Month: March 2024

It’s probably true that you can’t convince someone the economy is good. Citing facts and figures, no matter how objective and relevant, isn’t going to make someone believe differently about the price of milk, gas or whatever else might be bothering them. If they’re not doing well, then that only makes it worse that other people are prospering. So, John Austin is probably right when he writes that  “You can’t persuade people the economy is better, with the fact that it is—all you can say is “If you are not feeling it—I’m not done!””

I basically agree with the entirely of Austin’s essay, and it’s a variation on themes I’ve been hitting since at least 2015. Most of politics is convincing people you’re on their side. Trump is really good at this. There are communities all across this country that are 85 percent convinced Trump is their fucking champion even though it’s hard to find a single thing he’s done for them in a policy field.

The Biden administration has been working overtime to help these communities, as Austin notes:

Leaders working to tackle big problems—closing economic divides in our neglected heartland regions, tackling climate change with green transformation, rebuilding infrastructure, or closing digital skills divides with education and training—offer substantive solutions, not just angry rhetoric.

This is what Biden has been doing. The inward investment policies enacted by the White House and Congress—specifically, the American Rescue Plan Act, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the CHIPS and Science Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act, potentially worth some $3.8 trillion are the most significant heartland place-focused investments and incentives in American history. These regional investments dwarf previous large-scale historic place-focused investment programs such as the Tennessee Valley Authority under President Roosevelt and the Appalachian Regional Commission under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson.

Send that to your Crazy Trump-Loving Uncle Charlie. The problem is that the heartland voter in FDR’s time wasn’t subjected to non-stop propaganda trying to convince him that billionaires were on his side. But you can’t get anywhere with Uncle Charlie by telling him he’s stupid, gullible and deplorable.

Maybe Austin is right that the Democrats need to start preaching an “aspirational gospel” about a new economy for small towns, rural areas and Appalachia. Maybe a new hymn book is needed. I wish we had a smooth-talking and energetic candidate to pitch it, but maybe the solution lies in numbers.

Anyway, his piece is worth reading. Somebody has to get out there on the road, like Saul of Tarsus, and sell this shit. Thursday night’s State of the Union is a good place to start.

Howdy everyone. It’s been about 50 years since Brian Eno’s first solo LP was released. I always loved this particular track, but actually just loved the whole LP.

See you all next week. Cheers.

 

As a political animal, elections are usually like my Super Bowl, but Super Tuesday in 2024 was less interesting to me than NFL contract negotiations. Is Saquon Barkley really going to leave the New York Giants in free agency? I really hope not, but it’s looking more likely. God forbid he signs with the Eagles or Cowboys, how will I go on?

By contrast, it’s been obvious for months that Donald Trump would all but wrap up the Republican presidential nomination on Super Tuesday. I was pleasantly surprised to see Nikki Haley carry Vermont but she was slaughtered everywhere else and dropped out at 10am on Wednesday. On the Democratic side, things were the same. Joe Biden crushed his also-ran opponents everywhere except American Samoa where he tied Some Dude who paid for 51 votes.

President Joe Biden was sweeping every Democratic contest on Super Tuesday — except for American Samoa.

He fell short there to a previously unknown candidate named Jason Palmer. Out of 91 ballots cast in the territory’s caucus, Palmer won 51 and Biden won 40, according to the local party.

“I found out that I had won because my phone started blowing up with friends and campaign staffers texting me,” Palmer said in an interview late Tuesday.

Palmer, 52, said he never visited the territory before the caucus.

“I have been campaigning remotely, doing Zoom town halls, talking to people, listening to them about their concerns and what matters to them,” he said.

That makes Biden O-for-2 in the territory after Michael Bloomberg similarly paid for victory in 2020. The Samoan outcome was by far the most compelling result in Tuesday’s elections, and it seems like here is a good place to link to Hunter S. Thompson’s correspondence with Lyndon Johnson’s administration on becoming the governor of American Samoa.

So it goes.

There were some modestly interesting results here and there in down-ballot races. A MAGA nut fell short here, a MAGA nut prevailed over there. It’s nice to know that Adam Schiff will be facing off against Steve Garvey in the race to replaced Diane Feinstein in the U.S. Senate. My beloved New York Yankees beat Garvey’s L.A. Dodgers in 1977 and 1978, and since I was at a formidable age, I developed a real dislike for those Dodgers players. Garvey was among the weirdest with his perfect posture and hair. I’m not sure he really has the family values a conservative Christian wants in a role model, but who am I kidding?

Known as “Mr. Clean” during his baseball heyday in the ‘1970s and ‘80s, Garvey didn’t smoke or drink, and he projected the image of a man devoted to God and family.

Then came a highly publicized divorce, affairs with multiple women, multiple lawsuits — and injuries that led to the star’s retirement in 1988, at age 39.

