"no legitimate reason"

Bob Mould, "Next Generation"

He plays guitar harder than he ever has at the ripe old age of 59.  Anger makes you young.

We can't be complacent.  Donald Trump and the Republican Cult that supports him to the death are going to try and steal this election.

But frankly, it puts a spring in my step to realize that there's a more-than-zero chance that Cheeto Hitler and at least one or more of his horrible fail-children will go to jail in light of recent news:

"He pointed specifically to consultant fees paid by Donald Trump to Ivanka Trump. Since Ivanka Trump was already an employee of the Trump Organization, Akerman said, there was 'no legitimate reason' for those payments. 

He speculated the two could have been shifting the money around to avoid paying taxes on it.  

That, he said, could lead to an ominous development for the president should he leave office in January. 

'The only thing that’s saving him at this point is the Department of Justice’s guideline that says you can’t indict a sitting president,' Akerman said. 'Once he’s no longer a sitting president, he is subject to being indicted.'”

To quote a certain highly decorated starship captain, "Make it so." 

Electioneering

 I voted.

Washington State Ballot.

Same US address I've used for over a decade now (my last residence in America before moving to South Korea).

COVID changed things a bit though.  I usually send my ballots snail-mail, no insurance, because I've got pretty good faith in Korean and US mail.

But this year, and for months now, the Korean post office has warned that letters and packages can be delayed by over a month.

So I went to Daegu FedEx, and they told me they won't ship to PO Boxes.

Went to Korean post office, asked for "EMS" (express) service, and they said the same thing.

So, being that Washington State is primarily a Democratic one that actually wants folks to vote, I've done my first ever scan-and-e-mail ballot.

This is no shade on my Washington State county whatsoever -- they've been routinely excellent at letting me vote for over a decade now.

Anyhow, just thought it was worth sharing.  This election is not a normal one by any means.

Vote the bloated orange pussy-grabber out with enough vengeance that his inevitable cry of "illegal immigrants voting!" is drowned out by the joyful noise of a country that has an outside chance -- certainly not a definite one -- of making something of a comeback from the brink of tyranny and/or mediocrity.

Tediocraty?  Myranny?

This Wednesday is the beginning of Chuseok (Korean Thanksgiving) so I can get up and watch the first debate in the comfort of my boxer-shorts.  Lucky me.

I'm not expecting Ciceronian perfection from Biden, but I think he's got enough left in the tank and a sense of history to know that he needs to be sharp.

He can be.  He needs to be.

B+

Maybe I'm getting sappy-sentimental as I age, but I thought the roll call video nomination for Joe Biden was pretty great.

Given the Covid situation I can't imagine doing a much better job.

"male cruelty towards women is a bonding mechanism"

Adam Serwer takes the Trump era for what it is -- "The Cruelty Is The Point":

"The cruelty of the Trump administration’s policies, and the ritual rhetorical flaying of his targets before his supporters, are intimately connected. As Lili Loofbourow wrote of the Kavanaugh incident in Slate, adolescent male cruelty towards women is a bonding mechanism, a vehicle for intimacy through contempt. The white men in the lynching photos are not merely smiling because of what they have done, but because they did it together.

We can hear the spectacle of cruel laughter throughout the Trump era. There were the border patrol agents cracking up at the crying immigrant children separated from their families, and the Trump adviser who delighted white supremacists when he mocked a child with down syndrome who was separated from her mother. There were the police who laughed uproariously when the president encouraged them to abuse suspects, and the Fox News hosts mocking a survivor of the Pulse Nightclub massacre (and in the process inundating him with threats), the survivors of sexual assault protesting Senator Jeff Flake, the women who said the president sexually assaulted them, and the teen survivors of the Parkland school shooting. There was the president mocking Puerto Rican accents shortly after thousands were killed and tens of thousands displaced by Hurricane Maria, the black athletes protesting unjustified killings by police, the women of the #MeToo movement who have come forward with stories of sexual abuse, and the disabled reporter whose crime was reporting on Trump truthfully. It is not just that they enjoy this cruelty, it is that they enjoy it with each other. Their shared laughter at the suffering of others is an adhesive that binds them to each other, and to Trump."

All completely true.  I didn't think Trump would win in 2016 because I didn't want to to even flirt with the idea that a solid one-third of Americans are racist, hateful towards women and non-whites and gays, and, simply, cruel.  In their very bones, hateful.

I was wrong.

Hot Alabama Take!

Defeating a pedophile bigot is awesome.  Electing a true national hero like Doug Jones, who successfully convicted the white terrorists who blew up four little black girls, is even better.

Beyond that, we win by expanding and motivating our base, not by pandering to so-called "White Working Class" (actually, White Upper Middle Class) voters.

Sorry, Bernie.

Misogyny Or Racism? In America, Take Your Pick!

It’s been a good night in America with Dems both mainstream and progressive winning lots of seats at the state level.  But there’s also a lot of talk as to how badly Hillary “under-performed” in 2016.

Obviously, her campaign was far from perfect.  But also, it’s a really long-winded way of saying that way too many Americans (including, unfortunately, many women) will vote for shitty men before they’ll ever vote for qualifed women.

Which is to say, getting a black person elected president was doing the impossible.  But finally getting a woman elected might be an even bigger hill to climb.

I'm With Her

Tomorrow, Tuesday, is one of my split-schedule days.  I teach from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., and I come home pretty exhausted after 12 hours of teaching and office-ing.  (Thursday is my other split.)

Anyhow, tomorrow night I'll being going to bed just when America is waking up to go and vote.  I think I can say that now, above all else, I'm just kind of numb.  Hillary's numbers look good, and the signs of Hispanic turnout for early voting is truly moving.  Beyond that, competent ground games really do matter and Trump does not have one.  Having a rally and throwing out red meat is actually pretty easy to do, if you think about it.  Registering people to vote, reminding them to vote, driving their elderly grandma to the voting station, and handing out sample ballots for down-ticket races is not.  It's really fucking hard work, and Hillary and the people around her are not shy of hard work.

So those are the thoughts that will be going through my head as I pass out tomorrow night, wondering if I'll still have a country to go back to the next morning.

And as much as I'm optimistic about Hillary's chances, what's clear is that even if Trump loses America is (in Trump-speak, no less) a permanently damaged brand.  The fact that a fascist vagina-grabber even had a shot at the presidency tells you everything you need to know about the United States in the early stages of the 21st century.

I'll let Barbara Kingsolver have the last word in what I'd say is a must-read piece, "End This Misogynistic Horror Show":

"I’m horrified to watch the bizarre pageant of my nation pretending these two contenders are equivalent. No one really imagines Donald Trump applying himself to the disciplines of the presidency, staying up late reading reams of legislation, instead of firing off juvenile tweets. It’s even harder to imagine Clinton indulging in the boorish self-aggrandisement, intellectual laziness, racism and vulgar contempt for the opposite gender that characterise her opponent. If anyone still doubts that the inexperienced man gets promoted ahead of the qualified woman, you can wake up now.

This race is close. Polls tell us most Americans believe Trump has sexually assaulted women (to name just one potential disqualifier). A majority also believe Clinton 'can’t be trusted', for unspecified reasons. We’re back to the ancient conundrum: a woman can’t be that smart and commanding, so either her womanliness or her smartness must be counterfeit. To set that hazy discomfort next to a sexual assaulter and call these defects 'equivalent' is causing my ears to ring as I write."

Hillary may be imperfect (who isn't?) but she's fought like hell.  And lest we forget, she's been being attacked for over two decades now.  And it all started because she wasn't interested in baking a batch of fucking cookies like a good little housewife.

I'll always be proud to say I voted for her.