Month: November 2004

TV With The Sound Turned Off

Like so many things in life, huge disappointment doesn’t come as such a shock when you stop and think about it. There are always signs.

First, let me make one small point. Bush’s large margin in the popular vote is probably too big. They are still counting absentee ballots in the west and there are tons of them. In California there were almost five million mailed out. Al Gore, if you recall, was not secure as the winner of the popular vote for several days when all of these far west absentee votes started to trickle in from California, Oregon and washington.

Here’s a little trip down memory lane from november 9th of 2000, two days after the election:

There are 1.1 million outstanding in California, absentees that haven’t been counted, (and) 900,000 that haven’t been counted in Washington,” said Curtis Gans, director of the Committee for the Study of the American Electorate. Gans added that another 400,000 remain untallied in New York.

In addition, because Oregon attempted an all-mail voting system, about 300,000 votes remained out Thursday, Gans said.

“And then there are scatterings of votes in other places, including Alaska, whose votes are highly incomplete,” he said. “There are more than enough votes to close a 200,000 vote gap.”

Gore does lead in the unofficial tally of the popular vote — but by a narrow and changing margin. On Election Night, he was running behind by half a million votes. By the next day, he led by about 250,000 votes.

By Thursday afternoon his lead over Bush had shrunk to less than 200,000 votes — out of more than a 100 million counted for all candidates.

To be sure, Bush will maintain his lead in the popular vote, but it may not be by the large margin that has all the gasbags breathlessly proclaiming his glorious mandate. A lot more people voted absentee this year than in the past. The fact is that Bush’s popular vote lead mostly comes from a higher turnout in red states. That does not exactly make for a broad mandate. Not that it makes any difference in how Bush will govern. We already learned that the hard way.

This nation is essentially where we were four years ago, the people frozen in position like those horrible scenes from Pompeii. It was deja vu all over again, only this time Florida was Ohio and Bush got a bigger turn-out in the south. Other than the shift of New Hampshire and New Mexico, the red and blue map remains as it has been. The coasts, the midwest and the northeast are one America. The rest of the country is another. More precisely, we now have Democratic city states in the midst of a Republican nation state, each equal in population and diametrically opposed politically. It’s very interesting and highly unusual.

This was always going to be very close because it was always going to be very hard in wartime to prevail against the CW that Republicans are stronger on national security. We were right to believe fervently in the cause and put everything we had into it. It was clearly possible for us to win. But, the reality is that we were scaling a very high wall.

Bush has one of the most effective political machines in history behind him and, more importantly, the full power and majesty of the presidency to help him win. In the last days of the campaign he was landing in football stadiums on the Marine 1 helicopter with fireworks exploding to the tune of “Danger Zone.” That’s a wartime image that’s hard to beat — particularly if your adoring audience is predisposed to love that kind of faux military spectacle.

It’s never easy to unseat an incumbent president and it usually only happens when the country is in palpable economic distress. This was a partisan election and we simply didn’t have quite enough votes (whether to overcome his authetic lead or his rigged machines, either one) despite a valiant effort and plenty of money.

I’m too weary and dispirited right now to get into the inevitable fight that’s gearing up within the party, but suffice to say I don’t agree that we lost because we weren’t liberal enough. But, neither was it because we weren’t culturally conservative enough or populist enough.

I believe it was simply because we weren’t entertaining enough and that’s the sad truth. I think that Democrats are serious, earnest and substantive people. We are the reality-based community. And I think we top out at about forty eight percent of the population.

For everybody else politics is show business, whether in religious, political or media terms. Image trumps substance,charisma and personality trump everything. I don’t find George W. Bush appealing in any way because my vision of an attractive politician is that he be smart, competent and rhetorically talented. But, to many people, politics is interesting because of the spectacle and the tribal competition and they just aren’t interested in any other aspects of it. (See the PEW poll.) Oh, they mouth all the right platitudes about values and all, but this is not about governing for them because they have been taught that government is only relevant to their lives in that it houses their enemies — liberals who want to take things from them and force things on them. This is a reality TV show and they want to vote someone off the island.

