the Republican National Committee promptly tweeted footage of House Oversight Committee chair Representative James Comer (R-KY) suggesting that the “Biden family” has engaged in “a pattern of bribery, where payments would be made through shell accounts and multiple banks,” in a system of “money laundering.”
Politicians can affect millions of of lives, and even lives of generations yet to come. Why is it that they can tell egregious lies with impunity? If we believe in government of the people, by the people, for the people, and we citizens can get in serious trouble in many ways for lying to our own government, how is that that those we hire to manage the government get to lie outrageously to us?
Seems to me the ones in the Fascist/GQP party can lie, tell another lie, and then back that lie up with another lie. When they start in with these false accusations of the Biden family, does anyone ever ask them, '' do they have PROOF of what the Biden family is doing? Many times they go silent when they are asked this, or start to make up some absurd lies that they got from an unnamed fictional source. These cretins have serious mental problems and it seems they don't know right from wrong... it's outrageous that these nutso despots are members of our Congress and running for President. It would be funny if it weren't so dangerous;
The Fall of 2016 saw my wife's caseload (she is a Clinical Psychologist in private practice) increase to beyond full, and stay that way throughout fpotus's term. It did not ablate during Covid. She's worn out.
Anxiety is the disease of the 21st century. I was in practice for almost fifty years, ending in 2017 when I got cancer. When I began no one would admit they were in therapy — and a lot of therapy then was psychoanalytic, which is bullshit. Now, everyone is looking for a therapist. The politics are only one part of it. Most of the problems come from the uncertainty and instability that people feel due to the rapid changes in how the world works. Jobs are unstable, big companies fail, older people get laid-off, companies get bought. There is much less of any feeling of loyalty of the company to the workers and the workers to the company. Yet, work can take up much more time. This has affected family life. Schools are also suffering as there are so many more skills to learn, yet the social pressures have interrupted everything. It has led to at least half the country feeling financial insecurity. The Republicans just want people to work for low wages with no safety net. Billionaires have taken over both parties to some extent, but the Republicans have committed themselves to only the specific billionaires who support them. They rest of the population is there to work for low wages and fight wars. People are exhausted and don't have the time or energy to care about each other.
I hit "like," although there's not much to like there. Now we need someone to list all the positive things going for the world, but not me, I'm off to listen to my favorite Jerry Garcia album, "Old and In the Way."
OAITW, you, my friend, have said a mouthful. And every bit if it is gospel.
I spent over 26 years in firefighting and law enforcement. I was medically forced to retire at 45. I’m now 71, soon to be 72, and yo this very day I have extremely bad nightmares of crap I went through, did, had to do. After I was forced to retire, I had to sell my gun collection to pay bills.
The state of Florida, in all of its glory refused my medical, even though the doctor called them, sent them my records, and informed them I would not be back to work once he released me from the hospital. All this before he told me I was through.
My first check from the state was a whopping $236! They cut my retirement 78% because I was only 45 years old, even though I had over 25 years invested in the retirement under hazardous duty. The state Retirement Board sent me a letter informing me that my medical had been denied because they deemed I was able to gain other employment and work.
So, married, raising 4 children (2 in elementary school, 2 in diapers at home) my income was $236 a month until my doctor finally got my social security started in 2002.
I’m basically telling this because I am one of those that you speak about. I am one of those that should have tried to go to a therapist. I refused. I was stubborn. I was foolish. And today, I’m alone, broken down, broken, and just came out of living in the woods, and under a bridge for over two months. The only reason I’m not still there is my youngest son learned about my homelessness and came up here and found me. Put me in a motel two nights while he and his wife located this apartment they put me in. I have nothing, but things are just that. Material dust collectors.
OAITW, your are spot on with that assessment. My wife does not want a 50 year career; she's been licensed for 30 years and wants to retire at 62. Another constant in her practice is the toxic work environment of one of our city's largest employers; she's on the State provider panel and gets a fair number of state employees in her caseload.
