1. It will be in interesting to see if Scott Jennings, the articulate, gutsy token conservative who distinguished himself during the Presidential campaign by cutting through CNN propaganda and spin like a hot knife through Crisco, can make any progress in rehabilitating the corrupt and rotting shell of Ted Turner’s creating. Above is his timely take-down of the Jimmy Carter eulogists. The argument made by an opposing panel member that Carter’s work building houses and helping to end diseases in Africa out-balance his borderline treasonous efforts to undermine U.S. foreign policy and dissuade foreign nations from supporting the second Iraq war is truly head-exploding, and Jennings makes short work of it.
2. I wonder if the horrific truck slaughter on Bourban Street last night will prompt President Biden’s puppeteers to call for “commonsense” truck safety legislation. Probably not…
3. Want to see what a competent, ethical, erudite and intelligent theater review is like? Read Chip Defaa’s critique of “A Wonderful World: The Louis Armstrong Musical,” which just opened on Broadway. Chip, who is a friend, manages to offer both praise and criticism without assuming that all audience members are seeking what he seeks in entertainment, making his objections clear and the reasons for them clear as well, flagging flaws without attatching condemnations. Unlike most critics, Defaa is a distinguished practitioner as well, a producer, playwright, and cultural historian. He never sounds like a know-it-all, though in fact he probably comes as close to knowing it all when assessing a musical like this one as any human being could. Expertise and humility! That’s an ethical marriage and a balance to maintain.
4. Opinions are one thing, filling trusting readers’ heads with legal and political crap is something else. In an article appearing on The Hill, Evan A. Davis and David M. Schulte put forward the position that President-elect Trump is barred by Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment from becoming President. They are both lawyers and obviously Trump-Deranged, but that is no excuse for pimping for an absurd and, frankly, civil war-risking measure that plenty of progressives and Democrats will embrace just because the work of the Axis over the last eight years has rotted their cerebrums away. If there were the slightest legitimacy to their essay, The Hill could justify publishing it. There isn’t, and so its sole effect is to make a lot of Americans more ignorant than they already are. I saw it and dismissed it as being in Big Lie territory: debunking the intellectually indefensible theory gives it more publicity than it deserves. Still, a slapdown is in order, and legal scholar Seth Barrett Tillman delivers one, although the fact that what the two Hill authors propose requires ignoring a unanimous, 9-0 U.S. Supreme Court decision should be sufficient to bury their argument in the Crackpot file. [You can download Tillman’s succinct but complete rebuttal here.]
5. Speaking of the Insurrection That Wasn’t, one of the worst of the hyper-partisan Democrats in the Senate, Little Rhodie’s Sheldon Whitehouse, sent a letter to state party chairs assailing his party’s reticence in combatting the evil GOP. “We in Congress customarily say we’re ‘fighting’ for things when we really mean working or toiling,” Whitehouse wrote. “A fight means a defined adversary, a battle strategy, and actual punches thrown. Done well, it involves exposing and degrading your adversary’s machinery of warfare.”
That’s odd: I thought that using the term “fight” meant that the elected leader doing so was actually advocating violence, you know, like when Trump made all those idiots storm the Capitol.
6. Now that’s funny, but this is funnier. Real Clear Politics headline: “Dem Rep. Jamie Raskin: We Will Resist Trump’s Effort To Politicize The Department of Justice.” Not only is the outgoing Democratic Dept. of Justice one of the most overtly partisan in U.S. history, but the President was reportedly recently bemoaning the fact that it wasn’t partisan enough to get main adversary locked up before he was able to get elected. [Pointer: Other Bill]
7. On Facebook, I saw a charming and funny photograph of Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr and Yoko Ono wearing Christmas sweaters with legends mocking the famous tensions among the Beatles sparked by Yoko’s romance with John Lennon. I have no idea if it is genuine or not. I was also recently scammed on Facebook, paying for a product that I am now certain doesn’t exist, but was given a realistic image by a bot. Thus alerted, I am recognizing many of these products ads now: cool things that exist only in AI hallucinations. Some may be genuine, but again, it’s impossible to be sure which. (The beneficiary of my insecurity: Amazon.) I do not know how the public will possibly distinguish reality from lies in the future rapidly approaching. This in turn will lead to cynicism and even more conspiracy-minded people than we have already. The news media exploited the uncertainty already inflicted upon us when they dismissed reports of Joe Biden looking disoriented and confused in public as “cheapfakes and deepfakes” manufactured by conservative operatives.
7. For his party, this passes for an ethical Times op-ed. Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-NY Democrat, represents New York’s Third Congressional District proposes in “Let’s Try Something Different in How We Deal With Trump” that his party should try to compromise and pass needed legislation rather than spend the next four years trying to condemn everything Trump wants to do because they hate him so much. “Since the day Mr. Trump announced his candidacy at the tower bearing his name almost 10 years ago, many politicians, pundits, activists and members of the news media have detailed every one of his failings and missteps. Every word he’s ever spoken has been criticized. Yet he just won again. People are exhausted by the endless finger-pointing, nit-picking and daily battling for political advantage. They want leaders to work together to get things done.”