It’s clear that a small majority of the country buy Junior’s “Top-Gun” act. His youthful failures are seen as acts of anti-hero rebelliousness. His smart ass attitude is the sign of a macho rogue. He isn’t the smartest guy in the class and he’s often in trouble, but he’s a fearless warrior when it counts. His image is of a fun loving rascal who found himself in an extraordinary position and rose to the occasion. I know it’s bullshit, but that’s the archetype that his handlers have laid upon him and it’s a role he plays with relish.

We have always chosen leaders for superficial as well as substantive reasons. It’s not fair to say that Democrats aren’t seduced by their own archetypal dreamboats. But, Bush is a new paradigm and we need to study him and recognize its power. He is a character created out of whole cloth by marketing and political people for the single purpose of appealing to a specific portion of the population that can guarantee a small political majority without having to compromise in any way with the opposition to enact an agenda. He’s the first gerrymandered president.

Will Saletan gets to the nub of one of the qualities that seem to be required to make this work:

Bush is a very simple man. You may think that makes him a bad president, as I do, but lots of people don’t – and there are more of them than there are of us. If you don’t believe me, take a look at those numbers on your TV screen.

Think about the simplicity of everything Bush says and does. He gives the same speech every time. His sentences are short and clear. “Government must do a few things and do them well,” he says. True to his word, he has spent his political capital on a few big ideas: tax cuts, terrorism, Iraq. Even his electoral strategy tonight was powerfully simple: Win Florida, win Ohio, and nothing else matters. All those lesser states- Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin, New Hampshire- don’t matter if Bush reels in the big ones.

This is what so many people like about Bush’s approach to terrorism. They forgive his marginal and not-so-marginal screw-ups, because they can see that fundamentally, he “gets it.” They forgive his mismanagement of Iraq, because they see that his heart and will are in the right place. And while they may be unhappy about their economic circumstances, they don’t hold that against him. What you and I see as unreflectiveness, they see as transparency. They trust him.

Schwarzenneger is another example. He comes with the movie star appeal, of course, but his political talent is to speak like a cartoon character and entertain the audience as if he is at a film junket in Cannes. It doesn’t matter one iota what he actually does as long as he says things like this:

This is what I love about election day, because when the people flex their muscles, then the state gets much stronger.

Tha-tha-tha-tha-that’s entertainment folks. The Republicans have clearly figured out that they can get a thin majority by fielding charismatic candidates who speak like children. They don’t even have to make sense.

We know from the polling that most of Bush’s supporters are misinformed about his positions on the issues, so it’s not a matter of backing his agenda. They don’t know what it really is. And his religious base may believe that moral values are their highest priority, but since they are so very forgiving of their right wing brethren (Limbaugh, O’Reilly, Bennet,Gingrich, Swaggert, Bakker) when they stray from the straight and narrow, it’s pretty clear that their high moral standards are extremely selective. I heard over and over again this election, people who said, “he looks you in the eye,” as a reason for voting for him. That’s not character. That’s performance.

If, as the gasbags pontificating about all day, the Democrats decide that our “problem” is that we aren’t appealing to the heartland conservative values, they need to think again. It’s not about the substance of Republican appeals to values, it’s about the style with which they do it and the level of pure, primitive tribal identification they provide. It would be a grave mistake to misunderstand this slim electoral majority as a comment on real values. It’s a comment on production values. The Republicans have ’em and we don’t.

I’ve bever been a big believer in the ground game as the be all and end all of politics even in close races. I certainly think it is essential, but I don’t think knocking on doors and talking to earnest neighbors is the way people make political decisions in this day and age. I think people pretty much live in a media constructed reality and that’s where the votes are gathered.

We have a nascent infrastructure in place with a bunch of smart and dedicated people who must be called upon to sustain the momentum and make it grow. We didn’t lose by very much. Let’s not throw the baby out with the bath water.

The battle begins anew today. Our agenda is more popular. The substance of our message is what people say they want, (except they credit the republicans with giving it to them.) It’s our politicians’ image and style that aren’t making the grade in the new post modern politics. It’s not because they wouldn’t be terrific at actually doing the job. But that is substantially different and apart from special effects campaigning, image management and public relations, all of which supercede all other necessary qualities to get elected today.

John Kerry is the most qualified man to be president in my lifetime. And he might have won except for one thing. He couldn’t fill the role that certain voters require in a president in this era — he just wasn’t enough of an archetypal TV hero. That’s no knock on him, it’s a knock on America. I know it’s not politic to say it, but a majority of this country are obviously dumb as posts. Still, it’s the only country we’ve got and we are going to have to come to terms with this.

