As is most often the case, there are events and/or issues in the public sphere that don’t rise to full blown posts. However, there’s plenty that deserves mention. This is an attempt to remedy that…
Florida Fascism Part I
Florida Man Donald Trump doesn’t take bad news well. Last week Judge Cannon set his trial date for taking and keeping federal documents that don’t belong to him. As remarkable as as it might seem, he threw a tantrum.
He spewed the run of the mill nonsense about the Presidential Records Act and his claims of not doing anything wrong. By now that’s second verse, same as the first. Then he ranted more about as president he had every right to take anything he wanted when he left the White House.
Memo to the Bidens: check the silverware.
Also last week, Trump received a “target” letter from the Special Counsel telling him that he was a target of the D.C. grand jury regarding Trump’s possible violation of four federal statutes. As if on cue, even more tantrums.
But then tantrums took a quick turn to rage. A few days ago, Trump repurposed a comment made while appearing as president on Rush Limbaugh’s show. Trump was speaking about Iran when he said:
“If you f*ck around with us, if you do something bad to us, we are going to do things to you that have never been done before.”
This presidential quote appeared on a video he reposted on his laughingly insipid Truth Social. The video showed the menacing eyes with the above voice over of Trump’s comment on Limbaugh’s show, with a Trump 2024 logo imposed in the center.
Then this past Sunday, among many other rage rants, he posted “IT WILL ONLY GET WORSE. WE MUST STOP THESE "MONSTERS" FROM FURTHER DESTROYING OUR COUNTRY!" It needn’t be said but the caps are his.
This guy has threatened Attorney General Garland, Special Counsel Jack Smith, Smith’s family, other prosecutors and as soon as he sees that Judge Cannon will not due his bidding, no doubt her.
He has made every attempt to politicize the process, seeking to undermine any legitimacy to the changes pertaining to him and the legitimacy of the rule of law.
Given that we’ve witnessed Trump’s attempt to incite his followers to commit acts of violence, this is very serious stuff. It doesn’t take a mob like we saw on January 6, 2021, all it takes is some delusional “patriot” nutcase to commit acts of violence. And he knows, or at probably hopes that.
In days if not weeks, the D.C. grand jury will had down indictments against (fill in number here) people. Donald John Trump will be named as a defendant, of that there is little doubt. How he responds to this indictment can only be imagined. I hope whomever is the Magistrate at Trump’s arraignment sets a clear instruction that Trump must not communicate with anyone, publicly or privately save his attorneys, or express any comment, thought, ideas or any other utterance pertaining to the charges brought against him, the parties bringing and prosecuting those charges, the court and affiliated personnel, anyone’s family member(s), other defendants, or witnesses to testify against him.
I other words, I hope the Magistrate orders Trump to shut the “f*ck” up. That’s language that he’ll understand.
Prediction: for myriad of reasons I predict that Mark Meadows, Ginni Thomas’ text pal, is cooperating with the DOJ and will be a star witness against Trump. If I’m correct, please credit me with prescience. If I’m wrong, let’s agree to forget this prediction.
Florida Fascism Part II
Florida Man Ron DeSantis, the worst presidential candidate from Florida since Jeb(!) Bush, having blown through huge amounts of campaign cash, is now having trouble raising money and paying staff. I guess nobody told him that flying on private planes, staying at nice hotels, and bringing his retinue with him would cost money.
Memo to Ron: things cost money.
Last week he began to stabilize his finances. So far he’s fired 38 paid staffers. Given that his campaign has lost ground since he entered the race, maybe they deserved to be canned due to their poor performance. But then maybe he’s pointing the finger at the wrong people. As The Who sang in the rock opera Tommy, “go to the mirror, boy!”
Anyway, to compound his problem, many of the early donors who maxed themselves out for his primary campaign are still giving money to DeSantis’s campaign. The Federal Elections Commissions consider primary and general elections as separate election cycles. Individuals are limited to $3300/candidate/cycle. Therefore an individual can contribute $3300 to a candidate in a primary and another $3300 for the general election. And there’s no limit to how many candidates an individual can donate to. For example, some wacky person can donate $3300 to DeSantis, another $3300 to Trump, another $3300 to Scott and so on. Why they would requires a deep dive into their psyche, but they could.
Ron’s problem is that because of these limits on individual donations per election cycle, people who’ve maxed out for the primary cycle evidently are continuing to contribute to him. Adding to his problem is that 70% of his individual donors contributed $2000 or more to his campaign. The money that these people continue to send can now only be used by Ron in the general election. If he gets that far. A big IF.
There are lots of reasons why people fail in their campaigns for president. Some tell an audience to clap, some ignore the ravages of a pandemic, and apparently others pick fights with a cartoon mouse – and lose. It’s comforting to know that winning and losing a campaign is due to determinants other than chests of campaign cash.
Florida Fascism Part III
Ron’s getting a twofer today. I expect Trump to demand equal time! He’ll get it.
