Gotham City Digest

 

      Typical Republican rat fuckery. But I'm sure Trump will demand an investigation immediately (snort). (Tip o' the tinfoil hat to Constant Reader, CC)

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     Seems a little more than audacious that Ilhan Omar is being accused of using a fake name by an administration led by men named Donald Drumpf and JD Bowman.

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     What is this clown, late stage Johnny Carson?

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     "If we win the House and Senate, I am directing the Department of Justice to settle all remaining legitimate claims as soon as possible ... if we don't win, there's no money." What a fucking thug.

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     What does a billionaire scumbag do after he's charged with bribery? Bribe a US government official, in this case, Alina Habba, for a full pardon. Which he eventually got.

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     "Ramaswamy is trailing in the race. A Marist poll from mid-October had Acton ahead 50 percent to 43 percent among likely voters."

     That's why he's desperately doubling down on this $4 million ad buy. He's reeking of flop sweat right about now.

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     Considering this is coming from Bezos' right wing WaPo, this is huge.

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     When all else fails, try good old fashioned bribery. (A second tip o' the tinfoil at to Constant Reader, CC)

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     Yes, Donnie, let's talk about paid hecklers.

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     And while we're talking about protesters... Hey, lady, it's called the First Amendment. Freedom of speech, the right to peacefully assemble and all that that good shit?

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     I guess they didn't offer Mike Rogers' supporters enough money to show up.

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     Elmo seriously needs to be stuffed into one of his rockets and aimed directly at the sun.

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      Great moments in signage.

October Surprise

      The phrase "October Surprise" became popular during Ronald Reagan's first presidential campaign in 1980. It was supposedly coined by William Casey, Reagan's campaign manager, although in reality the phrase first came to us back in 1968 when William Safire claimed that Casey had tried to use a similar tactic during the final months of Lyndon Johnson's administration.

     Originally, it was meant as a warning to Republican operatives that Jimmy Carter was going to pull off a foreign policy coup just before the election (namely the Iranian hostage crisis). With typical Republican rat-fuckery, Reagan contacted the Iranian leadership and asked them to hold off releasing the hostages until after the election and the rest is history (stealing Jimmy Carter's playbook certainly didn't hurt their cause). The Iranians released the hostages literally 60 seconds after Reagan took the oath of office.

     In the 46 years since Reagan threw his hat in the ring, "October Surprise" has become virtually synonymous with Republican dirty tricks. Opposition research, scandals, both real and manufactured, that always seem to come out in the 11th hour of an election. We see it every two years.

     We saw it last week and both times, two dirty right wing tricks came out of the White House. One is undeniable because Trump crowed about it like a rooster on a dung hill. That was when, days ago, Trump suspended a provision in a bill named after the late Senator Lindsey Graham that would've imposed sanctions on Russia.

     As we now know, Trump is buying large amounts of diesel fuel from Russia in a cynical attempt to lower diesel prices just before the midterms. This, of course, would bypass embargoes on Russian fuel as well as give Putin a fresh cash infusion so he can continue prosecuting his war again Ukraine, which is entering its fifth year,

     This has resulted in a lot of screaming from both sides of the aisle. The bill named after the late South Carolina senator passed with broad bipartisan support. Say what you want about Lindsey Graham but he was always a hardliner about Russia and could see them for what they are. And Graham's own sister, Darline, is joining the chorus of boos.

     The second October Surprise came at around the same time when the White House essentially throttled Starshield, which is the military version of Elon Musk's Starlink. Ukraine's military and intelligence apparatus heavily depends upon Starshield to counter Russian drone attacks. Musk himself came out and said the White House was directly responsible for slowing the service down to 100 mph, which recently resulted in the loss of Ukrainian lives.

     Slowing down Starshield's service to glacially slow speeds makes absolutely no sense unless you look at it from a Russia First perspective. As with the cash infusion into Russia's Treasury, crippling Ukraine's ability to defend itself from Russia's attacks only benefits Putin. I don't know what Putin has on Trump but whatever it is, it's much worse than the legendary pee tape. So why is Trump doing for him, especially as Russia is undermining our efforts in the Middle East? 

     Musk claimed that Starlink has no control whatsoever over its military analog but the fact remains that news came out that Starlink itself  began fixing the slowdown, even though it's still not up to nearly the speeds that Ukraine needs. So, if Musk had no control over Starshield, then how come his company Starlink began making adjustments?

     America First, my ass.