Whatever the reasons, I’m devastated about this outcome, of course. But there is a silver lining. We here in the reality based community know full well that Bush and his minions have been dancing as fast as they can to get through this election. They have been desperate to avoid setting off an array of landmines with hair triggers. I am going to enjoy watching him try to deal with them as they begin to blow up in his face one by one. In many ways it is poetic justice that he is going to have to attempt to clean up the huge fetid, stinking mess he’s foisted on this country.

Too bad about the human carnage though.

And I take heart in remembering Richard Nixon. Junior is his true heir and I suspect he will have the same fate. This much corruption cannot be contained. Keep your eyes on purged members of the CIA and the State department. He may have won, but I have a feeling that Commander Codpiece may come to regret it.

There us much to recommend being the angry opposition. Watching our hated enemy squirm is one them.

Dumbasses

Quick note. This nonsense with the robocalls is just another example of the Republicans drowning in their own kool-aid. They apparently think that minorities are as deluded and dumb as their own idiot base is so they think they can fool them like children.

Fat chance. This isn’t rural georgia in 1950. The urban minorities in this country have more political sophistication in their little fingers than the entire rural red state vote. They value the franchise and they pay attention. It is a testament to the GOP’s continued racism that they play these games, but it is also a testament to how little they understand this country in 2004. They can continue with this insulting crap and lose as this country becomes more and more diverse or they can wise up and stop the Jim Crow games.

This bullshit will not deter minority voters. They are way too smart to fall for it.

Boots On The Ground

Hello, everyone. I’m out here in Sin City helping do the earnest work of getting people out to vote. Ok,ok. I may have done a teeny tiny bit of gambling when I arrived late last night, but that’s just because I was feeling lucky. Very lucky.

Blogger is bloggered as usual, so I don’t know how much I’ll be able to post. I’ll try to check in several times today.

Las Vegas is Kerry country, that’s for sure. There is a much bigger presence of signs and buttons in the environs around here than Bush signs. There’s lots of public talk among strangers and it’s intense but doesn’t seem to be particularly acrimonious.

Yesterday ACT had some star power in — Sean Penn and others were walking the precincts. I’m not sure anybody gives a damn, but all citizens have a right to participate so I’m for it.

As you know, Nevada has been a hotbed of voter suppression activity. The Sproul lawsuit was denied by the Nevada Supreme Court yesterday so the people who’s votes were thrown in the trash are out of luck:

The Nevada Supreme Court refused Monday to grant an order to allow a Sparks couple that suspects their registrations were discarded by a company hired by the Republican Party to vote in today’s election.

The court ruled 5-0 that Eric Amberson and Traci Amberson should have first taken their case to a District Court. The justices ruled against the couple, although the Ambersons had copies of receipts for the voter registration forms they filled out last month. The Ambersons are Democrats, according to their lawyers.

“This court is ill-equipped to resolve factual issues, such as whether petitioners are qualified electors and whether they submitted properly completed voter registration forms,” the court stated in a brief decision.

The Ambersons registered on Oct. 2 with a canvasser outside a Reno Wal-Mart, according to court documents. When they didn’t get sample ballots by mail they became alarmed and contacted the Washoe County registrar’s office. They learned they were not registered.

The couple has receipts for the registrations that indicate their forms were among the batch given to Voter Outreach of America, a firm operated by Sproul & Associates of Chandler, Ariz. Sproul was hired by the Republican National Committee to register voters..

The company is under investigation in Nevada and Oregon over allegations that workers destroyed Democrats’ voter registration forms.

Former state Supreme Court Justice Charles Springer, who represented the Ambersons, said he asked the court late Monday to rehear its decision. He said there is still a remote chance the court could reconsider and allow the couple to vote today.

“There are no questions of fact,” Springer said. “They got receipts. No one has ever denied that. They should be entitled to vote. But it may be futile now.”

Springer said it would be irresponsible to deny the couple the right to vote unless it can be shown they are lying.

According to Springer, Voter Outreach was given 4,000 voter registration forms in Clark County and 1,500 in Washoe County.

There are recent reports of bogus phone calls telling people their polling places have ben changed, for instance. Jim Crow crap in Nevada in 2004.

