finally comrade trump is fucked…probably

Posted on February 19, 2022 by greg

For decades, this guy has managed to dodge and delay any sort of accountability for most of the awful things he’s done. He didn’t escape responsibility because he was clever; he did it because he inherited a buttload of money, which allowed him to retain very expensive, highly skilled lawyers and accountants.

Trump’s entire reputation as a deal-maker and businessman was built on his access to those people. He was able to walk into meetings, make demands, then wander off while his legal-financial team worked out the details of the actual deal. Trump would then take credit for his team’s success (or blame them for the deal’s failure). But even the best lawyers and accountants couldn’t prevent Trump from fucking things up.

I mean, he had six (6!) corporate bankruptcies, and each time his lawyers/accountants were able to allow Trump to slide out from under his legitimate debts and remain in business. The guy bankrupted his own casinos, for fuck’s sake. How do you lose money running a casino? He’s been involved in numerous (at least 3500 lawsuits in the past 30 years) contract disputes (mostly for failure to pay his bills), tax cases, defamation claims, and allegations of sexual harassment. And, again, in almost all of those cases his lawyers/accountants protected Trump from serious criminal or financial harm.

But Trump being Trump, he also tended to stiff many of his lawyers out of their fees. Over time, that’s made it harder for him to hire effective counsel. Now, he finds himself scrabbling to find a good lawyer. After well-known litigator Marc Kasowitz withdrew his services last September, Trump engaged lawyer Alina Habba whose office is near his Bedminster, NJ golf club and whose biggest prior client was a parking garage company. (By the way, that doesn’t mean she’s not a good lawyer; it just means top tier lawyers have stopped taking Trump’s calls).

And now his accountants are taking a hike. A few days ago they completely severed their relationship with Trump and the Trump Organization. Looking beyond the delicate legal phrasing, his accountants basically said 1) they believe Trump has been lying about his assets and debts over the last decade, 2) they’ve seen/heard the evidence held by the Attorney General of New York–and they believe it, 3) Trump ought to cowboy up and inform his creditors of all this, and 4) they’re out the door, goodbye, good luck, you’re on your own.

Trump is going to face the same problem with accountants as he has with lawyers. No big hat accounting firm is going to pick up when he calls them. That’s a HUGE problem for him, because he owes a metric shit-ton of cash (at least US$400 million and up to about $1.1 billion) to various banks and lending institutions. He and his organization were able to borrow all that money based on the information Trump had provided to his accountants. Now that his accountants have pissed in his soup, it’s unlikely those banks will refinance his loans. It’s possible some of them will call in their loans.

If that’s not enough, a couple of days ago a NY judge agreed with the Attorney General of NY that Trump (and three of his feral children) must submit themselves for a deposition within 21 days. As always, he’s trying to delay that…and he may succeed for a while. But it’s pretty clear he’ll eventually be testifying under oath in a civil case. That’s a big deal for a couple of reasons. First, because Trump can’t/won’t stop lying. Lying under oath is a crime. I can’t see any situation in which Donald Trump can talk about his finances and not lie. Hell, I can’t imagine a situation in which Trump would talk about anything at all without lying.

Second, probably the only way Trump can avoid lying in a deposition is to invoke his 5th Amendment privilege against self-incrimination. But that will also bite him on the ass. In a criminal case, a jury isn’t allowed to draw any adverse inference about a defendant who takes the 5th Amendment. In a civil case, a jury CAN assume that a defendant who takes the 5th is hiding something.

That’s just his civil legal problems. Trump is also facing a variety of criminal charges in at least two jurisdictions.

There’s a tsunami of trouble coming for Comrade Trump, and the legal breakwater that’s protected him for so long has eroded. The guy is fucked. He’s fucked. Totally and comprehensively fucked.

Probably.

let the journey unfold

Posted on February 12, 2022 by greg

I recently learned that Iohan Gueorguiev is dead. He died months ago–August of 2021. I had no idea.

You know how it is. There are things you wish you’d done. There are things you wish you could do. But there are also things you wish you’d wanted to do, even though you know you wouldn’t actually do them even if you had the opportunity.

I wish I would have wanted to do what Iohan did. I know, if given the chance to do what he did, I’d have turned it down. What he did was just too hard. I mean, it was absolutely wonderful and amazing and quixotic. I admire him for what he did and how he did it. But even though I’d have enjoyed doing some small parts of what Iohan did, I don’t have it in me to really want to do it.

What did Iohan Gueorguiev do?

He rode a bicycle. He rode it a lot. He rode it very far. Incredibly far, in fact. Insanely far.

