Reflecting Fool

     While the rule of law (national and international) and long-established government functions come crashing down, I'm hearing a lot of news about the Reflecting Pool in Washington, DC.

     It's a distraction.  Was the repair work graft-laden?  Probably.  Was the previous condition and repair effort over-hyped?  Almost certainly.  But look -- this is a big, shallow hard-surface pool in warm-climate city.  It's filled from the Tidal Pool and/or city water sources,* and in recent decades, every time it gets drained and refilled for whatever reason, it ends up full of green gunk for a while.  You can't have a shallow, slow-moving pool of water in a Washington, DC summer without stuff growing in it, no matter what you have done to the thing.  They'll solve the current mess, including the self-created elements, by and by, and yeah, probably someone's going to line their pockets over it (again!) to the tune of millions or tens of millions.

     But there are people within the Federal government or closely connected to it, ripping off the public coffers or cheating private-spending suckers and rubes of billions of dollars; the destruction of USAID has resulted in deaths on an enormous scale and helped fuel the present ebola outbreak in Africa, which is on the edge of breaking containment.  The only thing that keeps ebola in check is that it kills infected people pretty quickly, and even those who survive it are usually too sick to travel far until they have recovered.  The present version appears to have a slightly longer period of ambulatory-but-infectious, and that's a problem.

     A little bit (or a lot) of green algae in a (usually) pretty part of DC's memorial landscape is insignificant compared to the infectious dead and burial efforts that are barely keeping up.  Millions of dollars are way smaller than billions.  Yes, it's one more embarrassing farce -- but Europe's melting in the summer heat, disease is way up in Africa, and screwworms are infesting American cattle and pets.  We've got more urgent business than pointing at the green water and snickering.
__________________
* Various infographics show a system of nearly Byzantine complexity.  Make what metaphors of it you will. 

Hoo Boy

     Everyone out there who thought they were ringing in a Caesar and either didn't care or were actively hoping he'd ring down the curtain on the American Republic has now been conclusively shown to have latched onto a dollar-store Nero instead -- and this one can't even play the lyre!

     I don't suppose any of his blood-and-soil fans will mind, and no doubt they loved Sunday's blood and blather.  Say the word "culture" to 'em and they reach for a club (no, I don't mean the 1980s band).

Grazin' In The Grass

     There is no reason to threaten any elected or appointed official with any level of violence.  Vote 'em out, impeach 'em, stick them in front of a Congressional committee and (try) to make them answer questions or get 'em hauled into court if they can be (it depends on the office).

     And, sure, criticize 'em.  It's right there in the Constitution that you can do that. This can include very harsh criticism.  "Throw the bum out" isn't especially harsh, as such things go.

     All that said, some critic or group of critics decided the National Mall, that big patch of grass in Washington, DC that stretches from the Washington Monument to the pool in front of the Capitol building could do with some commentary, and they have inscribed -- or tried to -- "86 47" in huge numbers, using something to discolor the grass.  The 8 and 7 are easily visible in photographs; you can trace the 6 but it takes imagination to see a 4. 

     There are about a zillion ways to pull this off, using everything from weedkiller to picnic blankets to fertilizer or even just coordinated dancing.  Make no mistake, it's vandalism however it is accomplished, but it's got more in common with crop circles than, say, the Weather Underground.

     What "86" might mean is presently disputed.  I always thought it was old diner/bar slang that meant "throw out," with a contextual secondary meaning of "not available" and dictionaries generally agree.  DOJ is claiming it means "to murder" in their case against former FBI Director James Comey.

     Defacing grass is hardly likely to amount to a "true threat" in the legal sense, but it's sure to rouse the administration's ire.  There's a big event coming up on the mall, and the setup and crowds will obliterate any marking on the grass: The "86" is going to get 86ed itself.

Models Of Leadership

     Vice President James David Vance is a weirdo who believes UFOs are demons.   He's right up there with Indiana Lieutenant Governor Micah Beckwith, though he appears to be slightly less bloody-minded than our local talent.

     Look, I get the GOP's hangup with wanting Executive Branch leaders in the general mold of a stern paterfamilias/grouchy grampa, some of whom will even try to run interference for their junior partners.  In a party bending to authoritarianism, "hetman" principle is inevitable.  But where do they get this string of freakish thinkers for the Number Two spot?

     It used to be the great weakness of the GOP was that they stank on ice at mentorship.  Presidents, Governors, even Senators tended to pick "safe" seconds and helpers, Party-line fools or sycophants who could be counted on to be no threat to the guy with the big desk.  But they were rarely way out there -- they left that to the Democrats on one side and the John Birchers on the other (and the Dems tended to marginalize their whackiest, too).

     Anymore, the kids are letting their freak flags fly, and heaven help the Union.  It's for sure they won't.

That Was...

