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So, happy fall, y’all! This time of the year is usually about getting back into routines, getting back to business. It’s always an exciting time of the year politically. For all you non-nerds out there, It’s kind of like the political playoffs. It’s been a long season and the primaries are finally over. And now we’re down to the final sprint before the November elections.
But these are strange times. Unlike the sleepy August news cycles of old, the political merry-go-round-from-hell never really slowed down this summer, it just kept on spinning. And if you’re listening to this podcast, you might be what the folks over at The Bulwark refer to as a Normie. By definition, that means you’re normal enough to be kind of grossed out by politics by most politicians, and most -if not all – the news outlets. It all makes you feel a little bit anxious, a little depressed and maybe kind of helpless. Chances are you’ve tuned out and you’re not exactly anxious to tune back in.
While all the experts agree it’s a good idea to give our brains a break and preserve our sanity, I’m going to give you the quick skinny on what went down the last few weeks and why the rest of the normies out there really need you to tune back in.
AUDIO: Stranger Things theme song
I basically only accomplished two things this summer. One, I gave up cream and sugar in my coffee (which was really hard to do.) And two, I watched all four seasons of Stranger Things. Now before you judge me and say it’s some sort of teenybopper show, I’m here to tell you I resisted for a long time because I don’t really usually do the Sci Fi thing. But this show grabbed me and would not let go. Admittedly, I first got hooked because it’s just Eighties-tastic. The harvest gold wall phone, the hair, the clothes, the Camaros, the music. And for those of you who are fans, Steve Harrington would have been in my graduating class. (Shout out to 1985, y’all.)
So that’s the stuff that hooked me. But what really drew me in was this thing called the upside down. The upside down is basically a parallel universe where all the things exist, like in our world, but they’re off… they’re distorted. They’re wrong somehow. And that’s honestly how I feel about a lot of things right now – about our country, about my old party about American evangelicals. It’s just like we live in the land of the unprecedented and the unimaginable, except for in books, which are weirdly now being banned.
The things that we never thought would happen, keep happening over and over and over again. So Im going to give us some good things to think about but we’re also going to look at some tough topics. Today we’re going to look at Maralago, we’re going to look at Roe and marriage equality, and we’re going to look at immigration. We’re also going to talk about the return of the January 6 hearings and I’m going to talk a little bit about the elections in November.
AUDIO: Miami Vice theme song
Okay, it’s time to grab your cataract sunglasses and your ugliest palm tree party pants and head on down with me to Maralago. Let’s figure out what the heck happened down there.
In order to understand what really went down with the FBI search at Maralago, you kind of have to look at the whole year and a half before that. So, when you’re sitting around watching football with your uncle Clyde this weekend, in his I love Jesus hat and his Let’s Go Brandon T shirt, and he tells you that the jackbooted thugs kicked in the door of a completely innocent man in the middle of the night… maybe you can help clarify things for him a little bit.
Here’s what we know… Shortly after Trump left office, and if you recall, it took a while to get him out of there. The Archives realized they were missing some boxes, but they didn’t really know what was inside. At that point, they just figured they just contained Trumpy souvenirs, like an 8 x 10 glossy of a shirtless Putin or an “Attaboy” note from Xi Jin Ping or maybe party picks with his favorite Hooters waitresses. You know, there’s gonna be stuff like that in there for sure.
At first glance, one might think, well, what’s the big deal? The poor guy only got one term, let him have some souvenirs. And I get that, except for, you know, there’s this issue – Not that it matters to Trump – but it’s against the law. There’s a Presidential Records Act that states that everything given to a president while he’s in office belongs to the American people. To the Office of the President, not to the person.
Even so, I mean, would the FBI really involve itself with getting back a bunch of paperweights and useless crap? Um, no, and that’s not what happened.
After Trump’s team repeatedly denied – for over a year – that they had boxes, they turned over 15 boxes (that reportedly didnt exist.) And those were the boxes that happened to contain classified documents. This is the point where the FBI got involved.
Now remember, the head of the FBI is guy named Chris Wray and he was appointed by Donald Trump. Since Maralago and White House staff had already tatted out Trump, the FBI knew that Trump still had boxes that had not been returned to the Archives. In order to get the remaining boxers, Wray would need a judge to sign a subpoena. Ironically the judge who needed to sign the subpoena for the FBI search had ALSO been appointed by Trump.