Half a Scaramucci

 

     By now, Trump has gotten rid of as many women as Jack the Ripper. First, there was Pam Bondi, who was shitcanned a day too late (April 2nd). Apparently, her performance before Congress was so disastrous that even Trump woke up long enough to give her the old heave-ho. Then, 18 days later he fired Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer after allegations persisted that she was having an affair with a staffer and that she was a raging alcoholic. 

     After a cooling off period lasting nearly a year, Trump then buried the axe in Kristi Noem, the Homeland Security Secretary, after persistent stories that she'd blown $220,000,000 of DHS money on promotional ads featuring herself (which Trump signed off on). As a consolation prize, he made her "special envoy" of the comic book-sounding "Shield of the Americas", which she just left two days ago.

     This week came the Double Event. Trump fired Kimberly Guilfoyle on national television through new Press Secretary, Katie Zacharia. Apparently, Trump had a problem with someone else in his administration shaking people down for money and threatening foreign officials.

     Guilfoyle's firing through Zacharia in her one and only press conference proved to the height of irony as Zacharia was herself rubbed out just hours ago (she's "transitioning out of the role", the administration said.). I guess her one press conference last Tuesday was a little too rocky. It lasted for less than 14 minutes and she'd only taken three questions, while keeping her baby blues glued to her binder.

     All that remains for Trump is to write a Dear Boss letter (To himself, natch) bragging about how sharp his Sharpie is.

     What all these women have in common, despite being incompetent morons, is that they embarrassed Trump (Yes, he's still capable of feeling chagrin) and they still bowed and scraped, every dick-slapped one of them, even after being, justifiably, publicly humiliated. And, true to form, in every case Trump refused to accept blame for his horrible hiring decisions.

     Typically, he blamed the media for dog-piling on Zacharia. It's all the media's fault because she did a creditable job impersonating the Hindenburg as it approached Lakehurst and stumbled on the first question she fielded. And it's also the media's fault because she tried to pass herself off as a lawyer (she tried to split hairs and say it wasn't OK to call herself an attorney but it was perfectly fine to refer to herself as a lawyer even though the words are synonymous and interchangeable), even though no one can find any evidence of her passing a state bar exam. Yeah, blame the Fake News, like Sean Hannity, who gave her a grilling recently on his show.

     So much for hiring nothing but the best.

     But, yeah. Trump has fired nothing but women from Cabinet level positions. Make of that what you will. Maybe by the end of his term, if he lives that long, he'll be able to boast of a female body count bigger than Ted Bundy's.

Republican Business As Usual, Greek Style

      Even considering how much the swamp has grown under Trump (it's now the size of the Gulf of Mexico), Kimberly Guilfoyle's brazen corruption and grifting still manages to amaze us. This fall, we'd read stories about Guilfoyle's people demanding cases of high-end champagne, at Guilfoyle's drinking parties that lasted until past four in the morning, at using helicopters and private jets (that she boasted about) to fly to swanky resorts and cozying up to a lobbyist for a Greek company. The Wall Street Journal delivered the coup de grace in naming two wealthy Greek businessmen with whom Guilfoyle had been canoodling.

     And then came Eric Deters.

     Deters, a smalltime right wing operator who's been trying to weasel his way into the Trump administration (One supposes he didn't bribe Trump sufficiently), was hit up for $100,000 by Guilfoyle. That was the outstanding balance on her American Express credit card and Guilfoyle told Deters to send the money directly to her AmEx account so as not to leave a paper trail. She also told him, in writing, to stop putting things in writing.

      "Honey please I need you to get this done for me today," she wrote in advance of her confirmation hearings. It would have been a quid pro quo arrangement because she promised him the access to the Trump administration for which he's been thirsting for years. I guess Guilfoyle overplayed her hand and overestimated her importance because the only reason she was nominated to the post of our ambassador to Greece was because Donnie Dumbo Junior had just broken up with her and they wanted her out of the country immediately. Senate Republicans, as always, were happy to oblige.

     The day after the story with Deters broke, Deters himself went public and confirmed the WSJ's story, basically calling her every name in the book. In reality, Deters never made the payment and only went public because Guilfoyle didn't deliver the access to the White House that she'd promised (although it's unclear how Deters thought she'd delivered without the bribe).

     Guilfolye's corruption and cartoonish elitism was such that Trump was forced to fire her yesterday (the official narrative is that she resigned, although when an administration demands your resignation, it still means you're shitcanned. whichever way you cut it).

