Kenny Boy Paxton as Trump's "real" AG nominee? I doubted it before being proven right

As everybody and their mom knows in the world of politics, Matt Gaetz pulled out and withdrew yesterday. He's reportedly done that before.

He also removed his name from consideration to be President-elect Donald Trump's Attorney General nominee. (I see what I did there!)

Ken Silverstein offers some analysis, as well as some speculation that Trump was playing his version of 11-dimensional chess, per the header. Here's the nutgrafs on that:

From the perspective of Trump and his political advisors, the strategy was to “flood the zone” with cabinet nominees, including some that were near certain cannon fodder, with Gaetz at the top of that list. The administration would be happy in the unlikely event that any of the dregs somehow passed Senate scrutiny, but completely unbothered if they didn’t, the calculation being that the Democratic and a few potential Republican rejectionists wouldn’t block all of his preferred choices even if they were all completely unqualified or unsuitable for the respective positions he’d allotted them for fear of looking intransigent, or they lacked the courage or integrity to go to the mattresses more than once or twice.

Hence, the president’s enemies would be more than satisfied by being able to brag about how they saved the nation from the nightmare scenario of Attorney General Matt Gaetz; meanwhile, Trump might be able to sneak through a replacement nominee who was just as bad or worse, and had been held in reserve for that reason rather than being nominated first. For example, one of the sources cited the possibility of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton as a possible substitute for Gaetz, but I’m pretty sure he was joking.

Sorry, but not buying it, from here in Tex-ass, to expand on my retweet of Ken Thursday. Note; It's not Ken, but a source of his saying that. Nonetheless, Ken, pass it back up the line. And, I'm leaving that just as I wrote it, because less than 24 hours after Gaetz had AG interruptus, Trump pivoted to Pam Bondi.

Yes, Kenny Boy is one of Trump's biggest suck-ups and ass-kissers here.

But, there's the question of whether he really wants to leave Tex-ass or not. There's many reasons he might not want to.

One is to continue on his revenge tour against Texas House Republicans who voted to impeach him last year. I don't think this is a big deal, but it could be a small one.

Second is to build on the revenge tour against the old Court of Criminal Appeals and actively work on trying to reshape it with its trio of new judges. This might be something.

That said, even as I updated this Thursday evening to include the Pam Bondi info, I saw on Twitter that Kenny Boy was on Steve Bannon's show. He certainly indicated interest when Bannon said that he heard Paxton was being shortlisted. OTOH, he certainly wouldn't just feign interest.

Third? That's 2026.

Big John (Cornyn) lost his bid to be Senate Majority Leader, and he's up for re-election then. He'll only be 74, a practical child still in the gerontocracy of today's Senate. As of the start of the current Congress, per Pew in 2023, before Feinstein kicked the bucket, there were four Senators over age 80 and 30 in Cornyn's 70-79 age bracket, with him being at the younger end of that at 71. But, Thune is nearly a decade younger, and the GOP doesn't term-limit the majority leader, unlike the majority whip. Unless Thune is a fuck-up, or decides HE wants an early retirement, Cornyn isn't getting the brass ring.

Will that be enough for him to want to step down?

Or, even though by some voting metrics, he's become more wingnut than Havana Ted, will he face pressure from the far right to step down?

If so? Would Gov. Strangeabbott want the seat? Or would he want to run for re-election to break Tricky Ricky Perry's gubernatorial tenure length?

In either case, Dannie Goeb as Lite Guv is two years older than Big John. Even if Cornyn doesn't step aside, Goeb might. 

(If Strangeabbott ran for Senate, there's no way Goeb is running for guv; that would be like a cockroach coming out in the light and wanting to stay there and be visible. That said, if Paxton ran for guv, Patrick might want to return to office for one more term, to be a mentor, a shield, and a "break glass in case of emergency" guy.)

So, it's possible that Kenny Boy would have one, or two, options on moving up in two years. Or he might hope that Trump appoints him, not to the federal bench at the district level, but the Fifth Circuit.

Beyond that, with Trump's transactional personality, why would he really be looking at Paxton in the first place? His suck-ups aside, Paxton is nowhere close to Trump's inner circle. Did you see him get featured at the RNC? No. Bondi, OTOH? A no-brainer. And, per the above, what sort of Trump circle is Bannon in these days?

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Side note: Contra Ken, I don't think Gaetz's payoff is going to Fox. OANN or Newsmax? Possibly.

I shot the JFK, but I did not shoot the LBJ

Riffing on Bob Marley and the Wailers, it's another anniversary of one of Merikkka's dumbest and most ill-informed, yet non-charmingly endearing conspiracy theories.

In reality, besides the buttloads of physical evidence? If one looks at the history of actual and attempted U.S. presidential assassinations, Lee Harvey Oswald is nowhere outside the norm on either being a nutter or on acting for actual or alleged political reasons. I addressed that on the 60th anniversary.

That won't stop the David Talbots, Jefferson Morleys and other nutters from continuing with their nuttery, of course.

And, with Donald J. Cheeseburger re-entering the White House in two months, it will all ramp up more, starting with Jan. 20, 2025.

That said, Trump head-faked Morley et al in his first term and didn't release "everything." THAT said, Morley has claimed to know what files he's not getting, in one of the biggest-ass cases of circular reasoning I've ever seen. Of course, he also lied about no longer being a JFK conspiracy theorist.

Reminder: I know the difference between a conspiracy and a conspiracy theory. 

The enshittification of Shitter gets worse

And, in this case, it has nothing to do with Elmo Musk's politics.