Dude has multiple grandkids he hasn’t even met. I’m not sure even Trump can say that.

But, yes, Trump wrapped things up last night and now Mitch McConnell has decided to endorse him. I wish I could enjoy seeing The Turtle suffer this monumental comeuppance. He should have killed Trump’s second run for president in the crib when he had the chance. Now, if he wants to serve out the rest of the year as the Senate Minority Leader, he’s forced to pretend Trump is fit for office.

Haley didn’t endorse Trump when she quit which is to her credit, but she invited him to earn her endorsement which is a ludicrous proposition. She has no future in the Republican Party whether or not Trump wins in November, so she should start adjusting accordingly. Maybe she can call William Kristol or Jeff Flake for tips.

There is no longer any resistance to Trump from within the GOP. He’s on a glide path to a dictatorship, and not much can stop him now if the polls can be believed. Personally, I don’t think it’s over yet, mainly because the resistance to Trump is rock-solid. But it looks grim. It looks like the money is on Trump and he’s got a giant built-in Electoral College advantage.

Another thing that worries me is that, even if we can get something to trial, it will be hard to get a unanimous verdict against Trump now that he’s the nominee, since it becomes something of a proxy for the presidential vote. Justice may have moved too slowly in this case, to our great peril.

Ah well, we won’t go down without a fight.

Right?

I’m not upset that the Supreme Court ruled that the states may not remove Donald Trump from the ballot. I looked into this issue when it first came up and satisfied myself that Section 3 of the 14th Amendment could not be used by individual states to keep a candidate off the ballot. If I were on the Supreme Court, I would have ruled in favor of Trump, too, and for the same reasons expressed in the unanimous opinion.

What I wish is that there were some forcing mechanism to get a federal decision on whether or nor January 6th was an insurrection and if Donald Trump is an insurrectionist. The Supreme Court could theoretically have ruled that Trump is not only ineligible in Colorado and other states that have removed his name from the ballot, but all states. I think that would have been the best outcome for the country, especially if it were an unanimous decision with Clarence Thomas recusing himself due to his wife’s participation in the conspiracy.

Short of that, Congress could pass a joint resolution declaring Trump ineligible under Section 3. That could still happen someday. But without a federal determination of this type, it was not practical to have some states barring him and some states not barring him. At some point, Trump needs to have a due process right to defend himself against charges of insurrection, and so far he has not been formally charged.

Even if Jack Smith had charged him with that particular offense, the trial would not have started. I do think if Trump is found guilty before Election Day on the federal January 6 charges, then Congress should invoke Section 3, but we know that is not going to happen.

In the end, Section 3 worked in the 1860’s because the Union won the fucking war. We haven’t won our war yet. Clearly.

Allen Weisselberg started work as an accountant for Fred Trump in 1973. He eventually became the chief financial officer of the Trump Organization, as well as the treasurer of the Trump Foundation. When Donald Trump became president, Weisselberg ran the Trump Organization along with Trump’s sons, Donald Jr. and Eric.

In 2019, the Trump Foundation was dissolved for illegally using its funds for political purposes. In August 2022, Weisselberg pleaded guilty to 15 criminal charges including grand larceny, tax fraud and falsifying business records. In 2023, he served several months in prison on Riker’s Island.

Now he is perhaps headed back to Riker’s Island after admitting he committed perjury during a deposition and testimony in Trump’s recent civil fraud trial in Manhattan. It’s interesting that the New York Times article on this doesn’t discuss what Weisselberg was lying about until the closing paragraphs.

Instead, the reporters focus on Weisselberg’s previous legal problems and the unusual $2 million severance package he received from the Trump Organization which paid him specifically not to cooperate with investigators unless compelled. It’s all important context for understanding the degree of rot we’re dealing with here, but the perjury was very specific.

Weisselberg lied about whether he was involved in misleading people about the value of Trump’s “home” property in Trump Tower.

A focus of the case — and Mr. Weisselberg’s testimony — was Mr. Trump’s triplex apartment in Trump Tower, which is 10,996 square feet, but had been listed for years on his annual financial statements as measuring 30,000 square feet.

During the investigation, in a deposition under oath, Mr. Weisselberg played down his involvement in valuing the triplex.

On the witness stand at the trial, Mr. Weisselberg also claimed that he “never focused” on the unit.

Yet soon after, Forbes magazine, which compiles a list of America’s richest people, published an article citing emails and notes showing that Mr. Weisselberg “played a key role in trying to convince Forbes over the course of several years” of the apartment’s value.

Try to imagine going to a notorious jail like Riker’s Island (for a second time) at the age of 76 because you weren’t willing to tell the truth about your role in lying about the size of Trump’s fucking apartment. But it starts to make sense when you see the dollars involved.

