright fun, and I think that comes through when you listen. For now, the podcast is audio only, but we hope to level up to video and eventually have the savvy to take calls. In the meantime, let us know what you think and you have ideas for a future podcasts, please make suggestions.

We’ll have Episode 2 ready as soon as possible, and hopefully that process will be a lot smoother.

Did I mention you can listen here?

Jonathan Taylor is a star running back for the Indianapolis Colts, a team that plays in the Southern Division of the American Football Conference in the National Football League. In 2021, Taylor led the NFL is rushing yards from scrimmage. He recently emerged from a one-on-one meeting on the bus of team owner Jim Irsay and demanded a trade. In response, Irsay sent out a tweet, saying “We’re not trading Jonathan … end of discussion. Not now and not in October!” This Halloween is the last day of the upcoming season that NFL teams are permitted to trade players.

For fans of the Colts, this is an unhappy development, but it’s similar to situations that have played out this offseason in New York, Philadelphia, Dallas, Minnesota, Las Vegas, and Los Angeles. NFL running backs are extremely disgruntled at the moment and it’s because they aren’t getting paid.

This isn’t a sports blog, and I do not want to bore you with all the intricacies of how the NFL pay scale works, so I’ll just give the briefest outline. There are just a few key things you need to understand. First, unlike the situation in Major League Baseball, the NFL has a hard salary cap that requires general managers to make tough decisions on how much to allocate to different position groups. Second, when a player is drafted into the NFL he receives a four-year rookie contract. If the player is drafted in the first round of the draft, the team has the option to exercise a fifth-year option. Irrespective of the position he plays, the higher a player is drafted, the higher his salary, and there’s very little room to negotiate.

All that changes after four years (or five years if the option is exercised). At that point a player becomes a free agent and can make serious money. A relatively low percentage of players cash in and get a second NFL contract, but here is when different position groups are paid vastly different amounts of money. The top NFL quarterbacks reaching free agency this past year topped $50 million a year. The top running back, Miles Sanders of the Super Bowl runner-up Philadelphia Eagles, signed a contract with the Carolina Panthers worth about $6 million a year.

The last detail that’s important to understand involves something called the “Franchise Tag.” This provision allows each NFL team to designate one player per season as too important to reach free agency. They get paid according to a formula based on what other top players at their position are paid. A quarterback on the franchise tag this year would get somewhere around $30 million, while a running back gets about $10 million. A player can only be franchise tagged twice before they’re allowed to be a free agent.

This year, three running backs were franchise tagged: Saquon Barkley of the New York Giants, Josh Jacobs of the Las Vegas Raiders (who lead the league in rushing last year), and Tony Pollard of the Dallas Cowboys. They each sought long-term deals with a lot of guaranteed money, but all were denied. Pollard and Barkley signed the tagged contract, but so far Jacobs is holding out.

Quarterback is obviously the most important position on a football team, but anyone with even a passing awareness of the NFL is familiar with names like Jim Brown, Franco Harris, Tony Dorsett, Eric Dickerson, Barry Sanders and Emmitt Smith. Traditionally, running backs have been the second-tier stars of the league, and the best of them used to be paid handsomely. Today, they are the only position group getting paid less than they were before the latest, very lucrative, NFL television deal.

So, what changed?

The answer is analytics. Everything you can imagine (and many things you couldn’t) is measured by today’s top sports leagues, and then run through computers. The computers say that running backs take such a pounding that their production begins to decline right around the time they reach free agency. They gain fewer yards and they miss more time to injury, which makes it a bad bet to give a running back a second contract, especially if that contract includes a lot of guaranteed money. The situation sticks out so starkly in the analytics that even the best running backs are considered bad investments. Add to this that rules changes have made it easier to successfully pass the ball, so teams throw the ball more than they rush it. The result is that the analytics devalue the contribution of good rushers to winning games.

This creates a real problem for running backs because it’s true they take a pounding. Of all the positions in the game, they are the ones likely to have a shortened career due to injury or wear and tear, which means they’re the most interested in getting a high average salary. Quarterbacks like Tom Brady and Aaron Rodgers not only get paid three, four or five times as much as star running backs, but they’re able to do it for 15-20 years.