What a concept!
Nobody will pay any attention to him.
Ethics Alarms 
“2. I wonder if the horrific truck slaughter on Bourban Street last night will prompt President Biden’s puppeteers to call for “commonsense” truck safety legislation. Probably not…”
Given all the latest developments- this entire thing is a resplendent basketful of the results of a variety of crappy policies. Not just an opportunity to mock Democrat miscreance regarding gun rights.
I have to admit the “we need reasonable controls on pick-up trucks” was just about the first thing that flitted through my mind when I first saw the photos of the truck on Bourbon Street. But hey, it is evidently an electric F-150, so the ISIS guy’s carbon footprint during his trip from Texas to New Orleans was wonderfully minimal! And he was flying an ISIS flag from the back of the truck. You know, like those awful conservative guys who have the nerve to fly American flags from the beds of their awful macho pick-up trucks and make all sorts of lefties feel unsafe. And the first thing out of the FBI’s mouth was “this is not an act of terrorism.” How can anyone take the FBI seriously anymore? I assumed the guy was a terrorist as soon as the FBI issued that statement. I’m surprised the guy’s identity has been released so soon, if not at all.
Current suspect is a Houston man- born and raised Texan who served in the army.
I highly doubt he’s the border crosser when the truck crossed two months ago. The truck certainly didn’t cross with the guns and bomb.
Rather the truck seems to be a privately owned one that the owner was renting out “Airbnb” style. The border crossing may have absolutely nothing to do with the attack.
This is bigger. Lots of coordination to make this happen.
On Carter, I met him once, on a Habitat for Humanity build site in Winnipeg. He was frail, and didn’t say much, but you could tell he was happy to be around. I couldn’t tell you a thing about his presidency, because that was a little bit before my time, and it doesn’t feel like much of significance happened during it.
With that in mind, and accepting that there are almost certainly books written about him I am entirely unaware of the contents of, Carter hit me as a good person, maybe not a good president, but a good person, and if there were more people like him around, that wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing.
On Tillman’s response to Davis and Schulte, I caught something that I’m not sure of the implications of. In describing D&S’s position, Tillman wrote:
“In those circumstances, the vote of presidential electors cast for Trump was a nullity. Given that the only remaining and otherwise lawful votes cast by presidential electors were cast for Vice President Kamala Harris, it is Harris who prevailed in the election, and she should be seated under the rules of the Electoral Count Act (1887) (as amended through 2022)”
Taking for granted that the position is absurd because Trump was not disqualified, would this scheme as described even work? I was under the impression that a majority of 270 electors was required to be president, and even if you only counted Harris’ support, she only got 226. I guess I’ve never considered this because your system is so bi-polar I can’t recall anyone other than a Democrat or Republican winning an EC vote, but is it possible to become president with a minority of EC votes? As an example, if the Libertarians managed to peel off the 4 EC votes from Montana, could someone become president with 268 EC votes?
I think the answer is “sure.” Once the election is thrown into the House for whatever reason, the EC doesn’t matter. Both Hayes and JQ Adams had a minority of the Electoral votes when the election was thrown into the House.
Right! I had to read up on this: If neither candidate reached 270 electoral college votes, the elections wouldn’t be determined by the Electoral College. It would instead be delegated to Congress to make the final decision.
So there’s no universe where we just dump out Trump’s electors and make Kamala president. Even if D&S’s scheme to nullify all of Trump’s electors bore fruit, the president would be determined by the majority Republican congress.
The argument is that the electoral votes for Trump were “not regularly given” and should be thrown out.
What Tillman points out is that this type of challenge does not dispute the validity of the elector’s selection or appointment, but that their vote is invalid. If true, then the vote could be discarded, but the electors were still appointed, and Harris would therefore not have a majority of the electors appointed — 538 — which would require 270 votes.
Given that, the election goes to the House of Representatives with each state having a single vote. Republicans hold a majority in 29 state delegations so you can do the math.
Even if the House didn’t include Trump as a candidate (since under this scenario he would have zero electoral votes), Harris would still require a majority of the states voting to be elected.
In that case, who would become president — Vance, or Speaker Johnson? Not sure, and it might just be acting president. I’m not sure where we’d go from there.
At some point the Supremes would have to be involved, I think, and they would, what, be adults? Say Trump was not disqualified and count his votes?
These proposals are the ultimate in sore loserdom.
Oh, and since the count is done January 6, it’s the new Congress doing the count, not the old one. Different situation than Jefferson/Burr or JQ Adams