Has Trump Overreached?

I heard “out of the corner of my ear” on today’s Today show that Trump had fired several departments’ inspector generals.  I Googled for it; and it turns out to be true:  he did indeed fire 17 IGs overnight, presumably to replace them with the usual yes-men.  I won’t bother including any links since several stories from outlets like Reuters all the way to Bezos’ Washington Post showed up right at the top.

It turns out that there’s a 2020 law that says that the president must give Congress 30 days notice before such a firing; and several congresscritters (including Republicans like Grassley) have already opposed the move.  We’ll see whether there are enough principled Republicans for the Congress to say, “no, you can’t do that”.

Discrimination, Inequity and Exclusion (DIE)

One down, 1460 to go.

I’m not sure that the pardons and sentence commutations are the big story, although that’s what the media are covering, including some mild comments by a handful of Republicans.  Getting less media attention is the executive order putting all federal DEI workers on paid leave and effectively shutting down all government DEI activity.  I have every expectation that we’ll soon see many more departures from basic human decency.

If the numbers I’ve seen on the WWW are true (I haven’t verified them myself), Trump squeeked by with a margin of just 1.5% of the popular vote; and it seems obvious to me that he couldn’t have achieved anywhere near that without the roughly 80% of Christian fundies voting for their god’s chosen one.  All the other guesses, e.g., refusing to vote for a woman, white working class men being abandoned by the Democrats, although probably true, strike me as small potatoes by comparison.

I’m coming to the conclusion that the real problem we have is a faux religion that’s just an excuse to be prideful, hateful, self-satisfied DIEhards.  I wish I could be more understanding; but I’m finding myself simply disgusted.

I Watched Biden’s Farewell Address

He didn’t spend all his time bragging on himself as Trump would have done.  He mentioned some of the good things that have happened during his administration, but that wasn’t the main part of the speech.

About ten minutes in, he started to go after the wannabe oligarchs and even briefly likened them to the late 19th century robber barons.  He warned about the rising influence of social media and its spreading of misinformation; and he warned about what he called the “tech-industrial complex” as an analogy to Eisenhower’s “military-industrial complex’.  This part was encouraging.

The next important election in the U.S., one in which you and I don’t get to vote, will happen on Saturday, Feb. 1, when the Democratic National Committee will elect their next chair.  We’ll find out then whether the Democrats will want to be a real opposition party and go after the 21st century robber barons, or if it’ll just be more of the same.  (I’m rooting for Ben Wikler who made the Wisconsin Democratic Party actually effective and who has Chuck Schumer’s endorsement at least.)

Here’s an Interesting Idea

Mike the Mad Biologist reminds us of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment.

If I were a member of the House or the Senate, I’d introduce a bill to remove the disability and see whether it gets a two-thirds majority in both houses.  That probably wouldn’t stop Trump because, even if the bill failed, we’d still need a finding that Trump engaged in insurrection or gave aid or comfort to those who did.  It would likely make the news, however; and that would be fun. 😎

LGBTQ+ People Are Not Going Back

Here’s a late addition to the support of Julia Serano’s post, and probably a boring one as well since others have already said it better than I, and I really have nothing to add.

But I do want to go on record as supporting LGBTQ+ rights which strikes be as just basic human decency.

(I also agree with others that we’re stuck with voting for politicians in the Democratic wing of the Oligarch party, but we should express our displeasure whenever we can at having no better choice.)

How They Can Think That

I think flex gave a good answer to the question in my previous post.

I’m now leaning toward an idea that I’ve had for quite a while which was reinforced by a recent e-mail message I got from Robert Reich’s Substack.  Here are three of what seem to me to be the important bits:

On Tuesday, according to exit polls, Americans voted mainly on the economy — and their votes reflected their class and level of education.

While the economy has improved over the last two years according to standard economic measures, most Americans without college degrees — that’s the majority — have not felt it.

While Republicans steadily cut taxes on the wealthy, Democrats abandoned the working class.

Yeah, professional Democrats and Republicans are pretty much united in their support of large corporations and billionaires (although the Republicans crank it up to eleven and the Democrats are much better on “social issues”).  That’s why I voted for Bernie Sanders in the primary when he was still a viable candidate (although I wasn’t a “Bernie bro” who stayed home out of spite).

I’d love to just quote the whole thing, but that goes way beyond “fair use”.  I guess the next job for this old fart is to figure out how to link to a particular post on somebody’s Substack.

How Can They Think That‽

I still can’t get my mind around the election results; but there’s something that’s nagging at me:  when I see shots of folks at Trump rallies, it looks to me like they believe, immediately and uncritically, everything he says.  How can they not know that he’s a liar?

flex has a comment on Mano’s blog that lists some things that one of their coworkers has said, including “Trump was never convicted of any crime.”  How can anyone not know that he was?