In a different world, this might be considered a golden age for running backs. Beyond the players already mentioned, the league is full of extremely talented backs, including players like the Cleveland Browns’ Nick Chubb, the San Francisco 49ers’ Christian McCaffrey, the Los Angeles Chargers’ Austin Ekeler, the Pittsburgh Steelers’ Najae Harris, and the Tennessee Titans’ Derrick Henry. Many members of this group recently became so concerned about the devaluation of their position that they held a meeting to discuss what can be done. But the truth is, they’re victims of science.

Once you take the emotion out of things, it doesn’t matter if a player has been productive in the past. It doesn’t matter if they’re a leader in the locker room or the local community. It doesn’t matter how many of their uniforms the fans purchase. The numbers say the position of running back should only take up a small percentage of a team’s salary cap. The numbers say that a player like Saquon Barkley is only worth $10-12 million a year, if that, and that it would be foolish to give him any economic security against injury by guaranteeing money in future years.

On the surface, this can seem absurd. While Barkley has suffered some injuries during his brief career, he’s clearly been the best player on the New York Giants’ offense. Another first round pick of the Giants, tight end Evan Engram, was run out of town for dropping too many passes. He played one season with the Jacksonville Jaguars before being franchise tagged, and then replaced the tag with a three-year, $41.25 million contact with $24 million guaranteed. The idea that Engram is a more valuable player than Barkley makes no sense, but science says a tight end is more valuable and a safer investment than a running back.

The problem in Indianapolis arose when owner Irsay defended this disparity.

“I mean, if I die tonight and Jonathan Taylor’s out of the league, no one’s going to miss us,” he told reporters. “The league goes on. We know that. The National Football (League) rolls on. It doesn’t matter who comes and who goes, and it’s a privilege to be part of it. Now’s the time for us to do our work. Now’s the time as an organization. And, you know, players who are 24, 25 years old, now’s the time to seize the moment.”

That was a pretty disrespectful of Taylor, the organization’s star player on what has been a putrid team. And it rather aggressively missed the point. How is Taylor supposed to “seize the moment”? The better he plays, the more money he should expect, and yet the more money he demands the more likely that he’ll simply be cut. That’s what happened to Dalvin Cook of the Minnesota Vikings who ran for over 1,000 yards every year from 2019 to 2022 and is currently unemployed because neither the Vikings nor the rest of the league want to bet on him continuing to play at a high level.

I’m of two minds about this. On the one hand, I am in favor of using numbers and science to assist in making decisions. On the whole, this should produce better results. On the other hand, some things can’t be measured, and some risks are worth taking simply because hard work and dedication are worth rewarding.

The analytics might say that Saquon Barkley is worth less than Evan Engram, but no human observer would agree. And it’s simply not true that Colts fans won’t miss Jonathan Taylor when he’s gone. Taylor is the team’s most exciting player and one of the few reasons to spend three hours watching one of their games.

In general, I’m most often frustrated when people refuse to respect and utilize science in their decision making, a particular flaw of the Republican Party (see: climate change), but people can also go wrong when they remove too much of the human element (see Democrats losing elections to poorly refuted populist pitches).

The problems of a handful of millionaire athletes are pretty far down the list of troubling issues we face, but the situation shows how things can get out of whack if we place too much emphasis on one side at the expense of the other. In this case, how much a running back is worth to a team is being put through a dogmatic formula posing as science. Each player is different and presents a different investment risk. A true team leader who sets a good example, like Barkley, is worth more than any formula can estimate.

There’s a lesson in that for other, more important areas of life.

Hello again painting fans.

This week I will be starting a new painting. It is a northern Arizona 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 9×9 inch canvas panel.

I started my sketch using my usual grind, duplicating the grid I made over a copy of the photo itself. Over this I added some preliminary paint.

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

I’ll have more progress to show you next week. See you then.

