Former president Trump met with a New York City probation officer today for a pre-sentencing interview. They met over video for a first step in the sentencing process, in which an officer assesses the convicted criminal’s living situation, finances, mental health, addiction, and criminal record. Trump was expected to have his lawyer, Todd Blanche, with him when he linked in from Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach. Judge Juan Merchan will take the information from the interview into account when he sentences Trump. He will also consider that Trump was held in contempt 10 times during the trial for violating the gag order designed to stop him from attacking witnesses and court personnel and their families.
the other day in Nevada was the nuttiest one yet. And, I noticed that all of those people standing behind him were, basically, expressionless the whole time.
I feel like we are living in the upside down much of the time…
Thank goodness for the beautiful D-Day celebration that POTUS & FLOTUS attended in France. It was solemn and reverent, as it should be. Biden’s speeches were excellent, and his genuine concern and respect for others shines through. 💙🇺🇸💙
The Biden Campaign should just show the footage of him talking, with each sentence unconnected to the one preceding and the one following, unedited. Do a 60-second ad, followed by the question "Is this trainwreck what you really want?"
Chump writes ads for Dems with every utterance. Fox edits with a vengeance but nobody else should have that agenda. And Fox is the known Fox in our media hen house.
Our “free press” is guilty also, but Fox is the master propaganda outlet. Edits the news. Omit the worst of the Repub agenda and word salad, and report every sneeze of Biden and his family. The “editors wouldn’t dare report it all, or report on what Biden has done for the people. A big bus parked West of me has a big sign “Biden must go.” What fools we Texans be.
I mean no disrespect. Instead, I have an honest question I hope someone can answer. Why does everyone seem to focus so much on who is lying and who is telling the truth? It's not hard to think of contexts where lying is a very good thing, or where telling the truth is a very bad thing. Wouldn't explicit statements contrasting the interests the two parties intend to serve make the difference between any two candidates more obvious?
Something like: do you want the "divide and conquer" Republican candidate, or the "united we stand and divided we fall" Democrat candidate?
I get it that lies and truth imply what interest is being served, but if one wants to cure the disease, one must go beyond merely treating its symptoms.
I also mean no disrespect, but I held my tongue after the Newt Gingrich/Frank Luntz GoPac memo, "Language: A Key Mechanism of Control" had become more publicly known (after the 1994 mid terms if I recall correctly). I had hoped that the party leaders would regain their senses and quit trying to making every Democrat and their ideas demons (so much so that they shouldn't socialize or even talk to their counterparts in the opposite party). I had hoped that they at least had legitimate differences in views but could actually implement policies both sides could accept. Instead the appeared to go scorched earth on me and advocate policies so far from what I could agree with (as a then 50 year old life long Republican). I left the party around the same time Elizabeth Warren did, for much the same reasons.
My old party operates like a ratchet, never give an inch no matter what, and steal an inch or a mile or two anytime given a chance to do so. They are way beyond anything I can support with the senseless tax cuts and Grover Norquist demands for Republican "No New Tax" pledges valued over oaths to flag and country. Reagan at least took back about a third of the excessive tax cuts he got passed (though he would never call them tax increases, just adjustments). Grover Norquist torpedoed George H.W. Bush's reelection over what he implied was a violation of that oath.
I believe that GHW Bush had started the decrease in deficit that Bill Clinton was able to finally turn into an annual surplus, but Grover Norquist helped kill that recovery by arguing that after 9/11 and the start of the GWOT we needed to cut taxes instead of raising them like we had done in every previous war in our history.
My wife had always figured our taxes well enough to be with in a dollar or 2 up until GW Bush gave us that $600 stimulus check as prepayment on the "benefits" of the tax cut coming. When the tax came due she was proud to say we were going to get a $2 refund, at least until I asked her if that included the $600 pre-refund. She was beyond incensed when we had to pay $598 to make up for it.
I'm still incensed at all the tricks they use and refusal to ever consider anything anyone else every did well (unless they could get the credit for it even while having voted against it). I tried supporting Christie Todd Whitman and once wrote in Sheila Bair (when doing so in California wouldn't hurt Democrats), but otherwise haven't voted for any Republican (even ones I liked) in over 2 decades. Voting for ones I liked always meant they might help give my old party a majority with the worst actors I could imagine overriding any good they might try to do.
I'm considering giving up 27 years of being registered as independent and registering as a Democrat for the foreseeable future.
Simon Rosenberg( HCR referenced today) is a data-driven strategist who uses simple, repetitive messaging.He is gaining a LOT of traction with the media.Simon is also the one who accurately predicted the faux red wave of ‘22.
Yes Trump Is A Bad Man, A Serial Criminal, But His Agenda Is Even Worse-
Joe Biden is a good and successful President. The country is better off, and will be far better under his leadership in the next 4 years
The Democratic Party is strong, winning elections across the country, raising tons of money and building the most powerful political machine we’ve ever had
And they have Trump - the ugliest political thing we’ve all ever seen - a rapist, fraudster, traitor, felon - and is leading a party that looks far more like the Star Wars bar than the party of Lincoln and Reagan
"It's not hard to think of contexts where lying is a very good thing, or where telling the truth is a very bad thing." Well - I think the mainstreaming of lies is a large part of the problem we have in our country right now. A good democracy just cannot function if voters cannot tell what is up and what is down. Our free speech that we are so proud of is biting us in the a_s. We have a powerful political party with an unpopular world view that has had to resort to lies and corruption to gain, or maintain, or increase power. That is not right, and it should be called out strongly. That in addition to policy discussion.
We focus on lying vs telling the truth because that is the central issue people have with government.
No, there are no contexts where lying is a good thing and telling the truth is a bad thing; not for adults. One of the central issues of the last 70 years has been the discovery of all the lies we were told as children. People see this as betrayal and that is why the conservatives are fighting so hard to protect their lies/rewriting of history.
They just have no idea what the truth is. What they hear is all the negative about Democrats. It is totally sad. I really believe we will have that idiot Braun as our new governor in Indiana. We have such a good candidate who was a former Republican. She is running because she was inside and knew how the Republicans are hurting our state. It is really sad!
I suggest you ask your friends this: Suppose Trump saw you get hit by a car. Do you think he’d call 911? Or, suppose that there was a fire and one of Trump’s children was inside the building. Do you think he would try to go in to save them?
Show them Timothy Snyder’s essay from this morning. Fox just parrots Russian propaganda. If only people could get that through their heads, it would sure help them understand.
The Lincoln Project ads on YouTube have several dozen ads doing just that.
Stuart Stevens and others at the Lincoln Project are 1) concentrating on the swing states knowing that a few percentage points in Biden's favor will win him reelection and 2) their ads really piss off Convicted Felon Donald Trump.
Thanks Gary, giving The Lincoln Project a round of applause too. Stand up comedians and the endless talk show hosts have had years of script writing from that circus ! Books written! Lawyers havens. Jails filling with the previous Trump Team …the list gets even longer. Sad stuff for his merry sycophants .
Meanwhile back at HQ alias The White House , a classy team forges ahead , records of ground breaking advances and shoring up confidence . Competency is needed in a world of crisis. Autocracy ‘on the rise’ always creates havoc .
Thank you President Biden your leadership , your team sets the bar again .
Patricia, I’m sharing the emails of what Biden’s doing on a daily basis with friends as talking points—it’s amazing how much they’re doing behind the scenes.
Thanks , Mary ..we are too, it’s a real grass roots movement rather monumentous by many a mention. Especially in our own community.Blood red WV here and wonderfully supportive commentary…🙌
Ever since the Murdoch owned WSJ hit piece on Biden last week where they basically reiterated the shamed former Speaker BS about Biden's acuity, there have been many more hit pieces about Biden's mental competence.
As Jennifer Rubin opined yesterday, the MAGAs and evangelicals have nothing so they are attacking Biden's mental fitness. And, of course it's almost all lies, but that doesn't matter to the current GOP
Oh they’ll have it “ in a couple of weeks”, right?😉🤣🤣
It’s sadly a hilarious sh*t show, numbers dimishing, the lies CLASSIC, endless, like they can’t stop, patterns of the pathological! And all at taxpayers expense!
Shall I repeat that….ALL AT TAXPAYERS EXPENSE! 🤦♀️🤷♀️😔
I’m wondering what Johnathan Capehart has to say about that? The Murdoch takeover. As is the autocratic moves ..take over the press and shut out the truth. He , Johnathan, is articulate and very interesting , has Biden praise and points out good factors. As Asst Editor he must have a say in things? Maybe not.
TCinL, it is obvious that there is absolutely nothing and I mean nothing tRump could do or say that would cause him to lose support, because of what he represents to his aggrieved supporters. If that were not painfully true he would have been gone long ago.
The 1's may be totally local to convicted felon DJT, but they not be as loyal to their House and Senate candidates. This is where the Lincoln Project ads come in. The Lincoln Project mostly goes after DJT, but they also point out others like Lindsay Graham, the Supremes, Leonard Leo, etc. whom the MAGAs may not be as loyal to.
Lol, 30 seconds should be more than good enough! As for me, i flip past the ads much as I can. Rachel Maddow, each ad segment is now 4 min 25 sec. America is ad-blitzed to death, honestly! I'm swatting them off FB since i can't ad block them.
We try to live in an ad free world. It's tough but we can try to eliminate them whenever possible. In our home, no cable TV. Our streaming services are ad free.
But they find us on the internet. We researched mattresses. No matter where I go now, mattress ads pop up. Big Brother is watching. I think, just for fun, I'll do some research on the best tequilas!
I started messing with the advertising bots. Bing and MSN seem to be most susceptible, so if I'm feeling stroppy I'll query their shopping sites for something utterly stupid like 12x12 structural steel beams or a Conestoga Wagon a couple of times. Makes the targeted ads easy to see and bypass, it wastes their time, and it jams their customer profiling of you!
Bill, I find this very annoying. I have taken to swatting them off Facebook as Frank puts it. As for TV ads, our mute button works overtime and the word mute hasn't been there for a long time. We do watch local and and national news on the NBC affiliate in Portland (OR) and a few sports events, but the rest is streaming series.
We've only seen one ad recently and that's from this republican candidate in Maine, austin theriault. And that we only see while watching the local news from Bangor via Paramount+. It's what you would expect, a trump-endorsed parade of lies and half-truths.
Why, whenever possible, I either record them for playback so I can say "Siri fast forward 4 and an half minutes" or watch the next day on Peacock, Hulu or Paramount+ where the commercials are removed and you can watch the hour long show in 40 minutes.
I watch everything online. I haven't seen an ad in over 20 years. Cancel your TV subscription and put the savings into faster internet. You will never look back.
Been streaming for about 10 years on a 1Gb connection and subscribe to several services like Netflix, Prime, etc. Also use Sling for national and world news channels I can't get for free.
Yes. Streaming is the way to go. No ads, and you can watch what you want, when you want. No erecording and fast forwarding through the ads. No having to be in front of your TV at a certain date and time. Spread the joys od streaming.
Anne-Louise, While not knowing the particulars, an ad blocker will help. I use Ad Block but there are others. Ad Block can be downloaded from getadblock dot com/en. I don't get any ads, anywhere. Once installed, highlight the ad and report it to Ad Block. You will never see that ad again. You will see essentially the same ad with some changes so Ad Block might not recognize it. When that happens, report the ad to Ad Blocker. It is a long process but worth it. Good luck.
I have a built-in voice command in my remote, only pre-record the shows i'm usually interested in for a copy or two, internet often posts ad-free highlights of prev day even earlier sometimes on msnbc eg.
I use Apple TV to stream and YouTube TV to record. I time shift everything I watch, I have done that ever since the first TiVo devices were sold 20+ years ago. I like to watch multi day sporting events and the ads are insufferable 😫, I might watch some of the ads during the Masters because they are speaking to me and they are so well done, MSNBC’s ads are among the worst. I’ll have to try to get Siri to do my fast forwarding for me it would save me a bunch of button pushes. 👍😎
It depends on the app you are using to watch, sometimes it will say it can't fast fwd because the app won't allow it. For that you have to manually scroll. Oh the pain! 😫
Agree re MSNBC ads. Interesting that, based on their ubiquitous pharma ads, their target audience is what I would have thought was the pro-Trump viewer, 60+ year olds...
The ads are what they are because major corporations refuse to be associated with MSBNC except in small doses during Prime Time. MSNBC would love to air high dollar ads but beggars can't be choosers.
In addition, the Dem PR campaign should make clear that the Republican congresspeople are taking credit for measures which they voted against. It's not just Trump. They all have to go.
TCinLA Thats Another Fine Mess - "The Biden Campaign should just show the footage of him talking, with each sentence unconnected to the one preceding and the one following, unedited."
Biden wanted to use his trip to speak to a domestic as well as international audience. He hoped the symbolism of all that America did, and of the heroic sacrifices made by Americans, to rescue Europe from the grip of fascism would rally contemporaries to the cause of saving democracy.
It was a noble ambition, but one that is unlikely to pay big dividends.
First there is the simple fact that Americans are woefully ill informed about our past, including about what happened on D-Day. As journalist Nicholas Goldberg wrote last year, “𝑀𝑜𝑠𝑡 𝐴𝑚𝑒𝑟𝑖𝑐𝑎𝑛𝑠 𝑑𝑜𝑛’𝑡 𝑘𝑛𝑜𝑤 𝑤ℎ𝑖𝑐ℎ 𝑐𝑜𝑢𝑛𝑡𝑟𝑖𝑒𝑠 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑈𝑛𝑖𝑡𝑒𝑑 𝑆𝑡𝑎𝑡𝑒𝑠 𝑓𝑜𝑢𝑔ℎ𝑡 𝑎𝑔𝑎𝑖𝑛𝑠𝑡 𝑖𝑛 𝑊𝑜𝑟𝑙𝑑 𝑊𝑎𝑟 𝐼𝐼 𝑜𝑟 𝑤ℎ𝑒𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑈.𝑆. 𝐶𝑜𝑛𝑠𝑡𝑖𝑡𝑢𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑤𝑎𝑠 𝑟𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑓𝑖𝑒𝑑. … 𝑀𝑎𝑛𝑦 𝑝𝑒𝑜𝑝𝑙𝑒 𝑡𝑜𝑑𝑎𝑦 𝑑𝑜 𝑛𝑜𝑡 𝑘𝑛𝑜𝑤 𝑤ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝐷-𝐷𝑎𝑦 𝑖𝑠 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑤ℎ𝑦 𝑖𝑡 𝑖𝑠 𝑐𝑒𝑙𝑒𝑏𝑟𝑎𝑡𝑒𝑑 𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑦 𝑦𝑒𝑎𝑟.”
