Edmund Schweppe

Like I said this time twelve years ago, I was not expecting Donald Trump to win the election.

Last time, Trump lost the popular vote and won the Electoral College.
This time, he's winning both of them; the Associated Press is currently showing Trump with 71.6 million votes to Kamala Harris' 66.7 million.

Not looking forward to the next few years.

Last March, former President Donald J. Trump was indicted in a New York city court on thirty-four counts of falsifying business records.

Today, the jury in that trial returned thirty-four guilty verdicts, after deliberating for only two days.

To paraphrase Gary Trudeeau from the May 29, 1973 Doonesbury comic strip:

That's guilty!
Guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty,
guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty,
guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty,
guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty,
guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty,
guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty,
guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty!

Today is what the US politicos call Super Tuesday, when, to quote the Associated Press,

voters in 16 different states and one territory (Get it? "Super" Tuesday.) will be choosing who they want to run for president.

Massachusetts is one such state, and I voted in today's Democratic Party primary.

Given that Biden is nearly certain to get the Democratic nod in Massachusetts, and Trump highly likely to get the Republican nod, I wasn't surprised to see fairly low turnout numbers when I voted earlier this afternoon. (Less than four hundred ballots cast in my precinct of around two thousand or so registered voters.)

Slightly amusing note: on today's ballot, there were more options for Libertarian Party preferences (5) than for Democratic Party preferences (4). On the other hand, the Libertarian Town Committee had ten open seats, and nobody named on the ballot for any of them ...

I'm not at all sure this qualifies as "moving past chaos", as the Associated Press headline claims. Still, we do have a Speaker of the House of Representatives, three weeks after the House Bombthrower Freedom Caucus deposed Kevin McCarthy:
( Mike Johnson, a staunch Louisiana conservative, is elected House speaker as GOP moves past chaos )
Representative Johnson is, from what I understand, not just extremely conservative. He's a full-fledged denier that Joeseph Biden won the 2020 Presidential election, as evidenced by his being the author of an amicus brief filed with the Supreme Court when the state of Texas claimed that the presidential election was fradulent because ... Pennsylvania gave out too many absentee ballots due to COVID. (The Supremes shot that case down in flames, noting that "Texas has not demonstrated a judicially cognizable interest in the manner in which another State conducts its elections.") Johnson is also apparently in favor of a national ban on abortion, along with massive cuts of Social Security, Medicare, and other "entitlements." He also has a ... poor, shall we say? ... record as a fundraiser, which is one of those things the Speaker of the House is expected to do for his party.

So, we've now got a not-yet-well-known Republican backbencher, who presumably will do whatever the Freedom Caucus demands of him. Yay?

Once again, Jim Jordan is not the Speaker of the House:
( Read more... )
I suppose the good news is that Jordan is only going through this exercise in humiliation once per day, rather than Kevin McCarthy's agonizing multiple-votes-per-day marathons. On the other hand, McCarthy never dropped below two hundred votes.

It's done: Kevin McCarthy voted out as Speaker of the House
( Read more... )
Those of us who've been doing Zoom meetings for the past few years know the sensation of the speaker being on mute. This is, AFAICT, the first time a Speaker has been put on boot ...

Semi-good news: Biden Administration announces reopening of free COVID tests website:
( Read more... )
The bad news, of course, is that at-home tests are still needed, due to our not actually eliminating COVID transmission nationwide (let alone worldwide).

But this is at least a decent step in the right direction. Especially as part of the program is to make sure domestic test production lines remain available to handle future surges in demand. Like, say, surging cases this fall and winter ...

Former President Donald J. Trump was indicted for the fourth time last night; this time in Fulton County, Georgia, along with eighteen other named co-conspirators:
( Read more... )

The indictment covers ninety-eight pages, nineteen defendants, and forty-one separate counts starting with violations of the Georgia state Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. That first RICO count alleges one hundred sixty one separate and distinct criminal acts in furtherance of the conspiracy to overturn the results of the 2020 Presidential election.

That's four indictments, in four separate courts, in three states and the District of Columbia, in less than five months.

Way to go, Donnie.

Former President Donald Trump was indicted - again - this afternoon, this time on four counts relating to his attempts to overturn the 2020 Presidential election and block the transfer of power:
( Read more... )

This, of course, follows Trump's previous indictments: the federal one on deliberately mishandling classified information (back in June), and the New York state one on fraudulent business record keeping (back in March).

It was just a couple of months ago that former President Donald Trump was indicted in New York City on thirty-four state felony counts of falsifying business records.

Today, Trump became the first former President to be indicted on federal charges. Specifically, a thirty-seven count indictment in the Southern District of Florida, alleging that Trump deliberately (and illegally) kept highly-classified defense information at Mar-A-Lago well after his term in office ended, along with conspiring with his former Navy valet to conceal having said documents from the government.

(This, of course, pushed the resignation of former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson from Parliament off the top of every US news feed.)

Unsurprisingly, stories about former President Donald Trump being arrested and arraigned in Manhattan yesterday on 34 felony charges were front page news in today's Boston Globe. In fact, they took up almost the entire front page.

Finland officially joining NATO was relegated to page A3. Granted, that story ran on the top of page A3, but NATO expanding along Russia's borders while said Russians are still invading Ukraine is a Big Effing Deal; without the Trumpman Show, I'd have expected it to be front page, above the fold news.

Ah, well.

The big news this morning: Disney stripped Florida governor Ron Desantis' handpicked board of pretty much all their power to control Walt Disney World back in February - and the new board only just now learned about it. (Or, as Talking Points Memo described it, "Wow! Disney Pantsed Lil' Ron!")

The big news this evening: Former President Donald Trump has been indicted in New York City; said indictment is still sealed as of this typing.

What a difference half a day makes.

After fifteen votes, Kevin McCarthy finally was elected Speaker of the House of Representatives:
( Read more... )
Of course, they now need to pass a rules package.

Kevin McCarthy managed to lose three more votes for Speaker of the House today.
On the other hand, he did - barely - win a vote.
To adjourn.
Until tomorrow.
( At least the kids can go to bed? )
Well, I suppose that's progress on McCarthy's part.

The town of Acton has posted the preliminary results of Tuesday's midterm election. Turnout was 62.16%; 9,952 of 16,011 registered voters cast ballots.
Compared to four years ago, turnout was actually down (72.68% then).

Still, that's a whole lotta votes for a non-Presidential year, especially as the Governor's race was pretty much a layup for Democratic Party nominee Maura Healy.