Impeachment: The Fix Was In All Along

Breaking the long silence on political blogging to note that I was wrong when I wrote in October that I thought the Senate would ultimately decide to move on from Trump.

Trump is the Republican Party and the Republican Party is Trump. The final Senate vote should come in a day or two, but it's obvious that the Republicans in the Senate have no interest in removing the sheer lawlessness and abuse of power that is the Trump Administration. Up until a week or two ago I still thought the potential electoral suicide of sticking with this disastrous administration would awaken their self-preservation instincts and lead them to dump Trump. But I was wrong.

So what's going on? At some level, I obviously don't understand it, so given my track record in predicting political outcomes in the Trump era, I'd recommend a big grain of salt. But here goes:

1. They're high on their own supply -- Given the extent to which Republican voters and elected officials live within the right-wing information bubble, I've come to believe that it's gone beyond cynically propagating a lot of that stuff to gain and hold power, which was the case for most of the last 30 years. A majority of Republican Congressmen fairly obviously believe the crazy. And by crazy I mean "repeatedly proven to be untrue and counterfactual."

There's a tendency to talk about the modern GOP as if it's a cult. Having spent some time reading about cults last year, it's in many ways a better way to understand their behavior than thinking about them as the usual sort of political party we've had in this country for most of our existence.

We live in an America of two distinct information bubbles. The right-wing bubble dominated by Fox News, Rush Limbaugh and his ilk, and an online ecosphere that gets increasingly toxic and racist and crazy the farther down the rat hole you go. And there's a fact-based bubble in which everybody else finds a niche. The phrase "facts have a well-known liberal bias" shouldn't be true. But it's true in 2020.

I wouldn't have believed that most Republican Congressmen believed this stuff myself until I saw it spewed in the House and Senate for the last three months. I would've thought they were cynically using it to manipulate voters. But they've convinced me. They believe this stuff. And it's industrial-strength poison to democracy.

2. There's something shady going on -- And something shady beyond just the garden-variety system of legalized bribery that has grown like a cancer on our system (direct campaign contributions from lobbyists, nepotism, etc.) for a long time.

The money trail from Russia into the National Rifle Association and from there into Republican campaigns has been pretty well proven at this point, and it has dozens of variants in other GOP SuperPACs and lobbying organizations. And the money trail from American billionaires who only care about keeping and maintaining the GOP's political power to benefit themselves is far more robust than that. The Citizens United v. FEC case in the Supreme Court threw the windows open for untraceable money and the money has been blasting through those windows ever since. All that money is probably playing out in two ways:

2A. For God's sake, don't look at what we've been doing! -- Most Republican members of Congress are desperate to keep from any further scrutiny of their money trail. Desperate. Because most of them have been on that campaign finance gravy train themselves and they don't want anybody to know it. I don't think all of them are in over their heads, but they're all at least hip-deep or ankle-deep in the muck.

2B. Partisan funding means party discipline -- If you've never been involved in campaign finance you may not realize the extent to which internal party goodwill makes an enormous difference in a candidate's ability to finance an election campaign. This problem has grown enormously over the last thirty or forty years. There's a long version of that statement that I might write about one day, but the point is that for most legislators, crossing party lines on an important issue endangers their job. Most legislators have lost their fundraising independence in recent years.When you hear discussion around the point that some of these senators are afraid of a primary challenge, you should realize that this means, "The party mechanisms will find a challenger and shift the money train to the challenger."

I had thought the obvious general election downside of voting against removal (supported by voters by a margin of something like 48%-45% for most of this process) or even voting against a full trial with witnesses and evidence (supported by around 75% of voters) would ultimately move senators, especially those up for election in 2020. Obviously, it didn't.

3. They think they can get away with it, and riding the Trump train is their best chance -- Given the wave of voter suppression, gerrymandering, etc., that followed the 2010 election, the GOP has been riding in power with the support of a minority of voters for quite a while. For most Republicans in Congress, what they've been doing has worked, so why would they change? This isn't about "the will of the people" and hasn't been for some time. It's about keeping power. When Alan Dershowitz stands in the well of the Senate and argues that if the President believes his re-election is good for America then anything he does in pursuit of that is unimpeachable, fascism has officially arrived on our shores.

If you think the Republican electoral abuses of the last ten years were something, just wait until you see what's going to happen this year now that they've collectively decided that any violation of existing law in pursuit of their own hold on political power is legal and good for America.

4. Game theory: There's no upside in voting for removal. There's only downside. -- If you're a Republican Senator and you vote to remove Trump and keep your seat, you will likely become a pariah in your own party. (Hello, U.S. Rep. Justin Amash.) You'll face blame from your political base and a likely loss of fund-raising clout. If you keep your seat you'll be greatly weakened. If you lose your next election or retire you'll be cut off from the lucrative gravy train of lobbying, Fox News contracts, corporate board appointments, etc., that has greeted your fellow former GOP Congressmen.