     But there's a rule in Trump's Washington DC- Don't embarrass the boss and don't get caught. Guilfoyle, not the sharpest knife in the drawer, apparently never learned that rule. Just like she never learned the rule that engagements are typically mutual and consensual and that you can't manufacture them by buying your own engagement ring and making the wedding announcement yourself.

Moving Day

 

     After a dizzying variety of departure dates set by my roommate, it looks as if we're finally leaving Arizona for good on either Halloween or November 1st. If you know anything about me, you know I've hated this city and state since the day I got here, so I'm excited to leave.

     The drawback is he's stopping off at his sister's house in Land O Lakes. Florida and the layover could be anywhere from one to six weeks. The ultimate goal is to get up to Massachusetts where I belong. Then, after that, where I wind up is anyone's guess. I could be in a shelter or on a park bench in the middle of the winter, who knows (No, I'm not making that up)?

     Bottom line is, even if we leave on the 31st of this month, we won't roll into Florida until Election Day, the busiest times for a political blog, on the 3rd or just after. So, to anyone who still reads this blog (lately, I've been getting about 200,000 hits a month but who knows how legit Google's analytics are?), if you don't read anything from me on Election Day, it's not because anything happened to me or that I just decided to quit. It simply means I won't be anywhere with a wifi connection.

     One more thing: If you're a current or past contributor to my Paypal, I could really use some help financially. I'm going to be expected to help defray the costs of the trip and tolls, highway gas and car food is expensive, gas especially with Trump's idiotic war against Iran.

The Ruse and Fall of the American Empire

     Since we lack the words or imagination or perspicacity or even the moral courage and wherewithall to adequately gauge the corruption infesting this nation, it'll likely fall to future generations to wonder what the fuck we were thinking since 2015.

     Corruption, graft and grift have become spectator sports in the Trump years, especially in this term. In fact, it could be said that the corruption we're seeing literally on a daily basis is greater than that of the Grant, Harding, Nixon and Bush years combined. The brazen level of pay-to-play politics far exceeds even the worst excesses of the infamous Tammany Hall of 19th century New York.

     But as corrupt as Tammany was in the 1860s and early 1870s under Boss Tweed, the bosses and sachems understood the civic need. It was rotten with corruption, yes, but at least bosses like Tweed put up the New York County Courthouse (even though it originally was supposed to cost the taxpayers just a quarter of a million dollars and wound up costing up to $13 million).

     And we're seeing the same exact graft (charitably referred to as "cost overruns") with the ridiculous ballroom that Trump is building. What was once a project projected to cost $200 million in private donations (read: bribes) is now up to $1.6 billion. Everything Trump originally told us about it turned out to be a lie. He wouldn't touch the East Wing until he knocked it down.

     Then there's his arch, which is projected to be 250 feet tall and, according to Trump, will house drones and even snipers. After taking over the Kennedy Center like a bloated aging Viking, then he then put his name on it and thereby stealing President Kennedy's honor.

     Boss Tweed could have learned a lot from Trump. But at least Tweed and his minions understood the need for "honest graft".

     But at least the Tweed Courthouse, as it came to he known, served a public need. There is no such thing with Trump's ballroom or arch. The ballroom, if it's ever completed, will merely be a place for 1% scumbags to bribe Trump in his waning time in office. And what can you say about a 250 foot-tall arch where snipers will be positioned ready to take out American citizens?

     At no time in US history had a president been given a jumbo jet by another country. Trump accepted one from Qatar, a plane valued at $400 million then, of course, cost the taxpayers another billion dollars to retrofit. He bankrupts the Secret Service by charging them through the nose for the privilege of protecting him, making them pay for their rooms and even golf cart rentals during his endless taxpayer-funded golf trips.

     And then there's his so-called Trump Institute for Peace, which requires nations to pony up a billion dollars. Naturally, there's no transparency and we have no idea where the money ends up, although we can venture an educated guess. In 2024, Trump openly offered oil executives whatever they wanted as long as they paid him a one billion dollar bribe, something that socked even the corrupt oil barons in attendance.

     And, of course, Republicans in Congress are more concerned about their own insider stock trades and keeping their seats than they are holding Trump's cloven hooves to the fire. The party that pretended to be so concerned about Hunter Biden's paintings and board spot on Burisma are suddenly not so concerned that their leader made $2.2 billion last year alone, mostly through shady cryptocurrency schemes. And that's just the money we know about.

     Yes, corruption has become a spectator sport these days and things like the Hatch Act, the Emoluments Clause in the Constitution and other federal laws are just quaint reminders of a bygone age when the government at least gave the appearance of respecting the rule of law.