     Monday wasn't fun.  Tuesday wasn't great, either: my back.  I've been living on aspirin and sleeping on an ice pack, walking as much as I can manage, and I'm getting better, but oh, jeepers.  I did not see this coming.

     I mean, it could be worse.  I could be stuck in a country rapidly sliding down into competitive authoritarianism, in which one party's politicians were uniformly crooks, cranks and grifters, while the other party distinguished itself by fielding many more plain old hacks and allowing the occasional idealist to slip though, counterbalanced by a scattering of outright weirdos; not that their opposite numbers didn't have a few of those, too.

     Oh, wait.

     The United States may be the only two-party democracy (in the broadest sense) that does itself in by the two parties leaping off a precipice, one shouting, "Hey, everybody, lookit me!  I can fly!" while the other party mutters, "Oh dear," and frantically tries to improvise a parachute from a pocket handkerchief all the way down.  They'll both make identical splatters when they hit the ground.

     The next person who gives me a version of "Same old same-old" in response to our present crisis is going to get the unexpurgated version of this diatribe, because no, it's not.  I'm looking back on LBJ and Nixon and both Bushes and Bill Clinton with fond regret: we didn't realize how good we had it at the time.

Seen In A Glass, Darkly....

     There's no darker glass, at least in metaphor, than a monitor or TV screen.  I had occasion to rewatch the film Civil War recently and, juxtaposed with radio and video coverage of the current mess in the Middle East, especially Israel's ongoing invasion of Lebanon, it makes for sobering viewing.  And the movie's deliberately incoherent conflict (it's about war correspondents, after all, not war) looks less and less so as time goes by.  Even the alliance between Texas and California as the "Western Forces:" if you had told an American or Russian in 1932 that they were going to end up fighting on the same side of a major war within a decade, they would have laughed at you.  A separatist California and a Texas "taking back its Lone Star" might find themselves with as much in common as Churchhill and FDR did with Stalin.

     The United States of Civil War aren't united. Some regions are in denial; a vast sweep of states are, apparently, largely untouched.  Others are less fortunate, crowded by internal refugees or wracked by war, buildings bombed, populations decimated, civil government gone or powerless.

     The second Trump administration has shown a marked propensity to route FEMA disaster relief (and similar aid) to GOP-supporting states and cites, and not to Democrat areas.  This is entirely aside from any overall reductions in aid: whatever there is to be had, you're a lot less likely to receive it if you live in a blue region than if you live in a red one, no matter how you chose to vote.

     ICE and CBP enforcement has shown a similar pattern, leaning more heavily on cities and states with Democrats in power and far less where the Republicans hold a majority of elected offices.

     Depending on where you live, it's life as usual, and what's all the fuss about -- or it's anything but usual.

     Civil War?  You're already soaking in it, in the slow, nightmare preliminary steps.

     There's still time; we may yet wake up, get a sip of water or take a trip down the hall, and return to blissful rest.  Or the nightmare could turn for the worse.

     None of us can be sure how this movie, these very American dreams, will play out.

     The 2026 and 2028 elections are crucial.  Choose wisely.

A Capsule Illustration

      Here's how ostensibly neutral journalism goes wrong -- though this example isn't journalism nearly so much as it is stenography: The Hill covered Secretary of Defense "Pete" Hegseth's commencement address at West Point this morning.

     One the face of it, it's straightforward reporting: who, what, where, when.  His remarks are quoted extensively -- with zero historical context.  In the Secretary's opinion, West Point was adrift in a sea of horrific wokery until he came along and freed officers from having to worry their decisions might be second-guessed by higher-ups, that there might be consequences to bad decisions, and -- oh, hurrah -- he's returned the painting of Robert E. Lee in full Confederate uniform to the academy's library.*

     There is passing mention of the coalition of Democratic federal legislators who spoke out to remind military officers of their duty to refuse illegal orders -- but even that leans heavily into the President declaring such a statement "treason" (it isn't) and the Department of Justice's attempt to have them indicted, which was refused by the grand jury -- and remember, "a halfway decent prosecutor can get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich."

     The Secretary's wild notions and wilder orders and rearrangements at the Department of Defense are not normal, and trying to normalize them with reporting that parrots his talking points without showing their imaginary basis won't make them okay.  
____________________
* Complete, it should be noted, with a slave holding his horse.  Not that readers of The Hill got any of that context.  Nope, all they read was Secretary Hegseth's celebratory quote, "...you've seen...statues taken down, paintings placed in the basement."  Statues and paintings of whom, Mr. Secretary?  And what could they possibly have done to deserve such ignominy?

A Government Of Smart-Assed Punks

      The current collection of ne'er-do-wells, failsons, solipsistic opportunists, toadies, religious extremists and other vile nutjobs and crooks -- see the list from Blazing Saddles -- running things in Washington D.C. and throughout the Federal government includes a great many men and women of a familiar type, one that comes tagging along no matter what party is in power: arrogant punks, secure in their access to authority and/or knowledge of how to manipulate the law.  They sneer and wink their way through Congressional hears and press conferences, not just lacking in humility but contemptuous of it.