Iohan was born in Bulgaria in 1988. When he was 15 years old, his parents sent him to live with an uncle in Mississauga, Ontario. At some point he bought a bicycle–a touring bike–and went for a ride. To Vancouver. About 2700 miles.

That started his weird fascination and love for long-distance bike-camping. In 2014, he decided to ride his bike from the Arctic Sea in Alaska to the town of Ushuaia in Tierra del Fuego, the southernmost town in Argentina, generally called the ‘end of the world’. He thought it might take him a year. He was wrong. Wildly wrong.

It was, to be frank, an absurd and ridiculous idea. The distance from Prudhoe Bay, Alaska to Ushuaia is about 9500 miles as the crow flies. On a bicycle, it’s…well, who knows how far it would be? Farther than any rational person would consider riding.

Iohan’s touring bike–with its narrow road tires–was entirely inadequate for the project. Eventually he was able to acquire a fat tire bike that was significantly more suited for the trip, and over time he obtained a better camera (and a GoPro and some sort of drone), but his gear was always a secondary–or tertiary–consideration. The adventure was what mattered–the things he saw, the people he met. He maintained a blog describing the trek (which is how I learned about him) and he produced a number of YouTube videos.

“I want to see the world. Follow a map to its edges and keep going. Forgo the plans. Trust my instincts. Let curiosity be my guide. I want to change hemispheres. Sleep with unfamiliar stars. And let the journey unfold before me.”

That’s mostly what he did–let the journey unfold. Iohan rarely took the easy route. He rode anywhere he could, anywhere he wanted: ice highways, lumber roads, hiking paths, wilderness trails. Hell, sometimes he didn’t take a route at all–he just set off in the general direction. On at least one occasion he broke down his bike to cross a lake using a collapsible kayak. He refused to let common sense dictate the trip.

He encountered every obstacle you could predict: bad weather, wildlife, gear failures, terrible terrain, mechanical issues. And yet he always seemed to find something positive about his situation. Cycling in a blizzard? He didn’t have to worry about his food supply spoiling. Traveling up a hazardous mountain trail so steep he has to carry his bike and all his supplies? The air is cool, he says, and fresh and invigorating.

“Ruta de Los Seis Miles is a 1,310km, month-long, high altitude desert traverse across the Central Andean Dry Puna in Chile and Argentina. This route promises the most physically and mentally demanding high altitude touring in the Andes. Thankfully, it’s balanced with dream-like mountain scenery with salt fields, lava flows, flamingo-filled lakes, and some of the highest volcanos in the world, far away from the civilization.”

Everywhere he went, Iohan met good people. They’d offer him a safe place to sleep, a warm meal, maybe a bit of money, stories. He seemed to take as much joy from the people he met as he did from the sights he saw. He was certainly comfortable being alone–and there were times on the trip when he was terribly alone–but he clearly delighted in meeting new people in unusual circumstances.

“My motivation: the kindness of strangers and the beauty of the wild.”

Without a private fortune (which Iohan didn’t have) or some sort of corporate sponsorship (which he occasionally received), he was forced to interrupt his journey periodically and return to Canada and earn enough money to continue. Then he’d resume the adventure where he’d left off.

The trip he originally thought might take a year stretched out to more than six. Then Covid arrived; the pandemic disrupted everything. Iohan returned to Canada. He still took what he’d describe as ‘short trips’ in Canada. But the trips weren’t very rewarding; the pandemic made it impossible for him to meet new people. Depression set in; he developed insomnia, made worse by sleep apnea.

Last August, Iohan killed himself.

He still had about 1500 miles to go to reach Ushuaia.

Earlier I said I wish I would have wanted to do what Iohan did. I try to do what he did on a much much much more modest scale. I ride my bike. I talk to strangers. But if it’s too cold or too hot or too windy or too wet, I stay home. Still, there’s a part of me that wishes I had the sort of irrational will that could inspire me to actually undertake an adventure like his.

Iohan Gueorguiev went as far as he could. So much farther than common sense would carry you. He experienced so much more than the rest of us. It would be wrong to think he fell 1500 miles short of his destination. The distance Iohan Gueorguiev traveled can’t be measure in miles. He kept going until he couldn’t. Then he stopped.

