In the name of the father, the son, and the wholly outraged

The big news that broke late on Sunday, December 1, 2024 was President Joe Biden's sweeping and unconditional pardon of his troubled son Hunter on firearms purchase violations and tax evasion charges, as well as a granting of clemency for Hunter's conduct dating back to January 1, 2014. This apparently took lots of folks by surprise, Biden supporters and detractors alike, as the president had been so adamant for such a long time about taking the high road, insisting that he would let the wheels of "justice" turn as they would and that he absolutely would not intervene in his son's cases.

But he changed his mind. In the official statement about the reasons he did this, he wrote, in part:

No reasonable person who looks at the facts of Hunter’s cases can reach any other conclusion than Hunter was singled out only because he is my son – and that is wrong. There has been an effort to break Hunter – who has been five and a half years sober, even in the face of unrelenting attacks and selective prosecution. In trying to break Hunter, they’ve tried to break me – and there’s no reason to believe it will stop here. Enough is enough. 
 
For my entire career I have followed a simple principle: just tell the American people the truth. They’ll be fair-minded. Here’s the truth: I believe in the justice system, but as I have wrestled with this, I also believe raw politics has infected this process and it led to a miscarriage of justice – and once I made this decision this weekend, there was no sense in delaying it further. I hope Americans will understand why a father and a President would come to this decision.

Well, a lot of Americans, including me, do understand and support the president's decision, but not surprisingly he is also facing a torrent of outrage. To me the backlash seems to be more extreme than any of the reactions against DonOld Trump's continual fascist threats and utterly appalling administration appointees. It could be that Trump is so profoundly awful and evil in every way that the commentariat have become numb to it all. It's no longer news when Trump threatens to do, or actually does, something else that will further hasten the wholesale destruction of American democracy. But when Biden, who unlike Trump has always been held to higher standards, does something that goes against the grain... well, now, that's a scandal.

Bring on the backlash
It's no big shocker that the reich-wing/rethuglican pearl clutchers are fuming about the injustice of it all, claiming that Biden is a hypocrite and that the pardon is a blatant attempt to "avoid accountability." (Given their choice for "president," rethuglicans talking about "accountability" is a joke in and of itself.)

Any jokers who are okay with the lineup of scoundrels who benefited from Trump's last-minute pardons and commutations a few years ago have zero room to criticize the pardoning of Hunter Biden. NBC News (January 20, 2021) published the list.

Trump had abused his pardon power earlier in his administration as well, as I wrote about on this Whirled back in June of 2018. (He never did pardon or commute the sentence of serial scammer and all-too-frequent Whirled subject Kevin Trudeau, though.)

And here, straight from the Department of Justice, is a complete list of pardons and commutations during Trump's first term. Several of these scumbags have already been granted a place in the next Trump administration.

But the backlash against the president hasn't just been coming from the reich. Even some (though by no means all) Democrats and liberals are wagging their fingers, as reported by Axios, among numerous other sources.

In an opinion piece by Matt Ford on The New Republic site, the headline reads, "The Hunter Biden Pardon Is Joe Biden’s Ultimate Failure." Ford describes Biden's time in office as a "failed presidency," seemingly basing that assessment on the fact that Biden broke his promise to "restore good government, protect American democracy, and cure the republic of Trumpism." (Apparently the numerous actual accomplishments that the Biden administration managed despite what turned out to be the out-of-control plague of Trumpism are irrelevant.)

Ford grouses that Biden broke his oath of office and that pardoning Hunter is "a quintessentially corrupt act" because the president is using his awesome presidential power to protect his own child -- but hasn't extended his pardon power to numerous others who are also clearly in danger from the Trumpublican wrecking ball. (Pssst, Matt, Joe still has a few weeks to add to the pardon list.)

In short, to Ford, this pardon is a blatant abuse of power.

To his credit, Ford acknowledges that Trump himself abused the presidential pardon power in the past and that he is planning to do it again "in even more grotesquely self-interested ways" -- and that he would have done this whether Biden pardoned his son or not. Nevertheless Ford insists that none of this excuses Biden's act of pardoning his own son. And he seems to be on the crowded bandwagon -- a bandwagon that includes Trump himself -- of those who believe that this one single act by President Biden clearly paves the way for Trump to go full speed ahead with his own pardon orgy.

That's nonsense.

Trump's gonna do what he's gonna do, regardless of what anyone else does or doesn't do
As even Matt Ford and other critics have noted -- and it cannot be overstated -- everyone who has been paying attention for the past nine years knows that Trump was and is always going to do whatever the hell he wants to do, with no respect for protocol or high standards or the rule of law. Most notably, ever since he launched his 2024 campaign — long before President Biden pardoned Hunter — Trump has been promising that if re-elected he will free and pardon virtually all of the convicted and/or imprisoned January 6 “patriots” and “political prisoners,” including the most violent ones.

In addition, he is hellbent on aggressively weaponizing the justice system and every tool within his reach to prosecute his political opponents as well as those within the justice system who have advanced the numerous cases against him, and journalists who have reported honestly on his lies and misdeeds.

Even though Trump lies about pretty much everything else, we have no reason to disbelieve him when he makes these threats. And he is building powerful alliances to help him carry out his threats.

As someone on a Xitter thread about this matter wrote, Biden's pardon of his son is not a green light for Trump, who was going to run the red light anyway. So those who are whining about Hunter’s pardon as if it were THE event that broke the last guardrail -- and who are insisting that anyone who supports the pardon can no longer claim the moral or legal high ground -- should really just sit this one out.

Now, could President Biden have handled the whole thing better? Probably. In a December 2 opinion piece on Intelligencer, legal analyst Elie Honig wrote that the president made all of this much harder than it needed to be on himself, Hunter, and the justice system. Honig wrote that instead of being so insistent that he would never, ever intervene in his son's cases, Biden could have just offered a standard political hedge: “I haven’t fully considered it yet, but I’ll examine it carefully when the time is right, and I’ll do what I believe is in the best interest of justice.”

Moreover, Honig added, he "could have positioned the pardon as a merits-based decision on which reasonable minds can disagree. Instead, he broke out the sanctimony and cried victimhood while breaking his unequivocal promise to the American public."

Well, Mr. Honig, even though your opinion piece is marginally more nuanced than that of numerous other critics, it seems that you're pouring on the sanctimony too. We'll just have to agree to disagree about your opinion that Biden has "tarnished his own legacy and undermined the very justice system he claims to so deeply revere." In his statement about the pardon/clemency, the president acknowledged that he had always been a strong supporter of the justice system, but that it has been grievously misused in this case. And I think he made a pretty clear and honest case about the merits of his decision, and why he changed his mind about pardoning his son.

What the critics are missing: there's a huge difference between a lie and a genuine change of heart
Critics of the pardon, including Elie Honig, have repeatedly whined that Biden "lied" to the American public. They're operating under the assumption that Biden never really intended to stick to his vow to butt out of his son's cases, and that an ultimate pardon was what he had in mind all along. That would be the definition of a lie in this case: a deliberate attempt to deceive or to hide one's real intentions.

But I am willing to give the president the benefit of the doubt. I think Biden really did intend to keep his promise, and that he was still clinging, however tenuously, to that intention even a few days after the disastrous 2024 election, when his press secretary, in answer to a question, said that the president still had no plans to pardon Hunter.

But extraordinary circumstances can crack even the strongest intentions. In the weeks after that statement at the presser, which seem like years in some ways, it became increasingly apparent that Hunter was most likely in real jeopardy from the Mango Mussolini mafia. Trump's recent announcement that he'd picked rabid Trump toady Kash Patel to head the FBI -- which he'd actually wanted to do during his first term -- could very well have been the last straw for Biden and his family.

Patel, like his orange idol, is obsessed with revenge against any and all factions who have stood up to Trump, including Trump's political opponents and their families. As Ron Filipkowski noted on Xitter December 2:

MONTHS AFTER Joe said he would not pardon Hunter, Trump won the election & appointed a man as FBI Director who has spent the last 4 years on every right-wing podcast ranting that he was going to go after Hunter. Obsessed with him. Were you aware of that, critics? Not relevant?

I'd say it's pretty damn relevant.