     Yesterday, the Department of Justice announced they have issued an indictment against six Cubans allegedly involved in shooting down two unarmed U. S. private airplanes in 1996.  The planes were operated by Brothers To The Rescue, an effort to help people fleeing Cuba by sea.  There are genuine questions of fact -- Cuba says the planes were in their airspace, the U.S. says they were over international waters.*  There are genuine issues of the Cuban government being repressive and generally awful, of the need to help people who got to sea in inadequate vessels; there's a lot of go work out in court, and plenty of room to argue over what court it should be, or if diplomacy is a better way to sort things out; or even if thirty years is too long to wait.

     But one of the Cubans is Raúl Castro.  He was in charge of their defense department at the time, and later served at President and leader of the Cuban Communist party, positions from which he has since stepped down.  He's 94 now.  Age is no shield from criminal prosecution (though you do have to wonder what the courts could do to him that Time has not already done or is about to do).  He's charged in the U.S.; we don't have an extradition agreement with Cuba, naturally enough, and there the matter sits.

     Or does it?  Acting U. S. Attorney General Todd Blanche, speaking at the press conference announcing the indictment yesterday, said this to reporters: "There was a warrant issued for his arrest. So we expect that he will show up here, by his own will or by another way."  Nudge-nudge, wink-wink.

     Cuba's government is far from admirable.  Raul Castro is no teddy bear.  The incident in question was tragic at best.  But the acting AG is hinting and shrugging his way through the kidnapping of a former foreign head of state, in his own country.  That's fine for the movies, but in the real world?  It's not.  Oh, we've probably all got lists of leaders and former leaders we'd like to see nabbed and hauled before a court (if not worse), but that's not how it works.  It's how wars start, and there are plenty enough of them simmering already.  Regular, ordinary Cubans are already suffering and the kind of military intervention it would take will only make things worse for them.

     But to the smart-assed punks of the world, the "little people" don't matter.  They're up there parading on the world stage, all suits and uniforms, legal writs and jet planes, bombs falling clean, high above the dust and blood and tears.  People getting killed are just a handy prop to them, to be pulled out and put to use decades after the fact.
____________________
* All things being equal, I'm a lot more inclined to trust the accuracy of U.S. radar than Cuba's; but unless you were staring at those screens at the time, it's a matter of opinion.

Crazy Pills? Voters Eat Them Like Candy

      Apparently, crazy wins.  At least in some elections.

     This post could have been called, "Why I'm no longer a Libertarian," except I never was a big-L Libertarian.  The state party was always too welcoming to people whose ideas skirted racism, eugenics and/or religious extremism.  It might have been called "Why I stopped being a default Republican voter," since it used to be that most of Indiana's GOP politicians were safe choices: they didn't support change.  Cautious to the point of stodginess, when the state did manage to change the laws and regulations, they stayed changed.  Progress was slow but it didn't go backwards.

     The problem was, some voters wanted something different -- and it wasn't classical libertarianism.  It wasn't steady-on conservatism.  It wasn't New Deal progressivism, either; it wasn't even old-time machine politics, with cigars (and and more substantial rewards) for party workers and the well-connected and damn-all for individuals, groups and organizations on the outs.  No, what voters wanted was--

     But why should I try to formulate it, when Kentucky's Thomas Massie put it so well in 2017?

     "All this time, I thought they were voting for libertarian Republicans. But after some soul searching I realized when they voted for Rand and Ron [Paul] and me in these primaries, they weren't voting for libertarian ideas—they were voting for the craziest son of a bitch in the race. And Donald Trump won best in class, as we had up until he came along."*

     So far, what voting for crazy has got us is gas over $4.00 a gallon -- over $5.00 in seven states, fueled by a simmering war of choice with Iran; ballooning measles cases in the U.S., a hantavirus outbreak that officials assure us is bottled up, a rare strain of ebola without any vaccine or specific treatment erupting in Africa not far from overcrowded and under-sanitized refugee camps, and a President who just got immunity from federal income tax enforcement, while building himself a combination bunker/ballroom and declaring, "I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation, I don’t think about anybody. I think about one thing: We cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon. That’s all. That’s the only thing that motivates me."

     I'm not too keen on a nuclear-armed Iran† -- who, other than some Iranians, is? -- but bombing their nuclear program flat whenever it got too busy seemed to be working.  Not as well as the enforced treaty they were under for a few years, but it worked.  At present, they've got more incentive than ever to be building a Bomb, and I think only the fact that they can shut down the Strait of Hormuz and dare the world to do anything about it has distracted them from whatever remains of their nuke effort.  Naval mines are cheaper than Manhattan Projects, and there's less to worry about downwind if one goes off unexpectedly.

