An immigrant physician friend, simply based on videos that she watched in 2020, diagnosed Joe Biden with dementia four years ago and referred to him as “the senile puppet” long before the New York Times editorial board noticed that anything was wrong. Democrats now believe that Joe Biden’s cognitive abilities are insufficient to handle the job of U.S. President. Democrats also hate Donald Trump and there are at least some Republicans who prefer Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley to Mr. Trump.
I wonder if these groups could get together and do a quickie amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would impose a mandatory retirement age of 67 (the current Social Security full retirement age for those born after 1960) on the job. We need three-fourths of the states to ratify such an amendment and then both the Republicans and Democrats would have to nominate younger politicians for the November election.
George Washington was America’s original maharaja of mules. Historians have long been squeamish about acknowledging that General Washington, like many of the American founders, was a voracious land speculator. Few academics and high school history teachers want to risk their careers by suggesting to their students that the father of their country worked the same day job as Donald Trump. Washington was a land developer, often described as the richest of his generation. By the end of the American Revolution, General Washington controlled about sixty thousand acres of land, more than half of it in the promising frontier country west of the Alleghenies, in what we today call West Virginia, Ohio, and western Pennsylvania. Wresting clear title to this rich bounty of soil from the English crown may not have been a principal motive for fighting the Revolutionary War, but Washington knew that he would profit mightily if independence was achieved.
Donald Trump has now been convicted by New York Democrats of (a) paying a prostitute, and (b) trying to make it look like he didn’t pay a prostitute. For this crime, which somehow expanded into 34 crimes (would someone please explain this?), Trump could be sentenced to more than 100 years in prison. (If Trump had murdered someone in New York State, he could be imprisoned for 15-25 years.)
I visited the North Carolina Museum of Art this week. The curators explain that George Washington was involved in “indigenous dispossession” (not such a bad dispossession that any of the curators want to give their own land back to the Native Americans and pay rent for it?) and also “enslavement of 317 Africans”.
Slavery and stealing from/killing Indians both sound bad, but on the other hand, a political party opposing George Washington never managed to convict him of any crimes. Are we thus forced to conclude that Donald Trump is definitively a worse person than George Washington, the enslaver of 317 lives (all of which matter)?
Update: two days after the case ended, the entire New York Times front page is devoted to the glorious conviction. Note that one article (bottom right) is by a reformed sinner. Democrats reject religion (except Islam?), but work within established conventions for religious worship:
Some friends who are Democrats have been obsessively and gleefully following the New York trial of Donald Trump. When I asked them what they’ve learned, however, they’re unable to offer anything beyond what was already fairly alleged prior to the trial, i.e., an American got paid for having sex and then the same person got paid some additional money as a result of that sex act. A “dog bites man” story, in other words, since (a) the U.S. has for many years been the world leader in the percentage of GDP devoted to compensating people for prior sex acts, and (b) a ruling party putting a political opponent on trial has been conventional in many nations for more than 100 years.
Readers: Have you learned anything new or interesting from press coverage of this trial?
My dream: A South Park episode in which the entire trial happens in South Park so as to ensure an unbiased jury pool.
On recent trips to the San Francisco Bay Area and Boston, friends who are Democrats spoke gleefully about the prospect of Donald Trump being reduced to poverty via lawsuits. While this might be straightforward in California or Maskachusetts, stripping a Floridian of all of his/her/zir/their wealth is more challenging.
Florida law shields insurance policies and annuity contracts from creditors. Statute 222.13, for example:
Whenever any person residing in the state shall die leaving insurance on his or her life, the said insurance shall inure exclusively to the benefit of the person for whose use and benefit such insurance is designated in the policy, and the proceeds thereof shall be exempt from the claims of creditors of the insured unless the insurance policy or a valid assignment thereof provides otherwise. Notwithstanding the foregoing, whenever the insurance, by designation or otherwise, is payable to the insured or to the insured’s estate or to his or her executors, administrators, or assigns, the insurance proceeds shall become a part of the insured’s estate for all purposes and shall be administered by the personal representative of the estate of the insured in accordance with the probate laws of the state in like manner as other assets of the insured’s estate.
