Stormy Daniels Is the Hero America Needs

In her testimony and especially in her cross-examination, writer/director/actor Stormy Daniels became the hero that America needs right now. She was on the stand for the prosecution of Donald Trump, a rapist who is also a former president, for falsifying business records to hide the hush money he paid to Daniels for a sexual encounter in 2006. Over the course of two days, first under questioning from Manhattan prosecutor Susan Hoffinger and then under dickish cross-examination from Trump attorney Susan Necheles, Daniels put a human face on what could be a somewhat dry financial crimes case and, in a much larger sense, responded to the complete bullshit of the Trump side with cutting common sense and two feet squarely in reality. 

Like in this exchange with Necheles, where Necheles was trying to say that everything Daniels was doing was just for money:

Q: That motivates you a lot in life, making more money; right?

A: Well, it is the United [States] -- that's what we do here. (Shrugs)

Can't argue with that. And it also is one of those answers that points to how completely idiotic the questions are. Let's not even get into the fact that Necheles's client monetizes everything from a cancer charity to the Bible and sells mugs with his mug shot on them. (Get it? Hilarious.)

In another exchange, Daniels schools Necheles in modern capitalism (and, as I've argued, Daniels is a more successful business person than Trump). Trying to show how much Daniels has monetized her hatred of Trump and her mainstream celebrity because she has been so vociferous in her condemnation of him, Necheles brought up some products that praise Daniels, like a prayer candle.

Q: That's one of the items you sell in your store, something called "Stormy, Saint of Indictments candle"; right? 

A: Yes. That was made from a store in New Orleans.

Q: You're saying that's not you bragging about how you are the Saint of a person who got President Trump indicted?

A:  No. I'm not bragging. I think it's funny that a store made those for me to sell, so I put those on my site.

Q: And you're making $40 on each of those, right?

A: No. I'm actually making about $7.

Yeah, that's how shit works in the real world. You don't make the amount that you're selling something for. That's basic online retailing, Etsy-level shit. Necheles was lying or ignorant, not Daniels.

Daniels honest answers made a mockery of Necheles questions. The lawyer really thought she was going to have a Perry Mason moment of catching Daniels in a lie, openly calling Daniels a liar to bait her in to cracking. But the things Necheles keeps quoting were not said under oath. Who gives a fuck if Daniels didn't tell In Touch magazine the whole truth? Necheles's client is an extravagant liar but refuses to go under oath and face real consequences for lying. Instead, Daniels fucked up Necheles time and again. Look at this exchange where Necheles tried to get Daniels to say everything she's doing is just acting, like Daniels does in the mostly adult films she's in. 

Q: So, you have a lot of experience in making phony stories about sex appear to be real, right?

A: Wow. I'm a -- (Laughter.) That's not how I would put it. The sex in the films, it's very much real. Just like what happened to me in that room [with Trump].

Q: All right. But you're making fictionalized stories about sex; you write those stories?

A: No. The sex is real. The character names might be different, but the sex is very real. That's why it's pornography and that's a B movie...

Q: And you have a lot of experience in memorizing these fictional stories and repeating them; right?

A: I have of experience in repeating stories and of memorizing stories? I do a lot of that, but not just about sex, I'm pretty sure we all can do that.

Q: And you have bragged about how good you are about writing porn movies and writing really good stories and writing really good dialogue; right?

A: Yes.

Q: And now you have a story you have been telling about having sex with President Trump; right?

A: And if that story was untrue, I would have written it to be a lot better. (Laughter.)

Daniels kept on schooling Necheles. When Necheles said Daniels worked in sex clubs, Daniels retorted, "I don't work in sex clubs. I work in strip clubs. So that's a big difference." And she's right. Trust me. It's a huge difference, as anyone who ever inappropriately touched a stripper in a lap dance room has learned. 

Necheles wanted to shame Daniels and her profession. Like a cop asking a rape victim why she wore a mini-skirt to a bar, Trump's lawyer had a fucking nauseating exchange with Daniels, showing a basic misunderstanding of porn, of sex, and of seeing Donald fucking Trump in his underwear. 

Q: So you say you came out of the bathroom and he was on the bed in his T-shirt and boxer shorts; right?

A: Yes.

Q: And, according to you, when you saw him sitting on the bed, you became faint, the room started to spin and the blood left your hands and feet, yes?

A: Yes. It was shock. Surprise.

Q: So just so I can be clear on what you are saying, you've acted and had sex in over 200 porn movies; right?

A: 150-ish, yes.

Q: And there are naked men and naked women having sex, including yourself in those movies; right?

A: Yes.

Q: And, but according to you, seeing a man sitting on a bed, in a T-shirt and boxer shorts, was so upsetting that you got light headed, blood left your hands and feet, and you almost fainted; right?

A: Yes. When you are not expecting a man twice your age to be in their underwear -- I have seen my husband naked almost everyday -- if I came out of the bathroom and it was not my husband and it was Mr. Trump on the bed, I would probably have the same reaction.

The obscenity here isn't Daniels having sex in adult films. It's Necheles asserting that even when Daniels was off the clock, she shouldn't care if random dudes strip for her. That kind of sexist, assaultive shit should have been squashed like a bug by the judge. 

Daniels was a goddamn champ, time and again, correcting Necheles, needling her, and obviously getting under her skin while she was desperately trying to get under Daniels's. 

