Bits: Ohio voters reject GOP authoritarianism; DJT lunacy continues; Wisdom from the Peanut Gallery

In a bit of good news, Ohio voters rejected the GOP's attempt to assert party power over voters. Issue 1 was solidly rejected. According to the NYT, with > 95% of the votes counted, 57% say no to 43% who voted yes. Now, abortion rights can be put into the Ohio constitution. The rural-urban divide is clear. Rural voter continue to support authoritarianism and reduced civil liberties.

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Everyone is reporting that DJT is in crazy-go-nuts mode. He's lying, slandering and crackpotting a galactic scale, and we're talking a huge galaxy, not a little one. A couple of examples:

Trump Pushes Total Lie About Georgia Prosecutor Sleeping With Gang Member | The former president baselessly accused Fani Willis, who is investigating his 2020 election meddling, of having an “affair” with a “gang member”

DJT lawyer John Lauro contended that the DoJ “will never be able to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump had corrupt or criminal intent.”; An expert blandly commented: “Here's an example: I honestly believe my bank has ripped me off and stole my deposit money. That's a sincerely held belief, but it doesn't mean I could go to the bank and rob the bank. It's not an excuse. Just because you think your cause is righteous, that doesn't mean you have to break the law in response to try to fix it.”

Trump Tells Supporters His Criminal Indictments Are About ‘You’; The former president, who has made his 2024 campaign principally about his own personal grievances, is attempting to convince supporters to see themselves in him.; As lawyers for Donald J. Trump float various legal arguments to defend him in court against an onslaught of criminal charges, the former president has settled on a political defense: “I’m being indicted for you.” 

Yeah, and this Bud is for you too! MAGA!! Implausible as it is, maybe this latest indictment really is going to actually nail his lying, dictator ass with a few felonies and, Gasp!, possibly some jail time. DJT is acting like it. Lock him up? Nah, that's too good to be true. Slap his naughty wrist! That sounds more like it.

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A comment from the peanut gallery struck me as worth a mention. A WaPo opinion by Alberto Gonzales, No, fellow Republicans, the Justice Department is not biased against us, argued rationally about the DJT legal situation. Gonzales was the 80th attorney general of the United States and counsel to President George W. Bush.

The peanut gallery commented: Why do GOP folks always need to have “was” in their summary statement to have any sort of moral compass or backbone? . . . . It's a rhetorical question. We all know the answer.

MAGA!! to that insightful rhetorical  question.

Another peanut gallery denizen snarked about the DoJ, They are biased against criminals!

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From the Christian Nationalist Theocracy Files: The New Republic reports about a rabid Christian nationalist Trump judge in Texas flying off the rials:

Texas Judge Orders Airline Lawyers to Take Training From Far-Right Hate Group

A Trump-appointed Texas judge has ordered three senior Southwest Airlines lawyers to take eight hours of “religious-liberty training” from the far-right Christian hate group Alliance Defending Freedom.

In his late Monday ruling, U.S. District Judge Brantley Starr specifically mandated the lawyers take the training as part of court-ordered sanctions for religious discrimination. He described ADF as one of several “esteemed non-profit organizations that are dedicated to preserving free speech and religious freedom.” The Southern Poverty Law Center has designated ADF as an extremist hate group.

That's what radical right, authoritarian CN theocracy looks like in the legal system.

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Ars technica writes about wonderful steady advances in AI:

Author discovers AI-generated counterfeit books written in her name on Amazon

Amazon resisted a removal request, citing lack of “trademark registration numbers”

Upon searching Amazon and Goodreads, author Jane Friedman recently discovered a half-dozen listings of fraudulent books using her name, likely filled with either junk or AI-generated content. Both Amazon and Goodreads resisted removing the faux titles until the author's complaints went viral on social media.

In a blog post titled "I Would Rather See My Books Get Pirated Than This (Or: Why Goodreads and Amazon Are Becoming Dumpster Fires)," published on Monday, Friedman detailed her struggle with the counterfeit books.

That's just like the credit rating agencies making a mistake in your credit rating and then refusing to fix it. I just love tales like this from unregulated capitalist markets running free, wild and butt naked. They're arrogant, unaccountable and happy. 

