Elections results were even better than I thought

While the top line election results on Tuesday were good for Democrats, the picture looks even better when you look further down at other races.

Right wing bigots have targeted school boards in their push to narrow down what is taught and the books that are read. Virginia governor Glenn Youngkin pushed the so-called ‘parental rights’ issue to win his election to the governorship in 2022. He and other Republicans thought that they had found the magic formula for winning elections and sought to use that same message to win control of both house of legislature and school boards. Youngkin was also being promoted to be the party savior by the anti-Trump establishment as Ron DeSantis’s campaign seemed to be flaming out. But both houses gained Democratic majorities and he lost even school board races, tarnishing his credentials considerably.

Loudoun county, Virginia, attracted national headlines in 2021, when parents outraged over the alleged instruction of critical race theory and policies regarding transgender students shouted down officials at school board meetings.

Republican Glenn Youngkin made the issue a central focus of his gubernatorial campaign in the months after, accusing Democrats of politicizing education to the detriment of students’ learning and blaming them for pandemic-related school closures. And he had hoped it would continue to work in Tuesday’s general election.

“No more are we going to make parents stand outside of the room,” Youngkin told a crowd in Leesburg, part of Loudon county, on Monday. “We are going to put them at the head of the table in charge of our children’s lives.”

But that message failed on Tuesday, as Democratic-endorsed candidates won a majority on the Loudoun county school board.

The elections, in which every school board seat was up for grabs on Tuesday, had been framed as a test of the resiliency of parents’ rights as a campaign issue. Republicans had hoped to replicate Youngkin’s success in Loudoun county, which serves more than 80,000 students in a wealthy area located about an hour outside Washington. Instead, Loudoun county voters delivered a six-seat majority for Democratic-backed candidates on the nine-seat school board.
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As Democrats took a victory lap on Tuesday, some of them pointed to the results in Loudoun county as evidence that Youngkin’s message of parents’ rights no longer resonates with Virginia voters.

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Good election night for Democrats

In Ohio, the amendment to enshrine the right to abortion in the state constitution passed easily by a margin of 57%-43%. This adds to the number of states including red ones like Kansas and Kentucky that, in the wake of the US Supreme court to overturn Roe v. Wade, passed state constitution amendments to restore the right to abortion.You may recall that the Republican legislature in Ohio, seeing the writing on the wall, tried to thwart this by suddenly putting a ballot issue in August, when hardly anyone votes, that would have raised the threshold for passing constitutional amendments to 60%. But vigorous campaigning by abortion rights advocates defeated that measure, enabling the right to abortion to pass yesterday. Recreational use of marijuana also passed by 57%-43%.
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Why do they take the abuse?

In yet another new book about serial sex abuser Donald Trump (SSAT), we read about how he lets loose with lengthy abusive attacks on those around him whom he feels have let him down.

The extent of Donald Trump’s frustrations over the timing of his multiple scheduled court appearances in the thick of the 2024 presidential race, as well as the disdain with which he treats his own lawyers, is laid bare in a new book by Jonathan Karl.

The Washington correspondent for ABC News reveals Trump’s furious reaction when told by a Manhattan judge earlier this year that his criminal trial in the Stormy Daniels hush-money case would start on 25 March 2024. That places it right in the middle of the Republican primaries, and just 20 days before the all-important Super Tuesday in which 15 states decide their preferred candidate.

Karl relates in his new book, Tired of Winning: Donald Trump and the End of the Grand Old Party, how the former president responded angrily as he heard the date virtually as he sat in his Florida home, Mar-a-Lago.

He turned to one of his key lawyers, Todd Blanche, and yelled: “That’s in the middle of the primaries! If I lose the presidency, you are going to be the reason!”

Trump’s tantrum lasted almost half an hour, Karl reports, based on an anonymous source present in the room. When the court hearing was over, and the cameras were turned off, the former president launched what Karl describes as “a withering attack on perhaps the most highly regarded lawyer on Trump’s troubled legal team”.