But the biggest fuckup by Necheles might have been a form that was shown to Daniels and the parties in court. It was a financial form related to Daniels being ordered to pay Trump's attorney fees for a failed defamation case a few years back. As the form was displayed on screens, Daniels whispered to the judge, "This has my address...That's got my address." Daniels was afraid of Trump seeing her address and knowing where she and her daughter live. It freaked her the fuck out. 

Even Judge Merchan saw it and commented to Necheles, "She turned to me, she looked very fearful, and she said, 'That's got my address'...She is very much afraid of this form." Later, when Necheles asked Daniels why she left out information about her daughter's identity on another form, Daniels responded, "I won't fill out information that endangers my family or my daughter, no matter what."

Of course Daniels was freaked out. She had just described to Hoffinger how, in 2011, a man came up to her and her infant daughter in a parking lot in Las Vegas and threatened her, telling her to stop talking about the sexual encounter with Trump. Daniels has implied that Trump was somehow behind it, and even if he wasn't, well, Trump sure likes to make it seem like he's capable of that kind of blatant thuggery. Why wouldn't she be afraid?

That's why Daniels is a goddamned hero. It's not just because she handed Trump's attorney her ass in court. It's also and especially because she is overcoming fear and derision and threats to sit there and take this. It's because Trump dangled the promise of mainstream legitimacy in the skeeviest, most elitist way, promising her that she'd "get out of the trailer park" by sticking with him and being on his bullshit TV show, using power and money to coerce her into accepting having sex with him, and then Trump never came through, and now she's willing to risk herself to make sure everything is taken away from him. 

And I'd love it if in at least some small way, Daniels wants to shove Trump onto the shit heap of history because he promised her dinner in 2006 and he never fucking delivered. 

Q: And you are saying that this was a big deal that you didn't get dinner; right?

A: I was invited. It was dinnertime. I was running hungry, yeah. We talked about ordering food or going down to get food, we never got to eat. It was dinnertime, and we never ate.

Q: And you made a big point of that on numerous interviews; right?

A: Yeah, I went to go to dinner and I didn't get dinner

Fuck, yeah, Stormy Daniels. You deserved dinner and so much more. America owes you big time. 

Protect the Free Speech Rights of the Student Encampments

On Friday, I spoke to author and activist Ashley Dawson. Like me, Dawson is a professor at the City University of New York, which has a bunch of campuses around NYC. Unlike me, he had been to the Gaza war protest encampment at the City College of New York, which is a CUNY school. The encampments have sprung up at universities around the country (and the world) as part of an outcry against Israel's massacre of civilians in its war on Gaza, as well against the United States's role in funding that massacre. 

What Dawson described to me at CCNY sounded very much like the set-up at Occupy Wall Street, the protest that took up residence on a block in Lower Manhattan in Fall of 2011 and was beloved and supported across the board on the American left. He said of CCNY, "The encampment was a pretty amazing space. There were upwards of 40 tents, which included not just places for people to sleep but also a large and well-stocked people's kitchen, a people's library, and a medical clinic." 

In fact, at this college, the primary activity at the camp seems to have been, well, education. Dawson saw speakers talking about their personal stories, as well as their own insights on Palestine and Israel. He said there were speakers who are professors and students, including Jewish speakers (and that one of the most radical groups was an anti-Zionist ultra-orthodox Jewish organization, which, yes, does exist). As befits a protest movement, there were calm voices and angry voices, defiant voices and compromising voices. There were voices who want a two-state solution and voices who want one state with Palestinians and Israelis living together equally. Of course there was a diversity of opinions. That's the way this goes. Every movement has extremists, too, on every side, and sometimes you hear from them. Welcome to the political world.

Dawson didn't see any signs or hear any speech that could be considered antisemitic, except for what you may think about the slogan "From the river to the sea." I know that phrase has been called "hate speech" by people who need something to condemn, but its meaning is really context specific. What do I mean by that? For example, when a group of people chant, "USA! USA!" how you hear that, as pride or a threat, maybe, depends on the circumstances and you. What Dawson did see, and what has been erased by much of the media, were the number of Jewish students and others who were at the encampment and support the Palestinian people. As a Jewish student from Columbia told Democracy Now!, "I think it’s really important to recognize that there is a large anti-Zionist Jewish voice on campus."

This doesn't excuse incidents of antisemitism that have occurred on campuses since the war's start last year, but it also doesn't even get into the anti-Muslim hate speech that has been directed at the protesters. 

Like me, Dawson doesn't believe the official accounts of why the encampment at CCNY was raided. What he saw was a peaceful protest with students who wanted to engage with their administrators about the direction of CUNY. If there were "outsiders" at CCNY, as media reports keep parroting the NYPD in saying, they included alumni and people from other CUNY schools, said Dawson. So, yeah, technically, they weren't members of the college itself, but CCNY is part of the landscape of Harlem, which is way up in Manhattan. Like all of CUNY, it's for students from working class families, many of whom work and have families themselves (so keep your remarks about privileged college kids to yourself). And it's also for the communities where the schools are. Community members are welcomed on the campuses for all kinds of events. Why not protests?

Over at Columbia University down the street, a school spokesperson said some of those arrested were "non-affiliates," which means not students or employees, which still leaves a ton of people affiliated with Columbia who could have been there. Or maybe journalists and a grandmother. One other thing: The NYPD didn't say how many people were arrested outside CCNY during its raid of the encampment late Tuesday night. So those outsiders might have literally been outside.