However, the observations of most people here is that it hasn’t deterred turn-out one iota. Most of the poeple I’ve talked to are on to this bullshit and it’s just made them more inclined to do whatever it takes to cast their vote. I’m not seing a lot of shrinking violet Democrats. The voters here are extremely well informed and they are very motivated. I’d like to see the flaccid GOP doughboy who tried to prevent these people from voting.

Wearing my Kerry button in the hotel last night (where the employees are obviously discouraged from talking politics with the paying customers) I got winks, high fives and whispers in my ears from several people — a bellman, a cocktail waitress and the desk clerk who just pointed at my button and winked. One guy just gave me a hard look and said “I feel it.” These are working people and they are engaged.

So, far I haven’t heard of any serious delays, but my knowledge is extremely limited. However, even if there are, these voters will stand in line as long as it takes. Las Vegas in the fall is just grea — clear, cool and sunny. It’s not a hardship to wait in line. Indeed, the ones I’ve observed so far seem downright jovial. There’s a bit of a party atmosphere — not surprising in the party capital of the world.

My coffee is cold and it’s time to get back out there. I’ll try to catch up on the national scene in detail later today. But, from what I’m hearing, it’s looking good. Let’s just say you couldn’t feel a lot of magic watching FOX News this morning.

They know.

Into The Purple Haze

We’re about to head out to Nevada to try to help those fine union, ACT and DNC people get those four electoral votes in our column. After all, Sin City will do much better under an economically successful Democratic administration when the rubes and the rich alike have enough disposable income that they can afford to throw large amounts of it away.

I’ll be blogging, documenting the massive Democratic turnout and monitoring the media atrocities. Check back frequently.

The Man

Ezra Klein has written a beautiful piece making the affirmative case for John Kerry. There is much in it that is original and thought-provoking, but I particularly like the following reflection on the merits of flexibility in a good leader:

Righteousness, as a habit, rejects certainty; in fact, the angels have a troubling predisposition to wander around issues, which makes sticking in their camp a matter of ideological flexibility as much as judgment. There’s no chasm greater than the one Kerry bridged to go from Vietnam war hero to the war’s most prominent opponent, but he was right to serve his country and right to fight for an end to the misguided slaughter. It’s a lesson he’s refused to unlearn, and one he’s spent a lifetime applying. And we need it.

I also am enthusiastic about Kerry. It’s not an ABB thing for me and never has been. Kerry is the right man at the right historical moment. He’s uniquely equipped by temperament and experience to lead in this world at this time.

Back when he won the primaries and I was still smarting from the defeat of my chosen candidate, I spent on evening reflecting and reading about John Kerry, trying to see what it was that so many of my fellow Democrats seemed to get about this guy that I hadn’t seen until he was already half way there. After all, I’d once voted for the man and had plenty of respect for him. Indeed, by the time his nomination was clinched, I thought he was a gift in many ways. A liberal in the White House seemed almost too good to be true in this day and age.

I discovered that what the Democrats in places like Iowa and New Hampshire and South Carolina saw was a man who was tough enough to win and tough enough to take the slings and arrows of what was going to happen to him afterwards. That flinty, Yankee determination is an all-American trait more authentic than all the faux folksiness and phony posturing that two-faced cowpoke from Kennebunkport could ever hope to conjure. And it’s a trait that people understood was vital as we deal with threats to our democracy from abroad and from within.

That night I wrote an affirmative case for Kerry, more prosaic certainly than Ezra’s fine piece, but from the heart nonetheless.

Obviously, there are many reasons any person runs for president having to do with ego and accident. After observing him for a while, I think John Kerry is responding to the call in the 30 year political civil war with the Republicans. He understands that they have become dangerously radical and that it’s time to break their hold on power. He knows this territory.

