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Dr. R you have a funny way of taking the night off. Thankfully for us and democracy. Bless you and please rest! We need you STRONG!!

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“What will Republicans say?” Crickets. For they, like Collins, fear for both their political lives and personal safety. trump seems the never ending dystopian nightmare. That he is still a free man is quite remarkable, to me. How can we continue to have faith in a country that has allowed this narcissistic criminal so much leash for so long? His legal exposure extends well before he ran for president, not to mention legal exposure during his presidency. Is this simply a case of our inherent difficulty in holding the wealthy accountable under the law?

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Many,many years ago when I first learned about Hitler, I said to my Father, “how could the Germans have allowed this to happen? How could the world have allowed this to happen?” I still remember the look on his face when he had no answer. He described a sermon he heard in 1939 as a high school student warning about Hitler but nothing clear after that. By summer a million people will have died of Covid because of this compulsive lying bully who mismanaged the virus response because the early victims were not his followers. Thanks to HCR, we have a documented history. Are we smart and brave enough to use it? Republican legislators were eye witnesses to January 6 and they are still silent and loyal. Look at the lowlifes this corrupt p o s has already pardoned, what he has done to the legal system and what will happen very shortly when the primaries begin. It’s not November, it’s March we have to worry about.

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Thank you for the update detailing Trump's open admission that he attempted an illegal coup.

Apparently, EVEN OPEN. BLATANT, RECORDED ADMISSION OF A HIGH CRIME ON VIDEO IS NOT ENOUGH TO GET RICH WHITE MEN ARRESTED IN THE good ole USA.

Disgusting. Really.

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With all the evidence there is in the hands of the January 6th Committee and I assume the DOJ, I simply cannot understand why trump and the cabal "leadership" are not in jail awaiting trial on numerous charges - any one alone is more than enough! What in heaven's name is the delay?! It just doesn't make any sense. And, "the wheels of justice grind slowly" is not a valid reason.

Two years for the Mueller report, two impeachments, an attempted coup (filmed live with emails, phone calls, evidence galore), "ongoing" IRS investigations (charity and business fraud), and so much more and the result is nothing - the bottom line is trump still lives free, has a podium, a microphone, and spews unmitigated garbage all the while it is covered by the media. Nothing, absolutely nothing will ever move the needle for whatever that is that calls itself the republican party. Not only is trump certifiably nuts, the democrats are invoking the definition of insanity . . . . “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” - Albert Einstein

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The silence of the Republican Party is deafening. For the remainder of my lifetime I condemn them all.

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What a post and report! Of course Trump's speech is a pastiche of threats, lies, and all the rest. But read/listen carefully (HCR has!). Part of the discussion of yesterday's post revolved around the GOP use of language (Gingrich, etc --- and ref to Orwell's "Politics and the english language" --if I recall the title correctly). Listen to the language Trump used---he may be a charlatan but he knows how to use language. The label "racist' is out there; the personal attack on him; the "legality" of the proposed plan for Pence (it must be legal if they are trying to change the process, or so he wants people to think). The narrative has been set up already---particularly no one on the Democrat side is going to speak loudly and point out the lies and stupidity. Sorry, but this is not going to play well for the Democrats---the True Believers will love it and be powered up. Without someone who is a skilled and eloquent orator who can reach ordinary people with direct effect, this is another failure to seize the moment and the narrative --- and of course the MSM (NYT and all the rest) will be content to "report" the speech, etc without any serious refutation (and the True Believers don't read these papers anyway). I despair---not of this community, not of the Truth, but a the drift of things and the anti-Biden (which means implicitly pro-Trump, since he is the alternative) pitch that dominates the press here and in Britain (the latter as far as my limited reading takes me). Well, that's a bit of a rant! Now I need to trundle off to bed and get some sleep for the new dawn that is coming. Peace and Courage to all.

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"What will the Republican leaders who have tied themselves to Trump say now that he has openly admitted he was trying to destroy our democracy?"