I'm not going to get into what I agree and disagree with on all of the demands of the students at CCNY and elsewhere, many of which are fairly specific to their schools. I've been pretty clear about my opposition to Israel's savage retaliation against Gaza for the horrific attack by Hamas on Israel. There should be a cease fire and withdrawal. And I was part of the movement to divest colleges from South Africa in the late 1980s. I have nothing but contempt for the transformation of schools into capitalist machines, and back then I had righteous anger about my tuition money supporting apartheid in even the tiniest way. 

But I will say that the response to the protests by leaders at the school and in government at various levels has been, across the board, enraging. I can get into the heavy-handed approach taken at New York City schools, at Columbia, at the New School, and at CCNY. You wanna know why things got crazy? It's simple: Escalation by the administrators and police inside and outside the universities blew this up. The first police raid at Columbia was on April 18, and that was done to crush the movement that was growing there in defiance of a ban on political demonstrations on campus. This oppressive action was an electric jolt to a movement that was starting, and that's when you saw the surge in encampments, almost all of which were peaceful, even if they were against school policies (I mean, that's what civil disobedience is, which has a long tradition in America, going back to, oh, hell, let's say the Boston Tea Party). But they were also on guard against police action and against pro-Israel groups on the campuses, which is going to lead to cautious, if not a little paranoid behavior when confronted. 

Things could have been handled differently in so many cases. At Brown University, administrators negotiated an end to the encampment by agreeing to some of the demands, including a vote on divestment of the school from companies with ties to Israel. At the University of Pennsylvania, the Philadelphia police and district attorney have said that they don't want to get involved unless there is a real threat. At Northwestern, an agreement between the protesters and the university allows for protests but ends the encampment, an action that led to immediate condemnation by pro-Israel groups, calling on the president of NU to resign. Free speech is supposed to lead to more speech. Even if you hate the speech, you allow the speech, as long as direct violence is not being called for (like, say, "Kill all [name a group]"). 

Of course, things can also go the way of UCLA, where pro-Israel counter-demonstrators attacked the encampment and police watched for hours before finally intervening with a ludicrous amount of force. 

There's so much more to say here, and I'll be saying it. But let me end with this: I keep hearing people on the left condemning the encampments, infantilizing the students, wondering, "Why this? Why now?" 

I dunno. Maybe if you lived your entire life during a period where the so-called adults did fuck-all about the climate crisis and ensuring that the planet continues to exist, maybe if you watched as the country slid backwards on civil rights for non-whites and for LGBTQ people and for women, maybe if your introduction to politics was a presidency that was so incompetent and vile that it allowed a global pandemic to fuck up the world and your life, maybe if you marched because you wanted the police to stop murdering Black people and the only response was more oppression by the police, maybe if you've been told you have to get a university education to get anywhere in this world but the only way to do that is to go deeply into debt, maybe if you've come out of a public education system that has been contorted away from learning and only gives a shit about outcomes assessments related to how well you take a fucking test, maybe if you are told you're not allowed to learn about the racist history of the country or the complicated nature of gender and sexuality, maybe if you watch as the richest country in the world can't come up with a way to get health care and food and homes to the needy, maybe the final fucking straw might be knowing that, instead of providing health care and food and homes, not only is your fucking government providing most of the weapons for a war that if it isn't genocide is sure as fuck genocide-adjacent, but the school you're going into a lifetime of debt to attend is also, directly or indirectly, using the money you are borrowing to fund the foreign country that is slaughtering women and children by the tens of thousands, and then when you protest this, finally, at last, when you say, "Enough!" and you put your voice and your future on the line, which is more than the so-called "adults" are willing to do for you, you're called "hateful" even though you're the one who wants the killing of children to stop and your groups are banned and your speech is silenced and you're threatened with expulsion and you're doxxed by assholes and you're beaten and arrested and so that all those nice things that you were taught about freedom in this alleged land of the free by the so-called "adults" is bullshit. Yeah, maybe you'd be fucking done, too, and ready to go to the wall on one goddamn thing. 

(Note: If it's not the thing you'd like the students to go to the wall on, if you're saying, "Why not abortion rights?" or "Why not Ukraine?" or whatever you support, well, that's on you. You start the movement. They're doing this.)

(Note 2: It shouldn't matter, but I feel I always need to say that I'm Jewish when I write this stuff. I had family die at Auschwitz. It's a card I am forced to play to fend off accusations of antisemitism.)

The Question that Justice Sonia Sotomayor Should Have Asked About Absolute Immunity for Presidents

Last week's Supreme Court hearing in Trump v. United States (as accurate a case name as I've seen), aka "The One About Immunity from Prosecution," was, to put it mildly, a shitshow at the monkeyfuck factory. In a case that should never have been taken, at least 5 of the justices, all the men, seemed to actually believe that Donald Trump and, presumably (but who knows), every president should have some immunity from being charged and tried as a criminal from acts done while president. In this case, it's to try to get Trump out of any responsibility for the January 6 insurrection, which Special Counsel Jack Smith is trying to get to trial. Frankly, the hearing was a disgrace, a disgusting display of a deviant ideology that was disposed of in the goddamned Declaration of Independence. These right-wing dickholes actually tried to come up with ways that laws don't apply to a president. 