The Economic Times reports, for example, that “𝑎 𝑢𝑠𝑒𝑟 𝑎𝑡 𝑅𝑒𝑑𝑑𝑖𝑡 𝑤𝑟𝑜𝑡𝑒, ‘𝐼 𝑡ℎ𝑜𝑢𝑔ℎ𝑡 𝐷 𝑖𝑛 𝐷-𝐷𝑎𝑦 𝑤𝑎𝑠 𝑠ℎ𝑜𝑟𝑡 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝐷𝑜𝑜𝑚𝑠𝑑𝑎𝑦.’ 𝐴𝑛𝑜𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟 𝑢𝑠𝑒𝑟 𝑤𝑟𝑜𝑡𝑒, ‘𝐷𝑖𝑑𝑛’𝑡 𝐷 𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝐷𝑒𝑐𝑖𝑠𝑖𝑜𝑛?’” Hard to enlist people to follow an example about which they are profoundly ignorant.
Even if they knew about D-Day, Biden’s audience has much less belief in, or reverence for, heroes... More than two decades ago, Harvard University’s Peter Gibbon argued that Americans no longer believe in heroes.
I would really think he is only a puppet. Many if not most of y’all know way more than me..I’m fascinated by only a number, the real power mongers are behind the scenes pulling the strings. Probably chump change to them what ‘he’ll’ accept in the many ‘bribes’ -malleable is key, and many tell the tale of considerably unmanageable . His character is played over and over by wanna be heads of departments, ministers of this or that societal programs, all looking for pocket change and moving on up. Putin’s regime ,with several others, lay the scene out , have for years, a long list of disappeared, fell out of windows, became ill/poisoned/otherwise fallen from ‘Grace’ …important going to get richer pons/‘advisors’ until they step across boundary lines …and there’s boundaries in every hierarchy .No rules there , fyi
So what’s the end game? And for who? I suspect not here in the ‘good ol’USA.
The track record of Biden is squeaky clean, doing for/helping the disadvantaged/disenfranchised, class act speeches,carriage, church attendance , fidelity, choice of team mates, accomplishments, and genuine world leaders. His only ‘faults’ are he’s a Democrat (1) smartly decent (2)..and not going to be anyone’s puppet (3).
I’ve never thought all the Republicans were bad, nor all the Democrats good. Blanket statements are fool’s utterings, yet in the same breath…there’s an awful lot of people fooled.
I’m not convinced the Dems can win, nor the Republicans will lose.
Every blue choice hand needs to be on deck if we want to give ‘our best shot’. It was stats last 2020 voting period , told what real effort can do , 66% voter participation was beat only one other time…
Can we get to 75%?
It’s up to each one registered -🫵 included , and bring as many friends as possible , please 🫶
Because it’s going to take this Blue Army to do it.
A Propos of D-Day, Guilty Donny has also recently been trying to convince his base that he never EVER called soldiers "suckers and losers". (His thin skin must be burning.)
It's not working. There's just too many historic news articles of him disrespecting vets, wounded soldiers, Gold Star families, etc. , so all he's succeeded in doing is make himself look like a bigger liar than ever. Also, the Biden campaign released an ad that took him apart over his statements. see <https://youtu.be/REhPyhejGr8>
My dad was a WWII disabled veteran. He struggled for years to find a job. The orignal $30 a month for his partial disability didn't go very far but my parents did as much for us kids as they could afford.
I realize there are hundreds of thousands of families who have one or both parents with war wounds that are struggling to make ends meet. So many employers are unwilling to give a disabled people a chance.
Convicted Felon Donald Trump's comment about those who serve their country being "suckers and losers" seems to fall on deaf ears with many veterans I know.
My question is "how can they support a draft dodger" that thinks so little of their service to this country?
Good question. How can they support him...how can anyone support such a corrupt person? Brain washing works. Repeat the ilie often enough and it is believed. So far it is working for him and his MAGA followers. The Biden Team needs to be on the defensive AND the offensive at the same time. Point out the obvious lies and at the same time tout the amazing accomplishments.
My heart goes out to you, Gary. So sorry to hear about your dad. So terribly unfair and inhumane to sacrifice young lives to war only to abandon them when they need assistance in return.
What General Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, did that day in full camo, when Trump strode across that protestor freed square with his upside down Bible, followed by the general, Ivanka with purse and other officials, in retrospect seems even more egregious. He managed to get Americans to distrust the military. The military has always seemed like a big neutral force, not a political force. When my husband was a Captain in the late fifties many of his fellow officers did not vote at all to preserve their detachment. General Milley later apologized but the image remains. That and the late arrival of National Guard troops on January 6th was another shove into the sea of unrest.
George Washington argued with the Continental Congress to pay his men what had been promised to them. So since the beginning of the country, it has been necessary to fight for veterans' benefits.
Pass it on. Link to Facebook military sites. 4 million people on Facebook are veterans or active duty members. 12.5 million people on Facebook are family members of a veteran or an active duty member. 242 million people on Facebook are friends with one or more veterans or active duty members.
So hoping! but eg, funny to see a pro military guy put the military intel failure on the president instead of on in situ intelligence failures, and of course Trump, who pulled the rug out from under the government.
Yes! Since the first election, I’ve dreamed of bumper stickers and billboards that say, “Trump doesn’t care about _____.” (Religion, abortion, your family, your small business, etc.) and just some that say, “Trump doesn’t care.”
The question is, are active members of the military and their families paying attention? If all THEY watch is Fox News/Spews, they're not going to see these news articles or Biden's ads.
That active members of the military watch Fox News is another heavy straw on the Democracy camel’s back. Fox News is not real news and should be disallowed in the military. That the military is watching Fox News is a big part of the takedown the extreme right is planning.
Within the realm of reason the contrast between a second Biden administration and the Heritage Society's Project 2025 couldn't be more stark. But what has reason to do with it? Yes, we need to better spotlight Biden administration many accomplishments. But how to focus the electorate? Aside from the obvious elephants in the room - Trump, MAGA, the GOP, and entire right wing apparatus at wits end, RFKjr et al agitating to elect Trump - there is our role in the Hamas Israel war and implication in disastrous and possibly criminal Netanyahu regime actions.
If on the verge of Netanyahu's congressional campaign to reelect Trump, Biden's diplomatic success at the United Nation Security Council translates into actual implementation - as mitigation of suffering through ceasefire, hostage release, and aid to Gaza - then that might be a significant turning point. But nothing changes our urgent need to Get Out The Vote,
I encouraged a young guy at Costco to vote years ago, if not in 2016, it was 2020. He wasn't really paying attention until I started talking to him. I remember after we barely escaped a second trump presidency, I backed off and just said hello whenever I saw him. Yesterday I got a wake up call when I asked him can you believe how crazy things have gotten. He became animated unlike ever before and launched into a tirade about how they're all criminals and said Biden is just as bad as the rest of them, especially those working behind the scenes. He kept asking me what I thought about being in debt to China as if that was was our most pressing issue. I asked him why was he spouting right wing talking points. He said he wasn't. I said if you're distracted by economic policies that you know nothing about while Republicans are stripping our rights away, you've been had. We were at the point of causing a scene right there in Costco. I finally got his attention when I told him about Project 2025. I made him look it up while I was standing there. This is exhausting, people.
Next time you see him, can you direct him to the youtube channel, "Beau of the Fifth Column"? I think Beau's common sense plain talk might appeal to him. He puts up several clips a day, and a longer version "The Roads with Beau" on Thursdays and Sundays. Here's a sample from yesterday:
"Why is Netanyahu being heard, he is a murdering bastard who is on chump’s team. Ask the questions, MSM"
Asked and answered in by MSM and others.
Although Trump is personally pissed at Netanyahu for recognizing the 2020 election, they share the AIPAC and Evangelical base. Netanyahu has extended and amplified the war in part to split the Democratic vote. Netanyahu's personal career and the agenda of his coalition were served by Trump, and Trump is their best bet for a blank check and full approval for their worst abuses.
I think Israel's military policies are more the result of a hard-line anti-Palestinian cabinet with huge support in the country. 1200 murdered Israelis is behind that, not to mention the remaining hostages, many of whom have died. And those who dump on these hardliners would do well to remember just what started this, and that HAMAS fighters are the children of Gazan families. When's the last time you heard news of Gazans turning in HAMAS fighters? Think about it.
I agree that Hamas is horrible. So is Netanyahu. Can’t find a good guy with a microscope. The big mistake was been going on forever. Building boom on Palestinian land told me years ago that trouble was going to be worse than what the idiot Arafat provoked. Sorry, but Netanyahu has undone the goodwill from the Holocaust. Just like W spent the goodwill toward us after 9/11. Hard to find innocents anywhere.
I think these arguments do nothing to advance a resolution.
Hamas is brutal, and care nothing for Palestinians. Neither do the Israelis.
But they are the murdered ones, while each side pursues vengeance for real wrongs. If you are blind to those from the Israeli side, then you are advancing the problem.
The ONLY way out is forward. A livable future for the Palestinians, whose homes have been destroyed in vengeful Israeli zeal. A determination to coexist, with rights, and the buy in from neighboring Arab countries. That was imminent, according to reporting, before hamas blew it up.
The way to defeat hamas is for it to find no safe harbor. Not in Arab countries not among the cowed and terrified Palestinians who "don't turn in hamas".
Two state solution, with buy in from all parties. Hamas won't be a party to it, but they can be made pariahs. What Israel is doing is just creating new generations of Hamas.
The Jewish right wing religious extremists had been undermining
Israeli government for decades. They were not spawned by Palestinian terrorism but by Meir Kahane of Brooklyn who wanted a militant Jewish power
movement built on the lines of militant Black Power. He popularized 'For every Jew a 22' And imported it to Israel. Where he was declared a terrorist. A followrr assassinated Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. Not to mention the terror unleashed on Palestinians in the Occupied Territories.
To form a government Netanyahu had to ally himself with such as Itamar Ben Gvir - a Kahanist whom an earlier Israeli government declared associated with a terrorist group and Ben Gvir's party which had formerly been a pariah lunatic fringe.
The Hamas atrocities of Oct 7 did not happen in a vacuum nor were they a rupture - Netanyahu had been supporting Hamas to weaken the Palestinian Authority and it literally blew up in his face.
Meanwhile millions of Israelis have been protesting in the streets against Netanyahu for a year before Oct 7 and even now z
I must point out that the far right conservative fascists of the heritage, federalist, and the group Norquist heads all have waited for this moment in time to have their useful idiot to further their agenda. When you read of their disappointment with Reagan, HWB, and GWB you can understand. They worked for years to gain the levers of power and get people in the right positions and they just needed someone that would not care about the country and would do anything for them. They got a few of the judgeships on SCOTUS and many in the lower ranks and with the publication of Project 2025 have made public their real intentions.
Libertarians tried hard to co-opt Reagan's agenda. That's when they gave up trying to be a third party and instead burrowed themselves deep into the Republican party. I've been watching Hitler and Nazis: Evil on Trial in netflix, and in many ways, far right right Libertarians and the Christian right have followed the nazi playbook to seize power.
We have to take very seriously that Project 2025 is the result of a sustained effort by GOP core supporters over invested in religious ideology who pump mainly anti-abortion, getting religion, mainly evangelical style, into public service and government, regardless they are only a minority in the US electorate. This ISNT Trump driven. It has a determined life of its own, to wit also the top judiciary of the country.
He is for everything Roe versus Wade decided. He wants to stop late term abortion after the fetus is viable, as did That decision. Please don’t distort this truth, vote for who you want though.
President Biden and Trump created exorbitant debt.Young people have a much more difficult time affording a home now, that’s why RFKJR will guarantee a 3 percent mortgage. The Democratic Party is no longer the party of peace or focused on the middle class . It’s driven by high tech billionaires.Both parties now are responding to the big money interests.Bobby will eliminate the corporate capture of our agencies so our food , environment, and drugs will be healthier and safer.Trump was awful and President Biden has fought back with anger that feeds the division.I’m very grateful that JR has accepted his call to pick up the torch from his dad.
The expressions are always basically expressionless, waving a poster on cue, or grinning in the hope of being on camera. I've been watching them for years.
Business as usual. Remember, he paid all those standing by as he descended the elevator for his first announcement in 2015.
He paid Stormy. Paid the Playmate. Paid the doorman.
He's never in his life succeeded by providing a product, a service, or a government program anyone wanted. It's been a continuous series of lies, frauds, grifts instead.
But the excitement he has been able to stir up has been as real as the hatreds, fears, inferiority complexes, guilt-trips, jealousies, victimization stews, and other sensationalism into which he has tapped continuously.
Dems just don't understand how people everywhere hunger for scripts, narratives, storylines. Dems could draw on our fitting novels, memoirs, films, and other arts, but Dems went to schools with all humanities long since marginalized away.
The working classes (whose jobs the billionaires offshored by the millions) by and large could not attend elite universities. So it's our pulp fiction demographic that has hungered for -- still hungers for -- what their TV celebrity (bing-bing-boing-bong) has had to huckster.
That's America. One political class vulgarized. The other neutered.
