The reckoning begins

        It looks like, in light of District Court Judge Beryl Howell's ruling yesterday, Rudy Giuliani will start facing consequences for his lies regarding the 2020 election.   In this case he was found liable for defaming election workers Ruby Freeman and her daughter Shaye Moss and causing them to go into hiding because of death threats on social media.

       Giuliani said despicable things about Freeman and Moss, calling them "vote scammers" and comparing them to drug dealers.  Now there will be a trial to determine how much monetary damages Guiliani will have to pay, in addition to the $90,000 in legal fees he will have to pay to the plaintiffs.  

      While Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss are collateral damage left in the wake of tRump's coup plot, they have every right to see justice served.  Here's hoping everyone who suffered harm as a result of Donny Two Scoops and his band and their reckless disregard of the law is compensated for their suffering.

They need to do better

        In the wake of wildfires sweeping the planet, the start of what promises to be a wild hurricane season in the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico and the fall of heat records all over the world, the GOP candidates for the presidential nomination are all singing from the hymnal of climate change denialism.  Vivek Ramaswamy went so far as to call climate change a hoax at the first debate.  Despite the fact more than 70% of Americans believe humans have caused climate change, presidential aspirants in the Republican party seem to feel they must play to the 28% of Americans who believe various conspiracy theories regarding climate change.  Or, possibly they are angling for campaign funds from various fossil fuel companies.

      If/ When the history of this era is written, fossil fuel extraction companies will be described as the villains of story.  However, the outsize political voice commanded by a tiny minority of global population here in the US will be a major component of the story.

Ginning up the rubes

       I have to admit the graphics showing the various legal actions facing tRump and his merry band of insurrectionists face during the coming year tickles my fancy.   However, what most cable news outlets and the MSM don't stress is the fact Donny Two Scoops and his legal team can file numerous motions to the trial judges which will slow down the timeline of the start of the trial itself.   I would be extremely surprised if any of the felony trials the Marmalade Menace is booked for start before the the summer of 2024.

Lies, liars and tRumpism

       On the weekend after his 4th indictment, the disgraced former guy claims he won the club championship at his Bedminster, NJ course, but that he shot a 67, presumably from the championship tees.  This, after he self reported his weight and height to be 6' 3" and 215 pounds.  

     On the very best day of his ignoble life, Donny Two Scoops could not have shot a 67 on a PGA championship course.  Also, his height and weight claims are unconnected with reality.  Even his most ardent supporters would probably agree the above claims are outright lies.  Yet a majority of Republicans believe him when he says the 2020 election was rigged against him.   As Paul Campos notes in the Lawyers, Guns and Money blog, Hannah Arendt had the right of it when she said the leader of a totalitarian state (or in this case a totalitarian cult) lies to remind his followers that he is the sole interpreter of reality for them.  It is a sad day when 35% or my fellow citizens will pledge the truth of whatever falls our of tRump's pie hole.

Lickspittiling for Dummies

       Although I wouldn't waste a minute of my life watching the Republican presidential debate on Wednesday, I have seen some snippets and heard commentary on each debater's performance.  From what I can gather, they all believe in climate change, but we shouldn't do anything about it;  we need to secure our borders, but they don't have a plan to do it and lastly, the justice system has been weaponized against Republicans.  So, where was the debate?

Flipping like burgers

         As the 19 defendants in Fani Willis' sweeping RICO indictment turn themselves in at the Fulton county courthouse this week, several, including Rudy Giuliani have requested meetings with Ms. Willis in advance of their arraignment.  I can smell the burgers, and many of them are ready to flip.

Projection, 24/7

        One of the things you can count on in the next election cycle is Republicans portraying Joe Biden as a drooling, senile old man who can barely get through a day without tripping over a sandbag or his own tongue.   Of course this is at odds with the other GOP meme; Joe Biden is a criminal mastermind who has been orchestrating a criminal enterprise his whole adult life.  What is it guys, because he can't be both.  However, he can be neither.  Possibly, he is an 80 year old man with a speech impediment doing a fairly good job in the most demanding occupation on earth.

     Meanwhile, the leading candidate for the Republican nomination for president is doing a fairly good  imitation of a doddering old fool playing at being the mastermind of a plot to subvert the 2020 election.  