Indeed, it wouldn't have been surprising if the ghost of Benjamin Franklin had appeared and sodomized the corrupt asses of Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch and others with a rolled up copy of the founding document, all while yowling that "We didn't risk getting hanged and having everything we love taken from us for you dismal cunts to go back to having a fucking king; now take the whole Declaration, bitches," as the drunken ghosts of Jefferson, Adams, and Robert Livingston cheered him on. 

Early in the arguments, Justice Sonia Sotomayor asked Trump's attorney, D. John Sauer, the question on everyone's mind: "If the president decides that his rival is a corrupt person and he orders the military or orders someone to assassinate him, is that within his official acts for which he can get immunity?" And Sauer gave the answer that everyone expected: "It would depend on the hypothetical.  We can see that could well be an official act." In other words, "Yes." In otherer words, the president can render the death penalty without any due process at all. In otherest words, there really is no difference between a president and a king and fuck the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the entire history of the country. 

Later in the hearing, Alito tried to throw aside Sotomayor's speculation about assassinations like he tosses civil rights into the garbage. "I think one could say it's not plausible that that is legal, that that action would be legal," Alito stammered to Sauer, trying to unfuck the fucked up implications of what he plainly believes. "And --and I'm sure you've thought --I've thought of lots of hypotheticals, I'm sure you've thought of lots of hypotheticals, where a president could say, I'm using an official power, and yet the president uses it in an absolutely outrageous manner." 

See, what Sotomayor should have asked at that moment of panicky bullshit from Alito was "Could President Biden decide Justice Alito is corrupt and order that he be assassinated? Is that an official act for which he could get immunity?" Because then Sauer would have had to repeat his answer that it "could well be an official act" and then that puts things in fucking stark territory: A vote to uphold this insanity is a vote for your own murder. 

That's the thing that annoys the shit out of me about the Supreme Court. Only rarely do the justices allow that their decisions might have an impact on themselves, or, you know, real people in general. I know that they're supposed to put that out of their heads, that they're supposed to concentrate on dry issues of the law (which is how, earlier in the week, a case about allowing abortions to save women's lives became a discussion of the fucking spending clause in the Constitution, even as the women on the court tried to assert the bloody reality of the situation). But this would have have been the perfect moment to remind some conservative motherfuckers that their own asses are on the line here. 

Hell, Sotomayor could have gone scorched earth and asked, "Could President Biden decide that Justice Alito and his whole family need to be murdered for the good of the country as part of his duty to protect the nation and still be immune from prosecution? Could he order the killing of Justice Alito's grandchildren in order to end the Alito bloodline? Could he have Justice Thomas's wife, Ginni, a true enemy of democracy, eliminated?" What's the fucking limit? That's a legitimate question if you're going to entertain the completely irrational idea that a president is above the law. 

See, all this shit has consequences. It's fucking time that the Supreme Court justices are asked how they would like the consequences of their decisions enacted on them. The rest of us sure as fuck will have to deal with them.

(Note: I know that Trump's lawyers said that the only way that said murderer/president might face some sanction is if they're impeached and convicted and thrown out of office. But they also argued in 2021 that Trump shouldn't be convicted in his second impeachment trial because he could face criminal charges after he's out of office. So, really, none of the process shit matters, and it's time we stop pretending that it does.)

GOP Ignores Trump's Crimes and Makes Up Shit About a Crime Wave

There's a charming-ass Facebook group that Zuckerberg's algorithm regularly feeds to my, well, feed. It's a little ray of sunshine since the posts are all by people from other countries talking about their trips to New York City. And while some things will make any local cringe, like they really seem to love pedicab rides or they call the World Trade Center Memorial just "9/11" (as in "we went to 911"), the authors, from New Zealand or Indonesia or Argentina or Austria, mostly unabashedly really fucking love NYC. They share tips on places to go or stay or eat. They post their itineraries and ask for comment on if it's doable. Like I said, just charming as hell.

One topic a bunch of them write about is something that comes as a surprise to them: they say how safe they felt all the time. They felt safe in Times Square or Greenwich Village or Central Park. They felt safe walking at night and in the subways. They heard that crime was out of control or there was a plague of unhoused people or just that New York City was a hellscape, an unending gauntlet of murder, robbery, rape, and assault. Then they get here and...it's just not any of that. They let the group, which includes tons of people planning trips, know that they always felt perfectly fine. 

Right now, in the cities of the United States, especially in the biggest cities in blue states, while there is still crime and there will always be crime, no shit, we are living through a golden age of safety and security. Hell, up here in the evil, sinful Northeast, we don't even own many guns. Less than 20% of people in New York, Massachusetts, and New Jersey are gun owners. On a per capita basis, it's like 5-10 guns per 1000 people. So "lots of fucking guns" is not the reason for crime to be going down. 

I mean, shit's just getting better and better after a hiccup of a crime surge during the pandemic (no sports and no work makes for a clusterfuck of factors). The murder rates in a huge number of cities is "plummeting." In Philadelphia, the murder rate in 2024 is down 34% from the same time in 2023; in Boston, it's down 82%. Even in notoriously murdery places, it's down: 39% in New Orleans and 30% in Baltimore. Chicago is down only 7%, but that's still lower. In 2023, we had one of the biggest drops in the murder rate and in the overall violent crime rate ever. This year is looking to be even better. 