And I really do think that President Biden should get busy with some additional sweeping preemptive pardons, which at the very least should include everybody on the enemies list that Krazy Kash published in his 2023 magnum dopus, Government Gangsters. Here's one place where you can read that list, which includes Joe Biden himself as well as Hillary Clinton, Kamala Harris, current FBI director Christopher Wray, Merrick Garland, Bill Barr, John Bolton, Alexander Vindman, Fiona Hill, Cassidy Hutchinson, and even some of Trump's former communications team members, such as Alyssa Farah Griffin (currently a co-host on The View) and Stephanie Grisham.

Would that be an abuse of the presidential pardon power? The reich will surely say yea, but again, given their dear leader's history and promised future of gross abuse of power -- including prosecution of the people on Kash's enemies list -- they have no room to squawk.

Real reasons for outrage
One would expect the reich to march lockstep with Der Furor, but the wholly outraged in the center and on the left really should find something more substantial to be outraged about than a father protecting his son from the thugs and criminals who had been gunning for both father and son for years -- most notably, the fact that Trump and many of those thugs and criminals are coming after all of us in 2025. America and the rest of the "free world" may never recover. From The Bulwark:

The theory here is simple: Trump will do what he has repeatedly promised to do and what he started doing in his first term. He will impose widespread tariffs, undercutting the postwar open trade regime, which disincentivizes conflict by promoting economic interdependence. He will break commitments to democratic allies and cozy up to authoritarians. Defenders of the U.S.-led international order from Trump’s first term, such as Secretary of Defense James Mattis and White House Chief of Staff John Kelly won’t be there to slow it down. In their stead will be enablers, including Russia sympathizers. The administration will act without fear of impeachment, legal punishment, or loss of re-election, because Trump already overcame all three...

That's what you should be making you outraged, and scared as hell. And don't tell me that it's possible and prudent to focus on both the outrage over Hunter being pardoned and the outrage over Trump and gang's plans. I know it's possible. I'm just saying that it's a stupid waste of precious energy, not to mention that it's grossly unfair to President Biden, to be outraged over this pardon.

Before you leave...
All politics aside, this has been, for several reasons that have nothing to do with politics, a nightmare of a year for me personally. Money, alas, cannot make the nightmare go away, but it can make it far easier to bear. Now more than ever, donations are urgently needed and profoundly appreciated. Here are some ways to do it:

• New: Venmo -- username @Connie-Schmidt-42. Here is a direct link to the Venmo page.
• New: PayPal -- Here is a direct link to my PayPal page.
• Old but still good: You can click on the "Donate" icon that currently appears on the right-hand side of every page of this blog on the Web version. There's also a donation link at the end of many of my older blog posts. In the case of both the icon and the links on the older posts, as well as the link in this sentence, this is also a PayPal link, but it references the email account of my husband, RevRon -- which is cool, because it all ultimately goes to the same place.

NOTE: If you are donating by PayPal, please specify that your contribution is a gift, which it is (as opposed to a conventional purchase, for which PayPal deducts a percentage for their fee).

Whether you can donate or not, thank you for visiting this Whirled.

Veterans Day: Those who have served will be ill-served by Trump and Project 2025 (and/or Elon & Vivek's austerity cartel)

Today, November 11, we in the Divided States of America observed Veterans Day, a holiday known in other parts of the world as Remembrance Day or Armistice Day. By any name, the original purpose of the holiday was to commemorate the end of World War I, which turned out not to be the "war to end all wars" as it had been billed back in the day, but whose end was nonetheless a cause for celebration. The US has since expanded the holiday to pay tribute, at least via lip service, impassioned patriotic memes, and mattress sales, not only to those who fought in the first World War but to all who have served our country throughout its history.

But because of what happened on November 5, on this November 11 the words, "Thank you for your service" are ringing even more hollow than usual.

As someone who is married to a US Navy veteran and is keenly interested in the laws and policies that most directly affect veterans, I am deeply saddened by the ways our vets are almost certainly going to get the shaft from the incoming regime. To put it succinctly: #NeverWasMyPresident King Donold John Trump, aka Cadet Bone Spurs -- who has consistently disrespected veterans despite the fact that so many of them continue to support him -- is no friend of the men and women who have served.

In my Election Day post I wrote about a conversation I'd had the Friday before the election with three senior-aged male veterans on a VA shuttle bus. All three were all in for Trump and had already early-voted for him, their main issues apparently being border security, meat prices, and the Green New Deal. In the interests of keeping the peace with my new friends, I kept my own political opinions to myself, but what I so badly wanted to say was, "If Trump wins... just wait until you see your VA benefits decimated."

Well... Donold won. I really would love to be proven wrong about what he and his well-funded, well-organized thug cartels are going to do to our veterans as well as to our active military, but I'm afraid it's gonna be bad.

There is a big movement by the thugs to outsource and privatize much if not all of VA healthcare, and to cut costs by slashing many of the benefits that vets now enjoy. The big bugaboo is Project 2025, of which Trump has spent the past year feigning ignorance and which, if implemented, would greatly reduce or completely end many veterans' hard-earned benefits. In a July 2024 opinion piece on Task & Purpose, Russell B. Lemle and Jasper Craven wrote:

Project 2025 proposes several alarming recommendations that could significantly reduce veterans’ access to healthcare. One would realign healthcare benefits to cover only “service-connected conditions,” – i.e., medical or mental health problems that were acquired or exacerbated by military service. Currently, once veterans prove they have a service-related condition, they can receive care for that problem as well as other conditions that they may develop. For example, a veteran whose leg was amputated in the military would not only have lifetime care for that problem, but also for the high blood pressure or cancer that they develop, in civilian life.

The Heritage blueprint argues for the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) to eliminate some clinical services that “don’t align with service-connected conditions.” If this strategy to authorize care based on service-connected disabilities is taken to its logical extension, other care, like for an amputee’s hypertension in the example above, would no longer be furnished. There are five million veterans who have a service-connected designation, and they all potentially stand to lose access for the bulk of their healthcare needs. Two million veterans without a service-connected designation could potentially be disenrolled from VA healthcare entirely. Such a draconian concept accords with the Koch-backed group Concerned Veterans for America, whose Veterans Independence Act proposes “tightening eligibility requirements for new enrollees at a certain date in order to reorient the VA back towards its mission of providing care for service-connected disabled veterans.” It is also a goal espoused in the Heritage Foundation’s Budget Blueprint for Fiscal Year 2023. 

Ahead of the election, numerous other sources repeated the warnings about Project 2025, among these being the American Postal Workers Union (APWU), which in an October 23, 2024 piece noted:

The Veterans Administration (VA) health system is also targeted by Project 2025. It plans to eliminate VA hospitals and health clinics and replace them with privatized outpatient clinics. This would have an especially considerable impact on Veterans living in rural areas. Project 2025 even calls for the privatization of TRICARE, the active duty service members (ADSMs) health system, threatening to drive up health care costs for millions of servicemembers and their families.

And in an August 29, 2024 article in the Pennsylvania Independent, Will Fritz wrote:

The [2025] playbook’s chapter on the Department of Veterans Affairs calls for ensuring “political control of the VA” on day one by replacing civil servants with political appointees. It says the next Republican administration in the White House should rescind VA directives that mandate the provision of abortion services, which it calls “a medical procedure unrelated to military service that the VA lacks the legal authority and clinical proficiency to perform.”

It proposes rescinding any clinical policy directives “that are contrary to principles of conservative governance,” beginning with abortion services as well as gender-affirming care, though its authors don’t specify exactly what those principles are.

“On reproductive health care, the project does seek to ban the use of public funds to facilitate reproductive health care and abortion for active service members, and that does strip away critical health care for millions of women and further pushing them away from serving in the military, potentially,” said Skye Perryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward, a nonpartisan legal services group that works to expose corruption in the executive branch.

And, as so many other sources have warned (but it can't be overstated), veterans with disabilities will be particularly hard hit.

The playbook argues that the next Republican administration in the White House should make plans to curtail veterans’ disability benefits.

The VA assigns veterans a disability rating for disabilities caused or aggravated by active duty service, ranging from 10% to 100% in increments of 10%. Veterans with a disability rating receive tax-free benefits.