Open politics-society-science-personal grievance thread

Unless I missed something, the news today is mostly repetition or repetition-adjacent. There's too much about DJT's machinations, lies and schemes to weasel out of his 1/6 treason lawsuit and milk the cult for cash to pay his legal bills. Meh, I'll pay more attention when something important happens.

I started reading Sources of the Self by the prominent philosopher Charles Taylor. I was looking for insight on morality, personal belief and behavior in modern advanced societies. But the book was too hard for me to comprehend. I had to set it aside. I suspect I could have learned a lot from that highly respected author. 

Now I'm reading Political Science for Dummies. That one is comprehensible. The first sentence of the book is, “Political science is the study of politics and more precisely power.” See, I told you to never lose track of where power flows in politics and policies. That was science and I didn't even know it. Social science to be more precise.

So, anything anyone wants to talk about?

Once Upon A Time...........

 I heard it said that if you want to gauge elections, you don't rely on polls, oh no, you rely on sports betting sites.

Why? Glad you asked.

Betting markets called the presidential election more accurately than polls

https://fortune.com/2020/11/19/betting-gambling-prediction-markets-2020-election-polls/

 Why gambling markets often predict elections more accurately than polls

https://phys.org/news/2022-11-midterms-gambling-elections-accurately-polls.html

So, what are the sports betting sites saying about 2024?

Joe Biden is the betting favorite to win the 2024 Election, with odds of +150.

https://www.oddschecker.com/us/politics/us-politics/us-presidential-election-2024/winner

Incumbent President Joe Biden is the favorite at most sportsbooks to win the Presidency in 2024.

https://www.thelines.com/odds/election/

August 3 update: President Joe Biden (34.8%, 15 to 8) ticked upward a little, while former President Donald Trump (30.8%, 9 to 4) held steady.

https://www.empirestakes.com/ny-sports-betting/presidential-election-odds

Joe Biden remains the favorite on the US presidential elections board at +162 but former president Donald Trump is right behind him at +200 despite his latest indictment.

https://www.covers.com/politics/us-election-betting-odds

 Biden leads the 2024 election oddsboard at +150 while Trump is behind his predecessor in the White House at +240.

https://www.oddsshark.com/politics/usa-presidential-odds-futures

So? So, stop hand wringing and hair pulling, all will be ok come 2024.

Want to place a bet on it?   😏

John Eastman concedes that he and DJT were trying to overthrow the government

NOTE: I added material taken directly from the interview to this post so that people can see what Eastman said in his own words.

This is worth a stand alone post. Talking Points Memo published comments by John Eastman, a key architect of the 1/6 coup attempt. Eastman is a central figure in fomenting treason on 1/6. TPM writes:

John Eastman Comes Clean: Hell Yes 

We Were Trying to Overthrow the Government

I want to return to this revelatory interview with co-conspirator John Eastman, the last portion of which was published Thursday by Tom Klingenstein, the Chairman of the Trumpite Claremont Institute and then highlighted by our Josh Kovensky. There’s a lot of atmospherics in this interview, a lot of bookshelf-lined tweedy gentility mixed with complaints about OSHA regulations and Drag Queen story hours. But the central bit comes just over half way through the interview when Eastman gets into the core justification and purpose for trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election and overthrow the constitutional order itself. He invokes the Declaration of Independence and says quite clearly that yes, we were trying to overthrow the government and argues that they were justified because of the sheer existential threat America was under because of the election of Joe Biden.

January 6th conspirators have spent more than two years claiming either that nothing really happened at all in the weeks leading up to January 6th or that it was just a peaceful protest that got a bit out of hand or that they were just making a good faith effort to follow the legal process. Eastman cuts through all of this and makes clear they were trying to overthrow (“abolish”) the government; they were justified in doing so; and the warrant for their actions is none other than the Declaration of Independence itself.

“Our Founders lay this case out,” says Eastman. “There’s actually a provision in the Declaration of Independence that a people will suffer abuses while they remain sufferable, tolerable while they remain tolerable. At some point abuses become so intolerable that it becomes not only their right but their duty to alter or abolish the existing government.”

The Declaration of Independence has no legal force under American law. It’s not a legal document. It’s a public explanation of a political decision: to break the colonies’ allegiance to Great Britain and form a new country. But it contains a number of claims and principles that became and remain central to American political life.

The one Eastman invokes here is the right to overthrow governments. The claim is that governments have no legitimacy or authority beyond their ability to serve the governed. Governments shouldn’t be overthrown over minor or transitory concerns. But when they become truly oppressive people have a right to get rid of them and start over.