EDITORIAL NOTE: You can still access Iohan Gueorguiev’s blog and his videos at BikeWanderer. It’s nice to watch the videos and think maybe he’s still on his way.

gop evolution of political discourse

Posted on February 8, 2022 by greg

Democrat: That insurrection on January 6th was awful.
Republican: Yeah, that was bad.
Dem: No way anybody could justify that sort of violence.
Rep: Well, it was bad but folks are upset about the election, so it’s sorta justifiable.
Dem: What? No. Ain’t no way you can justify assaulting the Capitol building.
Rep: Yeah, deffo justifiable.
Dem: Are you crazy?
Rep: Wasn’t just justifiable…actually justified. And maybe even a good thing?
Dem: No fucking way.
Rep: Yeah, deffo a good thing.
Dem: You’ve gone deep into the dark place, haven’t you.
Rep: Deffo a good thing. Maybe even a necessary thing.
Dem: Jesus suffering fuck.
Rep: Yep, it was absolutely good and totally necessary. Had to be done.
Dem: Can NOT believe you people.
Rep: I’m thinking we should do it again, maybe?
Dem: What about democracy?
Rep: It’s fucking ON, bitch.

Ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse.

read the room, buddy

Posted on February 5, 2022 by greg

Years ago, when I was a graduate student in DC, I lived in a dodgy part of Columbia Heights (well, the whole neighborhood was pretty dodgy back then, though I’m told it’s been gentrified now). I lived a couple of blocks from All Souls Church, where I attended a concert by Sweet Honey in the Rock. The opening act was an all-woman a cappella group from South Africa; they sang a song called Wathint’ abafazi, wathint’ imbokodo, which I understand means “When you strike women, you strike stone.”

A more flexible translation might be, “Don’t fuck around with women who are fed up.” I’m sorry to confess that’s a lesson that’s been impressed on me countless times over the years–and sad to say, it’ll probably be impressed on me many more times. But it’s a good lesson, a valuable lesson, and men need to learn and relearn it.

Glenn Youngkin, the newly-elected Republican governor of Virginia, received that lesson recently. He visited a Safeway market in Alexandria. Safeway’s policy is to request ALL customers wear masks–just like their employees do. Youngkin took the standard GOP approach and refused to wear a mask. And a woman shopper kicked him directly in the balls. Metaphorically.

She shouted out a question. “Governor, where’s your mask?” It was direct, but still respectful. She called him by his title. Youngkin replied, “We’re all making choices today.” The woman wearing a mask was making the choice to protect herself, the other shoppers, and the store employees from Covid; Youngkin was making the choice to put them all at risk. The woman said, “Look around you, governor. You’re in Alexandria. Read the room, buddy.”

Read the room, buddy. This ordinary woman stands up to the governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia and tells him to read the room. And if that’s not glorious enough, when some guy (who appears to be either a Youngkin staffer or security personnel, who was at least properly masked) gets in between the woman and the governor, she doesn’t back down. “He’s my governor too,” she says, “I get to say what I want.”

First she takes on the governor, then stands up to this guy.

When you strike women, you strike stone. Look at that face. Even if you had no idea what was going on, you know you’re looking at a woman who is fed up with somebody’s bullshit. I’m sure by now we know her name, but at that moment, she’s every woman who’s just fucking had it. She’s Safeway Boudica. Hangaku Gozen of the checkout counter. Ọya, the orisha of the produce department.

There’ll be a lot of stuff written about ‘speaking truth to power’ and all, and that’s appropriate. But I’m like 98% certain this woman wasn’t thinking about that. I’m convinced she was just tired of people–and probably men in particular–being dicks out of pure dickishness. She’s not advocating burning the patriarchy to the ground; she’s just wishing people would grow the fuck up and act like responsible adults.

Read the room, buddy.

EDITORIAL NOTE: Burn the patriarchal system to the ground. Burn it, pound the ashes into dust, scatter the dust, and salt the fucking earth. Then nuke the site from orbit; you know why.

lawdy, these degenerate fuckers again

Posted on January 31, 2022 by greg

Okay, first let me say this: even Nazis have free speech rights. I absolutely defend their right to wear swastikas on their clothes and to wave swastika flags; I defend their right to gather and say ugly, despicable, hateful things. And to do all that in public.

Saturday, a couple dozen Nazis did just that in Orlando, Florida. Gathered, wore swastikas, waved flags, shouted ugly, despicable, hateful things.

Yay First Amendment and all, but Jeebus on toast this is disgusting. If it seems this sort of appalling bullshit is becoming more common, it’s because this sort of appalling bullshit IS becoming more common. The Overton Window has shifted so far to the right that…what?

You’re wondering, “Greg, old sock, what is this Overton Window of which you speak?” Again, stop calling me old sock. And it’s a concept created by a policy analyst named Joseph P. Overton. It refers to the ‘range of policies politically acceptable to the mainstream population at a given time.’ For example, there was time–and not that long ago–when it would have been unacceptable for a politician to publicly support violent insurrectionists attempting to overturn the result of a fair election. That would have been outside the Overton Window, outside the range of acceptable and tolerable positions for a politician to take. Now it’s horrifying common. The window has shifted.