Everything Convicted felon DJT does is transactional usually a bribe. If the DOJ were to prosecute CFDT for every crime he has committed since 2015 he would die long before they could all be heard.
"In this age, in this country, public sentiment is everything. With it, nothing can fail; against it, nothing can succeed. Whoever molds public sentiment goes deeper than he who enacts statutes or pronounces judicial decisions."
That is as true today as it was in the age it was expressed by Abraham Lincoln. If one political class is vulgarized and the other neutered, then they are vulgarized and neutered by public sentiment.
Politics is not a spectator sport. If you have the legal right to vote, you are a member of the political class. IMHO, that's America.
Something in that comment, Phil. Not sure the "other" has been exactly neutered. Otherwise, no 2020, and only a minor hit in 2022, with repeated Dem off-year election successes, plebescites taking down anti-abortion extremism.
Someone should be writing a history now of many of them -- key players. I suspect you are more than correct -- many, many of them fueled by our great movies, songs, novels, memoirs.
How much are other Dems neutered? That's a question of simple arithmetic, Frank -- as in look at the list below. On any site where Dems with their comments appear, count how many references appear to any of the humanities on this list (or any good substitute humanities you like):
. . . films like “The Florida Project” and “Winter’s Bone”; novels like Barbara Kingsolver’s “Demon Copperhead,” Walter Mosley’s “Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned,” and many by Richard Russo and Stephen King; memoirs like Mary Karr’s “The Liars’ Club,” Jeannette Walls’ “The Glass Castle,” and Erin Gruwell’s “The Freedom Writers Diary,” songs like Tim Grimm’s “Broken Truth,” Bob Segers’ “Feel Like a Number,” and any number of Bruce Springsteen or hip hop Ari Melber will cite.
The Youtube channel "Meidas Touch network" daily puts up way too many clips from their various reporters, but one constant topic is exposing Trump's scams at his false attempts to claim crowd size. They have several clips regarding that.
I would not be surprised if they report on this, also.
They might as well be holding signs that say “I’m a moron”, there they are with their hero right in front of them spouting nonsense and they’re just fine with that. Maybe they’re thinking “I don’t understand that, but he’s much smarter than me so he must be right”. Our education system is failing to produce educated people.
Those expressionless people standing behind Trump while he made that totally whacko speech could have been paid to be there.He has done this many times before.It still boggles my mind that this yammering idiot is who the Republican Party has picked to represent Americans on the world stage.Unbelievable.
He is for sale. That's pure and simple why he's there. The morbidly wealthy, for whom there is never enough, finally have a fully purchasable salesman for the ignorant, someone who can sell himself to the gullible angry while selling himself to the pure evil of greed.
Yesterday, Ben Meiselas of the Midas Touch Network showed yet another clip of people walking out on his speeches. Why stay? It's the same ol' litany about the electric boat vs shark, and complaint about the tech people who he won't pay. I knew the shark story, but it was amazing to see 4 speeches where each time he complained about the mic and/or teleprompter--and what happened to his boast about NOT using a teleprompter?
They are once again hiring people to fill these rallies. They provide, shirts and signs and those folks have to provide photographic evidence that they were in attendance.
Only if you didn't see the interviews yesterday with the lumpenproletariat in line to go to his rally. The Biden campaign should get that footage and use it in ads - remind people that the Trumpscum are the people you cross the street to avoid. America's traditional looser class.
It's not that too many people are stupid, it's that too many people lack wisdom. Elon Musk, Speaker Mike, and all the Republicans in Congress that have Harvard law degrees are not stupid. They do stupid things because they lack wisdom. Translation: they care about themselves and don't care about the country. Countermeasure: don't be one of them. Instead, care about the country.
To paraphrase Tina Turner: What's intelligence got to do with it?
I’ve known some high IQ people who were stupid, ignorant, and proud. Usually greedy and fond of power as well, but not always. Just had specific skills, lacking humanity. Maybe they are not rare.
They should also run clips of the rallies where the people are leaving in droves as he speaks. There is an online 30 min clip of the Wildwood, NJ rally, and a shorter one of the Vegas rally.
She probably wears it all the time but convicted felon DJT has her locked in her room.
She needs to get out and campaign for her hubby. But, like 40 of 44 cabinet members and CFDT advisors, she knows he is still unqualified to be President.
That's a good point Carol. If he's reelected President his Alzheimer's may progress to the point he wanders off from the WH in the middle of the night.
yup. truth outs. what is excruciating is that so many are refusing to accept the truth, that it isn't only the marginalized or majority that he doesn't care about, he doesn't care about the demographic he claims to represent either. it's a sad, sick dynamic holding alliance with an abuser. I hope there is a strong enough demonstration of caring & reason by the rest of us to give these people something to believe in other than deceit & destruction.
Augh, but it won't. MAGA will continue over the cliff with him like Lemmings, and Musk/Murdoch and the usual 1%ers who don't want to pay their taxes are going to throw all the money they've got at Trump's campaign. To them, his dementia is a plus, they figure they can control him.
“In November 2021, Biden signed into law the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, also known as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act. In June 2022 he signed into law the Safer Communities Act, a gun safety law. In August 2022 he signed into law the CHIPS and Science Act that invested billions in semiconductor manufacturing and science, and the Inflation Reduction Act that provided record funding for addressing climate change and permitted Medicare to negotiate with pharmaceutical companies over drug prices. Together, those legislative accomplishments rival those of Presidents Lyndon Baines Johnson and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, whose congressional majorities were far stronger than Biden’s.”
And how many rank and file repubs know this. Of course, LBJ and FDR are dirty words in repub circles. A reason to denigrate while cashing their social security checks.
In order to believe that something bad is good, you must also believe that something good is bad. That's why the bad guys always make the good guys out to be the bad guys. And that's why Republican intellectuals explicitly state refer to JFK's "ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country" as a terrible idea.
"Trump’s own words from a rally this weekend in the broiling Nevada desert [...]: “We need every voter. I don’t care about you. I just want your vote. I don’t care.”"
When and how will this happen, that the GOP gives up on this loser? When is happens it will come quickly, like rats leaving a sinking ship. Essentially Trump and the GOP and MAGAs generally are 'cut from the same cloth', so they are like velcro.
Don’t hold your breath. Fox is still on the job, saw a Newsmax cap the other day. The propaganda spewers are still on the job. BTW. The Epoch Times is no longer at the grocery store where I go once in a while. Maybe their connection with Fulun Gong and money laundering had an impact.
Another interesting analysis; thank you. Can President Biden's campaign run an advert. that he is a statesmen owing to bi-partisan leadership? The adverts would feature the Republicans taking credit for new infrastructure projects. The adverts could then conclude, "Yes, Nancy Mace voted against the President's bill, but Joe cares more for her constituents than he does about Party politics."
In the report of the interview between Special Counsel Hur and President Biden, Mr Hur threw a booby-prize to Republicans by stating, in effect, that President Biden is a sympathetic figure for being well-intentioned, elderly, and forgetful.
😴
It is evident, to me at least, that the G.O.P. wants the audio so they slice out unrepresentative clips for commercials that make the President look as if he were disabled by dementia. Representative Scott (R-GA) just said as much by saying that every time President Biden is on television the American people see for themselves that he is kindly, old, demented.
🤢
Watching the debate among ranking House committee members. I was a R.I.N.0. until 2018.
The G.O.P. has been taken over by the WHINOes. Representatives Comer and Hagerman -- substituting for Jordan-as-a-no-show -- drive me to distraction.
⚖️
Notwithstanding today's conviction of Mr Hunter Biden, the score of guilty votes by jurors remain 418 for Trump versus ZERO for the President.
🥳
¡Well, there's a mandate!
🤓
President Biden's manly response of respecting the rule-of-law on what must be an extraordinarily painful moment in his life says it all compared to the many trumper tantrums starting from the man on down to the nattering nabobs of narcissism. 😱
They’re also doubling down on b.s. culture wars, since nothing else seems to be working. Latest instance, a MAGA acquaintance claimed that “under Biden, 30% of young people have decided to become trans and many are mutilating themselves to change their sex”. I countered that if the number was anywhere near that high, this couldn’t be buried by average mainstream media. He said he’ll send me links to proof, and I’m still waiting.
They're doing it badly. One RW talking-person screwed up and actually spoke badly about Dolly Parton, calling her falsely religious in a tweet on X. That did NOT go over well.
Later, in an interview, Donny aired his opinions about Taylor Swift; further alienating fans who didn't like him in the first place. How dumb do you need to be??
Next thing, they'll have to say something bad about Mr. Rogers just to complete the trifecta.
Well, as they say, if you can not lasso them with accomplishments, dazzle them with brilliance. If you can not dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bool-sheet.
It is interesting to me, Jerry, about how much the "transgender issue" has plugged into some visceral response for so many. (I cannot find the right word for this and I am going with "response" as the closest I can come at this moment). People get so wrapped up on bathroom issues (where a biological male pretends to be female so he can sexually assault females in the restroom) or biological males transitioning to female so they can be winners in sports they aren't "good enough" in as male athletes that they cannot comprehend what the real issues of a gender transition are about. <Damn, that is an awkward sentence. Sorry.>
Anecdotally, one thing that has happened in the lesbian communities is that we have lost a number of the subset of "butch lesbians" who tended to be masculine in their interests and appearances who have transitioned to male. I am a decidedly butch lesbian who ABSOLUTELY NEVER felt that I was male. I have a dear friend (another butch lesbian, former cop) who has transitioned as an adult and is so much more comfortable as a man that he ever was as a woman, and knew from a very young age that he was not female.
To your friend who can't find his sources: A generally accepted figure is that of 10% of the population identify as gay. A very superficial search of the googles tells me that 1% of the US population identifies as transgender, where studies show that 5% of the population identified as "young adults" identify as transgender (in that mix, it is roughly a 38 % male to female and 34% female to male with the remainder identifying as "gender non-conforming."
Interesting. My latest search online found that the 10% is an upper limit and includes all of LGBTQ+. The actual numbers are less important that two facts: First is that these statistics are humans who live life normally, and second is that for transgender folks, the struggle to fit into a hostile society is real. Also, no one's grooming little kids. The fear mongering is stupid, and leads to unhappiness.
I cannot imagine the internal struggle for transgender people. I somewhat flippantly (30+ years ago) said "I'm glad I didn't sign up for that one." Now?? I see people who have that place of being with a place to be.
It’s all about making somebody be the victim, and then trying to make them as miserable as possible. It’s despicable behavior, and they claim to be Christians, they are very far removed from those ideals, karma is keeping tabs and won’t be denied in the end.
<<Trump’s own words from a rally this weekend in the broiling Nevada desert in which he said he didn’t want people to keel over because: “We need every voter. I don’t care about you. I just want your vote. I don’t care.”>>
Not infrequently, Trump blurts out whatever is on his mind. So it was, when he spoke of immigrants from Mexico being rapists and murderers. So it was, when he came up with this ban of people from majority Muslim countries. So it was, when he spoke about NATO countries not "paying" their fair share. So it has been and will be, every time he spews his hate speech or narcissistic nonsense.
We have all known that for Trump, it is ALL about himself, not anyone else. Nevertheless, these Trump voters will remain deaf to his self-confessed proclamation: "I don't care about you" and they will declare their loyalty to him and their undying love.
Those words of Trump and the shameless sycophancy of so many Americans sums up what is a great tragedy for Democracy in America and why H.L. Mencken saw it regressing to the lowest common denominator.
The lowest common denominator, exemplified by the likes of Marjorie Taylor Greene, Steve Bannon, Samuel Alito, Mike Johnson, and the lesser MAGA Maggots like Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, Jon Eastman, Jim Jordan, etc., etc. tells us not only how low we have sunk but how much worse it can get. As we watch, Mitch McConnell who said that Trump was morally responsible for January 6, Bill Barr who declared his election fraud claims "Bullshit" and Nikki Haley who said he was unfit to be President, turn around and suck up to this Seditionist pig, we can either rally our fellow Americans to see that he never gets within sniffing distance of the White House, or lament the end of the glory that was America.
It's a story that continues to be written on fresh pages every day. Let us not run out of paper.
Why was Mencken pessimistic and MLK (The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice) optimistic? Because Mencken was observing some of the relevant evidence and MLK was observing all the relevant evidence.
That's an interesting observation. I wonder if it is too glib. Of course, one can argue that ALL who comment on events affecting the nation or the world are analyzing only part of the evidence and not all of it. I've never thought that ANYONE has been able to synthesize ALL of the evidence. Of course, you qualify this by referring to "relevant evidence" and that, of course, makes it subjective. What is relevant and how is that determined?
Rules on the admissibility of evidence in legal cases shed some light on the subject. The original common law rules of evidence have been codified into the Federal Rules of Evidence and cognate state codes.
MLK, Jr. and Mencken were both expressing opinions. Were these opinions based on relevant evidence or did each of them succumb to confirmation bias or simply express despair or hope? Consider the clickbait value of the statements of each.
Here is what the basic rule on relevance says:
Rule 401 – Test for Relevant Evidence
Evidence is relevant if:
(a) it has any tendency to make a fact more or less probable than it would be without the evidence; and
(b) the fact is of consequence in determining the action.
This leads logically to Rule 402 which states:
Relevant evidence is admissible unless any of the following provides otherwise:
the United States Constitution;
a federal statute;
these rules; or
other rules prescribed by the Supreme Court.
Irrelevant evidence is not admissible.
Below is a commentary on Rule 401.
Definition of Relevant Evidence: According to Rule 401, evidence is considered relevant if:
It has any tendency to make a fact more or less probable than it would be without the evidence; and
The fact is of consequence in determining the action.
Tendency to Prove or Disprove a Fact: This part of the rule emphasizes that for evidence to be relevant, it doesn’t need to conclusively prove a fact; it only needs to make the fact more or less likely to be true.