That anyone in DJT's close circle had the guts to admit the truth is astonishing to me. I never expected anyone in the inner circle to admit obvious truth. Hell yes, it was a coup attempt. 

What justified DJT's coup attempt in Eastman's mind? Decades of lies, slanders and crackpottery about nothingburger things like OSHA regulations, Drag Queen story hours, illegal immigration, woke, the LGBQT community and transgendered people. Those grievances are what has triggered most or nearly all of America's radical right into a lethal fit of blind fear, rage, hate, bigotry and outright support for dictatorship. Radical right supporters who know better, are cynical opportunists, grifters, trolls, thugs, deranged Christian nationalist theocrats and capitalist kleptocrats.

Of course, DJT will continue to lie and deny there was any coup attempt. The radical right Republican Party will continue to officially claim that 1/6 was “legitimate free speech.” 

In my firm opinion, Eastman, DJT and the rest of the inner circle should be tried for treason. 

Other sources are starting to report on this, e.g., Newsweek. I will wait to see if this turns out to be a fake story, but at this point it seems to be real. If it is real, it seems to be important.

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Added content from part 3 of the interview: Eastman's rationale for the coup attempt in his own words. This is from part 3 of the three part interview, starting at 20:55:

Key passages from the transcript (online here) are highlighted below.

John Eastman: Before we get to 2020. Let's have a brief stop over in 2000.

Tom Klingenstein: Okay

John Eastman: Because, because the claim is that Al Gore in conceding after Bush versus Gore rather than continuing to fight, exhibited the same kind of for the good of the country statesmanship, let's put an end to this. Um, I think that, uh, attributes to both of them, a greater magnanimity than is warranted. You look at Nixon's situation and every path, every judge in Texas, every judge in Illinois, uh, were Democrats. There was no way that he was gonna be able to bring election challenges that would result in his victory.

 And so if he did challenge and loses anyway, uh, uh, then he's put the country through a lot without any, any resolution, uh, it to the, the correct judgment. Same thing with Gore. I mean, we know for a fact that his folks had looked at every path. What happens if it gets to Congress, the joint session, what happens if it gets sent to the House of Representatives and in every path he loses no matter what happens in the litigation.

 So I, I don't want to give as much magnanimity of thought to either one of them. But, but let's assume the standard version and that Nixon is magnanimous, certainly not in 1960, but also not in 2000 were the stakes about the very existential threat that the country is under as great as they are. I mean, we're not talking about, you know, handing over to John Kennedy instead of Richard Nixon who's gonna deal with the Cold War.

Um, we're, we're, we are talking about whether we are gonna, as a nation completely repudiate every one of our founding principles, uh, which is what the modern Left-wing, which is in control of the Democrat Party, believes that we are the root of all evil in the world and we have to be eradicated. This is an existential threat to the very survivability, not just of our nation, but but of the, uh, example that our nation properly understood provides to the world.

That's the stakes, and Trump seems to understand that in a way a lot of Republican establishment types in Washington don't.  And it's the reason he gets so much support. In the hinterland, in the flyover country. People are fed up with folks, you know, get along, go along while the country is being destroyed.

 And so I think the stakes are much bigger. And, and, and that means a stolen election that thwarts the will of the people trying to correct course and get back on a path that understands the significance and the nobility of America and the American experiment is really at stake and we ought to fight for it.

 Tom Klingenstein: I'm assuming that if the conditions that obtained in this early sixties obtained now, you might not have made…

 John Eastman: I, I may, I may have come to a different conclusion and look, our Founders lay this case out. The prudential judgment they make in the Declaration of Independence is the same one. There's actually a provision in the Declaration of Independence that says, you know, a people will suffer abuses while they remain sufferable – Tolerable while they remain tolerable.

 But at some point, abuses become so intolerable that it's not only their right, but their duty to alter or abolish the existing government. So that's the question - have the abuses and the threat of abuses become so intolerable, uh, that we have to be willing to push back.

 Tom Klingenstein: To what degree are the differences between you and others on the fraud and the legal matters a function of a very different assessment of where we stand today.