Yet if you listen to Donald Trump and Republicans and the empty douches in right-wing media, you'd think that we're just one carjacking away from the complete collapse of cities into complete fucktastrophes. For instance, down on Fox "news," snarling shit badger Laura Ingraham snarled, "We all know communities don't feel safer...there's no meaningful change in the policies that are making America more dangerous." See, though, there's a big fucking difference between "feeling" safer and actually being fucking safer. Anecdotes and feelings are not facts. And who the hell is making communities feel unsafe? Shit badgers like Ingraham and actual goddamn criminals, like the extravagantly felonious Trump, whose real crimes Republicans eagerly and desperately ignore. 

They do the same goddamn thing all the time. In 2022, the GOP tried to run on a fake "crime wave" engulfing the nation and it failed. Now, they are doing it again except this time they've merged the fearmongering over migrants at the southern border and crime, and now you've got what Trump dumbly says is "Biden migrant crime" occurring around the United States. "There has never been a border so bad. People coming in at levels nobody has ever seen with the people. Where are they coming from? Criminals like never before pouring into our country," Trump slurred at one of his clown carnivals of the damned. All over the right, you'd think the Hottentots were at our door, ready to scalp us and rape us and rob us, not necessarily in that order. 

Except, of course, they aren't. There is no migrant crime wave, and the reason why is pretty fucking obvious. What idiot, after traveling for a thousand miles or more, through awful conditions and with the assistance of criminals, would want to call attention to themselves by committing crimes? That's a good way to get kicked the fuck out. It makes no sense at all. But that doesn't stop Trump from sayin, no shit, "Crime is down in Venezuela by 67% because they're taking their gangs and their criminals and depositing them very nicely into the United States." Except, of course, it's not down 67%. It's down, just not as much, because of a number of factors, none of which are that they're sending all "their gangs and their criminals" here.

But Republicans and dickhead podcasters, reporters, and commentators are just gonna keep flogging that myth, that lie about crime. Facts can go fuck themselves to death. Sure, of course, people are still gonna get killed and beaten and robbed in New York City. Over 8 million people live up here, and add another couple million for the metro area. But to pretend that an unabashed good - the low crime rate - is a lie made up to actively do harm, not just to Democratic politicians. 

It's an attack on the poverty-stricken people from south of the border who are seeking a safer place to live because of the crime in their countries. And it's an attack on the psyche of Americans, making them paranoid and angry and voting for assholes who would undo the progress that's been made so far.

We Can't Rely on People to Just Vote Against Trump; They Have to Vote For Biden

All this Trump shit can get exhausting, can't it? Watching this hemorrhoid in human form day in and day out as he blusters about perceived attacks by migrants and judges, ranting his brain-fucked comparisons between himself and Nelson Mandela or Jesus or Al Capone? And then we check the news on one of his four trials, whether it's the one where he paid off the porn star he fucked to keep her quiet, or the one where he tried to get the Georgia Secretary of State to change the vote, or the one where he stole classified documents and refused to give them back, or the one where he tried to get people to violently overthrow the government for him, and we see them moving at a speed that would make glaciers say, "Jesus, pick it up already." But we get signs and omens, reading every filing, every decision, with voices echoing on social media that this time he's fucked up and it'll all come crashing down or this time Judge Cannon has gone too far and will be booted from the case or this time he's violated a gag order and will have to be jailed, all the tweets and threads and memes and toks that tik ready to soothe and satisfy that raging hard-on for Trump to finally be undone, for this to be over, when, really, truly, we know in our heart of hearts, that it will never be over, that we are damned to the mental Sisyphean task of rolling that boulder of hope up the hill of justice, only to see it tumble back down once again, and we know, as much as we try to resist, that we're gonna roll that fucker up one more time. 

The exhaustion is of a piece. It's much like he's trying to exhaust the court with his lawyers filing endless motions in an effort to delay his trials (or, more precisely, the verdicts) until after the election when enough dumb voters doom the country to four more years of Trumpian fuckery and lawlessness. I've read a bunch of Trump's motions, and even though I'm not a lawyer, they come across as ludicrous and desperate, like a starving methhead firing his AR into the woods, hoping it hits something that he can eat later. And our attention to all that plays into the exhaustion. 

Worse, this attempt to put order into the chaos Trump continues to force us to experience has made the public not see that, by most measures, the presidency of Joe Biden has been something of a miracle. If the zone wasn't flooded with MAGA bullshit, we'd understand that we're living through an incredible time in the United States.

Look at this shit:

The surging labor market has been defying expectations for so long that experts now say we're in a "sweet spot" for employment. Job openings are "historically high," and layoffs have been "near a historic low" for the last two years. Support for unions has grown tremendously, and now we need to move that into growth in membership. Sure, wages aren't where they need to be, which has been true for decades, and the refusal of corporations to lower prices in the wake of inflation subsiding is aggravating as hell. But I'll bet your 401k is doing pretty damn well.

Despite what the bloodbath-mongers on the right say, violent crime in the United States has been declining for the last two years after rising during peak Covid (the combination of lockdowns, no sports, and lots of guns is dangerous, it seems). It's all falling: murder, rape, assault, robbery. And even though Republicans keep humping the story that New York City is an unlivable hellhole like it's a Mom for Liberty they're not married to, it's so goddamned safe up here that I tell friends when they're going to New Orleans or Memphis that they need to be careful because it's way more dangerous there. 

Where else do you wanna go? Prescription drugs? Infrastructure investment? The continuing success of the Affordable Care Act and its huge popularity? All incredible successes. And when shit doesn't work out, like canceling most student loan debt, it's the fault of courts with right-wing judges. You want Trump to appoint more of those?