I want to note, upfront, that Rep. Derrick Van Orden’s Wikipedia page is a hot mess and needs to be cleaned up pronto. I think it’s reliable though when it tells me that Van Orden is a former Navy SEAL and current freshman Republican representing Wisconsin’s Third District. He seems to walk right on the edge of acceptable civilized behavior. The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reports that he once berated a 17 year-old staffer at the Prairie du Chien Memorial Library because of a Pride Month display of books. He focused his rage in particular on a gay rabbit named “Marlon Bundo.” This happened in June of 2021 after he had run unsuccessfully for office in 2020 and declared his intention to run again in 2022.

The 40-page book put out by John Oliver’s weekly HBO news show, “Last Week Tonight,” tells the fictional story of how Marlon Bundo, former Vice President Mike Pence’s real-life rabbit, marries another rabbit of the same sex.

…“His voice was loud, he was aggressive, he had his finger jabbing into (the book) constantly,” Trautsch said. She described the situation as “very uncomfortable, threatening.”

Van Orden repeatedly demanded to know who set up the display so he could “teach them a lesson,” she said. She had set up the display but was too afraid of him to tell him, she said.

“He was full-on shouting at this point and he kept aggressively shoving the books around,” she said.

Van Orden ended up checking out every book from the display except one a library patron was already reading, she said. She went home and told her parents that she didn’t feel safe at work anymore.

“I was terrified that he would be outside, that there were be a collection of people outside waiting for me, waiting for anyone else,” she said. “We were terrified.”

Trautsch said she was afraid that Van Orden wouldn’t return the books or would return them damaged, but they came back within a week unscathed.

Two months after that incident, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reports that he was arrested at an Iowa airport for having a gun in his carry-on bag. He eventually pled guilty, paid a fine of a few hundred dollars and had to take a firearms safety course–a true embarrassment for a former SEAL.

Despite this highly dubious behavior, he was elected to Congress in 2022. But often past behavior is a good indicator of what someone will do in the future. For example, take yelling at kids. The Hill reports that Van Orden appears to have lost his damn mind on Thursday when he saw a small group of teenage Senate pages resting in the Capitol Rotunda.

Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) on Friday said he plans to talk to Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-Wis.) about his expletive-laced confrontation with teenage Senate pages early Thursday morning.

“I haven’t been able to speak to him yet. I’ll call him today. I don’t know the situation, I saw what was reported,” McCarthy told reporters on Friday.

Let’s look at the nasty little details.

A transcript written by a page minutes after the incident, and obtained by The Hill, recalled Van Orden calling a group of 16- and 17-year-old pages “jackasses” and “pieces of s—” for laying in the Capitol rotunda early Thursday morning. The rotunda is a common spot for pages to relax when Senate business goes late…

The pages are a group of 16- and 17-year-olds who assist Senate operations, and when the Senate works late — as it did Wednesday night on National Defense Authorization Act amendments — pages generally rest nearby in the rotunda.

“Wake the f‑‑‑ up you little s‑‑‑‑. … What the f‑‑‑ are you all doing? Get the f‑‑‑ out of here. You are defiling the space you [pieces of s‑‑‑],” Van Orden said, according to the account provided by the page.

“Who the f‑‑‑ are you?” Van Orden asked, to which one person said they were Senate pages. “I don’t give a f‑‑‑ who you are, get out.”
“You jackasses, get out,” he added.

Here’s where I tell you the best past. Van Orden did not apologize when he realized the pages always rest there when Senate business runs late. Instead, he said the pages were dishonoring the dead because the Rotunda was used as a field hospital during the Civil War. So, does Van Orden have a record of respecting the sanctity of the Capitol grounds?

No.

No, he does not. He was part of the mob that breached police barricades on January 6. Much of the mob continued into the Rotunda where they smeared feces throughout and left “blood on the marble bust of a former president.”

Two months after Republican congressional candidate Derrick Van Orden lost his 2020 race, he joined “stop the steal” rioters on the grounds of the U.S. Capitol—and he paid for the trip with donor money left over from his failed campaign.

Van Orden, a former Navy SEAL and small-time actor, has previously acknowledged attending the Jan. 6 rally, but has repeatedly claimed he never entered the Capitol grounds. However, social media posts from the riot suggest that isn’t true.