In that sense, I confess I’m surprised that liberals aren’t taking more heart in the fact that John Kerry is a card carrying fighting Massachusetts liberal. We should be thrilled that somebody as liberal as Kerry has got a chance to be president. Because let’s not kid ourselves, anybody more liberal than John Kerry is unelectable…

He’s not a crook, he’s not lazy, he’s not stupid. He’s very accomplished, he’s highly experienced and he’s got good instincts. But, I’m convinced that the most important character traits in a successful President at this point in history are resiliance and cunning; even if we win the election, politics are going to remain a bloodsport. The Republicans aren’t going to fade away. This battle is ongoing and we must have someone who can withstand a punch and come back. It is going to be very, very difficult to govern. I think Kerry is running not because he’s “electable,” but because he’s one of the few Democrats of his generation who has spent his life preparing to govern in the face of a radical political opposition. The job is not for the fainthearted…

I believe that right now the Democrats are essentially the conservative party, which means as great an emphasis on preservation as progress. This comes as a result of the two party system that places us in contrast to the radical Republican party which seeks to overturn the New Deal and dissolve the international order of the last 50 years. By necessity, our candidates are not going to be able to run on as progressive a platform as many of us might wish. One has to take into consideration the nature of the opposition and the character of the body politic when framing a case.

Kerry is not a reformer as Dean was perceived to be, nor is he a champion of a particular constituency as Gephardt was. But, perhaps at a time like this it is more helpful to judge the candidate by the quality of his enemies than his friends. His career has been about fighting bad guys, from Vietnam to Dick Nixon to BCCI.

In light of that, I believe Kerry is running for the simple reason that this time and place requires somebody who has the experience and character to keep the country secure while fighting back a rabid political opposition at home and a series of difficult threats overseas. His life has uniquely prepared him for this political moment.

He is the man called by history to bring America from the brink of radicalism from within and without. I’m grateful that he’s willing to take on this thankless task. That’s real patriotism.

E-mail your friends and family this link so they can watch the video, too:

http://www.johnkerry.com/video/110104_your_stories.html

Notes on Turn-Out

George Stephanopoulos said earlier this morning that he had two veteran political operative sources, one from each party, who he trusts. He claimed that each were “eerily calm” about their candidates’ prospects tomorrow but each had entirely different beliefs about what would win it for them.

The Democrat believed that there was going to be a record turn-out that would sweep Kerry to victory. The Republican believed that there wouldn’t be a record turn out and that Bush’s base would win it for him.

The Democrat is right.

On NBC, Tom Brokaw just said that he’d talked to Rove who told him that he didn’t think that more than 110 million would vote and repeated his oft-repeated CYA trope about how two million evangelicals stayed home in 2000 because they were shocked that Junior the reformed drunk had once been caught driving while under the influence. He feels confident that they are back in the fold.

It ain’t gonna be enough. If Rove and the boyz are “eerily calm” it’s because they are either delusional, they are good actors or they feel confident that Diebold can steal it with voting machines because it’s already clear that the turnout is going to be phenomenal.

I also heard Tucker Carlson on the Chris Matthews week-end show say that he thought Kerry would win because people don’t stand in line for hours in the Florida sun to vote because they like a politician. People are willing to stand in line for hours because they are angry.

Tucker’s right, too.

There is a lot of handwringing among the gasbags about the fact that people allegedly aren’t voting “for ” Kerry but against Bush, as if the underlying reason for voter intensity matters. It doesn’t. If the Democrats come out in droves tomorrow because they loathe and despise President asterisk more than they love Kerry it doesn’t matter one iota. The result is the same.

The underlying fact that cannot be ignored by Democrats and moderates of all stripes is that they stole the goddam election last time and then governed like they’d won in a landslide. They rubbed our noses in it for four long years with a far right agenda, treating us like shit every single step of the way. Apparently, they believed their own ridiculous hype and convinced themselves that we would just roll over and take it. They were wrong.

It didn’t have to be this way. 9/11 could have wiped the whole thing out if Junior had behaved even slightly as the president of the entire country instead of just his base. They made their bed.

And, despite all the polarization and bad feelings I don’t actually think there is going to be a lot of disruption at the polls because there are just too many of us and we are organized and working together. For instance, in this story of predictably shameless (and ineffectual) GOP agit-prop (Via Atrios) we see the signs of an energetic, cooperative progressive movement at work to help people exercize their right to vote:

We followed the congregants of the Mt. Hermon AME to vote after their Sunday service. The Pastor gave a rousing speech that shook the walls about exercising one’s “God given right to vote.” Outside, there were vans waiting to take people over to an early voting station in Ft. Lauderdale at the African American Research Library, where many thousands of people have already voted in the past two weeks. This day was no different; the line stretched across the parking lot and off the grounds on the sidewalk on Sistrunk. It was 1pm, and as hot as the day was gonna get, which was burning. 85 degrees, a slight breeze but not enough to overcome the moisture — typical fall in Florida. People carried umbrellas, and fanned themselves with Kerry/Edwards paddles.