Project 2025 suggests reducing those benefits. It states that the next Republican administration should speed up a review of disability rating criteria in order to save money while preserving benefits for future claims.

The legalese in the document belies the truth of the plan, according to Michael Embrich, a former policy advisor to the secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs: “They would go through every veteran who’s been rated, who currently gets their veteran’s — what they call benefit compensation check every month, and they would say, Hey, we want to take a look and see if you still have tinnitus. And if they determine you don’t, they want to take your benefit away, which is kind of unheard of.”

Revising disability ratings for future claimants would mean many disabled veterans wouldn’t get benefits at all, and the plan’s stated goal of “preserving them fully or partially for existing claimants” would allow them to cut benefits even for veterans who have already completed their service and are receiving benefits that they have rightfully earned and rely on, Embrich said.

In August of 2024, to commemorate the anniversary of the signing into law of the Biden administration's popular PACT Act, Democrats.org presented a list of sources offering insight into just how bad Trump 2.0 and Project 2025 would be for veterans and active-duty military. Among those sources was a July 4, 2024 piece in Raw Story that warned:

Among other recommendations, the [Project 2025] plan proposes eliminating concurrent eligibility for both service-related disability benefits and military retirement benefits, which [Brooks D.] Tucker [Trump's chief of staff for Trump's second VA secretary Robert Wilkie] says would reduce mandatory outlays by at least $160 billion through 2032, and revising the disability rating awards that determine eligibility for benefits and determine monthly disability compensation to reap "significant cost savings."

The plan also proposes to end enrollment in VA medical care for veterans in two low-priority groups to save an estimated $69 billion through 2032 and narrow eligibility for veterans disability by excluding disabilities that cannot be related to military service, which would save an estimated $37.6 billion during that same period.

Even worse (and as also noted in the APWU piece cited above, though the quote below is from the Raw Story piece):

Tucker recommends the expansion of Community Based Outpatient Clinics (CBOC) rather that maintaining or upgrading "obsolete" or "unaffordable" VA health care campuses that currently provide inpatient services, emergency care and other health services in one location.

The Michael DeBakey VA Medical Center in Houston, where my husband receives his healthcare, is one such campus that provides all of those services in one location, and it has been a blessing for us, especially since we don't have a working vehicle right now and can't just zip back and forth all over the state from specialist to specialist in order for him to get the care he needs. Under the thumbs of the reich-wing cost cutters, however, the DeBakey Center and others like it across the country might very well go the way of the republican party's regard for the Constitution. And that would be an egregious disservice not only for my husband but for hundreds of thousands of others who served our country honorably and deserve the best care possible.

* * * * *

I get that a lot of MAGAts are in deep denial about Project 2025, having been taken in by Trump's and the Heritage Foundation's efforts, in the wake of public outrage, to convince the rubes that Trump and P-2025 are not at all connected. (Here's a link to the denial page on the Project 2025 site.)

The MAGAts' denial really hit home for me when I began participating in a discussion on a Facebook group in which the majority of participants were clearly Trumpsters. Someone asked, "What do you think of Project 2025?" Most of the responses were earnest claims that Trump and the Heritage Foundation's pet project had absolutely nothing to do with each other, and that the alarmism about P-2025 was a fabrication of those lying, scheming Democrats. One person even claimed that the Heritage Foundation had endorsed Kamala (not true; one person formerly associated with the Heritage Foundation decades ago, Mickey Edwards, endorsed her. But the Trumpanzee making this claim would not accept this, and insisted that she was right.).

A few of us in the group respectfully disagreed with the claim that Trump and P-2025 weren't connected, and we provided numerous links to support our argument. We were for the most part rewarded with Facebook's laugh emoji and the expected name-calling. I was called a left-wing loony, a communist, and an idiot. There's no convincing the cult, so I gave up trying.

Whether or not one chooses to believe that Trump and P-2025 are connected, however, there's no denying the connection between Trump and the new Evil Musk/Vivek Ramasmarmy austerity cartel, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Unfortunately, there's a good chance that DOGE will be as ruthless as Project 2025 when it comes to cutting benefits for our veterans.

I'd be remiss if I were to gloss over the fact that when Trump was president the first time, some good things actually were done for veterans, although Trump falsely took credit for some actions that were not in fact his doing. But Biden arguably did more for our vets, and no doubt Kamala Harris would have continued and perhaps expanded on that trend. (Here's the rundown on what both Trump and Biden did for veterans.)

I'm afraid that those three male vets I talked with, and many thousands of others who voted for Trump, are in for a rude awakening. Frankly I don't see how any veteran or active military service member could support the man who called those who made the ultimate sacrifice in World War I "suckers" and "losers," and who once described his sexual escapades in his youth as his "own personal Vietnam." But I guess his military and vet supporters either rationalize that all of this is fake news, or that it's simply not important because he is going to fix inflation and the border and he's going to make America great for them. Believing these things is their choice, of course. It's just too bad that when they made their choice for president, they were voting squarely against their own best interests as well as the interests of most Americans.

In recent months I have been making frequent trips to the DeBakey VA Medical Center in Houston where, as I indicated above, my veteran husband receives his healthcare. There is a wall in the front lobby area with a framed photo of the Commander in Chief. It's going to be a grievous insult, not only to my husband but to every veteran who walks those endless halls, to see Trump’s smirking orange mug on that wall.

This post has been updated to include the information about the Department of Government Efficiency. ~ CC

Before you leave...
All politics aside, this has been, for several reasons that have nothing to do with politics, a nightmare of a year for me personally. Money, alas, cannot make the nightmare go away, but it can make it far easier to bear. Now more than ever, donations are urgently needed and profoundly appreciated. Here are some ways to do it:

• New: Venmo -- username @Connie-Schmidt-42. Here is a direct link to the Venmo page.
• New: PayPal -- Here is a direct link to my PayPal page.
• Old but still good: You can click on the "Donate" icon that currently appears on the right-hand side of every page of this blog on the Web version. There's also a donation link at the end of many of my older blog posts. In the case of both the icon and the links on the older posts, as well as the link in this sentence, this is also a PayPal link, but it references the email account of my husband, RevRon -- which is cool, because it all ultimately goes to the same place.

NOTE: If you are donating by PayPal, please specify that your contribution is a gift, which it is (as opposed to a conventional purchase, for which PayPal deducts a percentage for their fee).

Whether you can donate or not, thank you for visiting this Whirled.

 

Even darker: it's deja screw all over again, but even worse than last time

 Congratulations, Trump voters. I'm very much afraid that this is what awaits most of you, and unfortunately most of the rest of us too:

(If the embedded video doesn't play, here's a direct link. )

And yes, I know I cited this very video in my Election Day post on November 5. But it bears citing again, just because.

* * * * *

One of my Whirled posts in the early daze following the disastrous 2016 US presidential election was titled, "You want it darker." That was a reference to the title, and title song, of a then-new collection by Canadian songwriter/singer/poet/novelist/artist Leonard Cohen, who had passed away just one day before the aforementioned disastrous election. Having been a lifelong Cohen fan, I was as devastated by the revelation of his death as I was by the news that Mango Mussolini had won, and I wrote at length about both events a few days after the "Darker" post.

Well, Leonard, things have just become even darker. Trump won. As CNN summed it up:

The former president will return to the White House in a moment of historic consequence for American democracy. He’ll head back to to the nation’s highest office four years after losing the 2020 election, attempting to overturn the results, facing two presidential impeachments, a criminal conviction and many other criminal charges.

Yes, and now we get to see just how far into fascism this country will really descend. It doesn't look pretty. We were screwed in 2016, but it looks as if we're even screwed-er now.

But we're not storming the Capitol, and Vice President Kamala Harris has delivered her gracious concession speech. It's a speech that's far more hopeful than I feel right now, but maybe I'll catch up to her optimism at some point.

It's not that none of us saw this coming. After 2016, and then eight long years of hearing Trump's increasingly unhinged rhetoric that still didn't seem to alienate his cult followers but only made them love him more, we always knew that another Trump victory was a distinct possibility. Yet it was still a shock.