A Facebook image from Jan. 6 shows Van Orden standing on a wall on the Capitol grounds that was inside a restricted area. (The Daily Beast recreated the photo on Friday and confirmed that Van Orden would have had to cross police barricades to reach that area.)

So, despite his denials, he did enter restricted grounds. He wasn’t arrested presumably because he didn’t proceed into the Capitol itself.

Now, the people of Wisconsin’s Third District sent Democrat Ron Kind to Congress for 26 straight years before he retired. Look what happens the second they decide to give a Republican a chance.

But they had plenty of warning signs that they ignored. Hopefully, the lesson is now learned and they will not return Van Orden to Congress next year.

As for Kevin McCarthy, I’ll be surprised if he does anything meaningful because he needs Van Orden’s vote.

One of the stranger heat-fever dream scenarios of the 2020 presidential election happened in Michigan, where MAGA Republicans became completely convinced that vote tabulators had somehow been compromised, resulting in votes for Trump being counted for Biden. The insanity was already in full swing a month after the election in December when the shenanigans began in Antrim County.

A security group that’s questioned Michigan’s presidential results and is listed in at least one of the lawsuits challenging Michigan’s election results is reviewing tabulators and other election materials in Antrim County.

Allied Securities Operation Group and Village of Central Lake resident William Bailey will take forensic images of the county’s 22 tabulators and review other election related material Sunday following a Friday court order allowing for the review.

Antrim County Administrator Pete Garwood and county Clerk Sheryl Guy will be in attendance, according to a statement from the county.

It began when Antrim County initially posted inaccurate unofficial numbers from election night which it then had to correct. The initial error, which was caused by a failure to upload a software update, had been obvious since Antrim County is a very conservative area and the results showed Democrats up and down the ballot winning in a landslide. The corrected numbers were confirmed by hand count, no harm, no foul, but the seeds of a conspiracy were born.

As seen above, allies of Trump were allowed to investigate. They quickly produced a dishonest report claiming that the Dominion machines were intentionally designed to facilitate fraud. Central to the issuance of that report was a lawyer named Matt DePerno who would later be the Republican Party’s losing candidate for attorney general in the 2022 election. He asked Trump to take some action, and the then-president briefly considered issuing an executive order for the military to seize voting tabulators throughout the country. The order was drafted but never signed.

At the request of Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson and Attorney General Dana Nessel, a more thorough and professional investigation into the Antrim glitch was conducted by J. Alex Halderman, a University of Michigan professor, and if you’re interested in all the details of his findings, you can watch the following video.

But DeParno wasn’t done. He sought out access to tabulators in other counties, but this time without the cover of a court order. As you might guess, that is a crime in Michigan. Yet, by the time that crime was understood, DeParno was already a candidate for attorney general. This meant that incumbent AG Nessel had a conflict of interest, so she asked for and obtained a special prosecutor to investigate DeParno and his coconspirators. One of those coconspirators, Detroit lawyer Stefanie Lambert, just revealed that she’s been indicted by a grand jury.

“My attorney has been informed that I have been indicted by DJ Hilson, the special prosecutor in Michigan, working at the request of (Attorney General) Dana Nessel,” Stefanie Lambert said Wednesday on a conservative podcast, where she bashed the pending criminal action.

“I’m not losing any sleep over this,” continued Lambert, a metro Detroit attorney who has worked for 2020 election deniers across the country. “I know that I’ve done absolutely nothing illegal. My clients have not done anything illegal.”

…In her Wednesday podcast appearance, Lambert lambasted Hilson for using the grand jury to issue indictments instead of making a charging decision by himself. She reiterated a previous threat to sue him.

She sounds unremorseful and a bit unhinged. Still, she’s a bit player in this drama. The other conspirators include, in addition to DeParno, former state Rep. Daire Rendon of Lake City, Barry County Sheriff Dar Leaf, and officials with the Cyber Ninjas security firm, including CEO Doug Logan. It seems likely that some or all of them have also been indicted.