The dysfunction of the medical industrial complex is in part why I have opted out. Churn of providers and churn of patients, just like churn in jobs and churn of low-paid co-workers preclude stable and supportive relationships. Humans are evolutionarily wired to thrive in communities, and they're all fragmenting. All except the billionaires' club. (They have paid communities of sycophants).
Why didn't anyone anticipate that the combined "World Wars" was an unavoidable reality update that globalization was already here, and had been unfolding for a long while, at least since the French and USAmerican Revolutions? Change is not new, and will continue. People trained on Chinese Checkers are very disturbed when they are brought to the chess board. So, what's new. Our "reality community", or community of responsibility, is not USAmerican isolationism, which MTG and her gang know nothing about. Community is constituted by a common need to confront common dangers and opportunities. Climate change, the atom, world-level movement of populations, and super-charged global market capitalism, are beyond the competence level national institutions. In post-pioneer USAmerica, Congress governed and the president executed. We now live in at least an extra-national reality—chess and dominoes are played differently—where the president of the USA is functionally a representative standing between our national community and the global community. Our governing institutions designed to have Congress govern according to the "will of the (national) people", now depend perversely upon a constitutionally built executive ill suited to "represent" the will of the US citizen as members of the global people. New or evolved institutions take time to accommodate new conditions, but institutions of self-governance are adapting by confronting the postwar condition and the frank reality (in the information age) that people generally want to consent to how they are governed. Game-changers are what games do.
Not surprisingly, too many of us are looking for individual solutions rather than collective political action. Yes, plenty of us manage to combine the two, but individualism is a national flaw and I hope it doesn't kill us. (Paradoxically enough, the party that champions individualism has been out-organizing the Democrats, aka "the left of center," for decades.)
Ally, in 2016, my physician, when I told her how depressed I was, told me that every psychiatrist and psychologist that she knew was overwhelmed with patients, and that prescriptions for antidepressants had skyrocketed. For me, even with Biden in office and knocking it out of the park, I'm locked in a state of agitation, because of the continued slide of this country toward fascism. The fact that the "No Labels" party is ginning up enthusiasm for third party candidates, potentially handing the presidency back to tFg, just worsens the situation.
I totally agree, that is an extremely concerning--and disconcerting--development. I've been sharing articles about their (true) purpose and the source of their funding: Koch, Mercer...all funds from RW sources 😤🤬🤬. The Rs are clearly worried and going all out to win by any means necessary.
Why doesn't the MSN point out the true reason for this move? Any fool should know that a third-party candidate doesn't stand a chance of winning, so the only purpose would be to swing the race in a generally unintended direction. Unfortunately, Americans tend to be naive about who's behind these schemes. If they weren't, tFg would never have been elected in the first place, and by the time the '24 election occurs, he'll more than likely be a convicted felon.
When I went for my annual in 2017, I mentioned how I felt to my doctor and she said she had heard many say the same thing. Thankfully, your wife has been doing good work for all those upset by death star and the pandemic...partly his fault for downplaying it. Kudos to her and hope for some rest.
The bloodless coup of 2000. We’ve been through this before, the only difference was Bush is not insane. He’s for sure a criminal, but like all the Republican POTUS’s in our lifetime, they’re not held accountable. It’s like after they leave office they walk away with a clean slate, no worries. Meanwhile, Democrat POTUS’s bear a great deal of wasted scrutiny from their Republican counterparts.
You can bet there’s no way Republicans are going to escape the wrath of pro-choice voters. Which overwhelmingly vote to restore access to abortion unfettered.
This single issue is what people are voting on. It’s unconstitutional to deny access to medical care due to their sex. Then heap a good scoop of self-righteousness, sprinkle of fascism and a dollop of willful ignorance, you’ve got yourself a Nazi sundae. Hope the fascists choke on it. 🍨
Years ago, while on a boat ride around Lake Tahoe, we passed the multi-structure lakefront compound of an extremely wealthy Bay Area real estate developer. I asked, more rhetorically that seriously, why would he build such a huge vacation home. A friend replied, “Because he can.” That’s been a catch phrase for my husband and me ever since.
