Could a future President tweet out child porn?

 The SCOTUS immunity ruling is REALLY bad. Consider that it applies to every president, not just Biden and Trump. Consider that it not only protects the President from being charged with a crime as a result of an official act, it also prevents official acts from being used as evidence.

This could incentivize criminals to run for President. Consider wealthy pedophiles like Jared Fogle and Jeffery Epstein. There has to be more of them out there, we just don’t know who they are yet. One of these perverts might get the idea that if he was President, then he could indulge his illegal fetishes with impunity.

Consider that the moment he files to run for President, most people are going to give a candidate a huge benefit of the doubt every time an alleged victim steps forward. Her word against his word. So he could make it all the way through a campaign and possibly even win the election before the public figures out that this guy belongs in prison.

But once his hand touches that Bible on January 20^th, he doesn’t need to hide who he is anymore. He could tweet out images of child porn and those tweets would be considered official acts. He couldn’t be charged with sharing the images, he couldn’t be charged with having them, and the images couldn’t be used as evidence of the abuse that took place. And as President, he could pardon other child pornographers.

Forget becoming a dictator. This court ruling could enable a President to single-handedly legalize child pornography. And we all have Donald Trump to thank for this ruling.

Candidates who get arrested during campaign

My best advice for political candidates of any party is to don't do the kinds of things that will get you arrested. On the one hand, it leads to increased earned media coverage and can energize your base. On the other hand, it doesn't sit well with swing voters.

I have voted for three candidates who got arrested during their campaigns. Even though it didn't stop me from voting for them, I would have preferred they didn't do the things that led to their arrest.

First up is Michael Badnarik (L), who ran for President in 2004. He got arrested for trespassing when he showed up uninvited at a debate between George W. Bush and John Kerry. To be sure, he would have lost the election anyway, so this publicity stunt could be seen as a calculated risk or a Hail Mary play, depending on who you ask. Personally, it's not my style of campaigning because I like sleeping at home every night. But I voted for him because I was a yellow dog Libertarian at the time.

Matt Kelty (R) was arrested during his Fort Wayne mayoral run in 2007 for lying on his campaign finance forms. His perp walk was on the news. I voted for him anyway because I was mad about the proposed ballpark in downtown Fort Wayne. He lost in a landslide. After the election, he plead guilty to the felony charges but didn't have to do any time. But his status as a felon prevents him from serving in state or local elected office.

Tom Henry (D) was the one who beat Matt Kelty in 2007 and became mayor. He soundly defeated three other Republicans in 2011, 2015, and 2019. In 2022, he announced that he was running for a record fifth term as mayor of Fort Wayne. Then he got in a crash and wrecked his city-issued Chevy Impala. He had been drinking and blew a 1.5, so he was arrested for DWI. But he accepted responsibility, pled guilty to the charges, and paid for the damages. With the case behind him, Henry was re-elected, but by his lowest margin of victory in a mayor's race. It hurt him politically, but he survived the election. Sadly he died of cancer this year.

So getting charged with a crime isn't necessarily a dealbreaker for many voters, but it doesn't help a campaign either.  Candidates with criminal charges should either resolve the charges before the primary or drop out of the race altogether. Serving in elected office is a privilege, not a right.

Don't give Trump money

I don't believe in vote-shaming. If you voted for Trump, that is your business. If you feel like telling me that you are planning on voting for him again, whatever. Just don't give him your money. Going back when he started those photo ops wearing that stupid red hat, his early fans were saying "At least he won't have to raise money to campaign!" Maybe he didn't have to, but he did anyway. To be clear, all competitive Presidential candidates are wealthy, and also raise campaign funds. Trump isn't special because he's rich, he is special because he has name recognition. I grew up in the 1980's, and I knew who Donald Trump was before I knew who Bill and Hillary Clinton were. I also knew who Saddam Hussein was, so don't confuse fame with virtue here. For the past 40 years, in order to be a successful Republican presidential candidate, you have to have been famous during the 1980's. This is the real reason Ron DeSantis' campaign went nowhere: he was just some elementary school kid back then. Maybe they'll run Alf next.

Anyway, he has been successfully sued for over $450 million dollars this year. There are other lawsuits that might push that total over half a billion. Trump's net worth is $2 billion, so imagine giving away 1/4 of everything you own to people you don't like very much.

I'm trying to put myself in MAGA's shoes, and imagining that happening to a celebrity that I like. Remember when Katy Perry got sued over Dark Horse? Well it got overturned on appeal. But this was probably the one celebrity court case where I felt bad for the wealthy defendant. I dealt with it by focusing on my own real life, and not sending money to Katy Perry so she could pay her bills.

Contributing to a political campaign is one thing. It's actually illegal for candidates to use campaign funds to pay off a personal lawsuit unrelated to a campaign. (Which means Trump will probably try to do that anyway.) So people are taking the extraordinary step of setting up GoFundMe accounts to raise money so Trump can pay off E Jean Carroll and the state of New York.