In a sane country, Biden should have already all but won the 2024 election, his age and verbal gaffes be damned. He's been a historically successful president, and that's not me saying that. That's historians. In a survey of them, they already have Biden as the 14th-best president after just one term, ahead of Reagan, ahead of Wilson, tied with John fuckin' Adams himself. You already know who's last.

I get the idea that more attention needs to be paid to Trump's obviously declining mental faculties, and, sure, we always need to be reminded of just how fucking bugfuck insane and just downright fuckin' weird Trump is. Seriously, he's a creepy weirdo. But we're not gonna convince the MAGA cretins to jump ship now. They've mortgaged their souls to get that dumb orange motherfucker back into office. Trump could impregnate a 10 year-old girl during one of his wannabe Nuremberg rallies and laugh because she can't get an abortion, and his idiot hordes would cheer his virility. They're gone. Forget about them for now. So it's about making sure that anyone opposed to Trump gets out and votes for Biden.

Look, I'm not fucking blind or a slavering fanboy high on hopium. I also get that Biden has done shit that drives the left mad, that drives me mad. His pride in the amount of gas and oil being produced in this country is bizarre, considering how much his administration has done to actually help on climate change. His inability to stick to one path on immigration is frustrating as fuck; no, immigration is not wrecking this country. In fact, its effect is quite the opposite. Democrats have a very American story to tell about migrants, and they just don't tell it. 

And then there's Gaza.

When people on the left say they won't vote for Biden because of how the US has helped enable the horror in Gaza, it's understandable. Absolutely. Don't discount that rage because it's justified. My one bit of hope is that Biden's finally getting it. In case you're new to how American politicians react to conflict between Israel and Palestine, you should know that for decades it was poisonous for an elected official in DC to be supportive of the Palestinians. You had to have knee-jerk support for Israel, even when Likudnik maniacs were in charge, even when a savage and corrupt cockscab like Netanyahu is the leader. And voters punished politicians who veered away from that unquestioning support (for the most part). But things have finally shifted and I believe that Biden, Chuck Schumer, and others are catching up that they don't have to let Israel get away with genocide. Or ethnic cleansing. Or mass murder. Whichever one of those you're comfortable with. I just hope that shift happens faster and with greater clarity and before the number of deaths goes to six figures and before the mindset of voters gets locked in.

So the response to those voters for whom Gaza is a main issue can't just be "Well, would you rather have Trump, who is a fucking nightmare and wouldn't give a fuck about getting humanitarian aid in because a massacre would let Jared Kushner develop the beaches?" No, it's gotta also be about what Biden has done besides that. It's gotta be enough to overcome that.

What I would say is that Biden actually gives a shit about the future. I would say he hasn't gotten everything right, but he wants us to have a future, he wants us to evolve as a nation, and, unlike so many in his generation on the Republican side, he is working to build something he won't even be around to see come to fruition. That's genuine and hopeful. Meanwhile, Trump would gleefully drag us back to a repressive past of limited opportunities and greater threats all around us if it got him one more day as the focal point of the American psyche so he can sleep knowing that he pissed off his haters one more time. I'm not gonna vote for the guy who wants to deport millions of people and shoot shoplifters. I'll go with the guy who doesn't fucking exhaust me every time I hear his simpering, whiny, nasal, incoherent garble of bullshit, narcissism, and hate. I'll go with the guy who actually seems to give a fuck.

(I'll talk more about this kind of thing as we get closer to the election because I have long believed that, except for those of us damned to keep writing about this shit, most Americans won't pay attention to the election until after Labor Day because who the hell has the time? But narratives about polls, about perceived weaknesses have a way of cementing in the zeitgeist, and I'd rather wash it away than need to use a jackhammer.)

It's Not Just the Pandemic. We're Traumatized Because of Trump and the MAGA Movement.

Look, I'm not disagreeing with the pair of doctors who wrote in The Atlantic that everyone is grappling  with at least residual emotional detritus from the Covid pandemic that fucked us up 4 years ago and that's why shit just seems so weird. I mean, how can you disagree with "In our lifetime, COVID posed an unprecedented threat in both its overwhelming scope and severity; it left most Americans unable to protect themselves and, at times, at a loss to comprehend what was happening. That meets the clinical definition of trauma: an overwhelming experience in which you are threatened with serious physical or psychological harm." Yeah, no shit. 

In my real job, I say all the time that we haven't dealt with the effects of that asshole virus, and not just with all the students who had formative experiences cockblocked by lockdown. Senior years of high school, first years of college, graduations, to have all that over Zoom is gonna mess you up. And I know too many people who had to handle the worst of Covid firsthand, who said goodbye to loved ones through windows, who had empty funerals. Fuck, my stepfather (who really was my dad in all but sperm) caught it and didn't treat it fast enough and it cashed in his check. Yeah, I'm traumatized, too.

But blaming Covid for the reaming of the American psyche lets too many motherfuckers off the hook. It's like you came home from a trip and found out that your house was robbed. That stinks, no doubt. It's a goddamn trauma And then you call the cops who ransack your house looking for evidence but find nothing they think is helpful and they tell you there's nothing they can do about it and they can't make out anyone's face on your doorbell camera and they're hungry and they empty your refrigerator while telling you how grateful you should be that they're there and don't worry because in the future they'll be able to do something but you're just kind of fucked right now, oh, well. Yeah, the robbery sucks. But everything else didn't need to suck so much, too. Now you're not only paranoid about crime but about the people who were supposed to fucking help you and you have a huge mess to clean up that you didn't make and wait, did someone shit on the bed? Was it the robbers or the cops? Fuck, it doesn't even matter anymore.