     Corruption and complacence, an unshakable sense of its own dominion is what brought down the Roman empire. But at least it lasted for about 1000 years. We're barely 250 years into our own history and if any one man will bring it all crashing down, it's the demented freak sitting behind the Resolute Desk.

Dum Dum From Queens

 

     JoJoFromJerz. We've all heard the handle, read her feed on Twitter, at least those of us liberals who put a clothespin on our noses and chose to endure the stench of pork rinds and Zyklon B since Musk took over. JoJo, whose real name is Joanne Carducci, in the nine years she's been on Twitter (Yes, I'm dead-naming it. Shut the fuck up and move on, snowflake), has amassed a following of well over a million. That's quite an accomplishment considering so many so-called progressives and liberals fled the sinking ship of Twitter for the even smaller sinking ship of Bluesky starting Election Day 2024. Give yourself a hand, you wet-legged cunts. Myspace awaits.

      Anyway, JoJo is a working single mother living in the suburbs of New Jersey. She's barely clinging onto her home. She may be well-known but political notoriety isn't the same as wealth or even solvency. Hell, I'm living proof of that. Well, late last month Joanne revealed that starting last year, she'd begun getting threatening letters from Melania Trump's lawyers. The Ultimate Stepford Wife apparently had a problem with JoJo calling her, someone who recently walked out with a robot, "robotic".

     They'd demanded she take down her posts criticizing the Trumps, publicly apologize and even tried to extort a one million dollar bribe get them to back off from their legal threats. Carducci obviously can't afford one million dollars. So she ignored the letters and continued posting her content online. The letters kept coming every month. JoJo kept her mouth shut.

     The implications were clear. If America's most infamous gold-digger had her way, Joanne could've been thrown out on the street along with her kids. However, despite her public silence, JoJo behind the scenes had consulted with attorneys as well as current and former elected officials, including Matt Platkin, the former AG of NJ.

     Platkin advised her without charge regarding her legal options. One unnamed "prominent" attorney agreed to take on her case pro bono until he made some phone calls and realized to his horror that, Oh my God, the Trumps have "inexhaustible resources". He then advised Carducci to capitulate to their every demand. Real Profile in Courage, whoever that shyster was.

     Then, suddenly, the letters stopped cold. 

 

     They stopped right after Melania walked out and expressed outrage that anyone would tie her to Jeffrey Epstein, despite having her picture taken with him and his jailbird girlfriend countless times over the years. In other words, like her TACO husband, Melania folded like a gut-punched 10 dollar hooker.

     Which she is.

     This wasn't the first time Melania's shysters sent demand and cease and desist letters to critics over the years. They sued Michael Wolff for a billion dollars, who then did the unexpected and counter-sued Melania (the suit was tossed by a judge). They sued Hunter Biden for another billion, then sued The Daily Beast, James Carville and HarperCollins UK (Harper Collins, being the right wing queefs that they've always been, immediately bent the knee without even first testing the legal waters).

     Like all bullies, the Trumps tend to fold when people like Carducci, Hunter Biden and Michael Wolff stand up to them and threaten to punch hem in the nose or at least refuse to capitulate. But Carducci's case was disturbingly different. Unlike Biden, the son of a former president, the Daily Beast and Harper Collins UK, which have lawyers on staff, Carducci is a private citizen of limited means. The months-long effort to chill her free speech is despicable.

     And threatening Carducci with legal action inevitably would've involved a slippery slope. Because the Trumps and their lawyers would've had to prove malice, that Carducci willfully spread falsehoods about the Trumps. That could've involved some embarrassing discovery. And there's also the First Amendment issue. But Melania isn't a government official. The Constitution only protects citizens from government overreach. This is why Trump himself directly wasn't involved in the legal threats. It wasn't because he was afraid of the perception of him punching down- he does that every day. But as a government official, he couldn't suppress a citizen's right to free speech.

     So basically, he used his own wife and her team of shysters to do what he himself wanted to do- Chill Joanne Carducci's right to free speech.

    Because they're scared of her and her reach.

    Well, Joanne, if you're by any chance reading this, we've got your back. And by "we", I don't mean the fair weather liberals who were chased off Twitter after Election Night because they couldn't hack the sound of redneck German.

Will Trump Use His Nuclear Option?

     I think we all know by now that Trump is a crybaby who incessantly whines when he doesn't get his way. I suppose that's all we can expect from a coddled sociopath who's been an executive since he graduated from college back in the 60s.