It’s still outside the Overton Window for politicians to support Nazis. But now they can at least cast doubt on whether people wearing swastikas and waving Nazi flags and shouting “Jews rape children and drink their blood” are actual Nazis. A spokesperson for Florida governor Ron DeSantis actually did that. She tweeted (and later deleted) “Do we even know they’re Nazis? Or is this a stunt…?”

No, it’s not a stunt. It’s not like these folks just happen to have Nazi flags and swastika arm bands lying around the house and thought, ‘You know what would be funny? If we put on these armbands and the black uniforms that can be found in most Florida households and stood the street yelling that Jews rape kids…wouldn’t that be a hoot?‘ To even suggest it’s just a stunt expands the Overton Window by implying this sort of monstrous and reprehensible behavior is merely distasteful hijinks.

If you call yourself a Nazi, then you’re a fucking Nazi. If you act like a Nazi and talk like a Nazi and dress like a Nazi, then you’re a fucking Nazi. You don’t need to carry an official Nazi Party ID card. Don’t get distracted by some distinction between neo-Nazis and regular off-the-shelf Nazis; they all just fucking Nazis. This is pretty simple.

The question we have to answer is this: what’s the proper response to Nazis? Ignoring them doesn’t do any good; they’ll just get louder and more crude. What about punching them? I’ve written about this before; if you’re willing to accept the consequences of punching a Nazi, then punch away. I can’t–and won’t–actively advocate punching Nazis, but punching Nazis has real merit.

Probably the best thing to do about Nazis is to close the Overton Window on them. Right now, I’m 100% confident folks on the internet are looking at the photos of these Nazis, studying their faces, learning their identities, and contacting their employers. Very few employers–even those in Florida–are going to want to be associated with Nazis. Make it less acceptable to be a Nazi.

And always remember this: Nazis are like cockroaches. If you see one, you know there are more of the creepy little fuckers hiding in the cracks. They have the right to exist. But we don’t have to make it easy for them.

anocracy

Posted on January 26, 2022 by greg

The CIA (yes, that CIA) sucks in massive amounts of data and information from a whole galaxy of sources. One of those sources, when it comes to assessing the stability of a nation, is the Center for Systemic Peace. You’re probably asking, “Greg, old sock, just what the hell is this Center for Systemic Peace…and is that really it’s actual, no-shit name?”

Yes, that really is its name. The CSP was founded in 1997 to conduct “research and quantitative analysis in many issue areas related to the fundamental problems of violence in both human relations and societal-systemic development processes.” Basically, they evaluate a nation’s stability by looking at stuff–like the spectrum of social conflict, the methods of governance, and the various responses of the population. The CSP does this for just about every nation state that has a population of over half a million. Also, stop calling me ‘old sock’.

One of the CSP’s metrics for national stability is what they call a ‘polity score’. It measures ‘regime authority’ on a 21-pont scale with a zero point at the center: -10 being an hereditary monarchy, +10 is a consolidated democracy. They tend clump nations into three groups: 1) autocracies (-10 to -6), anocracies (-5 to +5), and democracies (+6 to +10).

Now I suspect you’re asking, “Greg, old sock, what the fuck is an anocracy?” Good question. At the high end (+5) an anocracy is a form of government that’s democratic but has autocratic features; at the low end (-5) it’s an autocratic government with some democratic features.

Why am I telling you all this? Two reasons. First, the CIA uses the CSP as a tool for understanding how fucked up nations are. They have their own reasons for doing this, of course, some of which are almost certainly nefarious, but the CSP metrics are universally seen as pretty damned reliable. The second reason I’m telling you this is because the US, for most or our history, has been either a +9 or a +10. For a long time, the US was the world’s longest continuing democracy.

Now we’re not. According to the CSP, under the Comrade Trump administration the polity score of the US dropped to a +5, which drags us right out of the democracy zone and dumps us in with the anocracies. How’d that happen? You can find the CSP’s abbreviated political history of the US here.

It’s sad that the US is now just a high-functioning, democracy-leaning anocracy. What makes it all very much worse, though, is that anocracies are much more susceptible to insurgencies, and nations that with active insurgencies are more likely to slide into an actual civil war. And we’re seeing overt signs of a growing insurgency movement in the US.