Journalist Jonathan M. Katz wrote in a "morning after" piece for The Racket:

The thing I knew most of all, the thing that is the most embarrassing to confront in the cold light of this unnervingly hot November day, was the lesson that decades of imperialist violence and dehumanization abroad comes home, sure as the sun, in the form of fascism. I wrote a whole book about it, a book that is still very much in print. For years I was bellowing at anyone who would listen: No, we are not immune. Yes, it can happen here. There were many off-ramps we could have taken. I wanted to believe, even still, at this late date, that somehow a loud enough series of warnings — from the former president’s former staffers, from the former president on the campaign trail himself — would spur enough people in enough states into action. What I did not know, and what I should have known, is that these warnings wouldn’t be enough. We will know soon enough if the critical margin who meandered into his camp, and those who did not go to the polls, understood what they voted for and will like it once they see it in action. But for now, it was not a dealbreaker, and that was enough.

You can lead voters to the truth, but you can't make them think. Especially if they're devoted cult members, so blinded by the orange that they can't see the multiple shimmering colors of that truth.

I know that it wasn't just the hardcore cultists who pushed Cantaloupe Caligula past the finish line. Other voters were sucked in by his erratic messaging and relentless fearmongering, many if not most of them no doubt driven by the same cognitive biases that I discussed on my previous post (here's that link again): negativity bias ("awfulizing" the current administration, the state of the economy, etc.); and euphoric recall (forgetting how genuinely awful the first Trump administration was).

Some have suggested that a combination of irregularities in tallying the votes, various forms of voter suppression, and foreign interference were the real causes of Harris' defeat. If there's even a remote possibility that any of these things occurred, or there's any doubt about the results, I would expect legal challenges and recounts.

For now, I'm going to take Trump's "victory" at face value, even though it casts a horrendous light on the faces of millions of American voters. Is this really "who we are" as a country? Jordan Zakarin, writing for Progress Report, says we might as well own up to it.

Americans knew Donald Trump, were fully aware of his mendacious personality and mental instability, the hateful crew of ideological madmen who accompany him, and had a clear idea of what he'd do in office. And they chose to make him president again, anyway.

It’s a painful thing to admit, but this is just who we are as a country, at least right now. A majority of voters experienced all four excruciating years of Trump’s presidency — the scandal and corruption, mass pandemic deaths, the elevation of three vicious Supreme Court justices, and an actual attempt to overthrow the government — and either enjoyed the depravity or did not see it as a dealbreaker when they chose a new president.

But in a thoughtful piece on Meidas News, Ron Filipkowski suggested that it wasn't just the Trump voters who are to blame, and he offered a list of the major mistakes and missteps by Biden, Harris, and the Democrats that helped lead to the unfortunate election results. Several of these blunders were in essence messaging failures; numerous opportunities were missed to adequately counter the attacks and outrageous lies by Trump and the republicans. It's a list well worth perusing.

Like Harris, however, Filipkowski refuses to give up hope, viewing the devastating loss as an opportunity to revive the Democratic Party. After all, as the sub-head in the article says, we do have the talent to win, and win big.

The Trump presidency will likely be a complete disaster for the country if he is able to implement even 10% of what he has proposed. The people he plans on bringing in to the government are arguably even worse tha[n] he is in many respects. I believe this second Trump Admin will seek to radically transform our institutions, alliances overseas, budget and tax code, economy, environmental regulations, health care, the food supply, separation of church and state, along with all the usual drama that surrounds Trump and his minions.

While all of that is bad for the country, so much so that many of us have dedicated our lives over the last 5 years trying to prevent it, it will also provide an opening for Democrats to reposition themselves to take back the presidency, House and Senate in 2028.

But we can only do that if we stick together, remain united while hashing out differences in good faith, and broaden our coalition. Americans will be hungry for a change after four more years of MAGA and Trump toxicity, and we have to be a party that appeals to them for reasons other than the fact that we aren't them.

It won't be easy, but it's doable, provided of course that dissenters don't all get thrown in jail by the Mango Mussolini regime before they can accomplish anything.

Jonathan Katz, whose "morning after" post I quoted above, concluded his post with this:

The main thing I’m keeping in mind is that this is the same country it was yesterday. We are just now seeing it in a new light. Tens of millions invited this future in, yes, but ten of millions more tried to choose a different path. We may be more constrained in making them now. But there will still be many more choices to come.

Let us hope. I'm grieving now, but as I said eight years ago, I am definitely not giving up. And as I also said eight years ago, I don't want you to give up either.

Before you leave...
All politics aside, this has been, for several reasons, a nightmare of a year for me personally. Money, alas, cannot make the nightmare go away, but it can make it far easier to bear. Now more than ever, donations are urgently needed and profoundly appreciated. Here are some ways to do it:

• New: Venmo -- username @Connie-Schmidt-42. Here is a direct link to the Venmo page.
• New: PayPal -- Here is a direct link to my PayPal page.
• Old but still good: You can click on the "Donate" icon that currently appears on the right-hand side of every page of this blog on the Web version. There's also a donation link at the end of many of my older blog posts. In the case of both the icon and the links on the older posts, as well as the link in this sentence, this is also a PayPal link, but it references the email account of my husband, RevRon -- which is cool, because it all ultimately goes to the same place.

NOTE: If you are donating by PayPal, please specify that your contribution is a gift, which it is (as opposed to a conventional purchase, for which PayPal deducts a percentage for their fee).

Whether you can donate or not, thank you for visiting this Whirled.

Election Day musings: overall the US is actually better off than it was 4 years ago, but will be much WORSE off if 45 becomes 47

We are in the waning hours of Election Day in the Divided States of America, and it's no exaggeration to say that if American democracy has any hope whatsoever of surviving, Kamala will be our Number 47. Unfortunately, if we're to believe the polls and the pundits (and there are reasons to be skeptical of both, but we can't ignore them), Dolt 45 has an alarmingly good chance of winning -- and then there goes the country, and along with it much of the rest of the free world.

And I think most of us also know that when all is said and done, even if Kamala were to score what in a sane political milieu would be considered a landslide victory, the vicious and well-organized MAGA forces will do everything in their power, both inside and outside of the law, to overturn the will of the American people. So we need to brace ourselves for the possibility that January 6, 2021, was just a rehearsal.

"Are you better off now?"
One of the constant themes of the Trump campaign has centered around the loaded question, first posed by the late Ronald Reagan during the 1980 presidential debate with Jimmy Carter: "Are you better off than you were four years ago?" Of course the MAGA faithful have shouted that they are not, not, NOT better off, citing soaring food prices, expensive gas, imaginary "open borders," and an equally imaginary violent crime tsunami as evidence that the Biden/Harris administration has brought the country to ruin. The devotees fondly recall the halcyon daze of the first Trump reign, when food and gas were cheap, the border was totally secure, and law and order prevailed.

Accordingly they long for the Second Coming of their Cheeto Jeezus, who, they imagine, will swoop in and fix every aspect of the deep national malaise, because of course, he alone can fix it. I can't help but think about the rooftop party scene in the 1996 movie Independence Day; that scene, as I've mentioned before, is the perfect metaphor for hopeful Trump supporters, who should in reality be very careful what they wish for. They may think he's a known quantity, but they could be in for some very unpleasant surprises under the Trump 2.0 operating system.

Meanwhile, people with a much less cloudy rear view mirror counter the "we were better off four years ago" mantra with fond memories of makeshift mortuaries and big trucks stacked with the bodies of COVID victims, endless lines at food banks, and bitter battles over toilet paper and hand sanitizer. Good times, good times.

MAGA cognitive bias has driven this election
I believe that apart from their abject worship of their orange god, there are two forms of cognitive bias that make MAGAs so disconnected from reality -- causing them to believe that things are horrific now but were a virtual paradise under Trump, and will be again upon his Second Coming. These biases have been cynically and relentlessly fueled by Trump's increasingly unhinged rhetoric and republican messaging in general.

1. Negativity bias
Granted, a majority of Americans report feeling "worse off" than they were four years ago, at least from the perspective of personal well-being, which seems to be guided by their perception of the US economy. This is according to a September 2024 Gallup poll, the results of which were posted on the Gallup site on October 18, 2024. But, but, but...