     The thing about leaving out big bowls of crazy pills is that eventually everyone either freaks out or passes out.‡  I don't know if we've reached that point yet, and I'm worried about just what form it will take if we do.

     After World War Two, the United States took on, however imperfectly, the role of the world's designated driver.  We've now given up on it and joined the partying.  It's fun, fun fun -- until we wrap the T-Bird around a tree.
_______________________
* Massie tried to keep up, but as of this morning, he's no longer the craziest S.O.B running for U. S. House in Kentucky, having lost his primary to Ed Gallrein.
 
† I'm not especially happy with a nuclear-armed anybody.  We're stuck with the countries that already are, but expanding membership in that club is a very bad idea.
 
‡ Or, in fact, leaves.

Do Your Homework, Politicians

      I usually run radio news in the morning as I clean up the kitchen and make breakfast, and this morning, they were interviewing a U. S. Congressman on a recent mass shooting in his district.

     Not knowing the man, not even knowing his party when I heard the interview, I was struck by how much he sounded like a schoolkid called on to deliver a book report when they had not read the book, right down to desperately riffing on the title.

     "Congressperson" is essentially an impossible job if you make an honest effort at it.  A good staff can help, knowing or at least looking up the things the officeholder needs to know and feeding them just enough information, right before they need to know it.  It's not even dishonest: it's effective staff command.  Nobody can know everything that job requires 'em to know; the best we can hope for is that they dig in and learn the most salient stuff, and get good support for the rest.

     But this morning's guy?  At a guess, he'd seen news reports; he had some idea of the location, might have shaken hands or given a campaign speech there, but he hadn't even hit Wikipedia for more information.

     I'd have to know more about him before I made my mind up, but if I lived in his district, I'd sure be finding out.  House and Senate seats are not sinecures.  They're not supposed to phone it in.  Do the darn homework!  Is it a hard job?  Yes, it's extraordinarily hard, and if they do it right, the paycheck-to-effort ratio is lousy.

     I'm sick and tired of Senators and Representatives who won't do the work.  I dislike 'em more than the few whose politics I dislike who actually show up to interviews and events -- and their Chamber -- with a good grasp of what's going on (or even the mere appearance of understanding): at least they put in the effort.  Even if it's glib, facile and based on a quick sheet of talking points a staffer handed 'em at the last minute, better that than trying to get by on BS and blather. 

Nuttier Than Ever

     Indiana's Lieutenant Governor continues to express peculiar opinions -- now he's concerned "Marxist Democrats" are going to lay the groundwork for an "Islamic Caliphate," right here in River Cit- er, Indiana.

     Take this as your regular reminder that not even our arch-conservative Governor Mike Braun wanted to run with this guy as his Number Two; the state GOP leadership made him do so.  And Indiana Democrats, while they're certainly Democrats, run more in the Evan Bayh mold, Lefty-Centrist or even a little Right, depending on the issue and the individual.  (Our actual Hoosier socialists -- Eugene V. Debs, for instance -- never hid it.)

     I'm not at all sure why he thinks there's any love or collusion between Islamic fundamentalists and Marxists; history suggests they're not exactly compatible, from Afghanistan to Chechnya to the Uyghurs.*  He appears to be just piling up scary things so he can warn everyone of the terrible, terrrrrible dangers that he's sure only an application of the exact right kind of Jesus to civil government can protect against -- I'm surprised he didn't throw feminism or transgender people in, as well.  Oooga-booga!  Guys like him live their life as if it's an episode of Scooby-Doo, never realizing that they're not the good-hearted "meddling kids" but the man in the monster mask.

     Bonus: Ohh, friend, either you're closing your eyes to a situation you do not wish to acknowledge or you are not aware of the caliber of disaster indicated....

     Always doubt the motives of a man who's pushing you for a quick emotional reaction; he's reaching for your wallet -- or your fundamental freedoms. 
________________
* Largely but not entirely Muslim.

Aw, Spare Me

     My family, what's left of it, sometimes shares nostalgic text messages about our happy childhood, and that's fine; we're all pretty old and enjoyable memories are a great comfort.

     Thing is, I disliked childhood.  I never saw anything clearly at farther away than arm's length until I was eight years old -- after being chided for years, "Don't you see it?  Oh, look there!" and not figuring out the reason why.  They tell me what a bright and inquisitive child I was, and darned right: I was trying to figure out the trick to understanding those blurred shapes.

     I spent all of first grade in trouble for not paying attention to what was on the blackboard, and all of second grade being humored as a child who was clearly, mystifyingly, unable to learn much.

     Here's a free tip: if your child is sitting a foot away from the TV or computer (etc.), it might be a good idea to get their vision checked.  Those halcyon years are apparently way better when you can see what's going on.