Why does Comer lie with impunity? Because he can. He’s a member of Congress, after all.
That seems so foreign to me. Whenever I think of what my life would be if I were really rich, that's the image that come to me -- drifting from beautiful room to beautiful room of a huge house, alone, pestering the servants for conversation and a sense of connection. The vision make me shiver, and explains to me why so many rich people have such odd social/political obsessions.
In all honesty, the gentleman who built this compound was a genuine philanthropist who was a 1st or 2nd generation America, attended Stanford on a full scholarship and, through his successful business, gave back to the community three-fold through the foundation he and his wife created.
I was using the comment "Because he can" not as criticism of him, but as criticism of Comer.
Nor was I criticizing him, either, although the concept of "do it bigger merely because I can" seems designed to create a lot of waste in many circumstances. And I'm sure there are many people with lives and personalities big enough to fill mansions.
But that's not me, and I suspect that's not like a lot of rich people. Like so many things, I bet some "do" rich better than others.
That's when I got involved in electoral politics as I never had before (even though I live in relatively sane Massachusetts), switched my voter registration from Unenrolled to Democrat, and became active in the local Democratic group.
It looks like a religion exactly to the extent that it relies on faith instead of evidence. Since it's really hard to rationally convince people to kill themselves and others, they have to turn to religion-style techniques to persuade them. It's a very time-honored tool and also explains why both government and religion have been struggling for centuries with how to accommodate the new guy, science.
Do not forget that Sen. Chuck Grassley was an active participant in the Jan. 6 insurrection, and if Pence had gotten into the Secret Service limo and disappeared, Grassley would have taken over as President pro tem of the Senate, and would have carried out the conspiracy by overturning the certification of the official electoral votes from the states, in cooperation with the 147 Republicans who went along with this ploy. I hope Jack Smith rounds up all of them and truly cleans house.....
I know yesterday afternoon, those three Trump attorneys that left the meeting in the federal building didn’t look happy at all. I hope that Smith told them to go suck on a bottle of buttermilk because their client was going to prison for a very long time!
Beth, I don't believe for a minute that Biden has done anything wrong, especially since the only "source" of the accusations is the insane, lying right wing. They are lying, and it's nothing new. Dirty politics has been their gameplan ever since McCarthy/Cohn ruined careers and lives during the Communist Scare.
You're very right, but please change your posture slightly. I don't believe anything they say either, but if they find any real corroborated evidence, I'll look at it. I no longer listen to them, but I like evidence, wherever it comes from. I'm not going to be a Republican.
Dirk, my posture will not change unless the right wing is able to demonstrate that actual wrongdoing occurred. If that happens, I'll certainly inform myself and make a decision at that point. Remember, the accusations regarding Hunter and the rest of the Bidens have been circulating for several years, with no concrete evidence, just vague allegations. Especially considering the source of these allegations, it would be terribly naive to take them at face value. If concrete evidence can be presented, I'll take it into consideration. I do recognize that Hunter used very poor judgment to take a position in the then-corrupt Ukrainian machine, using his father's position as capital. If that's all that is revealed, then the right wing could have pointed out the obvious and dropped it. Either way, like you, I won't be voting for any Republicans.
So I'm sorry, Ms. Fleming, because my first comment, I see now, is poorly phrased, I didn't mean to imply a criticism. Much of our current political discourse seems to be little more than operatives hoping to present information, even verifiable facts, in such a way as to make an unprepared listener to leap to a desired conclusion on the basis of non-rational prejudices. I can't reasonably imagine this practice is limited to Republicans, since it's really just an extension of common persuasive techniques. What's frightening is that this common, pandering-to-prejudice technique is so dangerously effective in the hands of skilled, morals-free, influencers in such an interconnected environment.