The higher-than-usual percentage of U.S. adults who say they are worse off this year is largely owing to Republicans’ much greater likelihood to say this than opponents of the incumbent president’s party had been in prior election years. Likewise, the higher-than-usual percentage of “better off” responses in 2020, when Donald Trump was in office, was attributable to Republicans’ much greater likelihood to give that response than supporters of the incumbent president’s party did in prior election years.

So there's that. In any case, Americans' general lack of economic confidence is at odds with the fact that the economy is actually booming. And it is this lack of confidence that appears to be one of the main reasons Trump supporters give for being Trump supporters.

It's not just the economy with the MAGAs, of course. Larger culture-war issues are a big factor too, and there again the negativity bias really comes through, with Trumpists blaming Biden/Harris for what they see as the disintegration of decent society into an immoral, godless hellscape. The trans folks are taking over our schools, forcibly gender-affirming our innocent children and destroying school sports! The brown and black criminals are flooding into the country from prisons all over the world, and occupying our beautiful cities! They're eating the cats and dogs! And it's all Kamala Harris' fault!

Yesterday, on a shuttle bus on my way back home from visiting my husband at the VA hospital in Houston, I had an extended conversation with three male veterans ranging in age from mid-60s to early 80s. The four of us were getting along famously, sharing an amiable exchange about this and that. I am proud to say that even after the conversation turned, perhaps inevitably, to politics, it remained amiable -- no doubt because I kept my mouth shut at crucial moments during the exchange.

I hasten to say that I have nothing but respect for these men, who served their country willingly and are now receiving well-earned treatment for various medical conditions, some of which are service-connected. They deserve every benefit they receive, and so much more. (Unfortunately there's a very good chance that under Trump reign they will lose many or in some cases most of those benefits.)

Our gabfest took a political turn when one of the guys mentioned that the next day was going to be Election Day. Another one asked the rest of us if we'd voted yet, and we all said yes, we'd taken advantage of early voting. Having been privy to previous political conversations on the VA bus, I was kind of hoping that the conversation would end there, but no: one of the men said something about hoping that it would be a free and fair election, but that he had his doubts because of all of the "illegals" who were presumably being allowed to vote. The other guys expressed their agreement, and then they seemed to be waiting for me to say something.

I decided it best to remain as neutral as possible, so I said, "No matter what the results are and how clear they seem to be, there are going to be people who dispute those results. I only hope it doesn't get too ugly. I think that above all, we should all be hoping and praying for peace." (Being a devout agnostic, I'm normally not a praying person myself, but they all seemed to be, and I'm not above playing to the room if it doesn't go against my deepest held beliefs, or lack thereof. Apparently I hit the right note, because they all nodded in agreement with my statement.)

That would have been a fine ending to the conversation, but... no. One of the men said, "I think ABOVE ALL, we need to return this country to being one nation, UNDER GOD, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all." The other two nodded vigorously in agreement and one of them piped up, "And it definitely HASN'T been that for the past four years."

And then they were off and running, talking about how awful the economy is because egg and meat prices are so high and whatnot, and how dire the border situation is. Their consensus was that the most important issues in this election are the border and the economy. They were having a fine time griping about Democratic policies, laughing bitterly about things such as the Green New Deal, the proposed banning of gas stoves, and, of course, sky-high food and gas prices, all of which are apparently part of a demonic Democratic plot to destroy the republic.

One man said that the Democrats even want to impose high taxes or fines on cow farts, a reference to the decades-long controversy over methane emissions, which are considered to be a big contributor to the climate crisis. Of course the guys all guffawed about this, but I remained silent, not pointing out that they were drawing on a distorted and over-simplified narrative, and that Congress has consistently blocked methane reporting regulations for years and years (and you can't tax or fine what isn't reported). Moreover, there is bipartisan support for legislation that encourages ranchers and farmers to voluntarily measure and report methane emissions. Plus there's ongoing research to find ways to reduce the cow-fart problem.

The conversation went on for a while in that vein, with the three vets riffing on how awful America had become during the last four years because of Democratic policies. And I stayed quiet for the most part. Why? To keep the peace, of course. It would have served no purpose to express my strongly dissenting opinions, especially since all of the men had already cast their votes.

But clearly, my new friends were suffering from negativity bias.

2. Euphoric recall
The other form of cognitive bias that seems to guide the MAGA mindset is something known as euphoric recall, which as a newly recovering alcoholic decades ago, I was warned could lead to relapse. Euphoric recall in the recovery context refers to a tendency, brought on by time and distance, to recall only the good things about one's drinking or drugging days, while glossing over the bad.

I took the warning to heart. I wasn't much of a praying person back then, either, but I clearly remember offering up a prayer to the Great Whatever, saying, "Please, no matter what happens, never, ever let me forget how bad it was." I wanted never to forget the horrible hangovers I had every day, that felt like a combination of jet lag and flu. I wanted never to forget the social gatherings that were ruined because of my drinking myself nearly into oblivion. I wanted never to forget the few times I might have come close to seriously or perhaps even fatally overdosing on alcohol, and was saved only by the intervention of caring friends.

And indeed, I never forgot any of that. I guess the prayer worked, because I'm still sober today.

Every one of us is prone to euphoric recall, because that's just the way our brains are wired. But MAGAts' euphoric recall, coupled with their negativity bias, could very well push our country over the edge.

My brother told me about a guy he recently met and with whom he'd struck up a conversation about a mutual friend of theirs. My brother, who is emphatically not a Trumper, mentioned to the guy that their mutual friend is. Well, it turned out that my brother's new acquaintance is also a Trumper. In trying to make his case for his support, all the guy could come up with was that gas was cheaper under Trump.

I've noticed that is a common refrain from Trumpists. But their memories are a bit distorted. A July 2024 piece on the Forbes site takes a closer and much more realistic look at this issue.

There are reasonable explanations for the movements of gasoline prices over the past 30 years. Few of those movements involve actions taken by a president...

...Although Trump is often credited with low gasoline prices, the average price during Trump’s first three years in office was higher than during Obama’s last two years in office. But this isn’t the general impression people seem to have. One shouldn’t read too much into this, as there were macro factors – like strong global demand – putting upward pressure on prices...

...Some fondly recall $2.00/gallon of gasoline, but they forget that it’s because there was little demand for gasoline since most people stopped traveling [because of the COVID pandemic]. To the extent you give credit to Trump for low gasoline prices, you would need to account for which actions of his caused gasoline prices to fall. The stay-at-home orders? Yes, if you want to credit him for that, this was a major factor in the drop in gasoline prices.

But as soon as those orders ended, gasoline prices began to climb. In the last eight months of Trump’s presidency — following the decline to $2.00/gallon, gasoline prices climbed nearly 25%. The increase that began in the summer of 2020 continued throughout 2021.

Biden’s energy policies didn’t help, but supply chain disruptions made the biggest impact on gasoline prices during Biden’s presidency. (For a thorough comparison of the energy policies of President Trump and President Biden, see this month’s cover story in Shale Magazine).

The truth is that gasoline prices did fall sharply during the last year of Trump’s presidency. But that drop happened because of the response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Further, prices had begun to steeply climb before Trump left office in January 2021. Thus, those who credit President Trump’s energy policies for the drop in gasoline prices are presenting a misleading picture at best.

Indeed.

So much is at stake
There are of course many other domestic issues at stake besides gas prices (and food prices, and the border, and crime), not to mention grave foreign policy issues. There is so much riding on this election, and it's both saddening and alarming to me that so many people are still embracing Trump, much like the foolish lady with the snake in the song that Trump so loves to quote as a way of demeaning immigrants. But the fact is that masses of folks are still pinning their hopes on him, and my fervent hope is that Blue voters will turn out in record numbers to remove the ugly orange stain from our political landscape. (Even then, of course, the battle will be far from over; Trump might exit the main stage, but Trumpism has taken a vicious hold on this country. The work will not be done; it will just be beginning.)