     The Democrats are unfair to him, the Supreme Court is unfair to him, the press is unfair to him. He's the ultimate spoiled brat and bully. It's still amazing to me that, after over a decade, Donald Trump still gets his way for the most part entirely through psychopathic persistence, whining, bullying and a toxic cult of personality. 

     But lately, he's been taking the whining to a whole 'nuther level.

     The most vivid illustration of this ongoing temper tantrum is Trump banning CNN, MS Now and Politico from covering the White House. The three media outlets filed an emergency motion in federal court and the courts sided with them. Then the White House (which is to say Trump) deliberately violated that court order by keeping them out. This led all media outlets who share pool duties (including Fox) to shut down the pool, which put Trump in the absurd position of blathering on without anyone at home being able to hear him.

     Then Trump whined about that.

     Now that we're officially less a month away from the midterms, there's uneasy talk circling around the Beltway that Trump may use his nuclear option, which is invoking the Insurrection Act. Six years ago, there were fears that Trump was going to invoke it, which would be the only legal option available to him around Posse Comitatus, the federal law that forbids the White House from deploying military troops on our streets.

     Now the grumbles are again beginning to circulate around the Beltway.

     When Trump found out he lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden, he pulled out all the stops short of invoking the Insurrection Act. The ultimate delineation of this was in inciting a riot at the Capitol (that claimed nine lives) on January 6, 2021 when he attempted to stop the certification of the Electoral College votes. But prior to this, he'd filed no fewer than 63 lawsuits whining about the outcome of the election that were all shot down. These attempts on the part of his attorneys cost several of them their law careers, including Lin Wood, Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman and others.

     He tried twisting the arms of local Republican officials, including Brad Raffensberger, the Georgia Secretary of State, to "find" 11,780 votes.(Biden won Georgia by 11,779 votes). And, not too long ago, Trump had the FBI seize voting records in Fulton County, Georgia, pertaining to the 2020 election, even dispatching then DNI Tulsi Gabbard to supervise the seizure.

     He's floated the idea of seizing voting machines and sending DHS to polling places next month, even though that would be a clear-cut example of illegal voter intimidation.

     So, considering how much Trump is panicking over the midterms, is it really beyond the pale for him to invoke the Insurrection Act?

     By now, it's become screamingly obvious that Trump doesn't give a shit about the Republican Party and doesn't give a damn if they retain the majority in either chamber. His interest in such is merely in denying Democrats the majority and subpoena power they'd need in order to pass articles of impeachment.

     Otherwise, if Trump truly gave a damn about the party to which he'd cynically attached himself, he'd open the purse strings of his $400,000,000 Super PAC war chest and contribute to some Republican campaigns. He wouldn't have primaried loyal Republican allies and cost them their seats such as John Cornyn of Texas and Bill Cassidy of Louisiana.

     So why wouldn't Trump deploy armed troops to intimidate voters on November 3rd?

The Last Witness is live (with addendum)

 

     I've just published my new thriller, The Last Witness, today. Well, "published" isn't quite the word. Right now, at least in the US market, it's in that Schrödinger's cat phase of paperback publishing. It's been cleared for sale but not actually available (except in the UK market).

     Here's the synopsis:

Sometimes the smallest decisions become the most disastrous. One night in Revere Beach, Massachusetts, restaurant owner Eddie Falcone takes a shortcut home and drives straight into a mob hit.

A traffic camera catches him at the scene. The feds need their last living witness and threaten him with prison if he refuses to talk. The mob wants him quiet and makes a counter-offer: Do the time and come out a made man. The only other door is Witness Protection.

Eddie reluctantly testifies and disappears into WITSEC with his wife, mother, and thirteen-year-old daughter. In Ames, Iowa, a psychotic U.S. Marshal obsessed with the girl calls in the mob’s contract killers, including a legendary assassin known only as the Brazilian.

After a bloody firefight, Eddie’s faith in the Marshals is gone. He runs from WITSEC and reconnects with an old Army buddy in Phoenix. The truth he’s tried burying comes back hard as shrapnel: He isn’t just a restaurant owner. He’s a former Army Ranger who resisted getting pulled out of retirement.

When the rogue Marshal kidnaps his daughter, Eddie returns to Massachusetts to take back his child and their lives. The man who was in the wrong place at the wrong time will show both sides of the law that no one gets to take his life from him.

     When the paperback (and Kindle) goes on the market, I'll provide the links, in case you're interested in getting it. Thanks in advance.

 

Addendum: The Last Witness is now available in paperback on the US domain.