Heather, clearly Susan Collins lacks a spine so I fear the rest of the Republican leadership does as well. What a sad and sorry predicament the United States is in – it's being sold down the river to satisfy the ego of a vile, repulsive man by the very people sworn to protect it.

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Trump is asserting prosecution of 'fairness'. That it is his right to decide what is 'fair' and who is being treated unfairly. Through false equivalencies and inverted rhetoric, Trump is claiming that prosecution is no way to treat White people. While Black people are getting away with murder. And the crowd cheered.

In the context of American systemic racism against Black people and embrace of White supremacy, two definitions of fairness come into play. In the context of AngloSaxon society the one word is freighted with significance which evolved to equate what is attractive with what is morally good.

White privilege has been a hallmark of American society. Through sophistry and a distortion of history, Republicans are selling White grievance. "A White man of sorrows' is the Trump brand.

With the ascendency of Trump, the proliferation of Trump Mini-Mes, Mitch McConnell and Leonard Leo packing/stacking the courts and the domination of state governments from the school board to the statehouse by right wing extremist Republicans, we are seeing government distortion of the history of racism in America.

So when I read of revisionism in increasingly populist, nativist, and authoritarian Poland, certain parallels here came to mind. Not just that from the KKK to Trump's tiki torch neoNazis, American discrimination against Black people has been tied up with antiSemitism or that Maus, Art Spiegelman's family history of the Holocaust, has been banned in Tennessee - but the specifics of Nazi treatment of the Poles and Polish persecution of Jews, and how government involves itself in revising that history.

I am going to quote from Jan Grabowski, a professor of history at the University of Ottawa and provide a link to his essay.

He starts by describing a commemoration in Treblinka honoring a young Pole "who Polish researchers say, was shot in 1942 by the Nazis for giving water to the Jews as they waited in locked cattle cars idling outside the camp." To me this resonated with new Republican laws in Georgia. Republicans are obstructing peoples Civil Rights by placing obstacles to voting, which results in having to wait in line for hours *and* Republicans have made it a crime to give water to people on line. But as the author notes, not to diminish that one man's heroism, the norm was for Poles to extort Jews for water at the entrance to Treblinka, where Poles assisted in slaughtering 900,000 Jews. This reminded me of revisionist American history which elides the legitimization of enslavement and all of Jim Crow abuses, while gutting Civil Rights voter protections.

Grabowski also discusses being sued by for quoting a Holocaust survivor who witnessed a Polish mayor denouncing Jews to the Nazis. The judge decided against him. The decision is worth reading

"We can assume that ascribing to Poles the crimes of the Holocaust committed by the Third Reich can be construed as harmful and detrimental to the sense of identity and of national pride,” the judge said last February. “Attributing to the Polish nation the responsibility for the Holocaust, for the killing of Jews during World War II and for the confiscation of their property touches upon the sphere of the national heritage and, consequently, as completely untrue and harmful, can significantly impact one’s feeling of own national dignity, destroying the justified — based on facts — belief that Poland was the victim of war operations initiated and conducted by the Germans.”

And Grabowski's reflections on the case:

"It seemed to me that the real objective of the lawsuit was not to rescue a man’s name or alter his reputation, but to frighten scholars of the Holocaust, to instill Poland’s pervasive atmosphere of fear into an entire discipline and to make students and educators think twice before choosing topics that would challenge the government-sponsored version of history. The idea of a right to national pride, advanced in court, is an ambiguous and legally undefined sentiment that effectively means any member of the Polish nation has the right to sue historians whose findings offend them."

This reminds me of the outlawing of Critical Race Theory. It also reminds me that on invading Poland, the Nazis persecuted, jailed, and even slaughtered Polish academics and intelligentsia who they feared might oppose the new regime. As did Stalin. As are Republicans, where in Virginia the much touted new GOP governor Youngkin has extended right wing extremist targeting of university professors to targeting elementary school teachers with his 'tattle on your teacher tip line'.

I was most struck by Grabowski's observation that "In all these cases, pushing blame for the destruction of Jewish communities entirely onto Nazi occupiers obfuscates the larger context of Holocaust horror and the very real problems of collaboration, bystanderism and local antisemitism that helped run the machine of the Holocaust."