By many objective measures, our country really is much better off than it was four years ago. Subjective measures are another matter; lots of folks, including me, still aren't feeling the results of that better-off status, and there are still serious problems, such as income inequality, lack of health care access, and housing insecurity. But Kamala Harris has expressed a willingness to address these problems, whereas Trump has done little more than vow revenge on his enemies, promise further tax cuts for billionaires, and outline his ambitions to be a brutal dictator like some of the tyrants he so admires. The choice should be clear.

As I'm wrapping up this post, the polls are already closing in some parts of the country. It will be many hours and perhaps several days, or maybe even longer, before we know the results, and then it will a long, long trek towards certification. I'm on pins and needles, and you probably are too. I don't expect my ramblings to change anyone's vote, but I did want to make my voice heard in this remote little corner of the blogosphere.

So now I'm off to watch the election returns, without the aid of stiff drinks or, for that matter, human company to make it a little easier. I'll see you again soon.

Before you leave...
This has been, through what is no apparent fault of her own (excluding, perhaps karmic matters that are quite beyond her ability to comprehend), a nightmare of a year for the ruler of this Whirled. Money, alas, cannot make the nightmare go away, but it can make it easier to bear. Now more than ever, donations are urgently needed and profoundly appreciated. Here are some ways to do it:

• New: Venmo -- username @Connie-Schmidt-42. Here is a direct link to the Venmo page.
• New: PayPal -- Here is a direct link to Cosmic Connie's PayPal page.
• Old but still good: You can click on the "Donate" icon that currently appears on the right-hand side of every page of this blog on the Web version. There's also a donation link at the end of many of my older blog posts. In the case of both the icon and the links on the older posts, this is also a PayPal link, but it references the email account of Cosmic Connie's husband, RevRon -- which is cool, because it all ultimately goes to the same place.

NOTE: If you are donating by PayPal, please specify that your contribution is a gift, which it is (as opposed to a conventional purchase, for which PayPal deducts a percentage for their fee).

Whether you can donate or not, thank you for visiting this Whirled.

Fifteen years after Sedona "sweat lodge" deaths, McSpirituality guru and Trumpanzee James Arthur Ray is still hustling and lying (and his victims are still dead)

 

Today, October 8, 2024, is the 15th anniversary of the day that sociopathic New-Wage/McSpirituality guru/cult leader James Arthur Ray killed two of his followers: Kirby Brown and James Shore, and set in motion the death, nine days later, of a third follower, Liz Neuman.

The instrument of their deaths was a fake and utterly reckless "sweat lodge" ceremony in Sedona, Arizona. Dozens of other participants were also injured and emotionally traumatized. The phony sweat lodge had been the "final challenge" at Ray's pricey "Spiritual Warrior" workshop, and unfortunately for three good people, it really was final.

Ray, who had shot to fame following his appearance in the simplistic and crassly materialistic New-Wage moviemercial The Secret, was convicted of negligent homicide for the three deaths in Sedona -- and consequently served less than two years in an Arizona state prison -- but he was never criminally charged in the death of yet another follower, Colleen Conaway, at a San Diego Ray event a couple of months before Sedona.

For Ray, the daze of the four- and five-figure live events such as Spiritual Warrior would seem to be over, and that's a good thing. His homicide creds are right there at the top of the page on Google search results along with the promotional stuff, and although he has been struggling mightily to make a comeback since his release from prison in July of 2013, framing the whole Sedona thing as a terrible trial and tribulation for him, his audience -- both live and online -- has shriveled like the balls of a long-time steroid user.

Though his base of followers remains as shrunken as his nads, Ray keeps on keeping on with his various shticks, because it's all he knows how to do. These days he spends a lot of time on Xitter alternating between spouting Bible verses like the man-o-God he wants you to think he is, and stumping for the American fascist movement popularly known as MAGA, kissing up shamelessly to the Mango Mussolini.

Naturally, much of Ray's MAGAt efforts center around demonizing the Democratic presidential nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, an angle I wrote about here back in August. He hasn't let up on his attacks on VP Harris, continually reposting highly edited videos and anti-Kamala memes that paint her as the destroyer of American democracy and an evil manipulator. If you know anything about Ray it should be clear that there's a lot of projection in those tweets and re-tweets, and a mercenary angle as well. As I wrote on my August post, in the context of Ray tweeting that Harris is evil and an abuser of power:

Well, I must say that Ray is a fine one to talk about "evil." Obviously he's projecting again. In any case it should come as no surprise that he is an ardent Trump supporter who is perfectly willing to paint Madame Vice President as an evil, dangerous, power-crazed demon, while totally overlooking Mango Mussolini's lies, felonies, authoritarian obsessions, and total lack of moral compass.

Ray, like his serial-scammer colleague Kevin Trudeau, is just another sorry illustration of the marriage-made-in-hell between Scamworld and reich-wing politix. Grifters are attracted to reich-wing/republican philosophies and policies, and I've been saying for years that this is due in large part to the reich's traditional disdain for consumer protection laws and regulations, the very tools that, apart from education, are necessary to protect the rest of us from the crooks.

Even as he has no room to talk about evil, Ray has zero standing in any discussion about the abuse of power. For years he abused his power over his followers, resulting in numerous injuries and at least four deaths of said followers.

I will repeat what I wrote on last year's Death Lodge anniversary post: as long as he continues to try to claw his way back to the top of an industry that has more than its share of sociopaths and predators, I feel duty-bound to post periodic reminders of why you should not listen to James Arthur Ray. In addition to being a MAGA social media warrior, he is still playing his dual role of faux-hero and martyr -- and most of all, still refusing to take any blame for the deaths and injuries of his faithful followers. And the people he killed are still dead.

Never forget.

Related on this Whirled

• October 2010: Musings on a tragedy and its meanings.
  I published this on the one-year anniversary of the infamous "sweat lodge," framing my musings around a review of Connie Joy's Tragedy in Sedona: My Life in James Arthur Ray's Inner Circle. That's another one you need to read.
• April 2019: From drawn-and-quartered martyr to "Crisis Coach": James Arthur Ray's newest desperate gimmick
  This is just one of numerous posts about Ray's arrogant yet pathetic attempts to reestablish himself as a selfish-help superstar. In this one we focus on Ray's efforts to brand himself as a "Crisis Coach."
• August 2020: Whiny babies of Scamworld
  Of the three "whiny babies" I wrote about in this post, James Arthur Ray is the worst, because even after being directly responsible for the deaths of four people at his events, and directly responsible for the physical and emotional injuries of countless others, he continues to paint himself as the real victim.
• October 2022: 13 years after James Arthur Ray's deadly sweat lodge, cults are still a danger
  This post, published last year on the Death Lodge anniversary, was a tale of two Virginias, one despicable one (that would be the infamous Virginia "Ginni" Thomas, insurrectionist extraordinaire, who was once a member of a selfish-help cult), and one admirable one: Virginia Brown, mother of one of James Arthur Ray's death lodge victims, Kirby Brown. One of the ways that Kirby Brown's family chose was to found a nonprofit organization, SEEK Safely to help educate the public, hold self-help leaders accountable, and hopefully avoid more deaths and injuries at the hands of reckless gurus. Even if you don't read my post, I urge you to visit the SEEK Safely site, which is continually expanding. You will find a wealth of useful information, as well as opportunities to get involved if you're so inclined.*
  October 2023: Fourteen years after Sedona "sweat lodge" deaths, James Arthur Ray, now a full-on reich-wing conspiranoid, is still hustling and whining (and his victims are still dead)
  Published on last year's Death Lodge anniversary, this is the first post where I discussed at length Ray's new-ish alliance with reich-wing conspiranoids and conspicuous contrarians.

* Currently on the SEEK Safely site:
Join us for SEEK Week, October 7-11. Streaming Live each night at 8pm ET on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube.

Before you leave...
This has been, through what is no apparent fault of her own (excluding, perhaps karmic matters that are quite beyond her ability to comprehend), a nightmare of a year for the ruler of this Whirled. Money, alas, cannot make the nightmare go away, but it can make it easier to bear. Now more than ever, donations are urgently needed and profoundly appreciated. Here are some ways to do it:

• New: Venmo -- username @Connie-Schmidt-42. Here is a direct link to the Venmo page.
  New: PayPal -- Here is a direct link to Cosmic Connie's PayPal page.
  Old but still good: You can click on the "Donate" icon that currently appears on the right-hand side of every page of this blog on the Web version. There's also a donation link at the end of many of my older blog posts. In the case of both the icon and the links on the older posts, this is also a PayPal link, but it references the email account of Cosmic Connie's husband, RevRon -- which is cool, because it all ultimately goes to the same place.