That would seem to protect only the family of an insured after his/her/zir/their death. But then there is 222.14:
Exemption of cash surrender value of life insurance policies and annuity contracts from legal process.—The cash surrender values of life insurance policies issued upon the lives of citizens or residents of the state and the proceeds of annuity contracts issued to citizens or residents of the state, upon whatever form, shall not in any case be liable to attachment, garnishment or legal process in favor of any creditor of the person whose life is so insured or of any creditor of the person who is the beneficiary of such annuity contract, unless the insurance policy or annuity contract was effected for the benefit of such creditor.
Donald Trump could take an unlimited percentage of his wealth and stuff it into a whole life policy and then Florida state law might protect him from, for example, Democrats in New York.
How about 20-acre Mar-a-Lago, worth either $18 million or “hundreds of millions” depending on when you tuned into CNN. It looks like the house and central 1/2 acre of land (maybe this isn’t even the entire house?) can be protected from creditors as long as it it Donald Trump’s primary residence. This is based on the Florida Constitution:
It looks as though they’ve captured the godlike powers that Democrats ascribe to Mr. Trump, e.g., immortality. Age might tarnish this medal, but never the Donald himself!
Despite not being a member of the Palm Beach elite or even elite-adjacent, I managed to bust into Mar-a-Lago recently for an annual event that benefits a local children’s charity, A Place of Hope. Why would anyone want to go to Mar-a-Lago? It’s a National Historic Landmark and important as an example of Spanish Colonial Revival architecture. The centrality of this style of architecture to South Florida is explained in Bubble in the Sun book: even those with the best information can’t predict a crash and, in fact, our neighborhood within Abacoa is all Spanish Colonial Revival.
The most hated man in America appeared midway through the event to welcome the guests, praise the organization, praise the musical and theatrical talent, etc. Donald Trump was gracious and did not mention politics nor did he talk about himself. He had no teleprompter. Only a small percentage of the guests mentioned Donald Trump or seemed to have the November election on their minds, but there were exceptions. In the It’s Not a Cult Category:
(Is the “most hated man” appellation accurate? Far more people hate Trump than, for example, Jose Antonio Ibarra (the migrant arrested for the murder of Laken Riley).)
The Mar-a-Lago staff put on a copious buffet. I asked about a dozen of the workers how they liked working there and all were positive, with the exception of a seasonal worker from South Africa who was neutral.
Sadly, we didn’t get to go into the original main house, but some of the architectural details were interesting nonetheless:
What did people drive to the event? Ferrari was a common choice:
More unusual Ferraris were selected for display closer to the house rather than simply parked in the back yard. The silver Enzo below might be worth $4 million. (Remember that Democrats agreed that all of Mar-a-Lago was worth $18 million at his trial in New York, though now CNN’s experts say that it is worth “hundreds of millions”.)
For my friends who are Porsche fans, though it was much more an event for Ferrari nerds:
Rolls-Royce was well-represented. They love their colors:
People wouldn’t think less of you if you showed up in a humble Ford:
I had some difficulty connecting with the local Honda Odyssey owner’s club at the event, but it was a pleasant crowd of people and one in which trust prevails. I managed to lose my valet parking ticket and was able to pick up my car without being asked to prove my identity or association with the car (I knew where it was in the parking lot because I’d been taking photos).
Speaking of cars and Florida, I’ve had to replaced all four tires and the battery recently on the 3-year-old Odyssey. The summer-all-the-time weather is tough on both tires and batteries, apparently.
Related (on the subject of elites in and around Palm Beach)…
The jury verdict was broken down into $65 million meant to punish Trump, $11 million to help Carroll rebuild her reputation and another $7.3 million to compensate her for her pain and suffering.