Materiality: The fact that the evidence seeks to prove or disprove must be significant to the case—it must be a “fact of consequence.” This means the evidence must relate directly to the issues or elements in dispute in the case.
Threshold for Relevance: The threshold for relevance under this rule is quite low. Evidence doesn’t need to be conclusive or even strongly indicative of a particular fact; it merely needs to contribute in some way to making a fact at issue more or less likely.
Foundation for Admissibility: Rule 401 sets the basic standard for whether evidence should be admitted in court. Evidence that does not meet this relevance standard is generally inadmissible, although relevant evidence can still be excluded under other rules if its probative value is substantially outweighed by certain other factors.
Federal Rule of Evidence 401 establishes the criteria for determining the relevance of evidence in federal court. Evidence is relevant if it has any tendency to make a fact of consequence in the case more or less probable. This rule is crucial as it serves as the foundation for deciding whether evidence can be presented to the court.
Not to put too fine a point on it, a fact is a fact and a probablility is a probability. That a something is more probable doesn't make it any more or less factual. A fact simply is. A probability could become a fact or not when proven or not.
I take your point. In absolute terms, if one says that A is a fact, there should be no dispute about it because it is either a fact or not a fact.
The context in which the Rules of Evidence play a role is one in which a jury is required to determine what the facts are. Let me give you a simple example. In an automobile accident case, A's and B's vehicles are involved in a collision. A says that he had a green light and B says that HE had a green light.
A jury is asked to decide who is right, i.e., what is the FACT about the state of the light for A and B (assume that the light system is working properly, and both cannot have a green light simultaneously.)
So, you have A and B each testify that he had a green light.
If you had a witness on either side who saw the accident and can say who had the green light, that would be direct evidence and it would be evidence that tended to make a fact (whether A or B had the green light) more or less probable. If the witness said A had the green light and the jury believed the witness (the witness was independent, not related to either party and had an opportunity to view the situation and appears to be of sound mind and recall).
Now, consider that there is a witness who says he did not see the collision, but he saw B suddenly slow down as he approached the intersection and then he (the witness) turned his head and did not see the collision. That evidence is relevant because it is circumstantial evidence that the light had either turned yellow or was red, causing B to slow down.
Or another witness says that he didn't see the accident, but just before he heard the collision, he saw some pedestrians who were waiting to cross start to walk into the intersection on the side of the road away from B's car as it approached. This evidence is also relevant as it makes the fact that the WALK light for the pedestrians likely came on and from that one can infer that B's light had turned red.
So, I'll conclude by saying that whereas you are correct in what you write, a "fact" is not established until it is established as a fact. Until then, it's just a probability to be sorted out.
Thanks Anil. I fully take your point in the context of a courtroom. But in reality (the courtroom being, instead, a review that determines what was real), a fact is always a fact, whether or not it's ever confirmed. Take a line call in tennis. The line judge rules it out, but it goes to a video review that shows the ball was in. The review confirmed that the ball was in but, in fact it was always in, and that was the fact of the matter, not the confirmation, which itself became a different fact in the same way that a trial verdict itself becomes a fact. In other words, a thing is factually real independent of any after-the-fact opinion. One of the great things about Heather's blog is that we can hold these opinions and conversations. I can say Trump doesn't always lie, but he is a liar, and have almost everyone agree that both things can be true. ;>} (Where's my smiley face when I need it?)
But what of the situation in which the linesman makes a call that is wrong, the Chair umpire does not overrule, and the player is out of challenges? Then the "fact" is that the ball was either in or out when it wasn't, and a non-fact is a fact in that circumstance for that match.
Or an NFL player catches a ball but the replay official in his judgment says the catch did not survive impact - video shows that it did but this guy got it wrong - or the team that is out of challenges and the "fact" of a incomplete pass is established for a pass that should have been called complete?
Everything needs context.
As for Trump, he is a liar. His latest is denying that he did not call the war dead of WWI and WWII or one or both, losers and suckers. Evidence to the contrary is from General Kelly (Kelley?) and Trump has said similar things in the past.
My right-wing yahoo friends tell me that I have TDS - Trump Derangement Syndrome.
I tell them that they are not qualified to make a diagnosis since medical degrees from Trump University don't count.
However, I tell them that they have TDS Syndrome. Trump D*** Sucker.
Thanks for the education. I'm an engineer, so I value standards, but only if they are providing value. Allow me to provide an alternative and simpler perspective.
MLK and Mencken did the same thing. They observed (effectively) the same evidence (society), made potentially erroneous but testable assumptions, and drew a conclusion, except MLK's conclusion was optimistic, and Mencken's was pessimistic.
If two parties, say you and me, find ourselves in a similar situation, then there's an assumption flaw (the way that at least one of us has connected the evidence to the conclusion), or at least one of us has excluded evidence the other included. We can and should seize the opportunity. To do that, I must describe and allow you to challenge my assumptions, and you must describe and allow me to challenge your assumptions. The only obstacle to identifying logic flaws and/or confirmation bias is our mutual willingness to reveal our own ignorance.
What you describe is in some part, what is called the scientific method (finding a way to repeat the result to verify a hypothesis) and in part the process of legal reasoning. (Yes, I understand that the scientific method has a more rigorous requirement of proof than my simple overview).
It should be the process by which we conduct ourselves in society, respecting the views of others even if we disagree and having the courage to agree by different routes.
This is the process that is so missing, so, so missing in American life and particularly in the political sphere.
He points out that the lack of experienced staff initially as well as COVID hampered some of Trump’s plans for revenge. No such restraints will exist next time around, if there is a next time.
Got me. I spoke too soon cos for some reason I was thinking "the next time around" referred to the next pandemic, NOT the butthole being reelected My mistake.
My favorite parts of Heather's today come in the middle.
That's where she lists Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives who voted "no" on the various Biden programs to provide much-needed help to the American people. The hypocrites (that word interchangeable with the word Republican) continuously follow the demented demands of their fat, orange, criminally convicted cult leader, but then seek the afterglow limelight of Biden's successes.
"She has attended a highway ribbon cutting and boasted of the modernization of locks and dams on the Mississippi River in her district despite her “no” vote."
Because they're happy to hear a politician -- a presidential candidate -- attacking the same people they don't like, and it validates their own nasty beliefs. They ignore the rest because it doesn't conflict with their desire to hurt and oppress "others".
The technique worked unfortunately well in Germany, from 1933 onwards.
We know the innumerable deaths and devastation it led to. The damage is still with us.
Given the fact that America's material power and military might are far, far greater than what wrecked Europe from 1939 onwards, the global danger posed by the MAGA candidate is immeasurably greater than anything in history. Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Genghis Khan pale into insignificance compared to any fool in the White House.
And those who should know better still persist in presenting Trump as a "normal" candidate...
Exactly. They need some big bad wolf to blame instead of realizing the impact of their ideologies. Now they’re all regressing into children demanding they get what they want.
That’s always such a complex reference… memory of Jim Jones & over 100 American human beings, many of them children, who perished at the command of a very different distressed human ‘leader’ cant’ remember name of country…
I believe that the cult dynamics are pretty much the same. That's how the "Republican" party gets to call the J6 attackers "ordinary citizens" and heroes, when massive documentation shows they are not. Cults are designed to take over the brain. Evidence and logic are rejected reflexively.
I’m tired, it’s still hard to believe that anyone, any two parents, any people can be caught up by the clearly anger-based fulminations of a Trump or a Jim Jones. Both believe they are worthy of being followed… I’m going to give up for tonite!
Heaven's Gate member took cyanide in order join the spaceship hidden in the tail of the comet Hale-Bopp. That might be even crazier than the claims of MTG, and anyway they proved willing to die for it. Cults trump logic for believers. Those afflicted will kill themselves, or kill you for perfect nonsense.
I remember that. The cultists were seeking to "shed their containers" so they could get to the spaceship. There was one survivor who was convinced she had been left behind.
Thank you. Sad thing is. They know me and know that I’m not an evil Dem. But still buy that moniker for so many others. Fox is the explanation in every case
There was an old interview in the 1980’s. I saw it, heard it and found it, when asked what Party DJT would run as, he said, “Probably Republican, because they are the dumbest!”
Can’t find the video of the interview. David Pecker must have purchased the copyright and buried it.
Ooohhhh boy! That crazy “speech” from
the other day in Nevada was the nuttiest one yet. And, I noticed that all of those people standing behind him were, basically, expressionless the whole time.
I feel like we are living in the upside down much of the time…
Thank goodness for the beautiful D-Day celebration that POTUS & FLOTUS attended in France. It was solemn and reverent, as it should be. Biden’s speeches were excellent, and his genuine concern and respect for others shines through. 💙🇺🇸💙
The Biden Campaign should just show the footage of him talking, with each sentence unconnected to the one preceding and the one following, unedited. Do a 60-second ad, followed by the question "Is this trainwreck what you really want?"
Chump writes ads for Dems with every utterance. Fox edits with a vengeance but nobody else should have that agenda. And Fox is the known Fox in our media hen house.
I have a couple of friends that still support Trump. They get 100% of their news from Fox News and their local TV stations.
Imagine all of the horrible things MAGAs and Evangelicals do every day that they have no clue about.
Our “free press” is guilty also, but Fox is the master propaganda outlet. Edits the news. Omit the worst of the Repub agenda and word salad, and report every sneeze of Biden and his family. The “editors wouldn’t dare report it all, or report on what Biden has done for the people. A big bus parked West of me has a big sign “Biden must go.” What fools we Texans be.
Amen! We have a lot of fools in Indiana too. I guess I have the wrong friends and family!
Ugh. People who only watch Fox News, Truth Social, and the like have no clue. They just cite lies, lies, and more lies. Fox Spews.
I mean no disrespect. Instead, I have an honest question I hope someone can answer. Why does everyone seem to focus so much on who is lying and who is telling the truth? It's not hard to think of contexts where lying is a very good thing, or where telling the truth is a very bad thing. Wouldn't explicit statements contrasting the interests the two parties intend to serve make the difference between any two candidates more obvious?
Something like: do you want the "divide and conquer" Republican candidate, or the "united we stand and divided we fall" Democrat candidate?
I get it that lies and truth imply what interest is being served, but if one wants to cure the disease, one must go beyond merely treating its symptoms.
We can try to argue policy, which I think is what you are saying. But this is cult behavior, and they aren't interested.
Think about the people who escaped Jim Jones's murderous klan. There were some, but they had to experience the danger personally.
We need deprogrammers, because that is what is going on.
Fox is far too ubiquitous.
I also mean no disrespect, but I held my tongue after the Newt Gingrich/Frank Luntz GoPac memo, "Language: A Key Mechanism of Control" had become more publicly known (after the 1994 mid terms if I recall correctly). I had hoped that the party leaders would regain their senses and quit trying to making every Democrat and their ideas demons (so much so that they shouldn't socialize or even talk to their counterparts in the opposite party). I had hoped that they at least had legitimate differences in views but could actually implement policies both sides could accept. Instead the appeared to go scorched earth on me and advocate policies so far from what I could agree with (as a then 50 year old life long Republican). I left the party around the same time Elizabeth Warren did, for much the same reasons.
My old party operates like a ratchet, never give an inch no matter what, and steal an inch or a mile or two anytime given a chance to do so. They are way beyond anything I can support with the senseless tax cuts and Grover Norquist demands for Republican "No New Tax" pledges valued over oaths to flag and country. Reagan at least took back about a third of the excessive tax cuts he got passed (though he would never call them tax increases, just adjustments). Grover Norquist torpedoed George H.W. Bush's reelection over what he implied was a violation of that oath.
I believe that GHW Bush had started the decrease in deficit that Bill Clinton was able to finally turn into an annual surplus, but Grover Norquist helped kill that recovery by arguing that after 9/11 and the start of the GWOT we needed to cut taxes instead of raising them like we had done in every previous war in our history.
My wife had always figured our taxes well enough to be with in a dollar or 2 up until GW Bush gave us that $600 stimulus check as prepayment on the "benefits" of the tax cut coming. When the tax came due she was proud to say we were going to get a $2 refund, at least until I asked her if that included the $600 pre-refund. She was beyond incensed when we had to pay $598 to make up for it.
I'm still incensed at all the tricks they use and refusal to ever consider anything anyone else every did well (unless they could get the credit for it even while having voted against it). I tried supporting Christie Todd Whitman and once wrote in Sheila Bair (when doing so in California wouldn't hurt Democrats), but otherwise haven't voted for any Republican (even ones I liked) in over 2 decades. Voting for ones I liked always meant they might help give my old party a majority with the worst actors I could imagine overriding any good they might try to do.
I'm considering giving up 27 years of being registered as independent and registering as a Democrat for the foreseeable future.
Simon Rosenberg( HCR referenced today) is a data-driven strategist who uses simple, repetitive messaging.He is gaining a LOT of traction with the media.Simon is also the one who accurately predicted the faux red wave of ‘22.
Yes Trump Is A Bad Man, A Serial Criminal, But His Agenda Is Even Worse-
Joe Biden is a good and successful President. The country is better off, and will be far better under his leadership in the next 4 years
The Democratic Party is strong, winning elections across the country, raising tons of money and building the most powerful political machine we’ve ever had
And they have Trump - the ugliest political thing we’ve all ever seen - a rapist, fraudster, traitor, felon - and is leading a party that looks far more like the Star Wars bar than the party of Lincoln and Reagan
https://www.hopiumchronicles.com/p/making-june-count-trump-is-a-bad?r=fqsxl&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
"It's not hard to think of contexts where lying is a very good thing, or where telling the truth is a very bad thing." Well - I think the mainstreaming of lies is a large part of the problem we have in our country right now. A good democracy just cannot function if voters cannot tell what is up and what is down. Our free speech that we are so proud of is biting us in the a_s. We have a powerful political party with an unpopular world view that has had to resort to lies and corruption to gain, or maintain, or increase power. That is not right, and it should be called out strongly. That in addition to policy discussion.