The only thing I can think of is that they get all their information from Rupert Murdoch and Elon Musk (or worse).  Is there anything we can do to get the truth out to these people?  (I’m not doing jack shit by posting this on FtB.  I’m “preaching to the choir” as they say; but I don’t know what else to do.)

SCOTUS’ Gang of Six Have Done It Again

From an e-mail from Robert Reich’s Substack:

… the Supreme Court decided today to allow Virginia to resume purging names from its voter registration rolls.  Virginia has purged 1,600 names in the last two months.

[The Justice Department argued] that Virginia’s purge violates the “quiet period” of the National Voter Registration Act, a three-decade-old federal law barring states from systematically removing voters from the rolls during the 90 days before a federal election.

Can anyone doubt that these people are totally shameless idealogues who craft opinions given partisan Republican talking points?

Mike the Mad Biologist links to a case of a Trump supporter who got purged in Texas, which gave me a good laugh, but is still something that shouldn’t have happened.

What I’ll Be Voting For

Siggy has a post about the importance of down-ballot voting, and giving examples from his ballot.  I wanted to follow his lead and give some examples of my own; but that turned out to be pretty long; so I decided to use up the space on my own blog instead.

School Boards

This is important.  We seriously need to keep the anti-fact folks off of them; so I always check out the candidates’ websites at least.  In the last school board election I had a vote in, there were five candidates for three positions.  I voted for one who had endorsements from several organizations with some version of “equity” in their names, one who had some version of “inclusive” in several of his issues, and one who likes teachers and thinks they should get a raise.  I declined to vote for a “human resources advisor” and a guy who had “parental rights” as an issue.

About a week from now:

There are 38 candidates in eleven races, U.S. President/Vice President, U.S. Senator, U.S. Representative District 2, Governor, Lt. Governor, Sec’y of State, State Treasurer, Atty. General, State Senate District 1, State Representative Distrint 92, St. Louis County Council District 6.  I see more Democratic than Republican yard signs in my neighborhood, so I might actually be voting on the winning side in the last three of those; in the others, almost certainly not.  Three of the races are, maybe, interesting.

U.S. Senator

Five candates.  In addition to the Libertarian and the Green, there’s a guy named Jared Young who’s running in something called the “Better” party.  His website is all about voting for an independent instead of a Democrat or a Republican.  Although I suppose I agree in principle, such a vote is way too dangerous this year.

The real choice is between the odious Josh Hawley and Lucas Kunce, a career Marine officer (now in the reserves), who seems to be a mostly mainstream Democrat with some progressive-leaning ideas.  He’s well-funded and has lots of TV ads that seem pretty effective to me.  Hawley is also well-funded and has lots of TV ads that, unsurprisingly, lie about Kunce.  I can only hope that Young pulls more votes from Hawley than from Kunce.  It would be cool if deep-red Missouri could flip a Senate seat. 😎  (I wouldn’t bet on it, though.)

U.S. Representative

The odius Ann Wagner is opposed by Ray Hartmann, the publisher of a left-leaning weekly newspaper, The Riverfront Times, and a minor local TV personality on our PBS affiliate.  He seems to have very little money; and his one TV ad strikes me as angry and inneffective.  I was hoping that this would be more fun than it turned out to be.

As a result of the last gerrymandering, Missouri’s Second Congressional District changed from leans Republican to safe Republican; and so the chance of flipping a House seat are slim to none.

Governor

The Democrat, Crystal Quade, grew up poor in Missouri’s bible belt, worked several waitress jobs to work her way through college, and eventually became the minority leader in the state House.  She seems to be very well-funded.  Let’s hope.

Six state constitutional amendments or propositions

Amendment 2 legalizes sports gambling, and amendment 5 sets up a new gambling district along the Osage River.  I’m ambivalent about gambling:  I’d like to keep sleazy people out of the state; but it’s probably too late for that; and legalizing it will probably mean more tax revenue.  (The TV ads for it are all about more money for schools, which is a lie.  There’s no requirement that additional revenue must go to schools.)  I’ll probably vote for both of them.

Amendment 3 overturns Missouri’s abortion ban.  I’m for that.

Amendment 6 funds various law enforcement jobs from higher court costs.  I’m against that.

Amendment 7 makes ranked-choice voting illegal.  Definitely gets my “no” vote.

Proposition A raises the minimum wage to $13.75/hour for 2025, and $15.00/hour for 2026.  Yea.

Other questions

There are three St. Louis County propositions.  I couldn’t find anything about them on the Internet beyond the text of the propositions themselves, so I still have no idea what all the legalese means.  I intend to abstain on these.

There are also 24 questions of the form, “Shall judge [name] of [court] be retained in office?”  I have no clue and will abstain on all of them.