Sucking the oxygen

      As Hawaiians continue to pickup the pieces of their lives in the aftermath of devastating wildfires and Californians brace for Hurricane Hilary, most of the news centers around the latest indictment of the former guy and its effect on the 2024 elections.   Mother Earth is burning and all we can think about is a washed up hustler's chances to bring down American democracy.

     Climate change is the number one existential threat to life on earth, period.   I realize a 2nd tRump administration would be a disaster for our ability to fight climate change, but the news media's  following of every twist and turn of Donny Two Scoops' fight to remain out of prison is not helping.  We should be learning how to fight climate change, not studying the minutia of our criminal justice system.

Deja Vu all over again

      Yogi Berra's malapropism seems more appropriate than ever in light of Fulton County district attorney Fani Willis' indictment of Donny Two Scoops and his not so merry band of election deniers and insurrectionists. 

      The same script played out, albeit more violently, in the south in the decades following the Civil War.  As a kid growing up in the 1950s and 60s in New York, I learned about the cause of the war, but the history of the aftermath might as well have been written and probably was by a white supremacist.  We learned about carpetbaggers who descended on the prostrate confederacy in the years after the war to profit on their fellow citizens circumstances.  we also learned about the "scalawags" or southerners who collaborated with them.  

     In reality, this was revisionist history which whitewashed the "war between the states" and those who brought the authoritarian Jim Crow states which held sway in the south for 90 years.

    Now, tRump and his henchmen want to bring a new era of hate to the south in the wake of Willis' attempt to bring accountability to the former guy.  Let's hope the textbook writers for the next generation brush up on the reality of southern and northern racism and its crippling effects on politics and the law.

When is it enough

        Donald tRump was indicted yesterday by a grand jury in Fulton County, Georgia along with 18 other men and women for trying to overturn the 2020 election in the state.  It is a sprawling document using the RICO statutes in Georgia law to describe a conspiracy to subvert the will of voters who cast their ballot for Joe Biden.

      It's hard to overstate the seriousness of the indictment as far as Donny Two Scoops is concerned.  He is caught on tape soliciting Georgia election officials to change over 11,000 votes to overturn the election.  He could potentially be convicted based solely on that one phone call.  Also, he can't expect a pardon from a Republican governor who doesn't have that power.   

     This trial may take up to two years to play out, but I can't imagine a world where a jury would fail to convict the disgraced former guy on many of the counts he is being tried for.

We have met the enemy, etc.

       As the grand jury in Fulton County, Ga., convenes today to hear prosecutor Fani Willis present evidence that implicates ex president Donald tRump in efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia, I can't help but wonder how we got here and why there aren't more state investigations into Donny Two Scoops and his band of merry corrupt lawyers.

      I suppose the infamous call the twice impeached, disgraced former president made to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, demanding he find 11,781 votes and thereby flip the state from Joe Biden to tRump, is so egregious it demanded action.   There doesn't seem to be smoking guns in other states where the tRump campaign tried to intervene.   It doesn't mean there were no illegalities involved.

    To paraphrase Rachel Maddow,  it's not so much the multiple indictments raining down on tRump, but how it is he got elected in the first place.   We the people enabled this and now we need to fix it.  Thanks to Fani Willis, accountability is starting to take place.

Another legend passes

       Robbie Robertson has left this mortal coil.   The lead singer and writer (some say) of many of the Band's iconic songs died at the age of 80.  I was never a huge fan of the group.  A good friend who knew Levon Helm, the drummer and lone American in the group said Helm felt Robertson hogged much of the credit for songwriting many of the Band's hits.  This soured me on Robertson, who may have offered a different story.    Regardless, Robertson and company put out a number of evocative songs that still have me singing along when I hear them.  The Weight, Up on Cripple Creek and The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down come to mind.   Besides, it's hard to work up any animus to a man with the same first name as me!  RIP, Robbie.

Treat us all that way

       Now that there is a possibility that Donny Two Scoops may actually have to spend the rest of his life in the crowbar hotel, those who can't imagine that happening are creating logistical roadblocks, such as protesting the Secret Service may have to assign men to a prison detail.  Really?  Pretty weak tea.  After their shift is over, the agents can go home, unlike the protectee.  

Above or Below

     After reading Jack Goldsmith's column in today's NYT, I no doubt experienced a blood pressure spike.  Goldsmith, an Assistant Attorney General during The Shrub's administration has cultivated an above the fray persona and has appeared as a non partisan talking head on left and right cable news shows.  In this latest essay, he reveals himself as a party apparatchik, issuing smarmy advice to special counsel Jack Smith and implying the Biden administration is persecuting poor Donald tRump to the detriment of the republic.