You hit their technique spot on. After all, I seen lots of "evidence" about Hunter Biden from his detractors -- about his addictions, his struggle, his wealth, too, and his directorships -- he's clearly been a busy boy, just like the rest of his family.
What they never seem to give is evidence of wrongdoing. Instead, they just tell you facts about Hunter's life and then look at you, hoping your prejudices will take it from there. It's a technique that works very well on those who don't constantly challenge their own prejudices, and I despair at ever finding and challenge all of my own.
He and Feinstein both! For her to continue "be there" when there could be someone put in place of her IF she would retire? Thats just wrong. Only seeing what the news is saying - she shouldnt be there. Its really sad. But certainly someone should be able to rectify this!
I have to really question what in the world are her constituents thinking? In California, for Petes sake - considering its mainly Democratic. Wouldnt you think they would want someone mentally capable of representing them? Puzzling.
There needs to be limits they can serve. The president is two terms, the House and Senate should be the same. This serving 6-8 terms is stupid. Look at the South Carolina senator that served until he died, or died right after he finally retired. Strom Thurmond.
It’s a deliberate strategy. Cause as much pain as possible for the other side. In the USA, it is issues of Identity Politics. In Russia/Ukraine it’s artillery.
No doubt it’s deliberate. All the experts on authoritarianism and political violence have been warning repeatedly that the road to fascism is paved with deterioration of TRUTH.
It seems the US just got a later start, but lately we’re on the same road as Russia. Hoping we succeed in flushing the 💩 into the fiery magma and elevating the TRUTH 🙏🤞🏼
That's exactly what they're doing and Bannon is the major contributor and proponent of this strategy. It is one he called "flooding the zone with 💩." It worked in '16 and they're hoping to win with it again in '24. We can't let them. Vote. Vote. Vote. Vote. Vote.
I’m not sure about “funny”. Look what happened when we allowed them to gain control of the House. Could you imagine where this country will be if they get the Senate, and White House, again? It will become the United Communist States. Under dictatorship, the likes of Trump, or even worse, Robert Kennedy, Jr., whose a Democratic presidential candidate, but is farther right than Trump!
Geeze! What the hell is happening to the people???
Yep....all the nastiness has been around for a long time....and death star gave carte blanche for people to be openly awful. Now rudeness rules everywhere.
Fine. Take names and remember who and where they are, for the future. They have exposed themselves and we do not have to let them crawl back under their rocks.....
Just out of curiosity, why did you predict that it would be called the "United Communist States," as opposed to something else. If that was a mistype, that's fine, too.
Dirk, actually, it wasn’t a misprint. It was meant to show that if we don’t get out and get our jobs done, the Trumpublicans will regain majority in the Senate, keep the House, and regain the Presidency in 2024. And, if we aren’t careful, they’ll get supermajority in the House and Senate. Plus gain state legislative seats, more so than they have now.
If that happens, 2024 could very well be the last election this country ever sees. It will be converted to a dictatorship first thing, and every right we have now is gone.
This is what Trump wants. This is what he’s fighting for.
Oh, I think there's an unpleasantly high chance that you are correct in all particulars, and that's exactly their plan. I was merely wondering why you thought they would change the name to the "Communist" states, instead of something like the "Republican Federation," "Beulahland," or maybe even the "National Socialist American Worker's Party."
Dirk, you have great suggestions on the new name, but I don’t see the last one you suggested. They don’t give a damn about the American working class of people. Plus, they will have nothing more to do with anything titled anything close to “America”, “American”, or any semblance of freedom.
We taught the same thing in law enforcement academy. But, now, in this situation it seems with the Trumpublicans the saying may have altered just a bit. “The absence of evidence is good. That’s evidence of wrongdoing needing to be investigated.” Dumbest bunch of sheep I’ve ever seen. What’s worse, most all of them are graduates of Ivy League universities as lawyers, doctors, and the like. Geeze!!!