John Eastman: So I had, I had one of my longtime friends call me and say, you know, you gotta quit with this Eastman. You know, it's all a blow over. Just write a book. You'll make a lot of money and everything will be fine. And I told them, “I said, you really don't understand the stakes of what we're dealing with, and I don't know how you can miss it, because it's just there for anybody with eyes to see.”

Tom Klingenstein: The narrative is Eastman and Trump tried to initiate a coup. Isn't that the narrative?

 John Eastman: Well, and I actually published an article saying, trying to trying to stop an illegal election is not a coup, but trying to thwart a coup. Um, but the fact that that true narrative is being censored and shut down so that the false narrative can prevail, uh, is I think part of the existential threat.

And it's not just shut down, it's, it's shut down any people that raise legitimate questions about the validity of the election.

Tom Klingenstein: And, and you are a good example in unfortunately this censoring and de-platforming comes almost as much from the Right as from the Left.   

John Eastman: Let's, let's kind of distinguish the Right. We've got, uh, what our friends at the Claremont Institute like to call Conservatism Inc. The, the establishment conservatives. Uh, they're, they're very much a part of the establishment and, and what Trump and more importantly, what, what the movement that Trump got ahead of, remember it was not called the MAGA movement until Trump came along. It was the Tea Party movement. It's the same movement.  It's the same, goes back to 2008 or 2010. They don't want the federal government controlling our healthcare, you know, taking over one sixth of the nation's economy. They don't want command and control. They don't want OSHA telling me what, what kind of chair I can have in my home office.

All of, they don't want them telling me that I can't have gas stoves in my kitchen. They're tired of that. That was a tea party movement. And the Republicans were as much opposed to the Tea party, populist uprising against what was happening and coming outta Washington as the Democrats were. And Trump got ahead of that movement, and it's now called the Make America Greater Movement.

Uh, uh, uh, again, movement, but, but that's what the establishment in DC or more broadly, the northeast corridor, if you will, to bring in New York. That's, that's, that's what they wanna stop. Mm-hmm. Partly because they think they're smarter than the average American, and therefore the average American just ought to bend the knee or whatever comes out of the expert.

And this is just a fruition of that a hundred year effort.  But it's, it's, uh, it's, uh, come to a rapid conclusion. I mean, it kind of, it kind of went, there were a couple of bumps when it increased quickly, but, but you look at that curve and it's been an exponential increase in the last few years.

You're gonna let 50 year old men naked into teenage girls' showers at public pools. That's one of the, or, or drag queens doing story hours to six year olds. If I had said that 10 years ago, you would've laughed me outta the room and you, you would've said, Eastman, you're way outta the limb. You're crazy.

Tom Klingenstein: Anything more?

John Eastman: No, I, I, I would just, you know, kind of bring it all together in this way. The amount of information about illegality, I thought was clear cut. That opened the door for fraud. And I think both the statistical evidence and the anecdotal evidence, if I had about people engaging in that fraud because the door had been open to it, was significant enough to have altered the results of the election.

And then the question is gonna be, is there any legal remedy to deal with a stolen election? Um, and I put together the best legal arguments that I thought, uh, were plausible to, to, to deal with that. But I did that because I thought the stakes were high. And I thought, uh, if we do not address the illegality here, what we're gonna see is they're, I mean, they use the institutions of government to affect the outcome of that election in ways that we now know - the Twitter files, the suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop, those were done with collusion with agencies of the United States government, putting a big thumb on the scale of the election, and, and they did that when you know, when the incoming president was gonna be able to call him on it, and they continued to do it after the boss was their enemy.

Um, and, and if they can do it that time, when they then get a boss who's in agreement with them, then there are no longer, you know, any impediments to them preventing us from ever having a fair election again, which means there are no impediments to them blocking the consent of the governed, having control of the direction of the government, and we no longer are free people.

I mean, those are the stakes. And if those are the stakes, I, you know, what are you supposed to do? Just, just sit around and twiddle your thumb, eh? It would be too messy to do anything about this. I'll just. You know, and maybe when the alligators come for everybody else, they'll eat me last. No, that's not my nature. I'm the one out there on the rampart. If they eat me first, at least I've gone down fighting.

Qs: 

1. Did the TPM article sensationalize or distort what Eastman said? (FWIW, I think it sensationalized and distorted what Eastman said)

2. Was what Eastman supported and fomented on 1/6 as best he could, a coup attempt, an insurrection, legitimate political discourse, something else, or something unknowable?