Here I need to remind you of a pattern that is very common. These MAGA Republicans wound up doing exactly what they falsely accused the Democrats of doing, which is illegally tampering with vote tabulating machines. The didn’t believe in the integrity of our elections, but all they succeeded in doing is convincing countless others to lose faith in the integrity of our elections. They found no evidence of fraud whatsoever. And now they’re probably going to jail.

This is what happens when you take action on behalf of Donald Trump. You go to jail like Michael Cohen, Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg and about 300 (so far) of the January 6 rioters. In the past, maybe you got a pardon like Steve Bannon, Paul Manafort and Roger Stone, but that’s over now.

The false reality he creates is infectious and it’s criminal in nature. There can be no justice while he walks free.

Greetings! It’s that time of the week again. It may be unbearably hot outdoors, but as long as the a/c keeps running, I’ll be just fine.

This week will be a bit of a tribute to the late Sinead O’Connor who passed away today. I first heard of her thanks to a mention in Tower Records’ Pulse! magazine, back when that was still a thing. I ended up spending part of my next paycheck on her first LP (though by no means the last album I’d purchase), The Lion and the Cobra. That would have been right at the end of 1987. I have it stored somewhere, and I still treasure it. Her voice was as unique as her appearance, and I was impressed. Most folks remember her for her monster hit single, “Nothing Compares 2 U”. I’d like to remember her from that first moment I heard her sing. Here’s but one example, from her first LP:

She’d end up being effectively marginalized after her controversial 1992 SNL appearance, which was more than a little unfortunate. She kept writing, performing, and collaborating over the years. The sheer scope of abuse at the hands of clergy while Popes continued to look the other way eventually came out, and I think she was vindicated. She was outspoken about a lot of injustices in her native Ireland, and also in later years outspoken about her own psychological health struggles. I will be among many who will miss her voice.

Until next time, take care.

Brendan and I have been working hard on our podcast for the last couple days and when I took my nose off the grindstone and looked up, I noticed that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky appears to have suffered some kind of major health event. Take a look at the video.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell begins his weekly press conference, freezes for 20 seconds, and then is escorted away by fellow Republicans. pic.twitter.com/mYdBaU0Acv

— The Recount (@therecount) July 26, 2023

I’m not a doctor, but that is deeply concerning. McConnell had a bad fall in March at a Waldorf Astoria hotel fundraiser in Washington, DC. He suffered a concussion and a rib fracture and spent a couple days in the hospital. He didn’t return to his duties in the Senate for six weeks, in Mid-April.

Between Diane Feinstein and John Fetterman’s well-publicized health scares, and now McConnell’s clear debilitating problem, it has been a rough start to 2023 in Congress’s upper chamber. And it matters more than it usually would because the Democrats’ only have a 51-49 seat advantage and the Republicans obstruct everything they possible can, all the time.

It’s also time for Congress to nail down the appropriations bills for the next fiscal year, and that will be an extra challenge without McConnell available to steer the Senate Republican Caucus. I suppose that role will fall to his deputy, Senate Minority Whip John Thune of South Dakota. Like McConnell, Thune is no friend of Donald Trump. He has endorsed his colleague, Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, for the GOP’s presidential nomination.

Maybe McConnell will be find after he lies down and drinks a couple glasses of water, but I have my doubts.

I can’t even imagine what kind of motherlode this represents.

A Donald Trump ally has turned over thousands of documents to special counsel Jack Smith related to efforts to find supposed voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election – including materials that haven’t been previously disclosed to investigators looking into events surrounding January 6, 2021.

Former New York Police Commissioner Bernie Kerik was part of the team led by Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani trying to uncover fraud that would swing the election in favor of Trump.

For months, Kerik had tried to shield some of the documents from investigators, citing privilege.

But in recent weeks, Kerik gave the documents to the Trump’s 2024 campaign to review. After that review, the campaign declined to assert privilege, according to Kerik’s lawyer, Tim Parlatore, who turned over the documents to Smith’s office on Sunday.