The plaintiff won $5 million in a previous lawsuit against the hated Trump. She’s 80 years old, 13 years beyond Social Security full retirement age. Has she lost out on job opportunities because Trump said that she was a liar? I hadn’t ever heard of her until she put herself into the public eye as a New York department store rape victim (the first jury actually did conclude that she was lying about having been raped).
Two election workers had reputations worth more $33 million., apparently, because they could lose $33 million in actual damages to those reputations. And then they suffered more emotional distress than if they’d been run over by a car and paralyzed or if they’d actually been killed.
Americans who had no public reputation will now be some of the richest people on Planet Earth due to compensation for damage to those non-existent reputations. This is a shocking resource allocation result in what is a mostly planned economy!
Although I thought that he needed a more optimistic and unrealistic message for Americans if he were to have any hope of prevailing in a general election, I am shocked that Ron DeSantis is now out:
Republicans are objectively terrible human beings and even the best Republican is inferior to the worst Democrat. Nonetheless, there are approximately 100 million Republicans in the U.S. (population 336 million plus, perhaps, another 10-20 million uncounted undocumented), 74 million of whom turned out to vote for Mr. Deplorable in 2020.
If Nikki Haley continues to underperform, are we forced to conclude that Donald Trump is the best person out of 100 million Americans? That’s sobering!
Is it now time to stop paying attention to Election 2024? Trump couldn’t beat the aging fossil Biden and the sexual opportunist Harris in 2020. Given that Americans are now drunk on student loan forgiveness, weekly abortion care, and other cornerstones of Biden/Harris policy, how could Trump possibly prevail? Is the path to victory Joe Biden dropping dead from old age between now and November and Trump runs against Kamala Harris?
Iowa Republicans love Donald Trump, it seems, slightly more than two seemingly far more plausible candidates combined (Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis). Who can explain to me why this incredibly old guy is more successful with voters than Haley and DeSantis?
In some poll data from Iowa, it looks as though oldsters are the ones who love Trump. Just as here in Florida, it is the young people who love DeSantis the most:
Trump had a few successes before coronapanic overwhelmed his younger self, but what exactly did he accomplish that so many Republicans want him back?
(I haven’t been following the debates, etc., too carefully. Has anything happened that should alter my opinion that, though DeSantis is more aligned with my smaller-government political philosophy Haley is more likely to win a general election? (Americans overall seem to want a planned economy.))
The Colorado Supreme Court, all of whose members “were appointed by Democratic governors”, has voted for protect our democracy by restricting the group of candidates from which Coloradans can choose in the 2024 Presidential elections.
Although I’m sure that this was well-intentioned, could the result be to threaten our democracy instead? I continue to reject the poll numbers that suggest that Donald Trump is a stronger candidate than Nikki Haley (my favorite Republican for the past few years, though that is arguably like being a dwarf among midgets) or Ron DeSantis (a great governor who needs a softer and more optimistic tone if he’s going to go higher, in my opinion). If Trump is banished from politics by an impartial group of 7 Democrat appointees, mightn’t that actually help democracy-ending Republicans by eliminating a candidate who would lose a general election?
What do people read in Denver? I visited the Tattered Cover, an old-school downtown bookstore, to find out. “For the sisters, misters, and binary resisters”:
How’s the “show me the man and I’ll show you the crime” prosecution of Donald Trump going? I’ve been out in the Mountain West and can’t keep up with all of the legal attacks.
[Idi] Amin sent a letter to Richard Nixon during the Watergate crisis: “When the stability of a nation is in danger, the only solution is, unfortunately, to imprison the leaders of the opposition.”
Democrats knew that Donald Trump deserved to be in prison at least as far back as 2016. Has anything new emerged that is convincing to Republicans or is it still a question of a former president’s right to keep his/her/zir/their papers?
Speaking of insurrectionists, here’s a suspicious character who may have participated in the January 6 insurrection… a golden retriever in Kanab, Utah exercising his Second Amendment rights (carrying bullets in his collar):