We focus on lying vs telling the truth because that is the central issue people have with government.
No, there are no contexts where lying is a good thing and telling the truth is a bad thing; not for adults. One of the central issues of the last 70 years has been the discovery of all the lies we were told as children. People see this as betrayal and that is why the conservatives are fighting so hard to protect their lies/rewriting of history.
"Fox Spews." 👍🏼👍🏿👍
They just have no idea what the truth is. What they hear is all the negative about Democrats. It is totally sad. I really believe we will have that idiot Braun as our new governor in Indiana. We have such a good candidate who was a former Republican. She is running because she was inside and knew how the Republicans are hurting our state. It is really sad!
Worse than sad. To me, it's unbearable.
I suggest you ask your friends this: Suppose Trump saw you get hit by a car. Do you think he’d call 911? Or, suppose that there was a fire and one of Trump’s children was inside the building. Do you think he would try to go in to save them?
Show them Timothy Snyder’s essay from this morning. Fox just parrots Russian propaganda. If only people could get that through their heads, it would sure help them understand.
The Lincoln Project ads on YouTube have several dozen ads doing just that.
Stuart Stevens and others at the Lincoln Project are 1) concentrating on the swing states knowing that a few percentage points in Biden's favor will win him reelection and 2) their ads really piss off Convicted Felon Donald Trump.
Thanks Gary, giving The Lincoln Project a round of applause too. Stand up comedians and the endless talk show hosts have had years of script writing from that circus ! Books written! Lawyers havens. Jails filling with the previous Trump Team …the list gets even longer. Sad stuff for his merry sycophants .
Meanwhile back at HQ alias The White House , a classy team forges ahead , records of ground breaking advances and shoring up confidence . Competency is needed in a world of crisis. Autocracy ‘on the rise’ always creates havoc .
Thank you President Biden your leadership , your team sets the bar again .
💙💙VOTE LL THE COMPLICIT OUT💙💙
Patricia, I’m sharing the emails of what Biden’s doing on a daily basis with friends as talking points—it’s amazing how much they’re doing behind the scenes.
https://whatdidbidendotoday.substack.com/
Thanks , Mary ..we are too, it’s a real grass roots movement rather monumentous by many a mention. Especially in our own community.Blood red WV here and wonderfully supportive commentary…🙌
Ever since the Murdoch owned WSJ hit piece on Biden last week where they basically reiterated the shamed former Speaker BS about Biden's acuity, there have been many more hit pieces about Biden's mental competence.
As Jennifer Rubin opined yesterday, the MAGAs and evangelicals have nothing so they are attacking Biden's mental fitness. And, of course it's almost all lies, but that doesn't matter to the current GOP
Oh they’ll have it “ in a couple of weeks”, right?😉🤣🤣
It’s sadly a hilarious sh*t show, numbers dimishing, the lies CLASSIC, endless, like they can’t stop, patterns of the pathological! And all at taxpayers expense!
Shall I repeat that….ALL AT TAXPAYERS EXPENSE! 🤦♀️🤷♀️😔
I’m wondering what Johnathan Capehart has to say about that? The Murdoch takeover. As is the autocratic moves ..take over the press and shut out the truth. He , Johnathan, is articulate and very interesting , has Biden praise and points out good factors. As Asst Editor he must have a say in things? Maybe not.
Thank you Patricia.
I don’t see them here in WV ,maybe on cable or satellite,but not local. Lost cause ?
Sadly likely.
That really cheers me up.
TCinL, it is obvious that there is absolutely nothing and I mean nothing tRump could do or say that would cause him to lose support, because of what he represents to his aggrieved supporters. If that were not painfully true he would have been gone long ago.
He will not lose support in his hard-core base.
I'm setting them aside.
Everything now is focused on people outside that base. It's really meaningless to keep giving up because we haven't impacted the hard core base.
I see 3 groups here:
1. Koolaid drinking hard core always-Trumpers.
2. Magas who like him but are somewhat concerned about too much baggage and his being a felon.
3. Independents undecideds
I have written off #1. I no longer even wonder if anything could impact them. None. The kool-aid has affected their brains.
Let's focus on 2 and 3.
The 1's may be totally local to convicted felon DJT, but they not be as loyal to their House and Senate candidates. This is where the Lincoln Project ads come in. The Lincoln Project mostly goes after DJT, but they also point out others like Lindsay Graham, the Supremes, Leonard Leo, etc. whom the MAGAs may not be as loyal to.
The Supremes! I can suddenly see them in a stage line-up, in make-up, wigs and costume.
My thoughts exactly!
Don’t forget about The Hundredth Monkey Effect, Harvey.
Lol, 30 seconds should be more than good enough! As for me, i flip past the ads much as I can. Rachel Maddow, each ad segment is now 4 min 25 sec. America is ad-blitzed to death, honestly! I'm swatting them off FB since i can't ad block them.
We try to live in an ad free world. It's tough but we can try to eliminate them whenever possible. In our home, no cable TV. Our streaming services are ad free.
But they find us on the internet. We researched mattresses. No matter where I go now, mattress ads pop up. Big Brother is watching. I think, just for fun, I'll do some research on the best tequilas!
I had a hip replacement. It was two years before the hip-bones stopped appearing all over my screen. Yes, try tequila research!
I started messing with the advertising bots. Bing and MSN seem to be most susceptible, so if I'm feeling stroppy I'll query their shopping sites for something utterly stupid like 12x12 structural steel beams or a Conestoga Wagon a couple of times. Makes the targeted ads easy to see and bypass, it wastes their time, and it jams their customer profiling of you!
Had a new hip 12/6/22.
And I was home for dinner that day. Modern medicine is amazing.
So grateful. Cheers!
Bill, I find this very annoying. I have taken to swatting them off Facebook as Frank puts it. As for TV ads, our mute button works overtime and the word mute hasn't been there for a long time. We do watch local and and national news on the NBC affiliate in Portland (OR) and a few sports events, but the rest is streaming series.
We've only seen one ad recently and that's from this republican candidate in Maine, austin theriault. And that we only see while watching the local news from Bangor via Paramount+. It's what you would expect, a trump-endorsed parade of lies and half-truths.
Why, whenever possible, I either record them for playback so I can say "Siri fast forward 4 and an half minutes" or watch the next day on Peacock, Hulu or Paramount+ where the commercials are removed and you can watch the hour long show in 40 minutes.
I watch everything online. I haven't seen an ad in over 20 years. Cancel your TV subscription and put the savings into faster internet. You will never look back.
Been streaming for about 10 years on a 1Gb connection and subscribe to several services like Netflix, Prime, etc. Also use Sling for national and world news channels I can't get for free.
Yes. Streaming is the way to go. No ads, and you can watch what you want, when you want. No erecording and fast forwarding through the ads. No having to be in front of your TV at a certain date and time. Spread the joys od streaming.
I've never had TV. Why is my internet ad-infested?
Anne-Louise, While not knowing the particulars, an ad blocker will help. I use Ad Block but there are others. Ad Block can be downloaded from getadblock dot com/en. I don't get any ads, anywhere. Once installed, highlight the ad and report it to Ad Block. You will never see that ad again. You will see essentially the same ad with some changes so Ad Block might not recognize it. When that happens, report the ad to Ad Blocker. It is a long process but worth it. Good luck.
I have a built-in voice command in my remote, only pre-record the shows i'm usually interested in for a copy or two, internet often posts ad-free highlights of prev day even earlier sometimes on msnbc eg.
I use Apple TV to stream and YouTube TV to record. I time shift everything I watch, I have done that ever since the first TiVo devices were sold 20+ years ago. I like to watch multi day sporting events and the ads are insufferable 😫, I might watch some of the ads during the Masters because they are speaking to me and they are so well done, MSNBC’s ads are among the worst. I’ll have to try to get Siri to do my fast forwarding for me it would save me a bunch of button pushes. 👍😎
It depends on the app you are using to watch, sometimes it will say it can't fast fwd because the app won't allow it. For that you have to manually scroll. Oh the pain! 😫
Agree re MSNBC ads. Interesting that, based on their ubiquitous pharma ads, their target audience is what I would have thought was the pro-Trump viewer, 60+ year olds...
The ads are what they are because major corporations refuse to be associated with MSBNC except in small doses during Prime Time. MSNBC would love to air high dollar ads but beggars can't be choosers.
In addition, the Dem PR campaign should make clear that the Republican congresspeople are taking credit for measures which they voted against. It's not just Trump. They all have to go.
TCinLA Thats Another Fine Mess - "The Biden Campaign should just show the footage of him talking, with each sentence unconnected to the one preceding and the one following, unedited."
Biden wanted to use his trip to speak to a domestic as well as international audience. He hoped the symbolism of all that America did, and of the heroic sacrifices made by Americans, to rescue Europe from the grip of fascism would rally contemporaries to the cause of saving democracy.
It was a noble ambition, but one that is unlikely to pay big dividends.
First there is the simple fact that Americans are woefully ill informed about our past, including about what happened on D-Day. As journalist Nicholas Goldberg wrote last year, “𝑀𝑜𝑠𝑡 𝐴𝑚𝑒𝑟𝑖𝑐𝑎𝑛𝑠 𝑑𝑜𝑛’𝑡 𝑘𝑛𝑜𝑤 𝑤ℎ𝑖𝑐ℎ 𝑐𝑜𝑢𝑛𝑡𝑟𝑖𝑒𝑠 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑈𝑛𝑖𝑡𝑒𝑑 𝑆𝑡𝑎𝑡𝑒𝑠 𝑓𝑜𝑢𝑔ℎ𝑡 𝑎𝑔𝑎𝑖𝑛𝑠𝑡 𝑖𝑛 𝑊𝑜𝑟𝑙𝑑 𝑊𝑎𝑟 𝐼𝐼 𝑜𝑟 𝑤ℎ𝑒𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑈.𝑆. 𝐶𝑜𝑛𝑠𝑡𝑖𝑡𝑢𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑤𝑎𝑠 𝑟𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑓𝑖𝑒𝑑. … 𝑀𝑎𝑛𝑦 𝑝𝑒𝑜𝑝𝑙𝑒 𝑡𝑜𝑑𝑎𝑦 𝑑𝑜 𝑛𝑜𝑡 𝑘𝑛𝑜𝑤 𝑤ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝐷-𝐷𝑎𝑦 𝑖𝑠 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑤ℎ𝑦 𝑖𝑡 𝑖𝑠 𝑐𝑒𝑙𝑒𝑏𝑟𝑎𝑡𝑒𝑑 𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑦 𝑦𝑒𝑎𝑟.”
The Economic Times reports, for example, that “𝑎 𝑢𝑠𝑒𝑟 𝑎𝑡 𝑅𝑒𝑑𝑑𝑖𝑡 𝑤𝑟𝑜𝑡𝑒, ‘𝐼 𝑡ℎ𝑜𝑢𝑔ℎ𝑡 𝐷 𝑖𝑛 𝐷-𝐷𝑎𝑦 𝑤𝑎𝑠 𝑠ℎ𝑜𝑟𝑡 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝐷𝑜𝑜𝑚𝑠𝑑𝑎𝑦.’ 𝐴𝑛𝑜𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟 𝑢𝑠𝑒𝑟 𝑤𝑟𝑜𝑡𝑒, ‘𝐷𝑖𝑑𝑛’𝑡 𝐷 𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝐷𝑒𝑐𝑖𝑠𝑖𝑜𝑛?’” Hard to enlist people to follow an example about which they are profoundly ignorant.
Even if they knew about D-Day, Biden’s audience has much less belief in, or reverence for, heroes... More than two decades ago, Harvard University’s Peter Gibbon argued that Americans no longer believe in heroes.
https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/4713503-joe-biden-d-day-speech-wont-save-democracy/
I frequently goon Fox News read and comment ridiculing everything Trump and magas stand for. I suggest that everyone do likewise.
Right on, TC!
I would really think he is only a puppet. Many if not most of y’all know way more than me..I’m fascinated by only a number, the real power mongers are behind the scenes pulling the strings. Probably chump change to them what ‘he’ll’ accept in the many ‘bribes’ -malleable is key, and many tell the tale of considerably unmanageable . His character is played over and over by wanna be heads of departments, ministers of this or that societal programs, all looking for pocket change and moving on up. Putin’s regime ,with several others, lay the scene out , have for years, a long list of disappeared, fell out of windows, became ill/poisoned/otherwise fallen from ‘Grace’ …important going to get richer pons/‘advisors’ until they step across boundary lines …and there’s boundaries in every hierarchy .No rules there , fyi
So what’s the end game? And for who? I suspect not here in the ‘good ol’USA.
The track record of Biden is squeaky clean, doing for/helping the disadvantaged/disenfranchised, class act speeches,carriage, church attendance , fidelity, choice of team mates, accomplishments, and genuine world leaders. His only ‘faults’ are he’s a Democrat (1) smartly decent (2)..and not going to be anyone’s puppet (3).
I’ve never thought all the Republicans were bad, nor all the Democrats good. Blanket statements are fool’s utterings, yet in the same breath…there’s an awful lot of people fooled.
I’m not convinced the Dems can win, nor the Republicans will lose.
Every blue choice hand needs to be on deck if we want to give ‘our best shot’. It was stats last 2020 voting period , told what real effort can do , 66% voter participation was beat only one other time…
Can we get to 75%?
It’s up to each one registered -🫵 included , and bring as many friends as possible , please 🫶
Because it’s going to take this Blue Army to do it.
💙💙VOTE .ALL .THE. COMPLICIT . OUT.💙💙
Sign me up
A Propos of D-Day, Guilty Donny has also recently been trying to convince his base that he never EVER called soldiers "suckers and losers". (His thin skin must be burning.)
It's not working. There's just too many historic news articles of him disrespecting vets, wounded soldiers, Gold Star families, etc. , so all he's succeeded in doing is make himself look like a bigger liar than ever. Also, the Biden campaign released an ad that took him apart over his statements. see <https://youtu.be/REhPyhejGr8>
As a Marine widow that was horrifying.