     I kept waiting for Goldsmith to come around to professing that despite the dangers of prosecuting an ex president, we must preserve the axiom no one is above the law.  But despite admitting tRump had created the mess we now find ourselves in, according to this Republican toady, the optics are just not right and anyhow it is all the Democrats' fault, somehow.

Slowly they turned

       tRump's main defense lawyer for the Jan. 6 conspiracy case, John Lauro, spent most of the day on Sunday running the tired "free speech" defense past an increasingly intolerant audience of pundits.   Obviously Cheeto Jesus and his henchmen prepared in advance for an incitement charge and when Jack Smith didn't deliver, they went with their canned response anyway.

     When Lauro got tired of being contradicted, he changed gears and tried what is now being called the "aspirational defense".  In this not so closely reasoned defense, the orange menace was not leading a criminal conspiracy, he was just asking politely for everyone from VP Mike Pence to Georgia Secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, to join in his coup attempt.  In this fantasy, tRump is merely aspiring to overthrow a democratically elected government.  We'll see, but I don't think this particular dog is up for hunting.

What's wrong with the Republican party?

        Over in the Lawyers, Guns and Money blog, Paul Campos argues anyone who belongs to or supports the institutional Republican party is supporting an authoritarian, ethno-nationalist agenda.  I agree with his assessment with the proviso that not every member of the party implicitly supports such goals.   There is a small, but substantial minority in the party who support the traditional Republican mantra of small government, low taxes and a strong national defense.   Many of these people vote for whatever candidate the party supports, much as many rank and file democrats do for their party's nominee.

     The trial of Donny Two Scoops for attempting to subvert democracy with the aid and connivance of the Republican party will, i hope, open the eyes of these Republicans to the danger their party poses to American liberal democracy.  Only several crushing electoral defeats will start the process of reform in one of the country's two main political parties.

Weather or climate

      The other morning, the village of Saranac Lake reported a temperature of 36 degrees Fahrenheit.  In the midst of record heat throughout the world in July; now recognized as the hottest month in human history, the little town in the heart of the Adirondacks provided a little relief from the otherwise oppressive weather news.

     Thanks to the melting icecap in Greenland and its interference with the Gulf Stream, our area is likely to experience cooler than normal temperatures as climate change proceeds.  If present trends continue we will (probably not in my lifetime) see an influx of climate refugees from the southern and western US as large portions of the country become uninhabitable at least during the summer.  The disruption of life around the world is hard to comprehend, but it must  be addressed or chaos will be the response.

What does accountability look like?

        Well,  Donnie Two Scoops has endured his third criminal indictment since leaving office.  Special Counsel Jack Smith is charging the twice impeached, disgraced former president with three counts, including conspiracy to defraud the US government and to deny voters the franchise.

       These charges go to the heart of the argument that tRump cares nothing about democracy when it conflicts with his self interest.  I'll let the cable news talking heads suss out the finer points, but if I were the orange menace, I'd be more worried about these indictments than any of the others, so far.

Our tangled health care system

    My recent brush with our health care system, thanks to the Divine Mrs. M, has been an eye opener.  Two of my children are Registered Nurses, so I have heard horror stories about patient care for years.  But the poor outcome of the Divine one's first visit to our local hospital is a cautionary tale.  Despite seemingly endless blood drawing and testing which showed elevated white cell counts, the attending physician blithely recommended discharge after a 2 day course off IV antibiotics.

      The doctor prescribed a course of oral antibiotics at home, but after a couple of days it was apparent this treatment was not working and after a visit to her primary care office it was recommended we again repair to the ER.  7 days later the patient is finally being discharged now that the condition is reasonably under control.  Fingers crossed.

      My wife's infection is fairly common and well understood.  Why the botched treatment?  Our local hospital is a point of community pride.  It is not owned by a private equity firm looking for maximum profit.  Yet, the staffing is sparse and many of the nurses are recent graduates who are being mentored by women and men who are barely out of school themselves.  My daughters correctly diagnosed the condition and probably could have recommended the correct treatment, but both of them have years of experience to back up their diagnosis.   It would seem we have a shortage of well trained and experienced hospital staff.   I don't know what the solution to this problem entails, but certainly more and better trained nurses and doctors would be a start.