“I have shared all of these documents, approximately 600MB, mostly pdfs, with the Special Counsel and look forward to sitting down with them in about 2 weeks to discuss.” Parlatore said

I’m not sure why the Trump 2024 campaign was involved in reviewing the documents or deciding on privilege challenges. Perhaps that’s a reporting error but it’s the 2020 campaign that was involved with Giuliani and Kerik’s shenanigans. Maybe there’s some kind of legal continuity between the two organizations, but it’s confusing.

Irrespective of that question, it’s already known that Kerik and Giuliani are an ethically challenge duo. In truth, Kerik has been a hot mess for nearly two decades now. In 2004, he had to withdraw from his nomination as Secretary of Homeland Security because he, a former NYC police commissioner, had been employing an undocumented worker as a nanny and housekeeper. But his withdrawal with too late to prevent the world from learning he had “carried on an affair with his book publisher [Judith Regan] at an apartment near ground zero intended to serve as a haven for rescue workers.” Then in 2010, when Kerik was convicted of “two counts of tax fraud, one count of making a false statement on a loan application, and five counts of making false statements,” Judge Stephen Robinson was so offended by his behavior that he ignored the federal guidelines recommending a maximum of 33 months of jail time and gave Kerik a full four years.

Perhaps the surest sign of Kerik’s corruption is the fact that President Trump pardoned him in 2020. Maybe it was out of gratitude for the pardon that Kerik decided to team up with Giuliani in the hunt for voter fraud after the 2020 presidential election. His reward has been, much like many other Trump sycophants, an unholy and mounting pile of legal bills. That’s in part because two Fulton County, Georgia election workers, Ruby Freeman and Wandrea “Shaye” Moss, who Giuliani falsely claimed engaged in ballot fraud, have sued them him for defamation, and Kerik has resisted turning over documents in the case. It’s also due to similar efforts to withhold documents from the congressional January 6 committee.

Armed with the information Kerik has been shielding, Special Counsel Jack Smith now has his eyes on the internal workings of Giuliani’s election fraud operation, and that’s going to unlock a boatload of criminal liability that will go in every possible direction.

 

Hello again painting fans.

This week I will be continuing with the painting of the Cape May, New Jersey scene. The photo that I’m using (My own from a recent visit.) is seen directly above.

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.

Since last time I have concentrated my efforts on the roadway. I have revised the right side edge. With that and a few other tweaks I have finished the painting.

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.

With news that US District Judge Aileen Cannon of Florida has set a trial date for former President Donald J. Trump’s classified documents case, I think it’s about time to take a look at his busy legal schedule. But before I get to that, I just want to draw attention to some things that have already happened.

In 2016, just days after Trump was elected president, Trump University agreed to a $25 million settlement in a class-action lawsuit brought by victims claiming fraud.  In 2019, the Trump Foundation, credibly accused of misusing charitable funds for personal, business and political gain, agreed to dissolve and distribute its remaining assets to other charities. The Foundation also agreed to pay a $2 million fine. In 2022, Trump settled a lawsuit for an undisclosed sum with six protesters who alleged that his security guards assaulted them outside Trump Tower in 2015. In January 2023, the Trump Organization was found guilty “on all charges in a 13-year criminal tax scheme” and compelled for fork over $1.6 million in penalties. In February 2023, Trump was forced to pay a $110,000 fine for refusing to abide by subpoenas issued by New York attorney general Letitia James in her civil investigation of his fraudulent business practices. In May, Trump was found guilty of sexually battering and defaming author E. Jean Carroll. She was awarded $5 million in compensatory and punitive damages. Finally, on Friday, the Trump Organization reached a settlement with former employee Michael Cohen for an undisclosed amount. Cohen was suing for over $1 million in legal costs.

This list is far from exhaustive, and it’s also all in the past. What’s coming up is more daunting. As of now, the first item on the docket is not a criminal case, although, as the New York Times reports, a guilty verdict could prevent “the Trumps from ever running a business in New York State again.”

In October 2023, Trump goes on trial in New York to defend against the New York attorney general’s [Letitia James] civil lawsuit alleging he, his adult sons, and the Trump Organization were engaged in a $250 million fraud for inflating the values of his golf courses, hotels, and properties to obtain loans and insurance. Trump, who has denied wrongdoing, is not required to attend the trial, but his lawyer has previously left the door open that he could be called to testify. Trump sat for a day-long deposition earlier this year. The attorney general is seeking to ban Trump from doing business in New York.