During the recent trial, Justice Engoron concluded that Mr. Weisselberg was not a credible witness, in part because of his [$2 milliom] severance agreement, which is paid in installments over time, as if to keep Mr. Weisselberg in thrall to the Trump family.

“His testimony in this trial was intentionally evasive, with large gaps of ‘I don’t remember,’” the judge wrote in his decision last month, adding that the severance agreement “renders his testimony highly unreliable.”

“The Trump Organization keeps Weisselberg on a short leash,” the justice wrote. “And it shows.”

I think the important thing to keep in mind is that Weisselberg is doing all this jail time to help Trump. It’s the same reason the Trump lawyer Michael Cohen went to prison. And Cohen and Weisselberg were the two main players involved in paying off porn star Stormy Daniels and Playboy bunny and Karen McDougal to keep quiet about their sexual relations with an adulterous Trump.

Trump is now scheduled to go on trial for the Stormy Daniels payment on March 25th. Cohen is expected to be the chief witness against Trump. Weisselberg, however, is expected to be less helpful. Admitting to perjury now will make him a less credible witness for the defense.

I find it amazing that you can pay a man specifically not to cooperate with legal authorities without it constituting an obstruction of justice, but Trump seems to find countless ways to walk the line between what’s legal and criminal. I think the Stormy Daniels case is important less for the 2016 coverup of a 2006 furtive tryst than it is for what it reveals about how Trump and Weisselberg operate.

They do a lot of criming together, and one way to keep track of it all is to just look at Weisselberg’s ever-growing rap sheet. It doesn’t seem right that he’s headed back to jail while Trump looks headed back to the Oval Office.

As Al Gore and Hillary Clinton can attest, a Democratic presidential contender shouldn’t feel comfortable with their position in the national polls unless it’s a substantial lead because winning the popular vote is not good enough to win the election. A Democrat who is getting beaten badly in the national polls has to hope that the polls are simply wrong, and wrong in a big way. That’s where President Joe Biden is sitting right now because the newest New York Times/Siena poll has him losing to Trump 43 percent to 48 percent.

Only one in four voters thinks the country is moving in the right direction. More than twice as many voters believe Mr. Biden’s policies have personally hurt them as believe his policies have helped them. A majority of voters think the economy is in poor condition. And the share of voters who strongly disapprove of Mr. Biden’s handling of his job has reached 47 percent, higher than in Times/Siena polls at any point in his presidency.

Based on those survey results, Biden is more likely to be ridden out of the White House on a rail than reelected. And, frankly, he’s just lucky to have Trump as an opponent. Trump will only beat him like a drum, whereas Nikki Haley would blow him into little tiny bits and eject him into space.

Nikki Haley, Mr. Trump’s Republican rival, who has made the case that he will lose in November, leads Mr. Biden by double the margin of the former president: a hypothetical 45 percent to 35 percent.

How much does this have to do specifically with President Biden? People are worried about his age. Maybe they’ve heard enough noise about Hunter Biden to think the president is corrupt. These things wouldn’t seem to explain why people think Biden’s policies have hurt them personally or why they think an objectively good and recovering economy is actually quite poor.

Some people are going to default to questioning the poll. Didn’t these same pollsters predict a red wave in the midterms that didn’t materialize? What about their sample? Is it representative?

And that’s fine. I have some questions myself. I can believe some of the following, but…

But over and over, the Times/Siena poll revealed how Mr. Trump has cut into more traditional Democratic constituencies while holding his ground among Republican groups. The gender gap, for instance, is no longer benefiting Democrats. Women, who strongly favored Mr. Biden four years ago, are now equally split, while men gave Mr. Trump a nine-point edge. The poll showed Mr. Trump edging out Mr. Biden among Latinos, and Mr. Biden’s share of the Black vote is shrinking, too.

I think it’s probably true that the Democratic Party is losing non-college educated voters without respect to race. And that would show up with the Latino vote moving to Trump. But is it plausible that the gender gap has disappeared completely? That would be shocking considering how so many women feel about the Republicans’ assault on reproductive freedom and choice.

But like I said at the top, to feel good about the election, Biden would have to be winning in a poll like this by more than Trump is winning. If Biden is losing the popular vote to Trump at all, let alone by five points, he’s going to get slaughtered in the Electoral College.

So, is it time to panic?

I think it’s time to get serious about figuring out what is real and what is not. Biden doesn’t have to accept the nomination. He can nominate someone else. The public doesn’t want to choose between too super old dudes. We could still give them a young, vibrant option. Personally, I’d put Gavin Newsom in the ring.

But I’m not arguing that this choice has to be made now. It has to be considered, by Biden. He needs to have a contingency in his back pocket. Because if he can’t beat Trump, he needs to let someone else try. And if he can’t figure out why he’s so unpopular and fix it, he isn’t beating Trump.

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 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’ve now started to paint the fence. I’m hoping this goes well.

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.