--

     This post started out to be a rant about news coverage of the current President, which still veers between normalizing stuff with an "Oh, that wacky, limits-testing Republican!" tone and pundits claiming that this time he's gotten himself way too far out on a limb or askew from popular opinion or whatever, and he's about to be brought to heel.  Yeah, well, his will to power is unprecedented for all it borders on incoherent -- and I can write that as someone who was reading newspapers during the Johnson and Nixon Administrations, though I did need some help with the big words in LBJ's early years.  And just who or what. exactly, is going to rein the man in?  His party?  Don't count on it.  Congress?  Nope.  The Courts?  The Supreme Court is brought and paid for, or a large chunk of the Court's conservative majority is. (Look up Leonard Leo, who is to the Right what they say George Soros is for the Left.)

     The misadventure with Iran may yet prove to be an own goal he can't avoid.  Fuel and fertilizer prices are nowhere near done spiking, even if the Strait of Hormuz magically opens up this afternoon.  It will likely be a year or more before the disruption works its way through the system and once it has, prices are unlikely to drop much.  2026 and 2027 will be hungry years.  How hungry remains to be seen, and this is the kind of thing that loses elections -- but it's also the kind of thing that powers major upheavals in systems of government.  So don't tell me "We've got him now!" when that pig isn't even in the poke.

     Chaos is Mr. Trump's very own briar patch. He's not well-spoken; he has never struck me as being particularly bright in a puzzle-solving way.  But give him a clamorous mess, and so far, he has a real skill for coming out on top.  Maybe it's all just bluster and bullshit and associates who have figured out how to profit by upholding and riding his coattails, but it works for him, even as it leaves most of us worse off -- and it leaves his rank and file followers sufficiently less worse off than the people they (and he) most dislike that they have not been minding the downside.  That's a formula for a certain kind of political success, one largely confined to authoritarian, personalist movements.

--

     I believed I was out of childhood when, finally, I got to the point that I was free to starve on my own merits.  I wasn't done growing up until I learned that sometimes, you need a hand when things get bad.

     I won't believe we're done with Trumpism until we are -- and we're putting in the effort to build better checks and balances, to keep Congress, the courts and the Executive Branch more protective of their own powers and less inclined to get in one another's pockets.  If we do not, the system will remain vulnerable to whatever demagogue, from whichever part of the political spectrum, comes along next to work it for their own gain.

And The Winner Is...

      Advertising! That was the biggest winner in Indiana's primary elections yesterday.  There was a big uptick in ad money, largely spurred by supporters of President Trump's efforts to unseat the seven State Senators who thwarted redistricting efforts.

     Turnout was unusually high -- in Marion Country, nearly double that of the previous two primaries.  And that's half of the story.

     The other half is not so great.  All that money pouring in, those TV ads painting that candidate as a closet liberal* and this candidate as a true-hearted America First† stalwart did bring people to the primary polls in record numbers, but that record still amounts to a 14.9% turnout instead of the usual single digits.  Just over eighty-five percent of registered voters are, apparently, okay with whoever the rest of us pick.  I'm honored, I guess -- but should you really trust me when you have a chance to put your own two cents in?

     (And by the way, my thanks to the two parties, especially the GOP, for spending the big dollars buying airtime from my employer, whom you otherwise revile.  You helped keep my paycheck from bouncing, in a market where my industry's share of dwindling advertising dollars continues to shrink.)

     Looking at horserace-level results, of the seven primaried Republicans, five lost to nearly indistinguishable challengers, replacing Tweedle-don't with Tweedle-do.  One held on, and the seventh hung in the balance over a difference of three (3) votes for a long time before being called for the incumbent.  Still okay staying home for the primaries?

     Don't look at me to lay a feather on the scales against either candidate's heart in that close contest.‡ I voted in the Democrat primary.  These are times to pick a side, and downstream of the 2021 insurrection, I'll never vote for a Republican.  They could have cleaned house, tossed out the vandals, religious extremists and authoritarians.  They chose to retcon recorded history and double down instead, so I'll content myself with picking the best Democrats I can find.  (As the late P. J. O'Rourke said of Hillary Clinton in 2016, "...she’s wrong within normal parameters.") 

     The 2026 Indiana primary is done.  The main event is in November -- and the future of the country is on the line.  Nobody's coming to save us, nobody except for us.
_________________
* Despite, in every instance I could check, a voting record somewhat to the right of Genghis Khan and fulsome support of the incumbent President on nearly every issue except redistricting.
 
† Seriously, when did they stop teaching U. S. History in our schools?  That slogan has an ugly history, only barely outside living memory.  Yes, the surface meaning of the words is just fine -- in much the same way as an English word of Scandinavian origin meaning miserly has utterly no relation to a vile racist slur and swastikas have a long and innocent history in Greek, Indian and Native American art.  People of good sense avoid 'em anyway, because the negative associations are far too strong.
 
‡ Indiana Senate District 23 isn't my neighborhood anyway.