And what's the upside? Protecting the rule of law and the constitution? We've already seen that Justin Amash was the only Republican Congressman who cared about any of that. And they literally threw him out of the party for it.

If you vote to keep Trump you can hope the voters have a short memory, which has often proven to be the case. And you probably think that nobody will blame you if you all stuck together on it.

-----

Put it all together, and it's probably some combination of those things plus other dynamics I haven't figured out that is responsible for what's been happening, and for what's about to happen in the Senate. Politics is complicated. There's a lot afoot here, and the iceberg principle probably applies: 90% of it is out of sight.

What can we all do about it? Vote in November 2020. Vote in overwhelming numbers. The basic mechanisms of elections are still spread out and diverse enough that it's possible to overcome everything that will happen in the next nine months. But it will take a wave of voters like we haven't seen in ages.

And for me?

In 2016 I discovered with Trump's election that the America I live in is worse than the America I thought I lived in.

In 2020 I've discovered that the basic political calculations that I have relied on to understand how our political systems function no longer work in the year 2020.

I need to improve my understanding of the world that I do live in. I need to better understand how I can make it more like the world I want to live in.

I'm going to spend some time mulling that.

Just cleansing the visual palate for 2020

I just thought I'd at least post a pretty picture, so as to cleanse the visual palate of the ol' Patio Boat after it's been sleeping the last couple of months. More actual posts coming this year, but for now please enjoy a mid-winter view in black and white.

So, here we are: Watergate Defcon Status 1: The Trumpocalypse in Full

I've been meaning to post something on recent events for a couple of weeks, now, but a few things have kept me busy and events quickly keep overtaking any coherent thoughts I try to put down in writing.

We are all now in the center of the Trumpocalypse.

The news cycle has spun out of control, with events piling upon events. To sum up for posterity, the White House tried to quash a whistleblower complaint that Trump was holding up military aid for Ukrainse to force them to manufacture political dirt for him to use on Joe Biden. To prove his innocence, a couple of weeks ago Trump had the White House release a transcript proving ... well, proving that he was holding up military aid for Ukrainse to force them to manufacture political dirt for him to use on Joe Biden.

Very shortly thereafter, the US House finally opened an official "impeachment inquiry."

I'm not even going to try to track down the higgledy piggledy that ensued, except to say that the muck gets deeper and deeper as Trump flails about and the GOP tries to duck and cover and avoid the truth.

The elected officials of the Republican Party have been supporting a deeply corrupt, lawless man as their President. Why? In exchange for tax cuts for their billionaire patrons and crazy-ass right wing judges to appease the Evangelical wing of the party. That's what they care about, and that's what they got.

As near as I can tell, elected Republican officials are all okay with that deal. In 2018 billionaires paid less in overall taxes as a percent of their income than all other income groups. Republican appointed judges are overturning decades and centuries of decided law to benefit their party's financial benefactors. And in the face of overwhelming evidence of corruption and abuse of power, the entire Republican controlled US Senate doesn't make a peep beyond Mitt Romney tweeting that the denials "strain credulity." Give Mitt another few months and he may express "concern" about it all.

In the midst of this chaos, I'll commit a bit of prognostication and punditry:

My best guess is still that Mitch McConnell eventually decides his best chance to keep control of the Senate is to give Trump the boot. If so, the final collapse of this rapidly deteriorating house of cards may be fast, in the form of a discussion with Pelosi and a deal to bring one clean, direct charge swiftly through the House and Senate to remove him, and to leave the rest of the disaster that is GOP control in Washington stand in place. They have an easy charge to prove with Ukraine, and the 20 or so GOP Senators that are up for re-election can go home and pontificate about how they hated to do it, but they believe deeply in the rule of law and Donald Trump had -- inadvertently, they're sure -- overstepped his bounds, and how President Pence is healing this glorious nation of ours, God Bless America.

Then they will try like hell to bury every other thing that happened during the Trump administration, while Fox News treats the name Donald Trump like, "New phone. Who 'dis?"

But what do I know? I never thought the Republican Party would ever nominate a sociopath like Trump. Go figure, electing one of the worst human being in America to the Presidency has turned out to be a horrible, corrupt disaster. Who could have possibly see that coming?

If nothing else, we owe Donald Trump thanks for proving that the rot in the Republican Party political structure runs all the way to the core. The GOP is irredeemable. If they were a corporation they would literally change their name and rebrand. Since they all live in the Fox News bubble, I can only assume they'll add another bald eagle to their iconography and ooze on.

At the outset my only hope for the Trump Administration was that we might somehow make it out of this disaster without a nuclear exchange in Korea or the Middle East and without a needless war that would lead to hundreds or thousands of deaths. Despite the deteriorating world condition I thought we might make it. But last night's White House statement that we're abandoning the Kurds has made me lose even that hope.

