"I Will Be Voting For the FELON!"

There are t-shirts.

Since the days are still getting longer, we have more time for musings on the end-stage idiocracy of our times.

So, Happy Wednesday. We’re back.

In the day’s least shocking story, Matt Gaetz faces an ethics probe for sexual misconduct and illicit drug use. In Wisconsin, Trump tries to un-ring the bell by denying he ever dissed Milwaukee and returns to the scene of one of his epic boondoggles.

In Virginia, the latest episode in MAGA-on-MAGA vengeance is too close to call, and I don’t really care.

ICYMI: Fresh off his Man of Real Genius proposal to replace the federal income tax with massive tariff increases, DJT has a new demand for American business:

But first, we have the obligatory dog pictures.

Auggie’s cone is off!

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It’s time for the green ball at the lake again.

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Lake dogs.

Not a Parody

For Real: Republicans now want to rename the oceans after Donald Trump | The Independent

A proposed bill from a House Republican would rename coastal waters around the US after former president Donald Trump, whose administration rolled back dozens of environmental rules while he was in office.

Wait, there’s more.

I WILL VOTE FOR THE FELON!

This is also not a parody.

It is, in fact, a letter to the editor of our local paper by Alex Leykin, who is the chairman of the Republican Party of Ozaukee County, a key swing county in the key swingiest state of Wisconsin.

He opens with his personal story and a tortured historical analogy, and it gets worse from there.

As a Jewish immigrant who escaped the totalitarian Soviet Union and was welcomed as a refugee to this amazing country we call the United States of America, I will openly, loudly and proudly proclaim here and now that I WILL CRAWL THROUGH ANY OBSTACLE to vote for the man Democrats have declared a “felon” and all Republicans.

Of course, Trump was not declared a felon by Democrats, but by a jury of his peers. But these are mere quibbles for the GOP leader. At no point does Leykin mention — or even allude to — the specific crimes for which Trump has been indicted and convicted. No mention of the hush-money-for-porn-star coverup; the violations of the Espionage Act, defrauding the federal government, or racketeering. Nor does he make mention of either the business frauds or sexual assault.

Leykin’s enthusiasm is based solely on Trump’s status as a “convicted felon,” which the GOP leader argues is a self-evident qualification for high office. (A status that should come as rather good news to the criminal class at large.)

At one time or another most of my family had been declared a “felon” by the Soviet regime. in the West, these people were known as refuseniks, dissidents, etc. But in the place where I came from, we were all “felons.”

At this point, one is tempted to note that Trump is no Natan Sharansky. But Leykin is actually making a far more deplorable point.

The GOP chair is at some pains to insist on the moral equivalence between the old Soviet Union and the “totalitarian” regime of his adopted country. To the chairman of the Ozaukee County Republican party, being a convicted felon in this country (for anything?) is equivalent to the persecutions of dissidents — including Alexei Navalny, the dissident murdered by Trump’s BFF, Valdimir Putin. He writes:

Even more recently another regime, this time right here in America, has arrested and imprisoned members of the opposing political party. After realizing that arresting and imprisoning dozens of opposition members was not enough our Democrat party decided to do the same with the leader of the opposition party and so they did.

Got all that?

The victims include participants in the fake elector plot, who Leykin describes as victims of “wholesale arrests and imprisonments.” (Fact check: No one is in prison. Yet.)

The arrests continue as 18 members of the opposition party have been arrested in Arizona and another two in Wisconsin. These wholesale arrests and imprisonments continue with little attention from the Guardians of information we call the media.

Actually, the stories have received extensive coverage. But, like many of the other details (including the actual crimes) Leykin appears to be clueless; but he is not at all undecided. He puts it All IN Caps:

I WILL VOTE FOR THE FELON!

I will vote for anyone declared a felon by the totalitarian Democrats. The more they declare a person “Felon” the more I support such people join me friends, we don't have to accept this... all we have to do is vote for the felon and all Republicans then the persecution ends.

A few quick thoughts:

• The embrace of felons seems like an interesting flex for the party of Law and Order, and curious minds want to know whether the New Enthusiasm for Felons will extend to other members of that class.

• The moral equivalency. It burns. You’ll have to take my word for it, but there was a time when conservatives rejected attempts to flatten or erase the moral and political differences between the United States and the Soviet Union. But in the Age of Trump, Republicans have internalized the idea that we are really no better than our enemies. [Recall Trump’s 2017 defense of Putin’s murders. ““But he’s a killer,” [Bill] O’Reilly said to Trump. “There are a lot of killers. You think our country’s so innocent?” Trump replied.”]

• Ronald Reagan and William F. Buckley Jr. would beg to differ.

• But the herd of independent minds is gathering around the right’s new equivalency narrative. Here’s deep-thinker Niall Ferguson in The Free Press: “We’re All Soviets Now.”

  A bogus ideology that hardly anyone really believes in, but everyone has to parrot unless they want to be labeled dissidents—sorry, I mean deplorables? Check. A population that no longer regards patriotism, religion, having children, or community involvement as important? Check. How about a massive disaster that lays bare the utter incompetence and mendacity that pervades every level of government? For Chernobyl, read Covid. And, while I make no claims to legal expertise, I think I recognize Soviet justice when I see—in a New York courtroom—the legal system being abused in the hope not just of imprisoning but also of discrediting the leader of the political opposition.

• FFS.

• Leykin’s enthusiasm for felony is not an outlier. There are t-shirts.

Exit take: Something deep in my contrarian soul says this may not be a winning message for swing voters. But we’ll find out soon enough, won’t we?

Meanwhile…

In Minnesota, the GOP nominee for U.S. Senate is challenging folks to “one on one” fights.

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In Wisconsin, the former governor searching for his moral compass.