“You little fucker!” Trump shouted in Blanche’s face. “You are going to cost me the presidency!” He went on to rant against other lawyers in his team, saying: “They want me to be indicted!”

I can understand low-level employees having little choice but to take the abuse. But powerful lawyers like Blanche are wealthy and don’t really need SSAT’s business. They could presumably tell him to go to hell and walk off.

But they don’t and seemingly sit there and take it meekly. Why?

Serious injuries in rugby

I have been railing about the serious dangers to participants in American football, especially with the rise in evidence of CTE, the long-term brain injury that results from repeated collisions that can cause concussions. It is thought that the repeated accumulation of concussions, even small ones during practices, is what leads to later serious cognitive decline in players. I feel the evidence is already compelling enough that I no longer watch games and also think that schools and colleges should no longer offer this as a sports option to their students. It is an activity that should be left for adults to choose to participate in, though they should be made aware of the risks.

Americans tend to view rugby as pretty much the same as American football, except without the protective helmets and body padding and hence think that it must be much more dangerous. I used to tell them that it was not so, that there were differences that made rugby safer. One is that there is evidence that the protective gear actually gives players a false sense of safety and encourages them to do dangerous things that they would not do without it. Another is that in rugby, it is only the player who has the ball that can be tackled, thus any given player faces far fewer collisions per game. A third is that any collision that results in contact with a player’s head results in an immediate yellow card that requires the offender to be off the field for ten minutes, to sit in a chair that is quaintly called a ‘sin bin’. If, during that time, an off-field review shows no mitigating factors, it is upgraded to a red card and the player cannot return to the game.
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Republicans cannot handle the truth

There was something called the Florida Freedom Summit held over the weekend. I had not heard of this group before but have learned that any outfit which has the words ‘freedom’, ‘family’, or ‘liberty’ in its name can usually be predicted to be made up of extreme right wing nut jobs and this one seems to fit the bill. Two candidates for the Republican nomination who have staked out positions critical of serial sex abuser Donald Trump (SSAT) spoke at the meeting and they got very hostile receptions when they criticized the Dear Leader SSAT.

To his credit, the combative Chris Christie did not flinch but engaged with the people jeering him.

Christie fed off the animated crowd, fueling more boos as he challenged audience members’ reactions to his remarks.

“The problem is, you want to shout down any voice that says anything different than what you want to hear. You can continue to do it, and believe me — believe me, it doesn’t bother me one bit,” Christie said before pivoting to Israel.
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With each disruption, the New Jersey Republican fired back until he left the stage at the conclusion of his remarks.

“You can yell and boo about it as much as you like, but it doesn’t change the truth. And the truth is coming. The truth is coming, and all of you need to understand: America needs better than what we’ve had. And it never makes America a better place, whether it’s on a college campus in an Ivy League or whether it’s in an auditorium in Orlando, for us to be booing and shouting down opinions we don’t agree with,” Christie said.

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Poor Ivanka, so put upon, like all the Trump family

Honestly, the sense of entitlement of Trump’s family is difficult to comprehend. After having been subpoenaed to testify at the fraud trial of the family business, daughter Ivanka Trump appealed the demand to appear because, as the mother of three school-age children, it would cause too much hardship to fly to New York to attend a mid-week trial.

The former president’s daughter, a senior adviser during his single term of office, asked the panel to set aside a ruling by a district court judge compelling her to testify next Wednesday, 8 November.

“Ms Trump, who resides in Florida with her three minor children, will suffer undue hardship if a stay is denied and she is required to testify at trial in New York in the middle of a school week, in a case she has already been dismissed from, before her appeal is heard,” her lawyers said in a legal filing on Thursday.

What did she expect the court to do? Delay the proceedings until the summer school break? Move the trial near to her home in Florida?

The appeals court was having none of it.

But in an expedited ruling on Thursday night, the appeals court offered a curt, 11-word response.

“Application for interim stay pending decision on the motion is denied,” the judges wrote.

