TWGB: The Damage Bad People Do

 

JUST IN: Oath Keeper Thomas Caldwell has been accused by prosecutors of keeping a “death list” that included the names of election officials on it (he calls it a benign “doodle pad.”)

In a filing tonight, Caldwell revealed the names on his pad:

Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss pic.twitter.com/HhKA3nDHJ4

— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) July 30, 2022

These regular people doing a commendable job that supports our democracy were placed on a death list. A "doodle pad" about who needs to die for just doing an extremely useful and necessary job. 

Trump's lie could have gotten them killed.

Newsflash, for the idiots who think election workers at any basic site have enough input to finagle an election loss or win: fuck you. Counting is just a cumulative effort. They have no way of knowing within the process where any count stands to know how many votes it would take to shift things another way. There just isn't any dependable way to steal an election by fucking with votes, because polls aren't votes. If they were--Hillary Clinton would have won in 2016. 

The idea that the vote could be finagled with is a conceit made up by the people who want to retcon the election. That is to say--Trump election deniers. Because, and please think about this deeply and truly, if you couldn't win on your own, and didn't know how many votes you would need to win, wouldn't the easiest way to try to win be to just throw out votes that weren't for you after the fact?  That's what the Trump scheme was. He and his friends badgered election officials in Georgia and Arizona, etc., to just not count the votes that were from the people Trump preferred not be counted. 

Now, Oath Keepers are just some variety of thugs, and let's not mistake the people who Trump's permission structure temporarily and feloniously deputized in the heat of the insurrectionist moment for being sheriffs or bailiffs who could cart away the ballots that made Trump an irrelevancy. Trump gave the worst people the best shot at doing their worst.  That's why the insurrection went down the way it did. Every soft-skulled crab felt deputized that day. That's why they did their worst. They thought they were being deputies of Team Trump.  

We are learning that not only did the Secret Service, but also Chad Wolf and Ken Cuccinelli have missing texts from that day. Wow, and how much does it definitely look like not an accident, but an "on-purpose".  Realistically, it's hard to look at the Secret Service reset as anything but a coverup based on the timing. 

I am not even sure how to convey the badness of everything Trump touched in retrospect,  But it looks like Trump's corruption damaged whole government agencies because he put bad people in charge and they, too, acted like his deputies, not like honest people.  And dishonest people can do a lot of damage.

Stuff I'm Thankful For--

Well, of course, pubs.

Ken Cuccinelli walked into a bar. And Martin O’Malley lit into him. https://t.co/zIqlBYZUVE

— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) November 28, 2019

If it were up to me, no person representing the Trump Administration would ever know a drink in peace unless they were quietly drinking themselves senseless in their own homes. I've been opposed to any enlarging of the pool of Democratic 2020 hopefuls, but I might make an exception for O'Malley, whom I did have high hopes for the last time.

(But that might just be a me thing. Look, Vixen's heart wants what it wants. I'm just saying. I mean, am I resisting this?)

But in the main, I'm thankful for rudeness and dissent. I'm thankful for the freedom to disagree and even be disagreeable. I'm thankful that, unlike many people around the holidays, I ate a table today where, while there was dissent from the current political climate, we had agreement with one another. I'm thankful for my health and peace of mind, and for my unease and disturbance of conscience. I am thankful for love and acceptance, and I want everyone to have that feeling of belonging. I'm thankful for the world and the environment I love, and I want to preserve it. I'm thankful for my blog as a virtual spleen-vent which has served as my place of thrashing out my thoughts while sharing them with others. My family joked with me about getting a knock from the Secret Service one day.

Yeah, no. I'm thankful we aren't that country, yet, for folks like me. And that's my Thanksgiving wish, for me, and for the pilgrims who need sticking up for, and their dissent and their journey and their desire to seek a new land and breathe free, that we greet them and welcome them to our table. That they too, can unite with their families in fellowship and love. And we all kick child-separating fascists out of our government. The end.