Primary Day

     Today's election results should be interesting.  The outcomes for the Indiana Republicans being primaried at the behest of the Republican president may tell us a little -- not a lot, but a little -- about the extent to which Mr. Trump still commands his base.

     Hoosiers remain crossgrained, and tend to prefer the familiar to the new; the latter trait probably finds stronger expression among GOP voters than Democrats.  On the other hand, a lot of the former have hitched their wagons very firmly so Mr. Trump's star.  So we shall see.  A rising star -- or a falling one?

Election Homework Done

     A good start for a Monday: I have located our polling place (a little Lutheran church that has hosted voting several times in recent years) and re-reviewed the (few) primary choices.  Indiana runs closed primaries, but neither party fielded a whole lot of candidates; the Democrats managed a full slate, while the Republicans skipped a few offices, but neither one offered more than one choice for many offices.

     Most of them are unglamorous jobs, like county assessor and clerk of the courts, where there's a lot of actual work and not much shaking hands and making speeches.  Only a few are even useful stepping stones to anything bigger; so what you end up with are people who want the job, either in and of itself or to show they're good members of their party, willing to step up, run, and (usually) do the work if they win.

     Someone's got to do the dull grunt work of government, and I have made my list and checked it more than twice.  I'm going to be interested in turnout numbers; it's not a great predictive metric for the general election this Fall, but it's what we've got.  If turnout for the primary is usually high (or low), that'll be a hint what to expect.

Wow

      It's more frustrating than I would have thought.  My replacement desktop computer has been delayed by a day, and I'm not good with it.

     Which is silly.  It will be here when it gets here, and until it does, I have many alternatives.

     I can't say the same about the current Administration: there are no alternatives, and they are taking the kinds of actions that suggest to me they expect a drubbing at mid-terms and want to accomplish as much of their extreme agenda as possible before the axe falls.

     From paying off energy companies to not build new wind and solar plants -- while waging a war that is driving up the price of oil! -- to making abortions ever more difficult to obtain legally, to last minute attempts at redistricting now that the U. S. Supreme Court has finished gutting the Voting Rights Act and frivolous, vengeful prosecutions (most notably over a former FBI director posting a photo of the number "8647" to social media, despite the current President himself having posted a picture that included "8646" and a bound and gagged Joe Biden during the latter's time in office*).  None of it is popular outside of the most dedicated portions of the MAGA base or those to the extreme Right of even it.

     That's both Wow-worthy and frustrating.  This is well past "political hardball," and on its way to a soft coup or autogolpe.  I think a majority of voters won't like it and will register their disapproval at the ballot box this Fall.  But will it matter?  I don't know.  And that worries me most of all.
______________________
* They're both childish things to post.  This is exactly the kind of ultimately petty tit-for-tat that led me to start using only actual names and titles for politicians, no matter what I thought of them.

Punished For Retroactive Bad Taste

     There was a time when you didn't mess with The Mouse.  Used to be, if legislators started talking about the need for copyright reform, you knew one or more of the copyrights covering a certain famous animated cartoon rodent and his pals was about to expire.

     Back when every major TV network changed hands and ended up belonging to one huge corporation or another,* Disney got hold of ABC.  They've never let go.

     And they had deep pockets.  TV networks in the United States own only a few of the stations that carry them, with the remained being independently-owned "affiliates."  ABC's got seven stations that are all theirs at present.  And in the U.S., the FCC regulates stations: anyone using up over-the-air RF spectrum has to have a license.  Networks themselves don't get a lot of FCC regulatory interaction; the individual stations do have to promise to be honest and fair, friendly and helpful, considerate and caring, courageous and strong, and responsible for what they say and do, and to respect themselves and others, respect authority, use resources wisely, make the world a better place, and....  No, wait,  that's Girl Scouts; but the FCC regs for broadcast stations are almost the same thing, plus a pile of technical stuff.

     ABC was a latecomer among radio networks; NBC had "Red" (primo stuff) and "Blue" (B-grade, things they were trying out, some highbrow shows that didn't make a profit) networks serving different stations and went into WW II under an anti-trust cloud because of it.  Once the war was over, Uncle Sam made 'em sell one off, and of course it was Blue that went.

     A candy company bought it up and eventually changed the name from "Blue" (c'mon, the word already had that connotation) to ABC, the kid brother of networks, gamely charging after the older, larger NBC and CBS (and Mutual), doing their best to keep up.  The first two were already into TV and as television bloomed, ABC leapt in after them, underfunded, scrappy, willing to try almost anything.  (After a few experiments, including developing Meet The Press, Mutual stuck with good, dependable radio.  They're gone now.)

     ABC remained the upstart network for decades, until Fox (entertainment, not News) came along and showed there were realms of edginess yet to be explored.

