Air DeSantis 🌻🌻🌻

Heil Who: On Saturday night while the media continued their non-stop coverage of the ceremonies surrounding the death of the matriarch of one dysfunctional family, the head of another one who is very alive and who aspires to return to his perch atop the country whose presidents are viewed as leaders of the free world was the keynote speaker at a political rally in Youngstown, Ohio where about 6000 obsessed fans hailed him with a one finger salute eerily reminiscent of one from the middle of the last century. The use of the salute wasn’t an outlier, the crowd at a rally in Pennsylvania for far-right gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano, himself a January 6^th rioter who continues to dog whistle slime at his Jewish Democratic opponent Josh Shapiro, also urged his crowd, many of whom complied, to use that salute.  No disrespect to the Queen but those salutes, what they stand for and the FG’s recent statement to conservative commentator Hugh Hewitt threatening widespread violence if he’s indicted for any of his crimes should be getting far more attention.

Obstruction, Obstruction: The Queen’s funeral has also sucked some of the air out of coverage of the case of the Mar a Lago purloined documents.  It’s bad that the FG took thousands of government documents to his very insecure winter home, worse that somewhere around 100 of those files were marked highly confidential but maybe worst of all that one of the judges that he appointed continues to kowtow to him proving that Chief Justice Roberts’ assertion that there’s no such things as FG judges is beyond wrong.  Last week, that Judge, Aileen Cannon, ruled in the FG’s favor, granting him executive privilege he no longer has, saying that even out of office he’s entitled to special treatment and doubling down by suggesting that there’s no reason to believe that those secret documents are really secret anymore in part because why should anyone not named the FG but especially the FBI be believed.  On Thursday, over the protests of the Department of Judge Cannon, gave the FG and his team most of what they requested.  She appointed one of their choices, US District Judge Raymond Dearie who the DOJ also signed off on to serve as Special Master to review all of the 11,000 documents that the FG had with him at Mar a Lago with instructions to try to complete his task by November 30, though she did concede that the 100 or so that the DOJ claims are super-secret should be prioritized.  She also said that the FG’s lawyers should be allowed to dispute the findings about which of the documents are personal or are covered by that executive privilege that he doesn’t have, a bit of a problem since: the FG’s lawyers don’t have security clearances, at least so far;  two of them may now be witnesses in any case related to the document theft over their representations that the FG had returned all of those documents when he hadn’t; and a third, Chris Kise, to whom the FG or one of his slush funds recently paid a $3 million retainer is registered as a foreign agent representing Venezuela’s Maduro regime, something that should disqualify him from obtaining a high end security clearance.  As to payments, a subject near and dear to the FG who hates parting with cash, Judge Cannon did throw one dagger his way, she ruled that contrary to his request that he and the DOJ share the costs of the Special Master, he’ll have to foot the whole bill.  Can Special Masters insist on being paid upfront?  As to the substance of her ruling, on Friday the DOJ filed a motion for a partial stay pending appeal, saying in far more polite words that though they believe Judge Cannon is off her rocker, stupid and incredibly biased and that there is no need for a Special Master but that to speed things up at this time they are seeking only to stay the portions of her order that are causing the most serious and immediate harm.  Essentially, they asked that the 100 most secret documents be immediately exempted from her ruling.  Legal experts say that even though the 11^th Circuit is made up of conservative FG appointed judges the court should rule in the DOJ’s favor, but haven’t we heard that before?  Anyway, the FG has gotten what he really wants, a delay in the process, because even if the judges move fast, whatever gets done, it won’t be fast enough.      

Yearning to be Free:  Just about everyone agrees that our immigration system is broken and has been for a long time, across several administrations both Republican and Democratic.  Congress can’t come to terms with how to deal with the large number of people, many  suffering from poverty and/or political oppression, who want to come here. It is a problem, but then again we are a nation of immigrants and many of our ancestors only arrived legally because back when they came ashore there were either no laws prohibiting their arrival.  Anyway, instead of trying to come up with solutions, isn’t it a whole lot more fun to use desperate people fleeing difficult circumstances, especially brown people, as pawns in election years? That apparently is the conclusion of Texas Governor Abbott and Florida Governor DeSantis, both presidential wannabees seeking to throw as much mud at the current administration, blue state and cities and anyone who gets in their way even if it means scooping refugees including families with babies off the streets and shoving them into buses and planes with promises of jobs and housing only to deposit them at the doors, naturally without any advance notice, of places like Martha’s Vineyard, NYC, Chicago, Washington DC and VP Harris’ door.   It is particularly ironic that the 50 carted off to Martha’s Vineyard this last week mostly left the political turmoil, socio-economic instability and ongoing humanitarian crisis of the very same Venezuela Maduro regime that the FG’s lawyer Chris Kise represents.  One of the weirder things about the Vineyard transport is how it took place, those individuals crossed into the US in Texas but were flown at Florida taxpayer’s expense to the Vineyard by Governor DeSantis who apparently forgot to consider that his antics might piss off some of his South Florida constituents who are themselves from Venezuela.  Also particularly bizarre is that two of the loudest voices on the subject belong to Senators Ted Cruz aka Rafael Edward Cruz and Marco Rubio, both of whom were born to Cuban parents fleeing Communism. Though I am far from an expert on this subject, I like NYC Mayor Adams’ suggestion that we allow those seeking refugee status to legally seek work especially since we are pretty much at full employment, especially for the jobs that they would initially be seeking.