My dad was a WWII disabled veteran. He struggled for years to find a job. The orignal $30 a month for his partial disability didn't go very far but my parents did as much for us kids as they could afford.
I realize there are hundreds of thousands of families who have one or both parents with war wounds that are struggling to make ends meet. So many employers are unwilling to give a disabled people a chance.
Convicted Felon Donald Trump's comment about those who serve their country being "suckers and losers" seems to fall on deaf ears with many veterans I know.
My question is "how can they support a draft dodger" that thinks so little of their service to this country?
Good question. How can they support him...how can anyone support such a corrupt person? Brain washing works. Repeat the ilie often enough and it is believed. So far it is working for him and his MAGA followers. The Biden Team needs to be on the defensive AND the offensive at the same time. Point out the obvious lies and at the same time tout the amazing accomplishments.
My heart goes out to you, Gary. So sorry to hear about your dad. So terribly unfair and inhumane to sacrifice young lives to war only to abandon them when they need assistance in return.
Its a conundrum. Maybe General Milley can have a “talk” with them
What General Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, did that day in full camo, when Trump strode across that protestor freed square with his upside down Bible, followed by the general, Ivanka with purse and other officials, in retrospect seems even more egregious. He managed to get Americans to distrust the military. The military has always seemed like a big neutral force, not a political force. When my husband was a Captain in the late fifties many of his fellow officers did not vote at all to preserve their detachment. General Milley later apologized but the image remains. That and the late arrival of National Guard troops on January 6th was another shove into the sea of unrest.
Milley was tricked into that as a last minute happening and recognized it as events unfolded. Read his account
George Washington argued with the Continental Congress to pay his men what had been promised to them. So since the beginning of the country, it has been necessary to fight for veterans' benefits.
The shameful treatment of The Bonus Army comes to mind.
My condolences on your loss. Another Marine guarding the gates of heaven. Semper Fi.
Sabrina, my condolences.
As a citizen of the United States, that is horrifying.
Bless you 🙏
Vietnam draft dodger—bone spurs and cowardice. https://www.militarytimes.com/news/pentagon-congress/2019/02/27/trumps-lawyer-no-basis-for-presidents-medical-deferment-from-vietnam/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMpdCuoZ-xs
Pass it on. Link to Facebook military sites. 4 million people on Facebook are veterans or active duty members. 12.5 million people on Facebook are family members of a veteran or an active duty member. 242 million people on Facebook are friends with one or more veterans or active duty members.
Yes Daniel ; That's how it's done.
Great link, Daniel. Here's another one - the American economy is the envy of the world, from The Atlantic: https://mail.aol.com/d/folders/1/messages/AKNbW9UA3uiaZmeixQUYsLGGC7Y
I'm gifting article from The Atlantic
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/06/us-economy-excellent/678630/?gift=1Ox86a92XSR5HQqRL88M1xL8CA6ZpHm5R4dhOhCpgzk&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share
Traditionally the military, like the police, tend to support GOP more than Dems?
Yes. Many thought that Trump was their commander in chief. But now, "not suckers or losers" repeated as a mantra flips a lot of them.
So hoping! but eg, funny to see a pro military guy put the military intel failure on the president instead of on in situ intelligence failures, and of course Trump, who pulled the rug out from under the government.
https://www.military.com/daily-news/opinions/2024/05/31/americas-veterans-need-second-term-of-president-trump.html
Never forget: Trump cares only for Trump. Period. He doesn't care about our soldiers, our poor, our downtrodden masses. And he never will.
"I don't care about you. I just want your vote." Convicted felon Donald Trump.
CFDT is never afraid to say the quiet part out loud. And his MAGAs either pretend it was a joke or that he never said it.
Or that, bizarrely, they don't think it will apply to them, in their homes, in their communities. He doesn't care!!!!
They may have buyers' remorse if, God forbid, he is reelected.
YUP, they actually laughed when he said that. You can hear it in the speech clip.
Yes! Since the first election, I’ve dreamed of bumper stickers and billboards that say, “Trump doesn’t care about _____.” (Religion, abortion, your family, your small business, etc.) and just some that say, “Trump doesn’t care.”
Doesn’t even care about supporters. He said so to them in Nevada.
The question is, are active members of the military and their families paying attention? If all THEY watch is Fox News/Spews, they're not going to see these news articles or Biden's ads.
That active members of the military watch Fox News is another heavy straw on the Democracy camel’s back. Fox News is not real news and should be disallowed in the military. That the military is watching Fox News is a big part of the takedown the extreme right is planning.
Thank you so much for that link. I hadn't seen this ad and it took my breath away.
The contrast with Trump couldn’t be more stark.
"The contrast with Trump couldn’t be more stark."
Within the realm of reason the contrast between a second Biden administration and the Heritage Society's Project 2025 couldn't be more stark. But what has reason to do with it? Yes, we need to better spotlight Biden administration many accomplishments. But how to focus the electorate? Aside from the obvious elephants in the room - Trump, MAGA, the GOP, and entire right wing apparatus at wits end, RFKjr et al agitating to elect Trump - there is our role in the Hamas Israel war and implication in disastrous and possibly criminal Netanyahu regime actions.
If on the verge of Netanyahu's congressional campaign to reelect Trump, Biden's diplomatic success at the United Nation Security Council translates into actual implementation - as mitigation of suffering through ceasefire, hostage release, and aid to Gaza - then that might be a significant turning point. But nothing changes our urgent need to Get Out The Vote,
I encouraged a young guy at Costco to vote years ago, if not in 2016, it was 2020. He wasn't really paying attention until I started talking to him. I remember after we barely escaped a second trump presidency, I backed off and just said hello whenever I saw him. Yesterday I got a wake up call when I asked him can you believe how crazy things have gotten. He became animated unlike ever before and launched into a tirade about how they're all criminals and said Biden is just as bad as the rest of them, especially those working behind the scenes. He kept asking me what I thought about being in debt to China as if that was was our most pressing issue. I asked him why was he spouting right wing talking points. He said he wasn't. I said if you're distracted by economic policies that you know nothing about while Republicans are stripping our rights away, you've been had. We were at the point of causing a scene right there in Costco. I finally got his attention when I told him about Project 2025. I made him look it up while I was standing there. This is exhausting, people.
Next time you see him, can you direct him to the youtube channel, "Beau of the Fifth Column"? I think Beau's common sense plain talk might appeal to him. He puts up several clips a day, and a longer version "The Roads with Beau" on Thursdays and Sundays. Here's a sample from yesterday:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXqVpPkoclc
I subscribe to Beau too. I will try that next. Thank you!
😲
Why is Netanyahu being heard, he is a murdering bastard who is on chump’s team. Ask the questions, MSM
"Why is Netanyahu being heard, he is a murdering bastard who is on chump’s team. Ask the questions, MSM"
Asked and answered in by MSM and others.
Although Trump is personally pissed at Netanyahu for recognizing the 2020 election, they share the AIPAC and Evangelical base. Netanyahu has extended and amplified the war in part to split the Democratic vote. Netanyahu's personal career and the agenda of his coalition were served by Trump, and Trump is their best bet for a blank check and full approval for their worst abuses.
And Netanyahu is and was a chump nut. Both trying to avoid jail. And get revenge. Power has its perks.
I think Israel's military policies are more the result of a hard-line anti-Palestinian cabinet with huge support in the country. 1200 murdered Israelis is behind that, not to mention the remaining hostages, many of whom have died. And those who dump on these hardliners would do well to remember just what started this, and that HAMAS fighters are the children of Gazan families. When's the last time you heard news of Gazans turning in HAMAS fighters? Think about it.
I agree that Hamas is horrible. So is Netanyahu. Can’t find a good guy with a microscope. The big mistake was been going on forever. Building boom on Palestinian land told me years ago that trouble was going to be worse than what the idiot Arafat provoked. Sorry, but Netanyahu has undone the goodwill from the Holocaust. Just like W spent the goodwill toward us after 9/11. Hard to find innocents anywhere.
I think these arguments do nothing to advance a resolution.
Hamas is brutal, and care nothing for Palestinians. Neither do the Israelis.
But they are the murdered ones, while each side pursues vengeance for real wrongs. If you are blind to those from the Israeli side, then you are advancing the problem.
The ONLY way out is forward. A livable future for the Palestinians, whose homes have been destroyed in vengeful Israeli zeal. A determination to coexist, with rights, and the buy in from neighboring Arab countries. That was imminent, according to reporting, before hamas blew it up.
The way to defeat hamas is for it to find no safe harbor. Not in Arab countries not among the cowed and terrified Palestinians who "don't turn in hamas".
Two state solution, with buy in from all parties. Hamas won't be a party to it, but they can be made pariahs. What Israel is doing is just creating new generations of Hamas.
"Huge support"? I thought that most Israelis want Netanyahu out.
"I think Israel's military policies are more the result of a hard-line anti-Palestinian cabinet with huge support in the country."
I suggest you look into Haaretz.
https://www.haaretz.com/
The Jewish right wing religious extremists had been undermining
Israeli government for decades. They were not spawned by Palestinian terrorism but by Meir Kahane of Brooklyn who wanted a militant Jewish power
movement built on the lines of militant Black Power. He popularized 'For every Jew a 22' And imported it to Israel. Where he was declared a terrorist. A followrr assassinated Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. Not to mention the terror unleashed on Palestinians in the Occupied Territories.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meir_Kahane
To form a government Netanyahu had to ally himself with such as Itamar Ben Gvir - a Kahanist whom an earlier Israeli government declared associated with a terrorist group and Ben Gvir's party which had formerly been a pariah lunatic fringe.
The Hamas atrocities of Oct 7 did not happen in a vacuum nor were they a rupture - Netanyahu had been supporting Hamas to weaken the Palestinian Authority and it literally blew up in his face.
Meanwhile millions of Israelis have been protesting in the streets against Netanyahu for a year before Oct 7 and even now z
I must point out that the far right conservative fascists of the heritage, federalist, and the group Norquist heads all have waited for this moment in time to have their useful idiot to further their agenda. When you read of their disappointment with Reagan, HWB, and GWB you can understand. They worked for years to gain the levers of power and get people in the right positions and they just needed someone that would not care about the country and would do anything for them. They got a few of the judgeships on SCOTUS and many in the lower ranks and with the publication of Project 2025 have made public their real intentions.
Libertarians tried hard to co-opt Reagan's agenda. That's when they gave up trying to be a third party and instead burrowed themselves deep into the Republican party. I've been watching Hitler and Nazis: Evil on Trial in netflix, and in many ways, far right right Libertarians and the Christian right have followed the nazi playbook to seize power.
Right. I kept saying to myself, "This sounds so familiar."
This!!!
Thanks.
We have to take very seriously that Project 2025 is the result of a sustained effort by GOP core supporters over invested in religious ideology who pump mainly anti-abortion, getting religion, mainly evangelical style, into public service and government, regardless they are only a minority in the US electorate. This ISNT Trump driven. It has a determined life of its own, to wit also the top judiciary of the country.
Only to the extent it supports his candidacy.
RFKJR is definitely not advocating to elect Trump. He believes in restoring America to a moral leader by we the people, he can win.
RFK Jr is nut-job #2. Trump being #1. RFK's entire family is voting against him. We don't need another conspiracy theorist.
Yeah that's why he hangs out with Steve Bannon, because he only wants to restore America to a moral leader.
RFK J is anti-abortion rights.
That says it all for this individual.
AND anti-vax! Nuff said.
He is for everything Roe versus Wade decided. He wants to stop late term abortion after the fetus is viable, as did That decision. Please don’t distort this truth, vote for who you want though.
The Cat in the Hat is not a mess maker, he hires the best janitors
You're either kidding or delusional.
President Biden and Trump created exorbitant debt.Young people have a much more difficult time affording a home now, that’s why RFKJR will guarantee a 3 percent mortgage. The Democratic Party is no longer the party of peace or focused on the middle class . It’s driven by high tech billionaires.Both parties now are responding to the big money interests.Bobby will eliminate the corporate capture of our agencies so our food , environment, and drugs will be healthier and safer.Trump was awful and President Biden has fought back with anger that feeds the division.I’m very grateful that JR has accepted his call to pick up the torch from his dad.
And that what we have to sell.
The expressions are always basically expressionless, waving a poster on cue, or grinning in the hope of being on camera. I've been watching them for years.
I've read that the campaign cut an ad in Craigslist Las Vegas to pay maga supporters $75 to stand behind Trump and wave those posters.
Pathetic.
"Pathetic," David?
Business as usual. Remember, he paid all those standing by as he descended the elevator for his first announcement in 2015.
He paid Stormy. Paid the Playmate. Paid the doorman.
He's never in his life succeeded by providing a product, a service, or a government program anyone wanted. It's been a continuous series of lies, frauds, grifts instead.
But the excitement he has been able to stir up has been as real as the hatreds, fears, inferiority complexes, guilt-trips, jealousies, victimization stews, and other sensationalism into which he has tapped continuously.
Dems just don't understand how people everywhere hunger for scripts, narratives, storylines. Dems could draw on our fitting novels, memoirs, films, and other arts, but Dems went to schools with all humanities long since marginalized away.
The working classes (whose jobs the billionaires offshored by the millions) by and large could not attend elite universities. So it's our pulp fiction demographic that has hungered for -- still hungers for -- what their TV celebrity (bing-bing-boing-bong) has had to huckster.
That's America. One political class vulgarized. The other neutered.
Everything Convicted felon DJT does is transactional usually a bribe. If the DOJ were to prosecute CFDT for every crime he has committed since 2015 he would die long before they could all be heard.
and always with other peoples money = always
Why do none of his supporters question his repeated money asks v. His being “really, really rich”?
Good?
Also ask why he NEVER wins in court. NEVER.
