I've wanted to post this for a while, but what with the pandemic, the election, the insurrection, the American Rescue Plan and all manner of other stories filling in the cracks, it's gotten push back -- and back and back.  Enough already.  Besides which, I also want to get beyond just writing about politics every morning.  Especially when so much of it coming from the fascist Republican Party pushing sedition makes my head hurt too much on far too many days.

So, at last we get to Mary Schmich.

When coming across Famous Quotes on social media, I always try to do research to see if it’s actually attributed correctly.  I'm not sure what the percentage of accuracy is -- not as horrible as its reputation, but definitely bad enough that you should always check if you don't know for sure. Mark Twain would probably be pleased to know how much is attributed to him that he never said.

However, for all that, I think the most famous of the mis-attributions came from the early days of the Internet, in the late-‘90s, I believe.  And it involved the Chicago Tribune.  You may even know the quote -- actually the very long quote, since it was part of a speech.  It’s what became known as Kurt Vonnegut’s famous “Wear sunscreen” commencement speech, where the list of life-lessons that he supposedly explained at the very end of the speech were passed around and around the globe. 

Eventually though – it took about a year later – word finally, slowly started to get out that it wasn't actually written by Kurt Vonnegut at all, or for that matter, even from a commencement speech.  Rather the "list" was a 1997 article by Chicago Tribune columnist Mary Schmich, written as if she was giving a commencement address.. 

Mary Schmich is very good, and still writes a column for the paper.  (For many years, she even used to have a special section on her official Tribune webpage specifically about “The Sunscreen Columns” – it included the original column, along with a couple of follow-ups she wrote about the reaction, but I don’t see that there anymore.  I guess after 25 years, enough time has passed.  Though if you go to the Chicago Tribune site and go to the Search box and start typing in “Mary Schmich” – the drop-down menu starts listing all the options and “Mary Schmich Wear Sunscreen” pops up as one.)

If you haven't ever read the column -- or only read the piece as if supposedly by Kurt Vonnegut, or haven't read it in years -- it's well-worth it.  The "commencement address" column was famous for a reason.  It's smart and a lot of fun.  And it's real title is, "Advice, like  youth, probably wasted on the young."  You can find it here.
 
All the better, one of those other "Sunscreen Columns" concerned how, to her utter surprise in 1999, she was contacted by acclaimed filmmaker Baz Luhrmann (who, among his long list of movies, made The Great Gatsby, Strictly Ballroom and the film musical Moulin Rouge!).  It turns out that Luhrmann, who's from Australia, read her "Wear Sunscreen" column all the way Down Under and actually wanted to make a music video using her column.  This is an article by Chicago Tribune reporter Mark Caro who interviewed his fellow Trib writer Mary Schmich and wrote about how it all came to pass.

For years, I’d never been able to find the music video, but finally tracked it down.  Here it is –

Speaking of insane, this article by Jonathan Swan in Axios is brilliant.  You may have heard one passage referenced on the news Monday about yelling at a Trump meeting that was between the outsiders (led by Sidney Powell, who has a $1.3 billion defamation lawsuit against her by Dominion Voting Systems, and the first-fired and then pardoned Mike Flynn) pushing Trump to keep trying to prove fraud and on the other side White House lawyers and advisers.  This is the full article that was a part of.  It’s truly insane and often hilarious, given that we happily know the outcome.

But just to give you a taste, this is an exchange between Trump senior advice Eric Herschmann and Overstock.com CEO (no, seriously) Patrick Byrne.
 
"Do you even know who the fuck I am, you idiot?" Herschmann snapped back.
 
"Yeah, you're Patrick Cipollone," Byrne said.
 
"Wrong! Wrong, you idiot!"
 
Actually, this isn't just Well-Worth reading, it's just great.  And it's not just interesting and important, but the article is eminently readable.  However, you may have to unclench your teeth every once in a while when you remember that a) this is about overthrowing the government, and b) there is a pandemic raging. 

​You can find it here.

“I’m counting the hours until he’s gone…I plan to pull him out by his hair, his little hands and his feet.”
-- Speaker Nancy Pelosi, on Trump

It wasn't the bluntness of Speaker Pelosi's comment towards a lame duck president that stood out to me yesterday -- and her counting the hours, not the days which requires a calendar rather than a ticking watch -- it was her use of "little hands."  As is well-known by now, Trump is deeply sensitive whenever the small size of his hands is ever referenced, seeing it as a reflection on what that purportedly means about the size of another of his important male body parts.