In my last post, School Fascism and Moms For Bigotry, I wrote about the efforts by rightwing nuts, MAGA for short, to white wash – literally – subject matter this small group finds “offensive.” It appears that Florida, even though fending off stiff competition from elsewhere, really is ground zero in the efforts to restore ignorance and bigotry to our public schools and communities.
Florida refused to permit the purchase of a math book because it was too “woke.” You just can’t make this stuff up.
Since that post, the Florida Department of (non)Education’s published its social studies curriculum “standards” on Wednesday, July 19. Of particular interest was its approach to Black history. For example, it is now required that an instruction of the 1920 Ocoee Massacre include “acts of violence perpetrated against and by African Americans.”
So so we’re clear, the Florida Department of (non)Education wants violent acts of the aggressors (the whites) seen as the equal of those defending their lives, families, and property (the blacks). Seriously. This is the worst instance of whataboutism since Trump said there were “good people of both sides” in Charlottesville.
Note: Recently, Oklahoma school Superintendent Ryan Walters has only permitted the instruction of the 1921 Tulsa Race Riots without mentioning the word “race.” This was the Superintendent of Education who said that. I shudder for those public school students.
Anyway, on Thursday, July 20, DeSantis defended these standards by opining that slaves benefited from their involuntary servitude. Ron used slaves becoming blacksmiths as a an example of “skills” the slaves could use in later life.
Memo to DeSantis: slavery wasn’t an elaborate job training program.
I don’t want to insult anybody by detailing how self evidently wrong DeSantis’ statement is. And remember, his first job out of college was history teacher in a private school in Georgia. Oh, and he also reportedly partied with the kids on weekends. What some teachers will do to be “popular.”
Back to the story. As you might know, DeSantis received a firestorm of ridicule for his statements. No worries, coming to his aid was the Florida Department of (non)Education. The Department, in support of DeSantis’ comments provided a list of 16 slaves who attained skills during their servitude that benefited them after they were freed. They forgot the old adage that “when you’re in a whole, stop digging.”
Over the weekend, the Tampa Bay Times published a story in response to the Department’s bull…er assertions. Citing numerous sources, the Department was wrong in numerous instances as to whether a listed person was ever a slave, obtained his skills as a slave, or used those “skills” to attain success once freed. In a couple of instances, the Department evenw got a freedman’s profession wrong. The Tampa Bay Times requires a subscription to read the story but The South Florida Sun Sentinel reprinted the article here: https://www.sun-sentinel.com/2023/07/22/benefited-from-slavery-critics-say-some-of-the-states-examples-were-never-even-slaves/ where you can read it without subscription.
I wrote in prior posts that a good definition of fascism is a far- right, authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology and movement, characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy, subordination of individual interests for the perceived good of the nation and race…
I believe the above three mini posts are appropriately entitled “Fascism.” But wait, there’s one more!
The Devil Went Down To Georgia
Apologies to Charlie Daniels. Once more this involves Florida Man Trump.
On July 14, Trump’s legal team petitioned the Georgia Supreme Court to issue an order to present Fulton County DA Fani Willis from filing charges against Donald Trump and to suppress the special Investigatory Grand Jury’s 600+ page report submitted to Willis earlier this year. Well, a boy can dream can’t he?
On July 24, Georgia’s high Court, in its judgment, noted that Team Trump’s submission lacked “the facts or the law necessary to mandate Willis’s disqualification by this Court at this time on this record.” When you give a Court ten calendar days to call “bullpucky” this is what you get.
If you think you’ve seen this before, you have. Over and over again, in fact. It seems that the argument that Trump “doesn’t want to be indicted and stand trial for various crimes” doesn’t work. Who knew?
Meanwhile DA Willis is proceeding with her case amidst efforts to shut her down. Speculation is that she will file her indictment(s?) the first week of August. Stay tuned. And to the Donald, I’m going to give you the best legal advice you’ve gotten in years: better call Saul because the guys you’ve got really don’t seem too sharp.
Remember when Rudy Giuliani, Sydney Powell, and Jenna Ellis styled themselves as Trump’s “elite strike force” during the 2020/21 post-election cycle? Giuliani is about to lose his law license in D.C. after having his license suspended in New York. Powell has been sanctioned by a federal court for making baseless and frivolous claims regarding the 2020 election. Ellis was censured by a Colorado court for statements that would undermine the public’s integrity in our election processes.
But wait, there’s more! John Eastman, the architect of the scheme to send specific electors back to their states thereby holding up the certification of the 2020 election, is fighting to keep his California law license. A disciplinary proceeding against former DOJ official Jeffrey Clark is proceeding apace. And Lin Wood retired from the Georgia bar solely to prevent being disbarred.
And all of these attorneys, along with others not named here, are being investigated by Jack Smith’s federal investigation and Willis’ Georgia investigation.
Maybe they all better call Saul…
And so it goes
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