Not a very cheery blog post. But the world isn't in a very cheery state this morning.


P.S. And then, literally as I was writing it, this gem of a tweet came along from Trump. This is a deeply disturbed mind, cracking under pressure. Things are going to get worse before they get better.

A fun day with the FUN MG in photos, part 2: The British Invasion, plus a lovely dinnertime lineup

After I got back from my visit with the vintage racers yesterday afternoon, Monique and I took the FUN MG down to the Inn at St. John's in Plymouth. The Concours of America is happening there today, Sunday. As part of Concours weekend they host a variety of automotive events, and last night they had a gathering for all British cars. It was a really fun event with a great variety of cars.

Afterwards, we went out to dinner with some British-car friends and found ourselves in the midst of something truly scenic. Ride along with us...

MGB, Rolls Royce, Mini, Jaguar F-Type, Morgan three-wheeler.

Ken and Melody Klemmer's MG TC. We'll see it again later this evening.

Triumph TR6

Austin-Healey, Triumph TR6, Jaguar XJ6...

... and then an MG TC putts on by.

This Lagonda was lovely.

Lotus, MGB

Monique loved this Invicta.

So this was really cool, a Rolls-Royce Mini. Apparently they built 1,000 of these back in 2018. The interior was every bit as plush as you might expect.

A Reliant Robin three-wheeler drew some of the biggest crowds at the British Invasion. I talked to the guy who owns it and he said it was much steadier around curves than its reputation.

How did it get that reputation?

Top Gear: The Reliant Robin

A nice sample of the variety: a Bug-eye Sprite, a Lotus 3-Eleven, and an old Rolls-Royce.

And that old Rolls was niiiiiiiiice.

Speaking of old Rolls-Royces, this 1909 Rolls-Royce was one of the real stars of the gathering. The details on it were amazing, and the restoration looked immaculate. Let's stop here for a few photos to look closer:

Chauffeur's seating

The second windscreen for the rear passengers

Now *this* is how you accessorize an air hose.

And yes, the rear tail lamps are real lamps.

Speaking of Rolls-Royces, the FUN MG was indeed parked next to one.

At this point I want to point out that the giant puddle of coolant next to the FUN MG did not come from us! It came from a Jaguar E-Type, which is what you should expect when you park a lesser car like that next to an MGB

Another pretty little MGB

Usually I take photos of the exterior of Jaguar E-Types. But this time I was struck by the lovely dash.

Oh, okay, have an exterior photo, too:

Lotus 7

Minis

Morgan

Factory Five AC Cobra replica

Ford Anglia

More Lotuses, these in orange.

Rolls-Royce Corniche. Nice.

Hundreds of *amazing* British luxury and sports cars and what was Monique's favorite? This wee little compact late-1940s Austin.


As the event began to break up, several of us decided to head up to The Garage in Northville, a restaurant in a converted 1930s garage. Much to my surprise, when we got up there with our B, Ken and Melody were waving in the British cars to park in their driveway:

As you might expect, we drew quite a crowd of passers-by. It took quite a bit of patience to catch these pictures of the cars without a crowd around them.

And then after dinner, the British roadsters went on their way....

All in all, an entirely fun automotive day in the Motor City!

A fun day with the FUN MG in photos, part 1: vintage racing

It's been a while since I've done any automotive photoblogging, and I do have a few good pictures to share from this spring...

... such as this photo of our new MG TD!

 But for now you'll all have to settle for a giant two-part photo dump from a fun day I had yesterday with my MGB.

First up was an afternoon stop at the vintage races at the Waterford Hills Racetrack. I got to take the FUN MG on some parade laps on the track itself(!!!), looked at some other lovely British cars, walked around the paddock a bit, and watched some on-track action.

I invite you to enjoy it along with me and the FUN MG:

We're here!

Just a nice little Triumph Spitfire.

And now, some pretty, pretty MGAs...

Parade laps on the track!

We never went all that fast ... maybe 60 or 65 on the backstretch. But it was way fun and a good chance to whip around some corners with a bit of speed.

I'm pretty sure I handled it just like Lewis Hamilton.

Then I walked around the paddock a bit and watched people working on their cars -- getting ready for their sessions or buttoning things up after a session. If you're ever at a race track, it's worth getting access to the paddock. You see a lot more of what goes on than if you just sit on the outside and watch the cars going in circles.

Can I come out and play?

And now, a bit of racing. First some midgets:

Then the bigger cars:

These two Corvettes were very equally matched and swapped places for 2nd and 3rd a few times...

.
... until #90 pushed just a bit too hard towards the end and spun out!

Fortunately, no Corvettes were harmed in the spinning, but the yellow Corvette left was well ahead by the time #90 got back on the track.

Next up, Part 2: The British Invasion, plus a nice dinnertime lineup.