I just mention this to point out that this is not a partisan “witch hunt.” This is all being signed off on and carried out by Trump-appointed Republicans. So, counting all the of the boxes in total, I think the total number of classified documents was about 300. Remember, classified documents are not all the same. There are essentially 3 levels of security – Confidential, Secret, and Top Secret. The sensitivity of these documents, of course, varies a lot. But there were 25 Top Secret files – and those are the ones that are especially concerning because they can undermine national security in massive ways. And by the way, these were not in a vault. Trump had Top Secret classified documents shoved in a closet with his pop tarts and self tanner.
The big question is, why did he take all these documents? Some people argue that he just took them because he’s Trump and he takes what he wants, and he does what he wants, and the law doesn’t matter. (And weirdly, they are fine with that.)
I wouldn’t say this about anybody else, but because it’s him, I keep thinking… why did he hold on to them? Once he knew that the FBI knew that he had classified documents, why didn’t he burn them? Why didn’t he destroy the evidence? There’s a school of thought that either he or somebody in his orbit – Steve Bannon – had the idea of monetizing or somehow using the documents as leverage against either our government or a foreign government.
And I know people think he’s not that smart…but we underestimated him all the way into the White House and through an attempted coup, so now I’m thinking he might be a little smarter than we have given him credit for. The Upside Down Part of this for me isn’t really about Trump. I don’t expect anything better from him, and I doubt you do, either. My question is, how have we gotten to the place where a Republican president may have – intentionally or unintentionally – exposed our national security and THIS is an acceptable response…
“And I’ll say this, if there’s a prosecution of Donald Trump for mishandling classified information, there’ll be riots in the streets.”
Senator Lindsay Graham
Whaaaaaaat? Riots in the streets over Donald Trump? Lindsay, you crazy. That would never happen. Oh. Wait… yeah.
Speaking of things that would never happen, let’s talk about overturning Roe. It’s a good thing that bell bottoms are back in fashion, because we’re going to head back to 1973 for a minute and take a look at what happened and how this thing all unraveled so you will have the backstory.
So in 1973, the Supreme Court ruled that women have a constitutional right to an abortion, but it was the under the umbrella of the right to privacy, not of equality. Back then, and many times since, people including Justice Ginsburg made the argument that it should have been an equality argument instead. It’s for that reason that Roe vs. Wade was always considered to be slightly vulnerable.
Also, Roe was really broad. It just guaranteed the constitutional right, but didn’t really define anything specific. So the Casey decision came along in 1992 and upheld Roe, but redefined some of the language and put some gestation rules into place. States could tailor the laws to some degree, but they had to allow it, and 23 weeks was the the floor – the earliest that more conservative states could limit abortion access.
Now remember, Republicans were NOT historically pro-life because they used to favor small government, but it is an issue that they learned to embrace because they knew that it would deliver pro life and evangelical support. Ronald Reagan was the first major candidate to embrace the pro-life position and really court the evangelicals, But it really took off in the 90s and 2000s. Also, It was not considered a risky position to take because nobody – and I mean nobody – thought Roe was going to be overturned.
But then here comes Donald Trump. He made a deal with the pro lifers in the evangelicals in exchange for them overlooking his reprehensible language and horrific behavior. He would give them pro life judges if given an opportunity.
Well, in his four years, he was able to give them not one, not two, but three pro life judges completely tipping the balance of the court. The third one, Amy Coney Barrett, is especially interesting because she came in just under the wire. I believe she was sworn in one week before Donald Trump was defeated.
And the ironic thing is that the Republicans refused to give Obama his final justice because he had only one year left in his term, one year, not one week, one year. I’m no lawyer. But if Roe is shaky than Dobbs, the decision that overturned Roe is even shakier. It’s based on the 1868 Due Process Clause. And the argument is because abortion wasn’t deeply rooted in our nation’s history. It’s not protected by the Constitution. Well, I have two things to say about that. Number one, we have a lot of really bad stuff that was rooted in our nation’s history, (slavery)
And number two, I’m not sure that today in the year of our Lord, 2022 We should be basing our policy on what was cool in 1868, when General Custer was still slaughtering the Indians. You know what, that tracks – you know why?