By the way, the origin of that sensitivity goes back to January, 1998, when Graydon Carter, co-founder of the bitingly satirical Spy magazine out of New York, wrote an article that described Trump as a “short-fingered vulgarian.” It upset Trump so much that for many years he would send photos of himself, generally torn out of magazines, to Carter with his hands circled in gold Sharpie and a personally-written comment to the side, "See, not so short!"  In a 2015 article in Vanity Fair (where he was then the editor), Carter said that the most recent mailing had come earlier that year and added, "I sent the picture back by return mail with a note attached, saying, 'Actually, quite short.' Which I can only assume gave him fits."

The knowledge of that sensitivity -- and the reality that he still would respond to it, even in public -- it a high point in the GOP presidential primaries that same 2015 when Marco Rubio made a reference to it, saying, "I don't understand why his hands are the size of someone who is 5-foot-2,  And you know what they say about men with small hands? You can't trust them." That, of course, is not what they say about men with small hands, unless they are trying to clean it up for public consumption, and Trump knew that well.  And so, with all the insecurity that the country has come to know, he responded in defense of his hands a week later during an actual presidential debate.  "Look at those hands, are they small hands?” he said, holding them up for the world to see, despite being the front-runner as Republican nominee for president of the United States. “And, he referred to my hands – ‘if they’re small, something else must be small.' I guarantee you there’s no problem. I guarantee."  Never mind that Rubio didn't say that, Trump knew what was meant, and so he brought the presidential conversation down into the scatological gutter.  For all I know, it's where the origin of his "Little Marco" insult came from.

And Nancy Pelosi most-certainly knew all this.  So, not only did she bluntly tell Trump off, she knowingly insulted his manhood.  And of course, it wasn't an insult of his manhood from just anyone, but from a woman.  And not just any woman, but an 80-year-old woman who was insulting his manhood.  And not just any 80-year-old woman, but the most powerful woman in the United States. 

And on top of insulting his manhood, saying she planned to throw him out.

Oh, and the "by his hair" wasn't too shabby as far as insults go, either, especially when dealing with a man famous for his elaborate comb-over.

But what perhaps leaped out the most was the response from Republicans in Congress. And that response was -- silence. No outrage, no cries of how unbecoming it was for the Speaker of the House -- and not just any Speaker, but the hated Nancy Pelosi, who Republicans have been fundraising off of for years, indeed decades.  Just... silence.  Forget the sly insults, just simply saying she planned to throw him out would normally be enough to send Republicans into apoplexy.  And not even because it's Nancy Pelosi or a generic Speaker of the House, but have we ever heard any politician be so blunt about getting rid of an outgoing president??  And as far as I can tell, there wasn't a word of complaint from any Republican.

I don't think that's necessarily because they didn't want to defend Trump -- they clearly have no trouble with that, even now, as many continue Trump's assault on democracy.  The best I can figure is that even they are just weary by it all and heard Speaker Pelosi's response as the natural reaction to Trump Mania.

And in the end, that's what you get when your party leader is a short-fingered vulgarian.

This is a very enjoyable article on election reaction from newspapers around the world.  Surprisingly and happily, some of the positive reactions were from right-leaning papers
 
A Sunday tabloid in London had a good one, simply “God Bless America.”  But my favorite this was the headline from the Ayrshire Daily News, which covers the locale where Trump's Turnberry golf course is in Scotland.
 
It said:  “South Ayrshire golf club owner loses 2020 presidential election."
 
You read all the others here.

I swear this is true.  You will either love this or spend the rest of the day banging your head against the wall.  I just came across this tweet a couple minutes ago, and it is serious and on the level.  I

This is from a guy who identifies himself as a “legal and political analyst for the Fox News Channel.”  Really.  His name is even familiar to me.  For those who watch "Fox News" periodically or regularly, you probably know him.

​This is how he actually thinks technology works.  That it's "probably" just a coincidence.  Probably!!!  And he’s a legal and political analyst for “Fox News”!!!!  Boy, does this explain a lot.
 
It’s one thing for idiots to have idiot conspiracy theories.  But as biased as they are at “Fox News,” you still hope that their “legal and political analysts” are just biased and not brain-dead.  Alas…
 ​

It's not just the tweet alone, it's the 8-minute video attached.  Unfortunately, for reasons that aren't clear, there is no embed code, so I can't embed the full things, but I can at least take a screen shot to get things started.  

​And happily, I was able to find the full video on YouTube.

At any other time, so many other stories would be the five-bell headline -- from the Breonna Taylor decision to charge no one in her killing, despite having settled a civil suit with the family for $12 million...to reports of former Secretary of Agriculture Rick Perry in an apparently-corrupt deal with a Ukrainian oil company to sit on its board... to the story of how the current nominee to lead the Department of Homeland Security (after having lead it illegally for months as "acting head") oversaw a $6 million contract to a firm where his wife worked.  And more.