I think their training and education is really evidence that all the innuendo and misinformation from such sources is deliberate. I wish I could file a Bar complaint against lawyers for lying outside the courtroom, not just inside.
To answer your question "... does anyone ever ask them ..." That is the job of JOURNALISTS, who unfortunately have been taught that they must be impartial to the point of not confronting Repugnant Party Right Wing LIES.
I totally agree with you, and it's sickening to me too that they are keeping things from the voters like that. The Rethuglicans know they can't win elections if they are fully exposed to their lying and deceitful ways. Disgusting is what it is..
As I first read that section of Heather’s letter, I reacted just like you. I thought Biden should sue tfg snd the Republican Party for libel! Something has to stop this egregious trend!!! Freedom of speech does not convey the right to damage the reputation of political opponents with falsehoods.
LOL Harvey,it’s funny anyhow ...but the example so marvelously being continued by ‘our President’ is let’s focus on the real issues as he rolls up his sleeves each day ( BRAVO!) .
Those falling off the cliff...you know , the ones with all the holes in their feet from their last shots/still smoking guns....won’t benefit much with damage control. Let them keep loading up ...
...we have better things to do , mates...better things to do ☺️
I rarely go on Twitter these days, but did see Professor Richardson push back on the "Biden family" suggestion, reminding in her tweet that 45 had his family "engaged."
You aren’t kidding. I bet she spilled her guts. With the stuff her hubby pulling with Saudi Arabia, it wouldn’t surprise me if the two of them didn’t move over there to get the hell away from “daddy”.
But, he’s already got in bed with the Saudi’s and created this professional golf thing that’s now teamed up with the professional golf organization here in the United States.
This is a really tough one. "how is that that those we hire to manage government get to lie outrageously to us?"
I don't think it is illegal to lie in most cases of sending out a lie outside of being on a stand in a courtroom as a witness.
Perfectly legal. And, moreover, Trump lied with every sentence while he was President and is not being charged with lying. He is being charged with stealing apparently.
Lying is legal.
Lastly, the American people have shown a huge appetite for consuming lies as Fox News readily proves on a daily basis.
Whoda thunk the “Space Alien in you cookie jar” headlines that screamed at us in the grocery store would become mainstream practice?
When I was a kid and saw an adult reading that claptrap while they waited in line at the checkout counter I thought “this is how I separate serious people from the buffoons”
I remember in high school a rumor about one of my female classmates circulated that she was pregnant. This was back in a place and time where girls were required to drop out of school if they got pregnant.
Turns out she was not pregnant, BUT, after the mess the rumor made of her life, she dropped out of school anyway.
I remember how everyone was talking about it. I cannot say I participated by talking because, I was mostly surprised since she was well outside the circle of girls who were well known as accessible. But, I sure did listen with interest and no I did nothing to tamp the rumors down.
When the girl stopped showing up at school I felt bad for, umm, the rest of my life.
But I remember how everyone flocked to the lie and grew it into the truth even though, in the end, it was a lie.
I’d like to go back in time and shake some compassion into the kid I was sometimes. The bad stuff can be haunting. The good news is, I can recognize some of it now. Maturity can encourage wisdom, huh?
I can only say I did not participate in spreading any rumor because the girl was totally outside those known as accessible. However, I did not contest the rumor when I heard it either.
I stayed out of it. Which, makes me guilty. I did not actually believe the lie and I did nothing to put a stop to it or support her. I was a coward.
Maturity comes with regrets Dave, for me. I try not to let it bother me too much, and, it is one reason I never drink alcohol. For some reason, if I drink alcohol, the stuff I did in the past haunts me.
I had an exercise I used to do back when I was instructing law enforcement officers at the state academies. I had a single sentence written in a piece of paper. I showed it to the first officer on one side of the class. I had them disperse it to the officer behind them until it travelled through the entire class (usually 25-30 officers). At the other end, I had the final officer write in the board exactly what he was told. I then wrote what the original sentence was.
You’d be really shocked to know the difference in the two. Absolutely no comparison at all.