Because we’re In the upside down!
Look, whether you’re pro choice or pro life, most people are kind of in the middle. Most people are pro-life BUT they don’t abortion to be illegal – or they’re pro-choice WITH some restrictions. These are normal positions. There’s a lot of room for compromise and common ground here. This is not an unwinnable argument.
But the thing is, the argument that the Republicans made for so long was a states rights argument. And then as soon as Roe was overturned, Senator Lindsey Graham introduces a federal ban on abortion. As you can well imagine, this wasn’t a very popular position to take right before a midterm election. His colleagues embraced this idea as if it was a big bag of monkey pox wrapped up in a box of leprosy…
“Most of the members of my conference prefer that this be dealt with at the state level.:”
-Senator Mitch McConnell
Translation: SHUT UP!
Under the category of equal opportunity criticism, the democrats had an opportunity to come in with a legislative fix to reinforce the middle ground. And they probably could have gotten the votes, except for the far lefties who went crazy and tried to force Catholic hospitals to perform abortions – which is outrageous and asinine, and nobody expects them to do. LIke I said, there was compromise to be made here, but we couldn’t make it because of the extremists. Because of the crazy 15% on the left, and the crazy 15% on the right.
Remember when we talked about gerrymandering, when politicians just play to the extremes on the right and the left? Pretty soon our policy doesn’t reflect what we want as a majority anymore. Except sometimes it does… Let’s take a look at the great state of Kansas.
So, for those of you who aren’t Kansas aficionados, Ive got a little trivia for you. The last time a Democrat was elected to the Senate from the state of Kansas was 1932. All right, so one might think that the Republicans have a pretty good stronghold in this state, and that the abortion issue would be a no brainer. That turned out to be partially true.
See, in Kansas, the right to an abortion was written into the state constitution. So when the Republicans put it up for a vote to try to strike it from the Constitution, they were smacked down by 20 points. It turns out that Kansans might very well be pro life and they might be Republican, but they don’t want abortion to be made illegal.
70% of America is not down with this Handmaid’s Tale business. I mean, I don’t mean to get all dramatic and everything but there’s some dystopian stuff going on out there, y’all. There is a guy running for the House of Representatives in Maryland who thinks that people who have HIV should have to be tattooed. So all this scarlet letter, Orwellian stuff has got some people very worried about marriage equality. (And oh, also, because one of the Supreme Court justices said he might want to get rid of marriage equality.) So yeah.
There’s speculation that it’s because it falls under the same umbrella that abortion did with the right to privacy and SCOTUS just ruled that the right to privacy is not guaranteed by the constitution.
That said, I kind of don’t think marriage equality is going to get overturned Because there’s a big difference between marriage equality and abortion. Getting rid of gay marriage would hurt both men and women, and the abortion issue really just affects women. (I’m sorry. But if men got pregnant, we wouldn’t even be talking about this. I mean, come on…)
And the second thing is that gay marriage really doesn’t affect anybody else. If you don’t want to marry somebody from the same sex, then don’t.
So because the Supreme Court is pretty, um, let’s say political at this point, the Democrats are getting out front on the gay marriage issue. And they have written a bill called the Respect for Marriage Act, but they need 10 Republican votes to pass it. They don’t think they have those votes prior to the midterms because otherwise supportive Republicans would take a beating for it at home with their base. But I’m not really sure that they would.
Support for same sex marriage, as of right now, among Democrats is 89%. among Republicans, it’s still 65%. Even the religious communities are on board. Broken down by denomination, I think the highest, Not surprisingly, are the Unitarians at around 98%. And the lowest, also not surprising, are evangelicals, followed by Jehovah’s Witnesses at like 59 – 60%. But you know, that’s kind of a lot for the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Well, look at you, Jehovah’s Witnesses being all progressive and all!
So the numbers just aren’t there. This is just an attempt by the far right to legislate morality. And let’s take a look at the Republicans morality right now, shall we?
In case you missed it, Texas governor and self-proclaimed-born-again Christian Greg Abbott decided to put a bunch of people legally seeking political asylum on airplanes and ship them to islands like Martha’s Vineyard. You know, like Jesus taught us in the good book
AUDIO: “Whoever welcomes one of these little ones in my name… might be letting in a murderer… or a drug. Let’s get her to a detention center.”
