• I'm cautious to the point of superstition about these things but it looks as if we may be headed in the right direction election-wise. (Remember: They cheat! Vote and let no one stop you!) And I have to say I'm pleasantly surprised that after years of sluicing the most deranged rightwing bullshit, the press and social media seem finally to have decided not to cooperate with at least one obvious disinformation attack, the Hunter Biden Laptop Caper. Gizmodo has a nice rundown on how sketchy it is, as do others, but you hardly need it: What mentally complete person would buy that Biden fils left laptops full of incriminating emails -- look, screenshots! Impossible to fake! -- with a repairman who felt it was his patriotic duty to give them to RUDY GIULIANI AND STEVE BANNON? (Who then funneled them to the New York Post -- presumably because Rupert Murdoch was all the Trump gang had left after David Pecker outlived his usefulness.)
The indicted shitbag Bannon is already self-discredited, and I hope this helps convince people that the New York "chortle chortle gotta love the" Post is not the cute ragamuffin they keep kitchy-kooing and is instead a repulsive and dangerous propaganda outfit. And as for Giuliani, well, here's my latest newsletter item on Third-Act Rudy (Free even to those of you who haven't subscribed yet!), and how this latest humiliation is just a reminder that he was always shit, and in much the same way as the President he serves as bagman and butler.
• While we're on the subject of FREE items from my newsletter (no, don't believe I dropped it: Roy Edroso Breaks It Down) here's another: a conservative defense of SCOTUS nominee Goody Godlywench, on the grounds that of course she's not going to rule in favor of the things she and all her enablers desperately want. The whole caper reminds me of a story from the childhood of former Justice John Paul Stevens; the missus found it in a New York Review of Books essay on his autobiography:
A primary business of Stevens’s immediate family was running the upscale Stevens Hotel in Chicago. But when it faced insolvency during the Great Depression, the hotel “borrowed” more than $1 million from the Illinois Life Insurance Company, which was controlled by Stevens’s grandfather, uncle, and father. Illinois state prosecutors saw this transfer as a form of embezzlement and indicted the three family members. Upon hearing the news, Stevens’s grandfather suffered a stroke and his uncle committed suicide, leaving Stevens’s father to face trial alone. A Chicago jury convicted him, but the Illinois Supreme Court subsequently reversed the conviction and directed an acquittal, finding no evidence of criminal intent.
Although one suspects that these events were traumatic for Stevens, who was still in his early teens, he recounts them in a typically matter-of-fact way. But what he says he learned from the experience is revealing: “In recent years, my firsthand knowledge of the criminal justice system’s fallibility has reinforced my conviction that the death penalty should be abolished.”
It would be wonderful, wouldn't it, if more of our judges had some acquaintance of the cruelties and caprices found on the other side of the law, instead of being bred in vats by the Federalist Society and religious maniac fringe groups.
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