It has nothing to do with #BlueAnon celebrities and political celebrities fleeing to BlueSky, all while either forgetting or else being ignorant of the fact that its owner, Ice Bath Balls Jack Dorsey, wasn't exactly a barrel of enlightenment when he owned Shitter, and neither was Shitter itself. (This also ignores that Ice Bath Balls Jack couldn't make a real profit on Shitter, so he dumped it on Musk.)

What it is, is that Elmo's Shitter appears to have dumped the "Trending" on the right-hand rail of a normal Shitter page. Dumped as in gotten rid of it.

Instead, we have this "Explore," listed as being currently in Beta, but surely about to be shoved down our throats.

It's nice. Or rather, "nice."

But, it's all about politics.

It's like Elmo and his autistic/OCD goons don't recognize the world of non-political media, and for that matter, non-media period, users of Shitter. (Well, maybe former users, if more and more of these people go away, too.)

Like #NBATwitter, for example.

I don't know if Cory Doctorow has tackled this subset of enshittification in detail, but it's the reverse of the old (and untrue) adage that "the customer is always right." It's now, "the tech dudebro owner is always right."

That said, it IS fun watching and reading all the post-election #BlueAnon blather. Or rich people like Ellen Degeneres being serious about leaving the US.

LeBron is just taking a Shitter break. Maybe he'll establish international residence after he retires? 

Update, Nov. 22: A LOT of people must have bitched about this. Shitter made them go away.

Texas Progressives talk politics, fall, book bans

Off the Kuff showed that in Harris County, Republicans did slightly better than 2020 in terms of votes collected. It was a downswing among Dems that made them competitive.  

SocraticGadfly takes a look at some recent climate science news of concern, especially in light of the upcoming COP29.

John Cornyn lost his Senate Majority Leader bid.

And ... the Observer has now removed the interim tag from Gus Bova as editor in chief. Way to make him sweat a few months.

Joe Biden is not emptying federal death row, sorry, Slate. Dear Leader didn't do it and he didn't free Leonard Peltier. 

Usually, I'm not that big on Steve Vladeck, but his interaction with Fifth Circuit Judge Edith Jones at a Federalist Society panel is definitely worth a read. That said, had I been him, I wouldn't have participated, because I would have expected the possibility of being sandbagged. That then said, yes, judges are partisan — but basically, within duopoly party bounds.

Frank Strong recapped the school board elections of note.  

Texas 2036 points to higher education opportunities in prison as a way to break the recidivism cycle.

The Fort Worth Report repeats plenty of previous information that turning out office building lights at night reduces the number of fatal collisions suffered by migratory birds. 

The Current reports that Texas enacted the nation's third-highest number of book bans in the last academic year. 

 The Bloggess assures us that she and her progressive bookshop aren't going anywhere.

John Nichols puts himself on #BlueAnon stupidity watch

The header is a pun on being on a "death watch," and post-Nov. 5, I wish I had thought of it sooner.

Nichols, the columnist at The Nation with the most visceral dislike for third parties, using his DSA Rosey fellating as a cudgel at times, yesterday seemed to think it was a big deal that Trump's share of the popular vote had officially fallen below 50 percent. (It had, per Wiki, as of Nov. 18, not 19, but as of yesterday evening when I wrote this, Wiki had Trump back at 50.0 percent.)

So, Wikipedia itself backstops my first callout of Nichols — he's shooting at a still-moving target.

So, this?

Unfortunately, for the president-elect, the United States takes time to count 155 million votes—give or take a million—and the actual result will rob Trump of his bragging points.

Might be a self-own.

And this?

Trump can no longer claim that powerful mandate. By most reasonable measures, the beginning point for such a claim in a system with two major parties is an overwhelming majority vote in favor of your candidacy. Trump no longer has that.

Certainly won't stop Trump from claiming a mandate. Shrub Bush was only a plurality president, if that, in 2000. Didn't stop him.

Nichols even, much later in the piece, admits this.

That won’t matter to Trump, who claimed a mandate even when he lost the 2016 popular vote by almost 3 million ballots. Four years later, Trump refused to accept his defeat by more than 7 million votes, and denied that majority support for Biden in the 2020 election amounted to anything akin to a mandate.

So, why is this being written?

Nichols goes on to note how Harris was better than this, that, and the other candidates of years past, even as Wiki's page notes her EV results were the worst since Dukakis.

He says she did well and thus Democrats shouldn't despair.

He ignores the massive decline in Democratic turnout, the Hispanic shift and other things that can't all be blamed on Harris running a craptacular campaign, worsened by Dementia Joe's failure to drop out sooner. I mean, per Anton Chekhov, the gun from Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign stupidity in Great Lakes states was in the room in Act I. Then 2020 was Act II and here we are in Act III.

That then said, to riff on Corey Robin? Winning by 2 percentage points or more in an America, er Merikkka still frozen in the Sixth Party System, and unlikely to unfreeze in the near future, is something.

I saw this piece because it was trending on Google News. Probably a sign that a lot of BlueAnon other than Nichols need to be put, or put themselves, on that stupidity watch.

Reminder that, speaking of fellation, Nichols also did that long ago with fauxgressive Randy Bryce, aka Iron Stache.

Warmonger Joe ups the game again in Ukraine

Warmonger Joe is doing it again, OKing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to use ATACMS in long-range use. 

Semafor doesn't even cite anonymous Nat-Sec Nutsacks™ in poo-poohing Russian President Vladimir Putin's concerns — it just does so, in clear editorializing. (The NYT, at the first link, at least has that fig leaf, and it also notes specific possible responses by Putin.) Nor does it call bullshit on Zelenskyy's offer to replace US troops in Europe with Ukrainian ones. (I'll bet other MSM have also been letting that one fly.) Anybody who's seen Ukrainian draft-dodging and the violence when Ukrainian draft officers land a fish know how that would turn out.