Ivanka had no trouble traveling all over the globe when her father was president. She also has a husband, the father of her children. Why couldn’t he look after them? And given their wealth, I am pretty sure that they have plenty of hired help with everything domestic related. I just don’t see them looking after the children and taking care of their home all on their own. And even if they did, every two-parent family has to deal with many, many occasions requiring the absence of one parent or even both. Single-parent families have it even worse, where the parent has to be unavoidably away from their children. All make whatever arrangements they can, even if they can ill afford it. That is all part of life.

When you have a lot of money, there are so many other options at your disposal. But the Trumps are such precious snowflakes that it is intolerable for them to have to put up with the kinds of inconveniences that are routine for pretty much everyone. They expect the world to accommodate them.

Expect her father to let loose with another rant about this further shows how everyone is being so unfair to them.

New speaker’s cynicism already on full display

The new speaker Mike Johnson has wasted no time in showing that he is as much a cynical politician as any in the GOP. Given the enthusiasm with which his election was received by the party, we should have expected no less, but it is still noteworthy.

The Biden administration had asked Congress for $104 billion for aid to Ukraine, Israel, and other causes. Spending bills have to originate in the House of Representatives and Johnson has decided to show his cleverness by passing a bill that would provide just the $14.3 billion for Israel, but require that this spending be offset by cutting the same amount from that dedicated to the IRS to hire new tax auditors in the Inflation Reduction Act passed earlier.

Johnson argues that this proves that the GOP are fiscal conservatives, a blatant lie since they have bloated the deficit repeatedly when they controlled Congress and the White House, by providing massive massive tax cuts for the rich. The Congressional Budget Office says that in reality, this bill would actually increase the deficit since the ‘saving’ of $14.3 billion on IRS agents will actually result in more than $26.8 billion of lost revenue due to inadequate auditing of wealthy people.

This bill is so obviously unserious that it will not even be brought up in the senate and president Biden has said he will veto it anyway. Johnson is trying to make the claim that Democrats prioritize hiring IRS agents over aiding Israel when the reality is that it is the GOP that is prioritizing helping the wealthy over aiding Israel. The devotion of the GOP to preserving and increasing the wealth of the already filthy rich is a marvel to behold.

Meanwhile, while he pursues these stunts, the budget deadline of November 17th is less than two weeks away.

This cartoon perfectly captures Johnson’s logic.

SBF found guilty on all counts

The jury returned a verdict of guilty on all seven counts in the trial of Sam Bankman-Fried.

“Mr. Bankman-Fried. Please rise and face the jury,” Judge Lewis A. Kaplan commanded just before a jury forewoman responded “guilty” seven times to two counts of wire fraud, two counts of wire fraud conspiracy and three other conspiracy charges, which carry potential penalties adding up to 110 years in prison. Bankman-Fried is likely to face far less than the maximum at a sentencing set for March 28.

Given the complexity of the entire cryptocurrency enterprise that few understand, there was the possibility that the jurors might be overwhelmed. The defense indeed emphasized that it was so complex that even their client was out of his depth and did not know what was going on and did not have the intent to defraud.

However, the prosecution decided to treat the whole cryptocurrency part as just a black box whose details were largely irrelevant. What they focused on was common-or-garden fraud, whereby SBF took the money of investors and diverted it for his personal use, including a lavish lifestyle.

U.S. Attorney Damian Williams, who sat in the front row of the spectator section during the verdict, stood before cameras outside the courthouse and said Bankman-Fried “perpetrated one of the biggest financial frauds in American history, a multibillion dollar scheme designed to make him the king of crypto.”

“But here’s the thing: The cryptocurrency industry might be new. The players like Sam Bankman-Fried might be new. This kind of fraud, this kind of corruption is as old as time and we have no patience for it,” he said.

He said the case should serve as a warning to every other fraudster who “thinks they’re untouchable, that their crimes are too complex,” that they are too powerful to prosecute or can talk their way out of their crimes because “I promise we’ll have enough handcuffs for all of them.”

That kind of fraud is easy to understand and the jury provided a verdict very quickly after just a few hours.