     And with that as background, their evening talk-show host Jimmy Kimmel, a few days before the White House Correspondents Dinner, made a tasteless joke about the First Lady and how she'd look at the dinner, referencing the 23-year age gap between her and Mr. Trump (and perhaps her usually-serious expression): he said she had "a glow like an expectant widow."

     It's funnier if you don't see public figures you dislike as quite human.

     It's not funny in hindsight after a guy apparently tried to make her a widow at the dinner.

     It's much less funny if you react in an all-too-human way: the Trumps aren't laughing.  FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, who has crossed swords with Kimmel and ABC once already, and blinked, announced the handful of TV stations directly owned by ABC are now up for license renewal, well ahead of schedule.  They've got thirty days to get their paperwork together and filed (and there's rather a lot of it), and they're going under the microscope.

     This is bureaucracy-as-punishment, and it is punishment not so much for a crass joke but for failing to predict the future when the joke was told.  It's a clear violation of the First Amendment, which protects even cruel and insensitive speech.

     The Mouse still has deep pockets, and though they have, finally, let the earliest version of their well-loved Mickey slip out from beneath copyright protection, Disney may decide to fight this one out; knuckling under will just get them more of the same, and the burden is likely to be laid more heavily on them than the three other major networks.  Or they may try judo: those "O&O" TV stations represent the smallest part of ABC's income; running them, mostly in major metropolitan areas, is more for prestige and ready access to newsmakers and they could easily sell them off and stand back, largely insulated from the wrath of Chairman Carr and the President he serves.
____________________
* Arguably, when General Electric bought RCA, NBC wasn't their main interest: RCA had a nice collection of lucrative government contracts, including plenty with the Department of Defense, plus an array of patents to warm the cockles of shareholder's hearts -- or wallets.  Nevertheless, GE held on to the network through some years of David Letterman ribbing that kept the company name front and center, before selling it off and making money on the deal.

"We're All Looking For The Person Responsible...."

     Who's most likely to commit politically-motivated violence, the Left or the Right?

     It is unlikely to surprise you that the answer is "people askew from reality," close to a wash between Republican-or-farther-right and Democrat-or-leftier, with "fricking incoherent" in close third place.

     Most people, including the ones with political opinions that many Americans find reprehensible, know you can't assassinate your way to a better world, and a little selective murder produces only more dead people and grieving families.  While major political upheaval often involves killings, it doesn't work the other way (and most Americans are not looking for major upheaval -- again, not even a majority of the ones you disagree with most).

     Don't get sucked into the nitwittery.

I Suppose I Should Comment

     It's appropriate to make some comment about the disruption at the White House Correspondents Dinner.

     It was something of a fiasco long before it started; the famously touchy President Trump has -- unusually for a sitting President -- never attended while in office until last night.  The event is often something of a mutual roast, it's always been a little too cozy, and mostly it's a rare fancy dinner for the White House Press corps, many of whom will who wallow in it while affecting disdain.  The entertainment this year was going to be a mentalist instead of the typical comedian, a transparent shying away from discord.  It was widely anticipated that Mr. Trump was going to go hard on the assembled reporters.

     And--  Most of it never happened.  Someone with a gun tried to crash the party, and failed.

     Security at events featuring high-ranking Federal politicians is always pretty tight, and the professionals do their best to manage every rational threat they can think of.  This means an irrational assailant has an advantage, and indeed, every known attempt on the lives of Presidents since John Wilkes Booth, successful or not, has been made by someone who was, in some way or another, not rational; they appear to have acted alone* in every case.  Add someone else to that kind of a plan, and it leaks -- and should.

     There's generally some distance in well-controlled space between the security gate(s) with metal detectors, suspicious Secret Service types, etc. and the room itself, and that's on purpose.  (I've had to pass though that exact kind of gantlet† on a couple of occasions.  It's serious business.)  It buys some time.  It worked just as it should last night; the would-be attacker -- whose precise target(s) remain unknown, but there's only one way to bet -- was stopped long before he got through the last set of doors.

     And I'm glad he was.  I happen to think Donald Trump is a loathsome human being, and his inner circle are no better.  They are doing immense harm to the proper functioning of the Federal government, to American society in general, and to both our country's stranding in the world and to world peace in general.  But nobody -- nobody -- not presenting an imminent mortal threat rates extrajudicial killing by some random guy with a grudge and/or a screw loose (or by anyone else, for that matter).  Impeachment, criminal trials, 25th Amendment, losing big at the ballot box?  I wish all of it on him.  But not what was successfully headed off last night.

     Of course, I have also been hearing claims it was all faked, or "allowed to happen."  I wouldn't count on it.  Everything about the sequence of events suggests very strongly one more Lone Gunman, getting as far as he got because he started out well askew.  And I think Trump and company are enormously more reactive than proactive.  They'll make hay with this; they already started to within the first hour.  But they didn't set it up.