If you are the kind of guy who has to wait until pay day to have spending money, you shouldn't send any of it to Trump. If you have any credit card debt, you shouldn't send any money to Trump. If winning $50 on a scratch off ticket gets you excited, then you shouldn't send any money to Trump. If his vast wealth can save him, so be it. If he slides into bankruptcy, that is something you need to make peace with. You need to look after you.

To put $450 million in perspective, the Trump campaign spent $774 million trying to get Trump re-elected in 2020. So figure his campaign would have to raise that much for a competitive campaign. So imagine all the money you donated in 2020 that you won't get back, and now you have to donate all that again plus way. way more money. The MAGA folk are talking about raising over a billion dollars for a candidate who couldn't win an election back when he was still President. All of you should be saving your money and energy for whatever comes next.

My wife left me.

We are still married, for now. I'm adult enough to know that As her husband, I believe that her happiness is as important as my own. And yet she isn't happy, and I want to address it.

I'm having trouble understanding why she left. There is a communication issue, to be sure. Here is a story about why I love her.

She bought tickets online for a movie with her money. We got to the theater, and the doors were locked. There must have been a staffing issue with the pandemic. Mistakes happen. We go back the next day, and I insisted on getting a refund for the tickets. She didn't want me to bother the theater employees, even though we were clearly in the right. She would have preferred to eat the cost of $30 in wasted tickets rather than cause a moment's inconvenience to a service worker. Regina is the anti-Karen. and that is what I love about her. I still got her money back. I just showed them that we bought tickets for a day that they were closed, and they didn't fight us about it. They gave us movie passes, and we used them to watch the movie.

I like to think that she is learning to stand up for herself.

How to react when they want to do something dumb?

Sometimes a loved one wants to make a life altering decision, like taking up an expensive hobby, moving to a different state, or making a career change. And then I'm presented with three options.

1. Try to talk them out of it. (Their response is that I am trying to kill their dreams. Never mind that this is one of multiple conflicting dreams and goals that they presented to me within a short time frame. I am the Dreamkiller.)

2. Encourage them in their passion. (Tomorrow, they're going to say that I'm pressuring them into doing something that could ruin their life. As if I have something to gain by them failing.)

3. Leave it completely up to them. (Obviously it's clear to them that I don't care about anything they have to say.)

It's even more fun when they bring up, say, becoming an astronaut even though they have never been on a plane because they are afraid to fly. And now it sounds like I'm mocking them, but they never had any serious plans towards becoming an astronaut so why did they bring it up, so yeah, I guess I am mocking them.

And now they are going "I NEVER SAID I WANTED TO BE AN ASTRONAUT" and of course you didn't, because this story isn't about you in particular. It's about a lot of people I know who dream way, way too big. Like maybe the schools should stop with "anybody can grow up to be President" nonsense and just go with "anybody can grow up to be stable adults who pay their bills and don't have some kind of crisis every month".

Gosh, I probably should update this blog more.

 All these hopes and dreams that I have, all that require daily maintenance, and being a semi-pro blogger is one of them. There are challenging things going on in my personal life, but I shouldn't share too many details. It would be my luck if people chose this moment in time to take an interest in this blog at a time when I decided to share too much.

It's really all about abortion for the GOP base

Yesterday, I wrote a diary that wondered why Republicans were so loyal to such a nakedly corrupt, immoral man. I went to bed, woke up, and it finally hit me. It is all about abortion for them. For 50 years, they couldn’t do anything about it. Then this promiscuous charlatan comes along and beats Hillary Clinton. Just as the sinking of the Titanic was a miracle for the lobsters in the kitchen, Trump’s victory looked like divine intervention for those who think God cares about US politics.

Since I’m a man, I’ve had the luxury of taking my time to come around to the realization that a fetus only matters if its mother says that it matters. Abortion can be a unpleasant subject to think and talk about, so that’s why a lot of people come to the wrong conclusion about it, even if they aren’t particularly religious.  To be sure, there are atheists and agnostics who oppose abortion too, (and whatever their religious beliefs are, their secular belief that abortion should be illegal is still wrong.)

So if you are a person who sincerely (but incorrectly) believes that abortion is murder, that can float to the top of your political priorities. You can rationalize anything, including violence, if it causes fewer abortions to take place. You stop caring about things like the economy, the justice system, and national security. Everything else can be dismissed as a distraction, or be exploited in order to distract others.

Consider the topic of vaccines. If you care about fetuses, then you should care about the health of pregnant women. Maybe you might not support vaccine mandates, but you still might be making PSA’s about how pregnant women should consult with their doctors about vaccines, and how the rest of us should get vaccinated to protect pregnant women.

Except now there is a huge overlap between the anti-vax and anti-abortion crowds. The common factor is a misunderstanding of biology, and a weaponization of that misunderstanding.

Trump gave the anti-abortion crowd three Supreme Court justices. No matter how delusional they are about everything else, they know that TFG played a role in overturning Roe V. Wade. They would follow him off a cliff for that alone. If we can win the debate on abortion, then that guts the GOP base. 2024 could be a fun year.