When we say that the pandemic has brain-raped us, we're letting the real rapists off the hook, and one of them is an actual and not metaphorical rapist. We don't definitely know if the start of the pandemic would have gone differently if literally anyone else had been president other than Donald Trump, but, c'mon, we know. We all fucking know. We all fucking watched as Trump played the raging dickhole with a panicked public, as if he could bully everyone into relaxing and just taking it. We watched him brag about the high ratings for his daily briefings in March and April as he moronically performed the part of an authority figure, suggesting that the pandemic would be over in a couple of weeks, that shit that didn't work or was outright dangerous would get rid of Covid, and then berating anyone in the media who tried to get him to acknowledge that people were dying in large numbers. That was fucking traumatic, too. Jesus, we were so traumatized by Trump's utter failure that we turned to Andrew Cuomo for comfort, and that led to a lot of us making walks of shame afterwards.

And it wasn't enough that Trump and the U.S. government was failing us horrendously, however much Anthony Fauci and a few others desperately attempted to offer comfort while warning us that shit was going to get really bad. We watched as millions of Americans, responding to Trump's refusal to treat the crisis like a crisis and not an opportunity, follow the worst fucking leaders in the nation to want to cause violence over mask-wearing or social distancing or online schooling. 

There was a calculated effort to tear this country apart, to set the red and blue states, hell, the red and blue regions within states against each other. Instead of unifying us, instead of demanding we all give a shit about each other, we had politicians earnestly saying that the elderly should just allow themselves to die so that we could get out and go shopping more. The leaders of the MAGA right wanted us at each other's throats, and that was even before the murder of George Floyd and the summer of Black Lives Matter protesters where our trauma was exacerbated by the failure of so many institutions around us.

And the anxiety and panic attack existence of the majority of Americans who are not Trumpist drones didn't come out of just the pandemic. No, no, no, we had already been through nearly 5 years of the rise of Donald Trump and the mainstreaming of open extremism in the form of the MAGA movement (Republicans had at least pretended to hide it pre-Trump). We had been through 3 years of the Trump presidency, with the threat of nuclear war with North Korea and the attempts to gut health care repeatedly and one goddamned impeachment investigation and vote. And then, going into 2021, we had January 6, election denialism, and anti-vax insanity, and then the eternal 2024 election and the multiple indictments of Trump that don't seem to go anywhere and the rise in MAGA violence and what the fucking fuck? How the hell are we supposed to process all of this? And I haven't even mentioned the conservative cockmites on the Supreme Court gutting precedents like abortion rights, something that was semi-stable for nearly 50 years, undermining confidence in the federal government to protect even the most basic right, to bodily autonomy. And let's not even get started on the wars around the world now and the United States's diminished position as a global power that nations can fully trust.

You can date it back to whenever you want: to January 6 or the start of the pandemic or the 2016 election or the MAGA hate rallies or when Trump came down his magical escalator in 2015, but it's way more than Covid. It's fucking everything. We're traumatized because we have lived nothing but trauma for years now with no break, and a click-driven media tries to act like this entirely abnormal time is totally normal when we know, we know it isn't. 

And if we can't appreciate what President Joe Biden has accomplished, maybe it's because we've seen how easily it can be taken away, whether it's civil rights or health care or infrastructure weeks that never arrive. The Trump years taught us how precarious it all is and we haven't done anything to build a nation that isn't constantly dancing on the edge of disaster. The last significant change to the Constitution was the 26th Amendment, lowering the voting age, and that was in 1971. (The 27th is from 1992 and is about congressional pay raises, and who the fuck cares?) The idea of the Constitution was that if it became apparent that something wasn't working, fucking fix it. But we don't do that in this country that worships the false idol of the imagined past.

We are stuck in this fucking doom loop, like a cosmic algorithm of despair is keeping our content chaotic. If it's the "era of bad feelings," as some have called it, it's not just the pandemic. It's because it's the Trump era. It's the MAGA era. It's the era of fucking around and not finding out so far for the fuck-arounds. Sure, though, the rest of us are finding out because it's making us feel like everything's a house of cards that's one breath from collapsing, from violence, from explosion, literal and figurative. 

And it's why we so desperately need Trump convicted and not just defeated at the polls. We need to say that someone is to fucking blame and punish them for it. It won't solve the trauma, but at least we know he won't be able to inflict more. Maybe then we can get to work restoring our feeling of safety in this America.

(Things I didn't cover here that contribute to our general anxiety every goddamn day: Our dumb fucking gun laws, school shootings, mall shootings, restaurant shootings, school lockdowns for shootings, shelter in place orders for shootings, street shootings, home shootings, accidental shootings...)

Abortion in Louisiana: The Real Criminals Are the Ones Enforcing the Bans

It must be terrifying to be pregnant in Louisiana right now. The state broadly banned abortion, thanks to a 2006 trigger law that went into effect after the savages on the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in the 2022 Dobbs decision and handed control of women's bodies to the states, subject to the whims of insane Christian nationalists and terrible leaders. It's awful in many states, and Louisiana is one of the worst. The only exceptions to the abortion bans in Louisiana are if the mother's life is in imminent danger and if the fetus is considered "medically futile," a term not recognized by, you know the medical community, and wouldn't survive. No exceptions for rape or incest.