NOTE: If you are donating by PayPal, please specify that your contribution is a gift, which it is (as opposed to a conventional purchase, for which PayPal deducts a percentage for their fee).

Whether you can donate or not, thank you for visiting this Whirled.

With Hurricane Helene, Trump & reich-wing influencers/conspiranoids once again show that hurricanes not only have eyes, but assholes as well

DonOld Trump and a host of crass attention whores across the GOP and the reich-wing idiosphere have been ruthlessly exploiting the tragedy of Hurricane Helene, spreading lies and conspiracy theories to further their own interests. And unfortunately this isn't just harmless nonsense; it is causing panic and hampering recovery efforts.

Hurricane Helene has been one of the deadliest hurricanes to make landfall in the mainland United States in the modern era -- with more than 200 people dead as of this writing, hundreds more missing, and the death toll sure to get drastically worse, according to Rowan County, North Carolina Sheriff Travis Allen. Thousands of survivors have had their lives upended -- many have lost everything -- and it's an ongoing nightmare for victims and aid workers alike. Unfortunately but inevitably, Helene has also provided endless opportunities for #NeverWasMyPresident DonOld John Trump and a host of lesser attention whores to mouth off and exploit the tragedy for their own purposes.

It should come as no surprise that Trump is using the storm to further his political ends, while much of the American reich is also politicizing it, and the usual run of social media conspiranoids and conspicuous contrarians are milking the disaster furiously in their endless quest for a few precious drops of attention.

For his part, Trump has been busy pretending to care about the storm victims, while pretending that Kamala Harris doesn't care (spoiler: actually, she does care), and unjustly slamming the Biden administration for its response to the storm. From an AP story by Matthew Daly, September 30, 2024 (via the ABC News site):

Former President Donald Trump criticized the Biden administration’s response to the widespread devastation caused by Hurricane Helene, even as his supporters have called for cuts to federal agencies that warn of weather disasters and deliver relief to hard-hit communities.

As president, Trump delayed disaster aid for hurricane-devastated Puerto Rico and diverted money from the Federal Emergency Management Agency in order to finance an effort to return undocumented migrants to Mexico. And Project 2025, backed by Trump supporters, would restructure FEMA to limit aid to states and says that the National Weather Service, which provides crucial data on hurricanes and other storms, “should be broken up and downsized.”

Trump claimed without evidence Monday that the Biden administration and North Carolina's Democratic governor were “going out of their way to not help people in Republican areas.” And Trump adviser Stephen Miller said President Joe Biden “failed to evacuate or rescue” U.S. citizens, “just like you failed in Afghanistan.''

And the Trumpian lies just went on and on. From AP, also on September 30:

Donald Trump repeatedly spread falsehoods Monday about the federal response to Hurricane Helene despite claiming not to be politicizing the disaster as he toured hard-hit areas in south Georgia.

The former president and Republican nominee claimed upon landing in Valdosta that President Joe Biden was “sleeping” and not responding to Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, who he said was “calling the president and hasn’t been able to get him.” He repeated the claim at an event with reporters after being told Kemp said he had spoken to Biden.

“He’s lying, and the governor told him he was lying,” Biden said Monday.

The White House previously announced that Biden spoke by phone Sunday night with Kemp and North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, as well as Scott Matheson, mayor of Valdosta, Georgia, and Florida Emergency Management Director John Louk. Kemp confirmed Monday morning that he spoke to Biden the night before.

Like everything Trump does, this goes far beyond politix-as-usual. An October 4, 2024 piece on the conservative Bulwark site elaborates on the harm and chaos that Trump and his allies are causing with their campaign of lies.

Trump has argued that FEMA has depleted its storm relief funds because it spent much of that money “housing” illegal migrants. His allies have accused FEMA of confiscating property, of making people apply for help, of asking for cash donations, and of preventing everyone from Elon Musk to the Department of Defense from helping out with the response efforts. Virtually all of them have pushed stories insisting that Kamala Harris told storm victims they could get only $750 in aid. (That’s just one type of assistance they can get quickly, not the full amount available.)

Things have gotten bad enough that on Friday, FEMA took the step of posting a “rumor response” webpage. The White House put out a memo of its own accusing Republican leaders of spreading “bald faced lies” and “poison.” One official, speaking to The Bulwark, said they feared there could be on-the-ground confrontations involving people who believed FEMA was trying to plunder the dispossessed. 

Here is a direct link to FEMA's Hurricane Helene rumor response page.

To MAGAts, however, the fact that Trump and gang are out-and-out lying won't matter, nor will the government's attempts to set the record straight. And from what I've seen in various news reports, even some of the vics of the hurricane are apparently taking Trump's in-person appearances at some of the devastated areas as evidence that he actually cares about them (or more accurately, that he cares about something beyond getting their votes in November).

But, giving credit where it is due, infesting impacted areas with his orange presence and lying about Biden/Harris aren't the the only things Trump is doing. Despite his notoriously shaky history with charities, he -- or rather, his campaign finance director, Meredith O'Rourke --- has launched a GoFundMe that so far has raised more than 6.3 million bucks and counting, supposedly to help Hurricane Helene victims (or more specifically to help other charities that are providing hurricane relief).

Originally I wrote that the GoFundMe page did not actually list a charity, and it didn't, but this has since been updated; several charities are now named: Samaritan's Purse, Water Mission, Clinch Foundation, and Mtn2Sea Ministries. According to an October 2 update by the fund's organizer, "an initial disbursement" has been made and more will be made as donations continue to come in. Here's a fact check from Reuters, dated October 4, 2024. (But also see the last couple of paragraphs in this section.)

Notably, it's not at all clear if Trump himself has been among those who have made a contribution to this Very Worthy Cause...but I'm guessing not. And you have to wonder why. From The Daily Beast, October 1, 2024:

Former President Donald Trump has launched a GoFundMe to support those affected by Hurricane Helene’s path of destruction—but some are saying that the Republican presidential nominee, who is reportedly worth around $4 billion, could do a lot to help victims out of his own pocket. The “Trump authorized” campaign has already raised $3 million from some 19,000 donations since it appeared yesterday. The list of the campaign’s biggest contributors is a sampler of Trump’s most high-profile allies: it features musician Kid Rock, UFC CEO Dana White, hedge fund CEO Bill Ackman, and Georgia Senator Kelly Loeffler, to name a few. It is unclear whether Trump himself has contributed to the campaign, but his name does not appear among the list of its top donors—those who gave between $5,000 and $500,000. Some wondered how much of an impact Trump’s personal wealth could make for those affected by Helene, however. “Why did Trump need to start a GoFundMe to raise money for hurricane victims?” reads a post with 22,000 likes from the X account @TheUSASingers. “Isn’t he supposed to be a billionaire? Can’t he just give them 10 million bucks?”

That Trump has formidable fund-raising clout is not in dispute. But more than funds are being raised: questions are being raised as well, at least by folks who aren't blinded and deafened by Trumplove. Even with the assurances by both GoFundMe and the fund's organizer, if you are willing to just take it on faith that every penny of every one of the contributions (minus GoFundMe's 3 percent cut) will go to the cause of helping Helene's victims... well, I've got a pair of gold clown shoes, a share in a social media company, and a $100k watch to sell you.

After all, as J.D. Wolf pointed out on the Meidas Touch site on October 4, the fund still has some basic transparency issues. After noting that Samaratin's Purse is an established charity (and that Trump had falsely taken credit for the charity's "truckloads" of hurricane relief supplies), Wolf added:

Trump's GoFundMe hasn't linked to the organizations for easy identification. MeidasTouch was able to find groups operating under the Water Mission and Mtn2Sea Ministries, but couldn't locate any entity providing hurricane relief under the name "Clinch Foundation."...