But they pale to Trump's comments not guaranteeing a peaceful transfer of power should he lose the election, and suggesting ballots be ignored -- on  the heels of a hair-raising article in The Atlantic that described Trump plans to subvert the Electoral College by having Republican legislatures in battleground states take back the power to appoint Electors.

As much as I was repulsed by Trump’s response at the press conference, I loved that he was asked – and that the reporter followed up.  So, perhaps we'll start to get journalists challenging him more, not in "debate," but to get his words on serious, uncommon matters like this on the record.  And in that regard, I also think that answers like he gave will repulse most voters, including some Republicans who aren’t cultists, but most-importantly undecided Independents.  I say that because I don’t think almost any American voter wants a contested election or wants a president to not commit to peaceful transfer of power.  Cultists may be okay with their beloved Trump refusing to commit to a peaceful transfer of power, but as a principle of Constitutional American life, I don’t think a president not committing to a peaceful transfer of power is something that comes across well to Americans.  And it will hurt him even more in the polls, for which yesterday there were two new ones that show him 10 points behind.
 
And ultimately, that will be the biggest protection against Trump's attempt to manipulate and challenge the results  – having, hopefully as big a landslide victory as possible.  It may not be that, it may not even be a victory at all.  But as all major polls show in the popular vote and by Electoral vote, it appears headed in that direction.  There was a major election analyst this week (I forget who, sorry), who said there is a much greater chance of Biden getting 350 Electoral votes (40%) than of Trump just winning (25%).  And I think every public action like this on Wednesday that Trump makes hurts him with those in the middle all the more.  And it's not that it changes people's minds on a wide, massive scale, but just stripping away 1% is significant.
 
And no, I don’t know.  But that’s what I think.

I also think there's a big hurdle in Trump trying to challenge the validity vote-by-mail and taking it to court.  And that hurdle is that voting-by-mail is not only legal in every state, and in operation in every state, but has been for many generations, so the precedent is very long established.

All that aside, there are two other issues related to this, in particular to the article in The Atlantic, that I believe offset some of the hair-on-fire horror that the author reported on Trump and GOP plans. 

The first is when I heard Barton Gellman, the author of The Atlantic article, state as legal fact something that supports the foundation of his article, which was a plan by Team Trump to challenge Electors being decided by popular vote, so that the Republican state legislatures can pick their own Electors, which was long-time past how things were handled before tradition changed all that.  What Mr. Gellman said was that Bush v. Gore set down the principle that states can take back the power of votes to determine Electoral votes.  The thing is...my understanding of Bush v. Gore is that it very clearly said that its ruling should not be taken as precedent, and that it solely pertained to this one specific election in Florida in 2000.
 
Now, maybe there’s another argument that supports states taking back the power.  Or maybe the Supreme Court could rule that way on its own.  But using Bush v. Gore as the precedent to substantiate your article is (as far as I can tell) without any foundation.  At the very least, I’m surprised that I didn't hear any analysts bring this up.

And there was one other thing The Atlantic article seems to ignore as a critical hurdle to its Worst Case Scenario -- a major thing.
 
Even if everything ends up happening exactly like article says Team Trump is in the early stages of tenatively maneuvering, the Electoral College doesn’t work like that.  It doesn't just meet, tabulate in their votes, and it’s all done.  Those votes actually have to be certified by the House and the Senate!  And…it’s not the current House and the Senate, but the Congress which meets in January, after the results of this election have taken place.  The new Congress.  Which means very possibly a Democratic House and a Democratic Senate.
 
I think that if Trump and Republicans actually pull off this outlandish plan, it is near impossible for me to imagine a Democratic House, let alone also a Democratic House and a Democratic Senate (if they take control) certifying such an unprecedented power-grab end run around the popular vote. 

Yes, if it all transpired this way and came down to that, it would certainly be a political mess.  But the point is that it's not the simplistic matter of just manipulating state legislatures and counting the Electoral votes.  There is another layer of protection built in.

But for all of this -- for all the hideous ghastliness of Trump's statement and The Atlantic reporting of GOP plans, the one statement that stands out just as loudly, if not more so now, that all the times before.  And the mantra can be repeated by everyone here in their sleep --

This is not about Trump, we know who he is.  This is about the elected members of the Republican Party who enable him and are complicit in it all.  This only happens if the Republican members of Congress support and allow it.  And they do support it.  And do allow it.  And at its core it is pure, book-definition fascism. Attempting to undermine trust in government institutions, and undermining what the truth and reality are, so that those in power are free to define it.

​This isn't about Trump.  It's about today's Republican Party which has gone full fascist.