A study came out last week from Physicians for Human Rights, the Center for Reproductive Rights, Lift Louisiana, and Reproductive Health Impact, and it chronicles the bleak terrain that Louisiana's pregnant people and medical personnel must negotiate in the scorched post-Dobbs reproductive health landscape.  Its conclusion couldn't be more stark: "The findings contained in this report are alarming: the research shows how Louisiana’s abortion bans violate federal law meant to protect patients, disregard evidence-based public health guidance, degrade long-standing medical ethical standards, and, worst of all, deny basic human rights to Louisianans seeking reproductive health care in their state." The report is filled with the words of doctors, nurses, and others who live constantly with the fear that they will lose their careers or their freedom if they are accused of violating the statute. It's also got the words of women, who fear they will lose their ability to have children or their lives if they don't receive the care they need.  It's beyond a confusing mess. It's a catastrophe in slow, but quickening, motion. 

For instance, "most recent iteration of the emergency rule contains 25 'medically futile' conditions and allows abortion care for a fatal fetal condition that is not explicitly named on the list only if it can be certified by two physicians licensed in Louisiana." So your doctor is willing to take the risk in trying to get you the medical help you need, but, sorry, you gotta get another doctor to sign on. And the rules on this are vague as hell. In 2022, "because the Department of Health’s declaration did not resolve clinicians’ lack of clarity, they requested greater insight into what kinds of conditions would qualify a pregnant person to receive legal abortion care. In response, the Department refused to provide clarity and instead referred clinicians to the state’s Attorney General." That Attorney General, by the way, was Jeff Landry, who is now the governor, and he is gonna make damn sure that anyone who violates the law can face its punishments: up to 15 years in prison and up to $200,000 in fines. 

It's just nightmare scenario after nightmare scenario: "clinicians described how the bans have adversely affected their ability to provide evidence-based pregnancy care in circumstances including the management of miscarriages, preterm premature rupture of membranes (PPROM), ectopic pregnancies, medical emergencies that may not be perceived as immediately life-threatening, but which may well threaten a pregnant patient’s life, and lethal fetal conditions not included in the state’s 'medically futile' emergency rule."

How do they try to do something for their patients but not go to jail? "Clinicians described how the bans have increased the use of medical procedures and treatments that do not meet the standard of care—heightening risk to patients—and which could have been avoided if they had been able to provide abortion care." In other words, they're giving cesarean sections instead of abortion procedures because somehow that's a way around the bans. That's major surgery instead of a simple outpatient visit. But it's how afraid doctors are. This is not to mention that "to avoid the risk of criminal penalties under the bans, nearly every clinician relayed an account in which they and/or their colleagues delayed abortion care until complications worsened to the point where the patient’s life was irrefutably at risk." Some OB/GYNs won't see pregnant patients until after 12 weeks because the risk of miscarriage is much lower then. 

It gets even worse. If doctors screw up on the paperwork, they can face legal ramifications: "An OB-GYN shared how the bans’ lack of clarity and the risk of professional and legal consequences is causing stress for clinicians as they cautiously document and seek to clearly demonstrate that their medical decisions adhered to the law. One OB-GYN noted: 'I can go to jail for documenting something the wrong way. Even if it was the medically necessary thing to do.'" Clinicians are worried about giving information on out-of-state care for patients who need abortion, even though the laws don't prohibit it. Some have been told not to do it because their hospital's lawyers believe they could possibly be prosecuted for doing so. 

Another conclusion: "Clinicians in Louisiana are facing an impossible choice: to comply with the law or to violate their medical, ethical, and human rights obligations, all the while harming pregnant patients by delaying or denying care or information. The difficulties with this coerced choice are only exacerbated by the harsh civil, criminal, and professional penalties a clinician may face for violating the bans." One definite response to this is that some doctors stop practicing in the state or medical students go elsewhere to do their residency. "In 2023, one year after the bans took effect, there was a decline in numbers of applicants to Louisiana’s OB-GYN residencies."

Louisiana is number one in the United States for percentage of households in poverty, with 1 in 5 people living below the poverty line. Maternal mortality is incredibly high in the state, especially for Black women. The health care system is broken, especially for rural hospitals, where they simply can't handle medical emergencies in pregnancy due to a lack of doctors and lawyers not wanting the hospitals to deal with it. The women are sent to urban hospitals, which are overwhelmed with patients. 

And the thing is that this ban, like all the wide abortion bans, violates federal law, especially the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, although the savages on the Supreme Court have put a hold on enforcement of that. It also violates several international treaties on human rights that the United States is a party to. You could make a case that the federal government should arrest anyone enforcing the laws. 

Two kickers here: many of the most severe aspects of the law, including the banning of abortion pills, were signed into law by the state's previous governor, a Democrat, John Bel Edwards, who was pretty liberal on many other things, but the only way to get elected statewide as a Democrat now is to be anti-choice. Yet a majority of people in the state oppose the abortion bans. 53% are against the new law, with 41% in support and 6% too stupid to decide. 

That's fine and all, but the state is in for a hell of a time on abortion for the next few years, at least. Harming women and sending doctors elsewhere, which harms everyone.