...We don't know the amounts Trump is donating to any of the groups or how much he has left to donate. With the Trump family history of impropriety involving charities, Trump needs to do better.

Also of note, the long-time President and Chairman of the Board of Samaritan's Purse is Christofascist and devout Trumpian Franklin Graham, who, among numerous other sins, defended Trump by deflection and whataboutism in the wake of the violent January 6 insurrection that Trump incited.* What I'm wondering is: will any of the funds donated to Samaritan's purse from the GoFundMe be redirected into Trump's pocket? It's not beyond the realm of possibility.

Harping on HAARP (and those evil Dems)
Meanwhile, in the larger reich-wing idiosphere, there's a new conspiranoid narrative in town: Democrats are responsible for Hurricane Helene. We've heard the wind blowing from the same direction before, regarding Dems being to blame for all manner of tragedy and evil and disaster, but here we go again. From The Daily Kos, September 30, 2024:

Brace yourself, because if you thought Donald Trump’s racist “cats and dogs” lies were bad enough, it won’t be long before this bit of QAnon and Q-adjacent insanity ends up in one of his rambling, incoherent campaign screeds.

I’m talking about Democrats controlling the weather.

Conservative influencer Matt Wallace, with his 2.1 million X followers, lays out the case here.

Don’t worry guys, weather modification isn’t real! It’s just a coincidence that Hurricane Helene is one of the most devastating “inland damage storms” in history and that hundreds of pro-Trump counties are being massively impacted during the most important election of our lifetimes. 

Obviously the elites would never be evil enough to create hurricanes designed to interfere with “democracy”… Pay no attention to the storms currently brewing in the Atlantic either! You can ask any mainstream scientist and they will tell you that it isn’t even possible to create those or target them at certain areas. 

Just stay silent. No need to vote or expose anything. You wouldn't want to be called a conspiracy theorist right? Couldn’t have that. So please ignore your own eyes and don’t share this post or investigate further.

In truth, of course, if there are bad guys in this tale of yet another storm of the century, Dems/liberals are definitely not it. More from The Daily Kos article:

...liberals didn’t control [Hurricane Helene]. In fact, we’ve been trying to tell anyone who would listen that these megastorms will become the norm if climate change remains unaddressed, and they don’t want to listen. Quite ironically, it is them, the climate deniers, who are in large part to blame. 

Instead, they’re claiming that HAARP—a research project in Alaska studying the ionosphere for communication and surveillance technologies—can’t just control the weather, it can even cause devastating earthquakes. 

High-profile conservative nutbags have spent the weekend blaming HAARP and the dastardly Democrats behind it for specifically targeting Trump counties for malicious purposes (you can see here, here, here, here, and here, just for starters).

The thing is, if Dems really had that much control over the weather, wouldn't they just target Mar-a-Lago, at a time when they were pretty sure Trump would be home, and/or hit key Trump areas closer to Election Day, and/or spare Asheville, North Carolina, a key blue area?

Alas, logic has rarely been a criterion for the conspiracy-minded. Among the logic-free loonies are reich-wing legislators such as Marjorie Taylor "Jewish Space Laser" Greene, who has been spreading the weather control narrative on Xitter. On September 30 she shared a map, created by the aforementioned Matt Wallace, that shows hurricane affected areas with an overlay of 2020 election results, and apparently is supposed to demonstrate that red areas have been targeted and blue areas spared. (In truth, the damage caused by Hurricane Helene has created challenges up- and down-ballot for both political parties, particularly in the battleground state of North Carolina.)

This is far from the first time that the conspiranoid loons have harped on HAARP and weather control and whatnot, and it won't be the last. I wrote about this back in 2017, in the wake of yet another devastating hurricane, Harvey (which hit my neck of the woods).

Apart from the election-manipulation narrative, other conspiranoid stories are making the rounds as well. In a recent post, a proudly Trumpian blogger claimed to know the real, true cause of hurricanes and floods, 'cause it's on seekrit government documents. The post links to a section on a conspiracy site called Stop World Control [spoiler: it's WEATHER CONTROL]. But and the blogger added her own pet theory about Asheville.

I fully believe that the flooding in Ashville [sic], NC was a purposeful land grab just like the direct energy weapons unleashed on Maui…

Ah, yes... the Maui Wildfire Conspiranoid Loonapaloooza. I wrote about that one too. Never one for originality, the Trumpanzee blogger is far from the only person to promote the land-grab lunacy re Hurricane Helene; in fact, apart from the election manipulation theory it's it's one of the top nutter narratives.

Not that setting the record straight on the weather-modification articles of faith will matter to those who are attached to conspiracy tales like orange glop to Trump's face, but there's this from Politifact:

Hurricane Helene was not a product of weather modification. That’s Pants on Fire!

There’s no proof that Hurricane Helene was formed through weather modification. Bart Geerts, professor at the University of Wyoming Department of Atmospheric Science, told PolitiFact that’s "false."

"NOAA confirms that there are no weather modification activities that could have resulted in Hurricane Helene. Hurricanes form on their own given the right conditions and that was the case with Helene," Monica Allen, director of public affairs for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Research division, told PolitiFact.

Allen cited Project Stormfury, a NOAA project in the 1960s that "involved seeding existing hurricanes." Attempted on four hurricanes, the project studied how seeding clouds with silver iodide could lead to a decrease in the hurricane’s strongest winds.

"This project ended in 1983 because it had, at best, mixed results, and there were concerns about unintended consequences," Allen said. "Since then, NOAA has done no weather modification."

But hey...that's what They want you to believe. Conspiranoids and conspicuous contrarians, of course, know better. And they will continue to let everyone know what they know throughout the aftermath of this storm and the next one and the next.

And it can't be emphasized enough that as Hurricane Helene recovery efforts continue, this is causing genuine harm to thousands of people. People are even threatening to kill FEMA workers because of the toxic lies being told by mega-influencers such as Trump's arguably most powerful ally at the moment, the profoundly evil Elon Musk.

It's gotten so bad that even some of the GOP officials who are actually in the thick of things are pleading for the nonsense to stop. North Carolina State Senator Kevin Corbin, to give but one example, wrote this on Facebook on October 3, 2024:

Friends can I ask a small favor? Will you all help STOP this conspiracy theory junk that is floating all over Facebook and the internet about the floods in WNC. Example: FEMA is stealing money from donations, body bags ordered but government has denied, bodies not being buried, government is controlling the weather from Antarctica, government is trying to get lithium from WNC, stacks of bodies left at hospitals, and on and on and on. PLEASE help stop this junk. It is just a distraction to people trying to do their job. Folks, this is a catastrophic event of which this country has never known. It is the largest crisis event in the history of N.C. The state is working non-stop. DOT has deployed workers from all over the state. Duke power has 10,000 workers on this. FEMA is here. The National Guard is here in large numbers. My Senate district is 8 counties and it takes 3 hours to drive across it in good weather…. And this disaster is 25 counties in N.C. This is going to take MONTHS if not years to overcome. Government will play a role in this cleanup. We are going to make sure the state chips in some massive money. But Government is not the total solution. YES, there are a lot of neighbors helping neighbors and that’s good and the way it should be. Please don’t let these crazy stories consume you or have you continually contact your elected officials to see if they are true. I just talked to one Senator that has had 15 calls TODAY about why we don’t stop …….. “fill in the blank.” 98% chance it’s not true and if it is a problem, somebody is aware and on it and not waiting for a post to go thru 10,000 people to be addressed. Thanks for listening but I’ve been working on this 12 hours a day since it started and I’m growing a bit weary of intentional distractions from the main job …. which is to help our citizens in need.

I hope Senator Corbin's message is doing some good, but my feeling is that the dedicated conspiranoids will just consider that Corbin has gone over to the Dark Side.

Meanwhile, as Trump blows on and lesser loons babble on, here is one of many sources of legitimate information about how you can actually help the victims of Hurricane Helene.

* While Franklin Graham's nose has an ugly orange stain, on the other hand, Graham's niece, Jerushah Duford (whose mother Virginia "Gigi" Graham Tchividjian is Graham's oldest daughter), has spoken out strongly against Trump and for Kamala Harris.

This post has been amended and updated since its original publication on October 3, 2024.
~ CC

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