"In this age, in this country, public sentiment is everything. With it, nothing can fail; against it, nothing can succeed. Whoever molds public sentiment goes deeper than he who enacts statutes or pronounces judicial decisions."
That is as true today as it was in the age it was expressed by Abraham Lincoln. If one political class is vulgarized and the other neutered, then they are vulgarized and neutered by public sentiment.
Politics is not a spectator sport. If you have the legal right to vote, you are a member of the political class. IMHO, that's America.
Something in that comment, Phil. Not sure the "other" has been exactly neutered. Otherwise, no 2020, and only a minor hit in 2022, with repeated Dem off-year election successes, plebescites taking down anti-abortion extremism.
We owe so much to these women -- agreed, Frank.
Someone should be writing a history now of many of them -- key players. I suspect you are more than correct -- many, many of them fueled by our great movies, songs, novels, memoirs.
How much are other Dems neutered? That's a question of simple arithmetic, Frank -- as in look at the list below. On any site where Dems with their comments appear, count how many references appear to any of the humanities on this list (or any good substitute humanities you like):
. . . films like “The Florida Project” and “Winter’s Bone”; novels like Barbara Kingsolver’s “Demon Copperhead,” Walter Mosley’s “Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned,” and many by Richard Russo and Stephen King; memoirs like Mary Karr’s “The Liars’ Club,” Jeannette Walls’ “The Glass Castle,” and Erin Gruwell’s “The Freedom Writers Diary,” songs like Tim Grimm’s “Broken Truth,” Bob Segers’ “Feel Like a Number,” and any number of Bruce Springsteen or hip hop Ari Melber will cite.
The Youtube channel "Meidas Touch network" daily puts up way too many clips from their various reporters, but one constant topic is exposing Trump's scams at his false attempts to claim crowd size. They have several clips regarding that.
I would not be surprised if they report on this, also.
I saw the same information. the folks had to pick up their shirts and signs and then provide photographic proof they were there in order to get paid.
They might as well be holding signs that say “I’m a moron”, there they are with their hero right in front of them spouting nonsense and they’re just fine with that. Maybe they’re thinking “I don’t understand that, but he’s much smarter than me so he must be right”. Our education system is failing to produce educated people.
Those expressionless people standing behind Trump while he made that totally whacko speech could have been paid to be there.He has done this many times before.It still boggles my mind that this yammering idiot is who the Republican Party has picked to represent Americans on the world stage.Unbelievable.
"Yammering idiot." "I want your vote. I don't care about you . . . I don't care."
Can you believe he was once president of the US? He hasn’t got a drop of humanity in him.
He is for sale. That's pure and simple why he's there. The morbidly wealthy, for whom there is never enough, finally have a fully purchasable salesman for the ignorant, someone who can sell himself to the gullible angry while selling himself to the pure evil of greed.
Yesterday, Ben Meiselas of the Midas Touch Network showed yet another clip of people walking out on his speeches. Why stay? It's the same ol' litany about the electric boat vs shark, and complaint about the tech people who he won't pay. I knew the shark story, but it was amazing to see 4 speeches where each time he complained about the mic and/or teleprompter--and what happened to his boast about NOT using a teleprompter?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AAgtEtrfkLg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKimSoWYHnA
They are once again hiring people to fill these rallies. They provide, shirts and signs and those folks have to provide photographic evidence that they were in attendance.
“He doesn’t care.”
That should settle it.
Only if you didn't see the interviews yesterday with the lumpenproletariat in line to go to his rally. The Biden campaign should get that footage and use it in ads - remind people that the Trumpscum are the people you cross the street to avoid. America's traditional looser class.
@TCinLA/ Interviews with MAGATs. Most, if not all of the "lumpen" interviewed are probably on the Trump payroll. E.G. Michael the Black Man. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_the_Black_Man
The REAL story is that Trump is losing his attraction -- even with his base. https://rvat.org/
I'm the world's biggest victim. Vote for me.
Every time I have thought that “we’re not that stupid,” I discover that too many of us are that stupid
That’s when you discover that ‘stupid’ has a sub-basement.
Boy, do they dig down. Wish they would bury themselves
It has, Maria, it has several -- see Dante's Inferno.
It also has a hierarchy reaching high, high... the High-IQ-UltraStupids.
And while the herd is dangerous only when stampeded, these moral idiots are very dangerous indeed.
We seem to have an infestation in the US judiciary, and there have been plenty of past cases, like Kissinger, Rumsfeld or Cheney...
The 45th Occupant is a special case, Our Lord of the Streetwise... until he took that act too far and promoted himself to Sublime Unwisdom.
Now there are signs that his Satanic protections may be wearing thin...
😂
It's not that too many people are stupid, it's that too many people lack wisdom. Elon Musk, Speaker Mike, and all the Republicans in Congress that have Harvard law degrees are not stupid. They do stupid things because they lack wisdom. Translation: they care about themselves and don't care about the country. Countermeasure: don't be one of them. Instead, care about the country.
To paraphrase Tina Turner: What's intelligence got to do with it?
I’ve known some high IQ people who were stupid, ignorant, and proud. Usually greedy and fond of power as well, but not always. Just had specific skills, lacking humanity. Maybe they are not rare.
*snort*
Had to look up “lumpenproletariat”, TC. Thanks for the new word to add to my vocabulary!
Main problem's not the lumpenproles, it's the lumpenplutocrats...
😉
Lol Marlene..
They should also run clips of the rallies where the people are leaving in droves as he speaks. There is an online 30 min clip of the Wildwood, NJ rally, and a shorter one of the Vegas rally.
Remarkable - Trump actually told the truth to his supporters!
Michael. Bales - which proves the former president’s supporters never listen.
Selective spewing of hate is very popular
Maybe it's time for Melania to put on that jacket again? "I really don't care - do you?"
She probably wears it all the time but convicted felon DJT has her locked in her room.
She needs to get out and campaign for her hubby. But, like 40 of 44 cabinet members and CFDT advisors, she knows he is still unqualified to be President.
Even a stopped clock is right twice a day. I have yet to hear him speak the truth about anything, that in itself is amazing.
Truly can’t he just wander off somewhere taking his attitude with him.
That's a good point Carol. If he's reelected President his Alzheimer's may progress to the point he wanders off from the WH in the middle of the night.
Bummer to read about him getting mugged. /S
Carol O - his ego will not allow it.
He needs Melanie’s coat.
Neither did his wife.
yup. truth outs. what is excruciating is that so many are refusing to accept the truth, that it isn't only the marginalized or majority that he doesn't care about, he doesn't care about the demographic he claims to represent either. it's a sad, sick dynamic holding alliance with an abuser. I hope there is a strong enough demonstration of caring & reason by the rest of us to give these people something to believe in other than deceit & destruction.
Augh, but it won't. MAGA will continue over the cliff with him like Lemmings, and Musk/Murdoch and the usual 1%ers who don't want to pay their taxes are going to throw all the money they've got at Trump's campaign. To them, his dementia is a plus, they figure they can control him.
And, he has NEVER cared. But he has bamboozled his base into thinking he cares about them. Mind bending how his supporters don’t see it.
Biden is a guy WHO CARES ABOUT YOU:
“In November 2021, Biden signed into law the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, also known as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act. In June 2022 he signed into law the Safer Communities Act, a gun safety law. In August 2022 he signed into law the CHIPS and Science Act that invested billions in semiconductor manufacturing and science, and the Inflation Reduction Act that provided record funding for addressing climate change and permitted Medicare to negotiate with pharmaceutical companies over drug prices. Together, those legislative accomplishments rival those of Presidents Lyndon Baines Johnson and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, whose congressional majorities were far stronger than Biden’s.”
The success IS being noticed! Check out this Atlantic article from today:
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/06/us-economy-excellent/678630
Love the Atlantic!
Yes, Dr Cox Richardson made a powerful argument. And since L.B.J. was my proxy grand-pa when I was little, I was glad to see him mentioned. ✌️
He stood up for those that now denigrate him.
?
And how many rank and file repubs know this. Of course, LBJ and FDR are dirty words in repub circles. A reason to denigrate while cashing their social security checks.
In order to believe that something bad is good, you must also believe that something good is bad. That's why the bad guys always make the good guys out to be the bad guys. And that's why Republican intellectuals explicitly state refer to JFK's "ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country" as a terrible idea.
I thought the Baltimore story was terrific. Teamwork. Nobody trying to cut anyone else down.
You need quotes around the whole post as it’s from HCR’s Substack 😉 AND it’s worth reading many more times.. !
Agree..it was sloppy of me!
Sometimes through clouds of dismay at the headlines, a bright little light of hope shines.
thank you, Dr. Heather
Wow, tffg inadvertently spoke truthfully:
"Trump’s own words from a rally this weekend in the broiling Nevada desert [...]: “We need every voter. I don’t care about you. I just want your vote. I don’t care.”"
Every time he opens his mouth, it's a confession to a new crime against America.
Spew it on the cretins, Dems.
Gotta watch for the entertainment value; 'La Rage aux Folles'. 🤓
He intended that as a friendly joke. We couldn't hear the response.
It’s time to encircle the GOP and speak loudly and speak often of all the points made here. Well said Heather.
Get things to the point where they're unwilling to identify themselves as Republicans in public.
When and how will this happen, that the GOP gives up on this loser? When is happens it will come quickly, like rats leaving a sinking ship. Essentially Trump and the GOP and MAGAs generally are 'cut from the same cloth', so they are like velcro.
Don’t hold your breath. Fox is still on the job, saw a Newsmax cap the other day. The propaganda spewers are still on the job. BTW. The Epoch Times is no longer at the grocery store where I go once in a while. Maybe their connection with Fulun Gong and money laundering had an impact.
I've still got people that counter my positions with documentation from Epoch Times and Praeger U.
Haha, took a look at Epoch Times years ago and complained to manager that they were pushing propaganda.
Lord, I dream.
Another interesting analysis; thank you. Can President Biden's campaign run an advert. that he is a statesmen owing to bi-partisan leadership? The adverts would feature the Republicans taking credit for new infrastructure projects. The adverts could then conclude, "Yes, Nancy Mace voted against the President's bill, but Joe cares more for her constituents than he does about Party politics."
He hear that Dems, pay attention and stop with the inane emails
Something like that.
Thank you Jeri and J.L. for your responses.
🤝
¿Talk about future adverts?
🤔
In the report of the interview between Special Counsel Hur and President Biden, Mr Hur threw a booby-prize to Republicans by stating, in effect, that President Biden is a sympathetic figure for being well-intentioned, elderly, and forgetful.
😴
It is evident, to me at least, that the G.O.P. wants the audio so they slice out unrepresentative clips for commercials that make the President look as if he were disabled by dementia. Representative Scott (R-GA) just said as much by saying that every time President Biden is on television the American people see for themselves that he is kindly, old, demented.
🤢
Watching the debate among ranking House committee members. I was a R.I.N.0. until 2018.
The G.O.P. has been taken over by the WHINOes. Representatives Comer and Hagerman -- substituting for Jordan-as-a-no-show -- drive me to distraction.
⚖️
Notwithstanding today's conviction of Mr Hunter Biden, the score of guilty votes by jurors remain 418 for Trump versus ZERO for the President.
🥳
¡Well, there's a mandate!
🤓
President Biden's manly response of respecting the rule-of-law on what must be an extraordinarily painful moment in his life says it all compared to the many trumper tantrums starting from the man on down to the nattering nabobs of narcissism. 😱
They’re also doubling down on b.s. culture wars, since nothing else seems to be working. Latest instance, a MAGA acquaintance claimed that “under Biden, 30% of young people have decided to become trans and many are mutilating themselves to change their sex”. I countered that if the number was anywhere near that high, this couldn’t be buried by average mainstream media. He said he’ll send me links to proof, and I’m still waiting.
They're doing it badly. One RW talking-person screwed up and actually spoke badly about Dolly Parton, calling her falsely religious in a tweet on X. That did NOT go over well.
Later, in an interview, Donny aired his opinions about Taylor Swift; further alienating fans who didn't like him in the first place. How dumb do you need to be??
Next thing, they'll have to say something bad about Mr. Rogers just to complete the trifecta.
Well, as they say, if you can not lasso them with accomplishments, dazzle them with brilliance. If you can not dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bool-sheet.
My old professor told me that I'm the 1970's. He also quoted some other genius, "Never underestimate what a clever fool can do."
It is interesting to me, Jerry, about how much the "transgender issue" has plugged into some visceral response for so many. (I cannot find the right word for this and I am going with "response" as the closest I can come at this moment). People get so wrapped up on bathroom issues (where a biological male pretends to be female so he can sexually assault females in the restroom) or biological males transitioning to female so they can be winners in sports they aren't "good enough" in as male athletes that they cannot comprehend what the real issues of a gender transition are about. <Damn, that is an awkward sentence. Sorry.>
Anecdotally, one thing that has happened in the lesbian communities is that we have lost a number of the subset of "butch lesbians" who tended to be masculine in their interests and appearances who have transitioned to male. I am a decidedly butch lesbian who ABSOLUTELY NEVER felt that I was male. I have a dear friend (another butch lesbian, former cop) who has transitioned as an adult and is so much more comfortable as a man that he ever was as a woman, and knew from a very young age that he was not female.
To your friend who can't find his sources: A generally accepted figure is that of 10% of the population identify as gay. A very superficial search of the googles tells me that 1% of the US population identifies as transgender, where studies show that 5% of the population identified as "young adults" identify as transgender (in that mix, it is roughly a 38 % male to female and 34% female to male with the remainder identifying as "gender non-conforming."
Interesting. My latest search online found that the 10% is an upper limit and includes all of LGBTQ+. The actual numbers are less important that two facts: First is that these statistics are humans who live life normally, and second is that for transgender folks, the struggle to fit into a hostile society is real. Also, no one's grooming little kids. The fear mongering is stupid, and leads to unhappiness.
It really does. No one is grooming kids.