Depending on which poll you look at, somewhere between 17-38% of folks who identify strongly as Republicans believe the use of violence to ‘restore America’ is acceptable or necessary. Every state in the Union has at least one civilian armed militia movement. Some militia groups are national–the Oathkeepers, the III Percenters, the Proud Boys, etc. Members (and supporters) of militia groups have engaged in anti-government ranging from the insurrection on 1/6/20, to a plot to kidnap the Democratic governor of Michigan and put her on ‘trial’, to threatening the lives of local election or school board official. These aren’t just crimes; they’re insurgent actions.

Again, the US is still at the high end of anocracies. We can claw our way back into the realm of full democracies. But there’s no guarantee we will. At this point, the Republican Party is effectively acting as the political wing of an inchoate collective of insurgent groups, all of whom want to install some form of right-wing authoritarian government. Since Senators Sinema and Manchin have given the GOP the power they need to suppress voting, the odds of the US sinking lower on the polity scale have increased.

It’s hard for me to even say this–mainly because this should be unthinkable–but we may be witnessing a cascade of events that will be the end of representative democracy in the United States. And because it should be unthinkable, most of the people in the US aren’t thinking about it at all. Most of us are just assuming everything will go on just about as it always has. And maybe it will. But I’m not confident about it. I keep thinking of the closing stanza of T.S. Eliot’s poem The Hollow Men.

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

ADDENDUM (1/28): It appears that Uncle Joe’s move to the Oval Office has allowed the US to claw its way up from a 5 on the Polity Scale to an 8. We are now a middling, shaky democracy. Yay?

the ire of mitt

Posted on January 21, 2022 by greg

Mitt Romney was angry. Very angry. His anger burned as hot as a thousand blazing suns. Well, okay, maybe a thousand cheap birthday candles. Well, maybe a couple dozen cheap birthday candles. But still, Mitt was ever so angry. You could tell he was angry because he frowned. Not the frown he gets when the époisses de bourgogne has been served before it reached room temperature, but still it was clearly a frown.

Why was Mitt so very angry? Because he felt President Uncle Joe had been mean to Republicans. Mitt said Biden had “accused a number of my good and principled colleagues in the Senate of having sinister, even racist inclinations.” (NOTE: there are “good and principled” Republicans?) He said Biden had “charged that voting against his bill allies us with Bull Connor, George Wallace and Jefferson Davis.” (NOTE: voting against even debating the voting rights bill allies the GOP with Bull Connor and George Wallace, but maybe not Jefferson Davis.)

And then Mitt paused dramatically before delivering a crushing, devastating, soul-crushing blow to Uncle Joe. He said, “So much for unifying the country and working across the aisle.” (NOTE: the GOP has dug a moat between the aisles and filled it with meth-addicted Florida alligators.) And he said it with a sneer.

It seems unlikely the Biden administration will ever fully recover from the room temperature ire of Mitt Romney. There’s a reason Romney is known far and wide as ‘Mitt Vicious’. (NOTE: Romney isn’t known far and wide as anything, let alone ‘Mitt Vicious’. He IS known close and narrow as ‘Mittens the Peevish’.)

Pundits have declared the Biden administration–and Uncle Joe his ownself–a colossal failure based on his inability in his first year in office to get the GOP, whose political survival depends on their ability to shred voting rights, to support voting rights. It seems clear to the pundits that President Uncle Joe’s ONLY hope for a successful administration is to stop suggesting that the GOP’s racist policies are based on racism; he MUST begin to foster cooperation and compromise with the GOP by accepting the god-given right of the minority to rule.

And if Biden refuses, he’ll have to face the ire of Mitt, the Towering Pale Blancmange of the Senate.

more like jesus

Posted on January 15, 2022 by greg

A couple of days ago, passing by a church, I saw a sign (I wish I’d stopped and photographed it) that said something like: Try to be more like Jesus. My first thought was “Dude, it’s January; I’m NOT wearing sandals.” Which, I admit, is somewhat disrespectful.

For some reason that be-more-like-Jesus concept stuck in my mind. I can see some benefits from it.

Spend time talking to strangers
Tell stories
Spend time chilling with sinners
Drink wine (in moderation, of course)
Ride donkeys
Remind folks to be kind and gentle.
Hang out in boats
Piss off hypocrites
Bake bread and share it

I seem to recall a lot of paintings showing Jesus playing with kids, and I don’t think that would work out so well these days. Besides, kids are noisy. So I think we could safely skip all that. Also, I’m not sure where Jesus stood on napping; I suspect he was a fan, but that might just be wishful thinking.

“Believe me, my young friend, there is *nothing*–absolutely nothing–half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.”

I’m not a Christian, but you can’t deny that the guy had some good ideas. Too bad so few Christians follow them. Seriously, the worst thing about Christianity is Christians.

EDITORIAL NOTE: The quotation in the photo is from the Gospel of The Wind in the Willows.

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