     In a time of chaos, this is just more damnable chaos, and the worst people will proceed to turn it to their own ends as much as they can.
_______________________
* The Kennedy assassination conspiracy theorists are welcome to debate that among themselves, but as far as can be proven, it is true.  (IIRC, there has been one attempt by a pair of desperate and borderline men working together, which failed.)
 
† Although the words are so widely misused that most dictionaries have given up, a gauntlet is a kind of glove, one that once upon a time was occasionally flung down in challenge.  A gantlet is a double row of your nominal peers, or perhaps Native Americans, who are going to whale the tar out of you as you run between them.  This does not sound like a good time, and heavy gloves aren't going to be much help.

LARPing His Faith

     It's been three days and I almost forgot -- or perhaps I should say that it is so preposterous that I nearly dismissed it out of hand.  But it's true: Indiana's delusional nutjob Lieutenant Governor Micah Beckwith continues to behave as if he's a supporting character in a Left Behind prequel film.

     The latest installment was prompted by his outrage that the Virginia legislature and voters had the temerity to redistrict the state's Congressional districts to favor Democratic candidates -- this in response to--  It's kind of a long checkers game.  I'd better review it.

     In late 2025, Donald Trump, frustrated by his party's bare majority in the U.S. House of Representatives, called on Republican-led states  ("About four," per the President) to gerrymander themselves.  The effort began with Texas, despite worries by some of that state's GOP politicians that it might dilute solidly-red districts.
     In August 2025, the Texas legislature approved a map that gave the state five more Republican-leaning districts than it previously had.  This was promptly challenged in court and worked its way up to the U.S. Supreme Court, who let the new maps stand in December of this year.
     Meanwhile, California's Governor Gavin Newsom called on their legislature to counter the move.  That's not so easy as in Texas: California has an Independent Redistricting Commission that draws their U.S. House maps.  So the legislature had to put a referendum before voters in a tearing hurry: would they approve bypassing the Commission for the next set of maps?  The referendum was successful.  California's new maps moves five districts into the safely-Democrat column.
     Over in Missouri, Republicans planned to split up a Democrat-held district centered on Kansas City.  That's still in process, having cleared the legislature, been challenged in court and upheld, and challenged by petition, which might result in a referendum to overturn the new maps.  Or it might not; that's still up in the air.
     The North Carolina legislature successfully redrew their maps and will probably replace a Democratic Congressperson with a Republican.
     Utah's been going back and forth.  Anti-gerrymandering provisions of state law limit the amount of juggling either party can do, and attempts to carve up Salt Lake City into four districts that combine with the surrounding areas to create safe spaces for GOP candidates have failed after a court challenge.  SLC is likely to continue to be represented in the House by a Democrat.
     Indiana, four-square Republican, MAGA as can be, lacking any kind of independent board or commission to decide House districts and having no anti-gerrymandering laws, should have been a shoo-in.  But Hoosiers are muleish -- and cautious.  Redistricting can water down "safe" districts.  Confronted with an informal directive from Washington, DC, the State Senate mustered enough votes to stand pat: Indiana districts remain unchanged, and the dissenting Republicans who kept it that way are being primaried.
     Maryland has tried to redraw their maps to favor Democrats, an effort which appears stalled.   New York has had the same general result.
     Florida has changes in the works; their intent is to give Republicans an edge.  It's a multistep process with commissions, committees and a special legislative session, and it has only just begun.
     And that brings me, at least, to Virginia.  Remember Virginia?  That state has also cot an independent commission to draw up their House maps; the legislature managed to pass a proposed amendment to bypass it, and put the notion before the state's voters to decide: partisan maps for 2026, or not?  They voted to redistrict.

     And that effort in Virginia, that result at the end of all the preceding back-and-forth, is what drew Micah Beckwith's ire: "Democrats aren't necessarily all dark, but they are being led by the minions and the voices of darkness—they're going to win. They're playing to win. And so we have to wake up and guys step up. If we go on the battlefield, we will win. The question is, will we enter the battlefield?"

     Got it?  In a fight they didn't start, on a "battlefield" where the Democrats had to get voter approval to redraw maps while the Republicans can just let the various state legislatures rip,* he's still worried about the "voices of darkness," and warns Republicans, "Evil will find you."

     Better yet?  Ignoring polls showing increasing voter unhappiness with Republicans, all of this shifting around is pretty much a wash.  The balance lies in the few remaining competitive districts -- and in public sentiment.  I wouldn't advise either party to count those chickens before they have all come home to roost, no matter how much they want to believe someone's goose is cooked.  I know which side I'd like to see lose, but the results remain to be seen.
________________
* It is nevertheless not a bug but a feature that states decide how to draw their own maps.  Nor is it Federally prohibited to draw 'em up to favor one party or another.  "Fifty experiments in democracy" doesn't promise they'll all be noble, fair-minded efforts at uplift, or even especially wise.  Don't like it?  Vote in a new set of crooks!