His Own Two Feet in His Mouth

Ken Cuccinelli, Trump's Acting Immigration Chief, Demonstrates the Size of the Feet he is Planning to Place in His Mouth

 

 

Trump's Acting Director of the US Immigration and Citizenship Services, Ken Cuccinelli, announced plans this week to deny green cards to legal immigrants who were considered "likely" to use government aid programs. He has now elaborated on this a few times using Emma Lazarus' famous poem inscribed on the Statue of Liberty to, um, some kind of effect:

 



“Would you also agree that Emma Lazarus’ words etched on the Statue of Liberty, ‘give me your tired, your poor,’ are also part of the American ethos?” Martin asked, after noting that many immigrants throughout history have come to the U.S. “with nothing.”

“They certainly are,” Cuccinelli said. “Give me your tired and your poor who can stand on their own two feet, and who will not become a public charge.”

"On their own two feet" sounds a little ableist to me, but leaving that aside, how do we know who is likely to be able to stand on their own two feet and not become a public charge? After all, it's very possible that a person might be leaving their country of origin because they were denied the kind of education and upward-mobility they believe they will find here.

Well, Cuccinelli has unpacked that one a bit for us, too:

Ken Cuccinelli, longtime focus of TPM reporting and now President Trump’s non-Senate-confirmed immigration chief, tells CNN that the poem on the Statute of Liberty is actually referring to “people coming from Europe” and “wretched” didn’t really mean “wretched” — just that they were commoners, not members of the nobility or gentry.

Hm. I don't believe that explains the word following wretched--"refuse", at all, but wow! Surprise, Cuccinelli is saying the US wants people from white countries. Or maybe not such a surprise.

A lot of us Americans have family histories of an ancestor who came off the boat with just the clothes on their back and five dollars in their pocket. Many of them barely spoke English, or did with an accent that made it really clear where they came from. This administration is saying folks just like my great-greats, have no business coming here. And even though my people all hailed from European countries, I take exception to that--if we aren't a country where people can start with nothing and make a good lives for themselves and their kids--what have we become?

Not as good as we should be. And we can and should be better.

(B)rand Paul Takes Things. Seriously.

I'm pretty much always skeptical about Senator Rand Paul, because there's just something about him that strikes me as being breakfast-cereal-flaky and squirrel-turd-nutty. What's worse is, I have a feeling this is a cultivated impression. In other words, I think he's fashioning himself politically as a guy who marches to the beat of his own drummer--

You know, just like his old man did.

Basically, he's a real unoriginal original. A libertarian down with the Christian Right. A states' rights authoritarian. A pal of neo-Confederates who chats up the youth at HBCU's . So he filibusters about drones to no particular end and files a suit against the NSA because "Liberty". Or "liberty-ish". In the vicinity. Of. Bills of Rights. And stuff.

So, a funny thing happened regarding his suit against the NSA--it really looks like some part of it was...plagiarized. 

Now, Sen. Paul has been accused of plagiarism before. But, even allowing that the lawyer whose work product his (and Ken-freaking-Cuccinelli's) lawsuit rips off seems to be copacetic with it now (although some of his earlier correspondence indicates--not very!) this is kind of in line with how seriously Rand Paul takes this whole Constimatutionalism thing. It's his brand. Brand Paul.

And this is probably how he's selling himself on the libertarian side (and to some potential sugar daddy for 2016, right?) rather a bit more than because he cares. Because caring would mean not playing, but as Rude Pundit makes scatalogically clear, he's totally playing. For a particular audience. And it's kind of obvious to people who pay attention. Which could be, well, anybody, anymore. 

Santorum "StrikeForce" to the Rescue in VA

Santorum StrikeForce!

There's a phrase to make you want to, I dunno, duck, or something, but if you are in VA, you may just be getting a knock on your door from someone from Rick Santorum's own Patriot Voices to remind you that Ken Cuccinelli is the Santorum choice. 

This kind of support from the former PA Senator & 2012 GOP primary candidate is sure to help Cuccinelli with groups he has flagging support from, like, um.  Well, not LGBT folks. (Sorry.) And um, not science-minded people. (Sorry there, too.) And um, probably not women.  (Oh well.)

But, you know. At least a candidate like Cucinelli can pull a Santorum. All that McAuliffe character's got backing him is some former First Lady. You know, and more of the people who have been polled.

Climate Monday: Could Denialism be the Death of the GOP?

Well, one could always hope...