If Texas has more migrants than they can handle they certainly could have gotten some help. Send them to a city, don’t send them to an island. Give the mayor or the governor a heads up, – let them prepare, let them get medicine and formula and diapers. But this was never about helping these people, and it wasn’t even about relieving Texas.
This was about throwing red meat to the blood thirsty base.
Now they’re finding out that the governor’s staff lied to these migrants – said they were sending them to one place, sent them someplace else, and signed them up from for immigration hearings all the way across the country. This put them in almost immediate violation of immigration policy and made it nearly impossible for them to ever get legal citizenship.
Why? Because they’re going to come in and take our jobs? All we have are jobs…We need workers.
You know who else got in on the action? Ron DeSantis. I’m sorry, was Florida somehow suddenly overrun with asylum seekers from Georgia and Alabama?
What, were they seeking asylum from the SEC?
All these Republican governors are scrambling to try to out-trump Trump. Virginia’s Glenn Younkin didn’t want to be left behind either – He just rolled back a bunch of rights for transgender kids. You know, because those transgender kids need to be put in their place. They’ve got it too easy already. Slackers.
That’s the thing about the upside down – it kind of looks like the Republican Party from before but when you look closer, it’s not. It’s the opposite.
This GOP wants to regulate what books you read.
This GOP doesn’t root for Ukraine, it routes for Putin.
They want to control what you do with your body, and with whom.
They don’t want to persuade you to agree – they want to force you to comply.
I don’t say all this to scare you, I say to piss you off. It’s time for people to get a little bit irritated so they get out there and get active because you know what? We are in the majority, we can actually do something about this. We now know what it looks like when we allow the extremes to control the narrative, and we’re not going to do it anymore.
Okay, now, I gotta drag you out of the ditch that I just pushed you in. Let’s just do a quick minute on the midterms.
Historically, what happens is the party in power loses seats. Right now, Democrats control the White House so, if history holds, the Republicans ought to be able to take the House and the Senate. As of now, it does look like the house is still going to flip to the Republicans, but the margin is not going to be nearly what it could have been and it’s possible that the Democrats even hold on to the Senate – largely because of what I’ve been talking about for the last 13 minutes, and also because Republicans have put up some truly amazingly terrible candidates.
They’ve also got some really extreme candidates running for governor so that has a tendency to trickle down the ticket as well. It’s a long way off, but I swear every week is like a million years in politics, so I’ll have to do another update closer to game day.
So I want to tie this all together with a little bow for y’all. So if you haven’t seen Stranger Things, here’s the thing, when you get trapped in the Upside Down, there’s always a way back. You can always get back to the right side. So I want to leave you with a few thoughts.
Number one – we are a nation of laws. Laws are made by legislators, legislators are chosen by you and me.
Which brings you to the second thing. It’s really important – It’s critical – for the normal people to get off the bench and for you to pay attention. Make sure you’re registered and make sure you vote. Make sure everyone you know who believes in the rule of law, votes.
And the third thing is that it’s probably time for us to stop talking about the things that “never happen.” When we think things can’t happen, merely because they’ve never happened before. It makes us complacent. I think we need to learn from what’s going on around us and start expecting the unexpected. Now is not the time to check out because this stuff is depressing. It’s kind of like pulling up to an intersection and not looking both ways because you’re afraid you might see a car. You’ve got to pay attention so you can avoid the accidents.
Last thing – as I think everybody knows, Mother of Dragons (and my personal hero) Liz Cheney lost her primary election, as expected. Liz did something that almost no politicians are doing right now, which is sacrificing short term personal gain for the good of the nation. So we all owe her our gratitude. Something tells me we haven’t seen the last of Liz Cheney.
As for the January 6 committee, the final public hearing is scheduled for Wednesday, September 28th. There could be more hearings if more information comes forward but that is the plan for right now. Also, I’d love for y’all to pick up the phone… 512-463-1782 is Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s office. Lets call and ask him to stop using human beings as political pawns.
Maybe we can all just assume that when Jesus came down here and told us to love one another, that he actually meant it.