At first glance, it looked like the scene outside a stadium before an AC/DC show: too many cars trying to park; confusion in the line; people handing out water; everyone clutching their ID’s.

But the place was stamped with politics. Distributing the cold bottles of Zephyrhills were about dozen NAACP Voter Fund volunteers in yellow shirts. Others distributed folding chairs for people who wanted to sit in the line. An Election Protection corps in black uniforms passed out flyers printed with voting rights. A couple of Kerry/Edwards people handed out candy from plastic pumpkins.

As Harold Myerson wrote in this wonderful piece from the LA Weekly this week:

I have spent the past week observing the official Democratic Party and unofficial 527 field operations in the battleground states of Ohio and Florida. And I have found something I’ve never before seen in my 36 or so years as a progressive activist and later as a journalist: an effective, fully functioning American left.

If it is fear and loathing of George W. Bush that made that happen, so be it. The modern Republican Party will rue the day they pushed us to our limit. Their hubristic dreams of a permanent majority are dead. We are going to crush them with our numbers.

Here’s Johnnie!

Reason number 5,769,438 not to vote for George W. Bush:

They have already used the Justice Department in the pre-election legal challenges for partisan purposes.

CINCINNATI — As two federal judges in Ohio prepared to rule on lawsuits contending that the state’s procedure for challenging an individual’s right to vote is unconstitutional, the Justice Department weighed in with an unusual letter brief supporting the statute.

Assistant Atty. Gen. R. Alexander Acosta sent a brief during the weekend to U.S. District Judge Susan J. Dlott, who held a rare Sunday night hearing in one of the cases, a lawsuit filed late last week by Donald and Marian Spencer. The Spencers, an elderly African American couple, are longtime civil rights activists in Cincinnati.

The Spencers’ lawsuit contends that the Ohio procedure, which was enacted in 1886 and permits individuals to challenge the legitimacy of a voter at the polling place, is a vestige of “Jim Crow” laws and creates the possibility of disenfranchising a voter without due process of law.

[…]

Acosta’s letter urged the judge to heed the Help America Vote Act, or HAVA, which was passed in 2002 to help remedy some of the problems in the 2000 presidential election. In particular, the letter said HAVA permitted a voter whose “eligibility to vote is called into question” to cast a provisional ballot.

“We bring this provision to the court’s attention because HAVA’s provisional ballot requirement is relevant to the balance between ballot access and ballot integrity,” Acosta wrote.

“Challenge statutes, such as those at issue in Ohio, are part of this balance,” he added. “They are intended to allow citizens and election officials, who have information pertinent to the crucial determination of whether an individual possesses all of the necessary qualifiers to being able to vote, to place that information before the officials charged with making such determinations.”

Acosta’s letter also stated that “nothing” in the Voting Rights Act barred challenge statutes. Consequently, Acosta concluded, “a challenge statute permitting objections based on United States citizenship, residency, precinct residency, and legal voting age like those at issue here are not subject” to a challenge based on the language of the law alone, because those criteria are “not tied to race.”

Alphonse A. Gerhardstein, a veteran civil rights lawyer who represents the plaintiffs in the Cincinnati case, said he thought “the letter was highly irregular.”

“The Justice Department is not a party to the case. They have not filed a motion to intervene in the case or filed an amicus brief,” Gerhardstein said.

“They volunteered information that goes beyond any federal interest. It’s startling to say that challengers can bring information to [the official] poll watchers. That presumes they will bring in outside information. If you are a poll watcher, how are you going to evaluate that information on the spot?” Gerhardstein wondered.

Nice. John Ashcroft’s Justice Department inappropriately injects itself into a case on the side of the Republican Party.

They don’t even slightly care about appearances anymore. Here’s the good news:

A federal judge issued an order about 1:30 a.m. today barring political party challengers from polling places throughout Ohio during Tuesday’s election.

U.S. District Judge Susan Dlott found that the application of Ohio’s statute allowing challengers at polling places is unconstitutional. She said the presence of challengers inexperienced in the electoral process questioning voters about their eligibility would impede voting.

What you and I call common sense, the Republicans are calling a ruling by an “activist liberal judge.” Fuck ’em.