It does look like there's one demographic the party of denialism is definitely losing--scientists.  Ideological purity, which has Republicans rejecting climate change science (as well as bending over backwards at times to show support for anti-intellectualism and faith-based "science", like creationism) is certainly a big part of it (and don't get me started on their support for cutting scientific research funding and education spending!) But it's one thing to give lip-service to climate change denialism (and so many of them do),  and quite another to go the added step of actually going after scientists for their work if it happens to go against "Republican science" (which is to say, stuff they make up).

But that is something that VA gubernatorial hopeful Ken Cuccinelli did do.  And after burning up a bit of taxpayer money in pursuit of former University of Viginia employee, Michael Mann (a favorite target of right-wing denialist conspiracy theorists) he was rejected in his bid to be a denialist folk-hero by the Virginia Supreme Court, who realized, rightly, that his goofy quest was just totally without merit. It seems very possible that it's just this kind of dogged denialistic derring-do that that has doomed the doughty doofus. 

Again, one could always hope...

But take note, even if his anti-climate activism hasn't helped him in the electoral sense, it has been lucrative as a fund-raising incentive for the fossilly-inclined. (Oh, but a lot of cats get carbon-based cash in their kitties that way, as desmogblog regularly points out.) Is it possible that we are geting over the climate-change awareness hump, though--when no amount of greenbacks can save your hide if you aren't green?

Here's hoping. Cheers.

Ken Cuccinelli's Unnatural Act: Or, the AG and the BJ's

I'll admit, I was aware that Ken Cuccinelli was up for bigger things back in 2010, when it looked like he was trying to take on climate science as his signifying crusade; but deep down, I was hoping he would go full-metal-wingnut over something a little more representative of his social conservative bona fides.  After all, this is the guy who weirded out over boobies post-Ashcroft. I won't have Rick Santorum to kick around forever--why not be on the look-out for a new field of ripe prudish whackadoodlehood?

But the other reason I was hoping Cuccinelli would pick a crusade with social conservative value is that there is a religious right bubble--on one hand, they seem to be aware that they're out of the mainstream and that their values aren't represented by Hollyweird and the mainstream media, but on the other hand, there seems to be a an almost naive lack of awareness that they don't represent a silent, moral majority of people who think exactly as they do. Case in point, I believe, is his request for a re-hearing of Virginia's anti-sodomy law:

This specific case deals with a man who was prosecuted under the "Crimes Against Nature" statute for having had oral sex with women, a felony offense under that law. The man in the case, William MacDonald, was in his late 40s when he was charged with having consensual oral sex with two young women who were, at the time, ages 16 and 17. While that might be seen as creepy, in Virginia, the age of consent is 15 years old. It is considered statutory rape—a felony offense—to have sex with anyone under that age. Under state law, an adult can be prosecuted for "causing" delinquency by having sex with someone between the ages of 15 and 18, but that is only a misdemeanor. MacDonald was convicted of such a misdemeanor, and his lawyers aren't challenging that conviction. But they have challenged—so far, successfully—the state's attempt to prosecute him for violating the "Crimes Against Nature" law. 

Because Virginia still has this anti-sodomy law on the books, the state wants to use it against MacDonald and win a felony conviction. The state, however, couldn't prosecute him under this statute if he had engaged in vaginal sex. That is, the state is trying to use a loophole in the law that makes oral, but not vaginal, sex a felony in order to go after this guy. The court of appeals determined that MacDonald could not be prosecuted under this law because the US Supreme Court ruled in 2003 that such laws are an unconstitutional "intrusion into the personal and private life of the individual."

At issue with the statute that he's using is that he's specifically singling out, not the issue of the ages of the young women in question nor the issue of consent, but the actual nature of the act itself. He wants a felony conviction because the act is oral sex.

He wants oral sex to be treated as a serious crime.  Let that sink in. Is that really where most people are on the subject?  Because I am willing to bet they are not. And yet he's going to be "the anti-oral sex guy" on the cusp of a gubernatorial run--is that natural, I ask you? (And this is just the latest thing in a string of things, which includes being birther-curious and paranoid about being tracked by one's Social Security number.)

Anyway, I suspect Cuccinelli will make for interesting watching in the months, nay, years to come.