And it is this which we must overcome - the collaboration, bystanderism, and local racism which runs the machine of racism against Black people

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/29/opinion/holocaust-poland-europe.html

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Today is a dark day for the citizens of the great state of Maine. The man Matt Taibbi profiled so beautifully, the "insane, clown president" who aspired to be King finally goes mad in public and openly admits his heart is black with evil intent and deed. So Shakespearian and tragic. And concurrently we witness Susan Collins (R-ME), refusing to denounce the evil bastard along with a number of other Republicans who also express their fealty to an avowed criminal who confesses his crimes as a means to rally his troops to join him in more illegal endeavors against democracy and the Constitution, the document many of us took a sacred oath to protect and defend against all enemies foreign and domestic. Senator Collins has exposed more than just her lack of integrity; she has failed egregiously to uphold her oath of office and in the process blown the whistle on all the Mainers who voted for her. As Pat Cole commented on this platform, "For the remainder of my lifetime I condemn them all."

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Hasn't this guy done anything that is adequately investigated to warrant charging and arresting him? The law may be closing in on him, but in the meantime he continues to wreak havoc on the population at large all the while continuing to incite his good-ol-boys to acts of violence thinly disguised as some sort of weird patriotism. Someone needs to strap a muzzle on him; perhaps a billion dollars bail could be a start...

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Trump is not a smart man. His admission this week that, if he were reelected, he would pardon those who participated in the January 6 insurrection further evidences his criminal intent that he wanted the insurrection to succeed. This adds to the evidence of criminal intent already uncovered, including his failure to take action to stop the insurrection, his undue delay in saying anything to stop the insurrection, his expressions of love for the insurrectionists. This, and much more, adds to the mounting evidence that Trump intended and loved all that occurred on January 6, thus enhancing the criminal case against him for conspiring to overthrow the government. And, I'm betting that when further evidence is discovered, there will be evidence that Trump ordered that no national guard or federal troops should come to the defense of the Capitol.

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First of all, I hope that the storm moving up the East Coast did not cause too much damage in your part of Maine.

OK, now on to Trump. Please everyone, chill out! Commentators on MSNBC were apoplectic today! The TFG's threats were dissected, inspected, projected, diced, sliced etc.

However, 2024 is still a long time away. One fear is that a court case may go against TFG and he calls his supporters to take to the streets. I'm just not sure whom he would sic them on. Another fear is the undoing that can result if the Republicans take over the House in November.

Be patient; have faith in the January 6th Committee; watch the Republicans squirm as the heat is turned up. Between the court cases and the House Committee, the evidence against TFG will become overwhelming. Gosh, I sure hope I'm right!!!

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Oh wait, I though TFG said it was Antifa? Who is he going to pardon then? Is Susan Collins having trouble with reality?

Remember Pardons are an admission of guilt. So…thank you for the heads up HCR. Some heavy indictments must be coming this week.

And maybe that’s why the market is tanking when the economy is stronger than ever per the last 35 years. The market is beginning to factor in TFG not going away, a distraction to solving the most deadly pandemic in over 100 years, which without focused global cooperation will linger, supply chains continually strained, promises of continued social division and unrest, a leader of one of two major American political parties is calling for street violence against the the other and the upholding of sacred law and order.

Does that sound like a good place to invest your money???

Maybe the coming sell off will make some big donors think again.

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Heather, you ask, "What will the Republican leaders who have tied themselves to Trump say now that he has openly admitted he was trying to destroy our democracy?" 1) They will deny he said it. 2)Shown a clip of him saying it, they will say it was taken out of context, 3) Shown the whole thing in context they will say he didn't really mean it. 4) Shown that he has said he meant it, they will say Dems are making too big a deal of it because they know he's telling the truth (yes, I know it makes no sense, but that's what will be said). 5) And finally, when all is said and done, they won't care. That's the part that gets to me. They don't care.

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I’m still laughing at Acosta’s “Coup coup for Cocoa Puffs” statement.

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