I cannot imagine the internal struggle for transgender people. I somewhat flippantly (30+ years ago) said "I'm glad I didn't sign up for that one." Now?? I see people who have that place of being with a place to be.
Right? It is a very hard thing to do, and literally nobody would choose to do it just to play on a high school sports team.
One person that I am aware of; collegiate swimmer.
Wild!
It’s not just stupid, it puts people’s lives in danger, including my beloved daughter’s.
It’s all about making somebody be the victim, and then trying to make them as miserable as possible. It’s despicable behavior, and they claim to be Christians, they are very far removed from those ideals, karma is keeping tabs and won’t be denied in the end.
Are people really that stupid to believe this crapola?? (No need to answer.)
Not necessarily stupid. Lost.
Well if Q said so.
<<Trump’s own words from a rally this weekend in the broiling Nevada desert in which he said he didn’t want people to keel over because: “We need every voter. I don’t care about you. I just want your vote. I don’t care.”>>
Not infrequently, Trump blurts out whatever is on his mind. So it was, when he spoke of immigrants from Mexico being rapists and murderers. So it was, when he came up with this ban of people from majority Muslim countries. So it was, when he spoke about NATO countries not "paying" their fair share. So it has been and will be, every time he spews his hate speech or narcissistic nonsense.
We have all known that for Trump, it is ALL about himself, not anyone else. Nevertheless, these Trump voters will remain deaf to his self-confessed proclamation: "I don't care about you" and they will declare their loyalty to him and their undying love.
Those words of Trump and the shameless sycophancy of so many Americans sums up what is a great tragedy for Democracy in America and why H.L. Mencken saw it regressing to the lowest common denominator.
The lowest common denominator, exemplified by the likes of Marjorie Taylor Greene, Steve Bannon, Samuel Alito, Mike Johnson, and the lesser MAGA Maggots like Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, Jon Eastman, Jim Jordan, etc., etc. tells us not only how low we have sunk but how much worse it can get. As we watch, Mitch McConnell who said that Trump was morally responsible for January 6, Bill Barr who declared his election fraud claims "Bullshit" and Nikki Haley who said he was unfit to be President, turn around and suck up to this Seditionist pig, we can either rally our fellow Americans to see that he never gets within sniffing distance of the White House, or lament the end of the glory that was America.
It's a story that continues to be written on fresh pages every day. Let us not run out of paper.
Why was Mencken pessimistic and MLK (The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice) optimistic? Because Mencken was observing some of the relevant evidence and MLK was observing all the relevant evidence.
James R. Carey
That's an interesting observation. I wonder if it is too glib. Of course, one can argue that ALL who comment on events affecting the nation or the world are analyzing only part of the evidence and not all of it. I've never thought that ANYONE has been able to synthesize ALL of the evidence. Of course, you qualify this by referring to "relevant evidence" and that, of course, makes it subjective. What is relevant and how is that determined?
Rules on the admissibility of evidence in legal cases shed some light on the subject. The original common law rules of evidence have been codified into the Federal Rules of Evidence and cognate state codes.
MLK, Jr. and Mencken were both expressing opinions. Were these opinions based on relevant evidence or did each of them succumb to confirmation bias or simply express despair or hope? Consider the clickbait value of the statements of each.
Here is what the basic rule on relevance says:
Rule 401 – Test for Relevant Evidence
Evidence is relevant if:
(a) it has any tendency to make a fact more or less probable than it would be without the evidence; and
(b) the fact is of consequence in determining the action.
This leads logically to Rule 402 which states:
Relevant evidence is admissible unless any of the following provides otherwise:
the United States Constitution;
a federal statute;
these rules; or
other rules prescribed by the Supreme Court.
Irrelevant evidence is not admissible.
Below is a commentary on Rule 401.
Definition of Relevant Evidence: According to Rule 401, evidence is considered relevant if:
It has any tendency to make a fact more or less probable than it would be without the evidence; and
The fact is of consequence in determining the action.
Tendency to Prove or Disprove a Fact: This part of the rule emphasizes that for evidence to be relevant, it doesn’t need to conclusively prove a fact; it only needs to make the fact more or less likely to be true.
Materiality: The fact that the evidence seeks to prove or disprove must be significant to the case—it must be a “fact of consequence.” This means the evidence must relate directly to the issues or elements in dispute in the case.
Threshold for Relevance: The threshold for relevance under this rule is quite low. Evidence doesn’t need to be conclusive or even strongly indicative of a particular fact; it merely needs to contribute in some way to making a fact at issue more or less likely.
Foundation for Admissibility: Rule 401 sets the basic standard for whether evidence should be admitted in court. Evidence that does not meet this relevance standard is generally inadmissible, although relevant evidence can still be excluded under other rules if its probative value is substantially outweighed by certain other factors.
Federal Rule of Evidence 401 establishes the criteria for determining the relevance of evidence in federal court. Evidence is relevant if it has any tendency to make a fact of consequence in the case more or less probable. This rule is crucial as it serves as the foundation for deciding whether evidence can be presented to the court.
Thanks for your comment.
Not to put too fine a point on it, a fact is a fact and a probablility is a probability. That a something is more probable doesn't make it any more or less factual. A fact simply is. A probability could become a fact or not when proven or not.
Jaxon
I take your point. In absolute terms, if one says that A is a fact, there should be no dispute about it because it is either a fact or not a fact.
The context in which the Rules of Evidence play a role is one in which a jury is required to determine what the facts are. Let me give you a simple example. In an automobile accident case, A's and B's vehicles are involved in a collision. A says that he had a green light and B says that HE had a green light.
A jury is asked to decide who is right, i.e., what is the FACT about the state of the light for A and B (assume that the light system is working properly, and both cannot have a green light simultaneously.)
So, you have A and B each testify that he had a green light.
If you had a witness on either side who saw the accident and can say who had the green light, that would be direct evidence and it would be evidence that tended to make a fact (whether A or B had the green light) more or less probable. If the witness said A had the green light and the jury believed the witness (the witness was independent, not related to either party and had an opportunity to view the situation and appears to be of sound mind and recall).
Now, consider that there is a witness who says he did not see the collision, but he saw B suddenly slow down as he approached the intersection and then he (the witness) turned his head and did not see the collision. That evidence is relevant because it is circumstantial evidence that the light had either turned yellow or was red, causing B to slow down.
Or another witness says that he didn't see the accident, but just before he heard the collision, he saw some pedestrians who were waiting to cross start to walk into the intersection on the side of the road away from B's car as it approached. This evidence is also relevant as it makes the fact that the WALK light for the pedestrians likely came on and from that one can infer that B's light had turned red.
So, I'll conclude by saying that whereas you are correct in what you write, a "fact" is not established until it is established as a fact. Until then, it's just a probability to be sorted out.
Thanks for your comment.
Thanks Anil. I fully take your point in the context of a courtroom. But in reality (the courtroom being, instead, a review that determines what was real), a fact is always a fact, whether or not it's ever confirmed. Take a line call in tennis. The line judge rules it out, but it goes to a video review that shows the ball was in. The review confirmed that the ball was in but, in fact it was always in, and that was the fact of the matter, not the confirmation, which itself became a different fact in the same way that a trial verdict itself becomes a fact. In other words, a thing is factually real independent of any after-the-fact opinion. One of the great things about Heather's blog is that we can hold these opinions and conversations. I can say Trump doesn't always lie, but he is a liar, and have almost everyone agree that both things can be true. ;>} (Where's my smiley face when I need it?)
Jaxon
I can't disagree.
But what of the situation in which the linesman makes a call that is wrong, the Chair umpire does not overrule, and the player is out of challenges? Then the "fact" is that the ball was either in or out when it wasn't, and a non-fact is a fact in that circumstance for that match.
Or an NFL player catches a ball but the replay official in his judgment says the catch did not survive impact - video shows that it did but this guy got it wrong - or the team that is out of challenges and the "fact" of a incomplete pass is established for a pass that should have been called complete?
Everything needs context.
As for Trump, he is a liar. His latest is denying that he did not call the war dead of WWI and WWII or one or both, losers and suckers. Evidence to the contrary is from General Kelly (Kelley?) and Trump has said similar things in the past.
My right-wing yahoo friends tell me that I have TDS - Trump Derangement Syndrome.
I tell them that they are not qualified to make a diagnosis since medical degrees from Trump University don't count.
However, I tell them that they have TDS Syndrome. Trump D*** Sucker.
Thanks for the education. I'm an engineer, so I value standards, but only if they are providing value. Allow me to provide an alternative and simpler perspective.
MLK and Mencken did the same thing. They observed (effectively) the same evidence (society), made potentially erroneous but testable assumptions, and drew a conclusion, except MLK's conclusion was optimistic, and Mencken's was pessimistic.
If two parties, say you and me, find ourselves in a similar situation, then there's an assumption flaw (the way that at least one of us has connected the evidence to the conclusion), or at least one of us has excluded evidence the other included. We can and should seize the opportunity. To do that, I must describe and allow you to challenge my assumptions, and you must describe and allow me to challenge your assumptions. The only obstacle to identifying logic flaws and/or confirmation bias is our mutual willingness to reveal our own ignorance.
James
What you describe is in some part, what is called the scientific method (finding a way to repeat the result to verify a hypothesis) and in part the process of legal reasoning. (Yes, I understand that the scientific method has a more rigorous requirement of proof than my simple overview).
It should be the process by which we conduct ourselves in society, respecting the views of others even if we disagree and having the courage to agree by different routes.
This is the process that is so missing, so, so missing in American life and particularly in the political sphere.
On the topic of revenge Rick Wilson’s Substack today titled The Orange Devil speaks to this in more detail and is worth a look:
https://open.substack.com/pub/therickwilson/p/the-orange-devil?r=3p4cw&utm_medium=ios
He points out that the lack of experienced staff initially as well as COVID hampered some of Trump’s plans for revenge. No such restraints will exist next time around, if there is a next time.
When, not if.
Dream on….
Got me. I spoke too soon cos for some reason I was thinking "the next time around" referred to the next pandemic, NOT the butthole being reelected My mistake.
Thanks for clarifying!!
My favorite parts of Heather's today come in the middle.
That's where she lists Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives who voted "no" on the various Biden programs to provide much-needed help to the American people. The hypocrites (that word interchangeable with the word Republican) continuously follow the demented demands of their fat, orange, criminally convicted cult leader, but then seek the afterglow limelight of Biden's successes.
"She has attended a highway ribbon cutting and boasted of the modernization of locks and dams on the Mississippi River in her district despite her “no” vote."
Ad worthy.
I do not understand why they still follow him, but they are still drinking the kool-aid
Because they're happy to hear a politician -- a presidential candidate -- attacking the same people they don't like, and it validates their own nasty beliefs. They ignore the rest because it doesn't conflict with their desire to hurt and oppress "others".
The technique worked unfortunately well in Germany, from 1933 onwards.
We know the innumerable deaths and devastation it led to. The damage is still with us.
Given the fact that America's material power and military might are far, far greater than what wrecked Europe from 1939 onwards, the global danger posed by the MAGA candidate is immeasurably greater than anything in history. Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Genghis Khan pale into insignificance compared to any fool in the White House.
And those who should know better still persist in presenting Trump as a "normal" candidate...
You read my mind. Our nukes change the equation in ways that we should never forget
Beware!
He and his are mad enough to be attracted to destroying the world.
Exactly. They need some big bad wolf to blame instead of realizing the impact of their ideologies. Now they’re all regressing into children demanding they get what they want.
Because with him, they know they'll get what they want. Their ideologies forced onto everyone.
That’s always such a complex reference… memory of Jim Jones & over 100 American human beings, many of them children, who perished at the command of a very different distressed human ‘leader’ cant’ remember name of country…
I believe that the cult dynamics are pretty much the same. That's how the "Republican" party gets to call the J6 attackers "ordinary citizens" and heroes, when massive documentation shows they are not. Cults are designed to take over the brain. Evidence and logic are rejected reflexively.
I’m tired, it’s still hard to believe that anyone, any two parents, any people can be caught up by the clearly anger-based fulminations of a Trump or a Jim Jones. Both believe they are worthy of being followed… I’m going to give up for tonite!
Even Dems have been treating them like worthy opponents.
Evidence and logic are not so much rejected reflexively, but by design.
Guyana.
The Jonestown massacre. Just remembering it freezes one's blood.
Heaven's Gate member took cyanide in order join the spaceship hidden in the tail of the comet Hale-Bopp. That might be even crazier than the claims of MTG, and anyway they proved willing to die for it. Cults trump logic for believers. Those afflicted will kill themselves, or kill you for perfect nonsense.
I remember that. The cultists were seeking to "shed their containers" so they could get to the spaceship. There was one survivor who was convinced she had been left behind.
I forget who said "I don't have a body, I am a body".
Deprogramming is long and expensive, Ike’s way even more so
Yes indeed.
Because they're America's traditional loser class, the people everyone crosses the street to avoid.
Some I know are family and ex-friends who know better. Bamboozled by bullschittery
Hugging you, Jeri!
Thank you. Sad thing is. They know me and know that I’m not an evil Dem. But still buy that moniker for so many others. Fox is the explanation in every case
Me, too!
Yes
There was an old interview in the 1980’s. I saw it, heard it and found it, when asked what Party DJT would run as, he said, “Probably Republican, because they are the dumbest!”
Can’t find the video of the interview. David Pecker must have purchased the copyright and buried it.
Love it…
The NYT reported on Trump's rally but skipped all the crazy talk.
And that is a constant problem with the NYT!!
But a slip of tongue by Biden?
(Real or invented - it's all good...)
Of course they did, why I cancelled them. Unconscionable by any measure
I wish we could have a week off… like vacation from the endless reporting of the minutiae of T ‘s senseless blather.
Nonetheless I truly appreciate your efforts Heather. And I essentially ‘set my clock’ to be ‘on time’ for every Letter from An American!