Next in line is the second bite of the apple for E. Jean Carroll. Currently, this trial is set to start on the same day as the Republican Party’s Iowa caucuses.

Three months later, on January 15, 2024, Trump is a defendant again facing off against former magazine columnist E. Jean Carroll who sued him for defamation for statements he made denying her allegation that he raped her in a New York department store in the mid-1990s. Trump was found liable for sexual abuse and defamation this spring and ordered to pay Carroll $5 million. Her initial lawsuit, set for trial next year, is seeking more than $10 million in damages.

From here, things get considerably more serious (yes, more personally perilous than rape allegations). By the time this next trial starts, the primaries will have already progressed through Super Tuesday and a half dozen other contests. Here’s where the disgraced ex-president can become a convicted felon.

On March 25, Trump will face a jury for the first time in a criminal case to defend against a 34-count indictment charging him with falsifying business records.

The Manhattan district attorney’s office alleges Trump falsified records to cover up a reimbursement to his former fixer Michael Cohen who advanced a hush-money payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels to stop her from going public about a past affair days before the 2016 presidential election. Trump has denied the affair and pleaded not guilty to the charges. The judge has warned Trump that he is required to attend every day of the trial, potentially keeping him off the campaign trail for a couple of weeks.

Judge Aileen Cannon has set the classified documents case to begin in a two-week period beginning May 20, 2023. By that time, only a small handful of states will not have voted in caucuses or primaries and it’s likely that the Republicans will have chosen their candidate.

What we still don’t know is if Trump will be indicted on either state or federal charges for attempt to stage a coup and remain in power despite losing the 2020 presidential election. The signs are that he will face federal charges within days or weeks, and state charges in Georgia sometime in August. These are the most serious charges both morally and in terms of the penalties if convicted.

But when will these trials be scheduled? Both cases are immensely complicated and could involve multiple defendants. On the other hand, unlike the documents case, they aren’t reliant on classified information which presents obvious opportunities for delay. Of the two, the federal case, which will be tried in Washington DC, will presumably take precedence. In fact, I think the presiding judge will probably schedule the trial for as soon as is practicable irrespective of preexisting trial schedules in other cases. If not, it’s hard to see a time period before about a year from now that is available. Maybe November-December is still open, although that presses up against the holidays.

So, if I have to make a prediction, it’s that the federal January 6 case will bounce something and there may be a domino effect on Trump’s present trial schedule. The Georgia “January 6” case will probably follow quickly upon the federal one. It seems likely that Trump will to be on trial pretty much continuously from October 2023 (maybe even earlier) through to (at a minimum) the end of June. The Republican National Convention is scheduled  for mid-July in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

There’s a real possibility that at least some of these cases will not be resolved even then.

So, is it possible that Trump will avoid losing some or all of these cases?

On the merits, he doesn’t have a viable defense against any of them. He lost once to E. Jean Carroll and he almost assuredly will lose to her again. The friendliest jury pool he’s going to face is in the Florida documents case, but the evidence against him is overwhelming and incontrovertible. His best chance is that the judge who has proven absurdly friendly to the disgraced ex-president, will exclude evidence and otherwise steer the jurors toward a reasonable doubt. Short of that, he can hope that at least one juror will refuse to convict out of pure stubborn partisanship.

The other trials, in New York and Washington DC, will have tougher jury pools, but the president can hope to get some luck. I’d say that there’s as good a chance that he will lose all of these cases as that he’ll get a hung jury and mistrial in any of them. Outright acquittals are completely out of the question because the cases are just too strong.

The first presently scheduled trial that could result in jail time is the New York business practices case that is to begin in late March. However, a conviction would be more likely to result in probation. It would be far better to have the federal January 6 case go sometime in 2023, so people will know if he’s going to jail before they begin voting in Iowa in January.

That’s what I’m hoping for anyway. It’s the best hope to bring some sanity to this unprecedented clusterfuck.