Mike, that is exactly the danger ⚠️ of ‘hearsay’. I was fortunate to sit on a grand jury in NYC for a long stretch, and the first thing we were told was about that term. Inadmissible as evidence.
I heard a story about myself that had circulated in the MA town I live in now that was twisted into an unrecognizable braid. The village mentality adores gossip. And that is now the viscous, mo even more, the deadly trademark of the Republican Party.
Not at all! Villages really are a bunch of nice folks trying to help each other. It's just that villages are so boring that you have to burn somebody at the stake every now and then just to liven things up.
Ages ago we would buy a couple of these hilarious rags, tuck them in our backpacks as “reading material” before a days-long hike into the wilderness…..in the evening around a campfire (if allowed) or camp stove, we would read the stories and howl with laughter.
I recall laughing my butt off because I saw on the cover of Weekly World News that Clinton (I THINK it was him) was with the same space alien as Ross Perot!!
When I was in high school I took an elective summer school class, Language and Persuasion. I learned about Dale Carnegie, “it’s possible to change other people’s behavior by changing one’s behavior towards them.”
Subliminal messages, Vance Packard, “The Hidden Persuaders” 1961. I graduated in 1964 and was fascinated by the way hidden messages can affect behavior. I pictured a subliminal message scrolling across the movie screen making me do something unethical or immoral or just making me hungry for popcorn. I was too naive to be scared until I watched “The Manchurian Candidate.” All these books and movies must be on the DeSatin’s Banned list. What people think without a foundation of understanding. They might be stuck in childhood problem solving and thinking.
Hmmm. Mike I don't believe lying is legal. There are an awful lot of lawyers who would tell you differently.
It does appear that, beginning with Newt Gingrich and Reagan lying became the accepted norm for the Republican Party. The MAGAs in true "1984" (the book) fashion now believe there is no such thing as truth.
I thought about trying to draft a retired-lawyer type response to Mike S's assertion, going down all the situations where lying is expressly illegal, usually by statute, none of which apply to public statements. Sure defamation and slander may apply, but very difficult to prove and you run into governmental immunity. Quantum meruit could conceivably apply, but again, you'd have to get around immunity and their habitual lying actually hurts your case.
And that's when I stopped, because I realized that as disgusting as it is, Mike S. is essentially correct: unless a specific law forbids it, lying is generally legal in the U.S.
IF lying is illegal, outside of being on a witness stand, then the law is essentially never enforced that I can perceive anyway.
Right now Jamie Dimon is claiming he never heard of Epstein before 2019 even though Epstein was a JP Morgan client from 2012 or so. Do you think the gov will arrest the guy they go to to bail out banks for them….for lying?
It is human to love confirmation bias and righteous superiority. I love it myself. My awareness of it allows me (mostly) not to get sucked in and insist upon evidence.
J.L., you make the point: "Politicians can affect millions of of lives, and even lives of generations yet to come." You are sooooo right, and the person who comes to my mind is Frances Perkins, FDR's Secretary of Labor and the architect of the New Deal (though FDR gets the credit.) Perkins' philosophy of government is to the point: "The people are what matter to government, and a government should aim to provide all the people under its jurisdiction the best possible life." All the people. Amen to that. This is also posted in my home office.
We have an inadequate press, which is so worried about bottom line that they forgot to care about the truth. The ownership of the press is a big problem. That is something that needs fixing if we are to have a democracy.
Very true. One big difference between Watergate and now was more frequent, more robust and more fearless investigative journalism, or so it seems to me. The post Reagan/Friedman governmental bias toward facilitating profit over people is blatant and profoundly anti-democratic. The former CEO of CBS put it in a nutshell; https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/general-news/leslie-moonves-donald-trump-may-871464/
Sadly, all too sadly, under the right emotional circumstances, outright lying works, esp for audiences already prone to believe. GOP has been running this for a very long time. Straight out of the Nazi, but hardly only the Nazi, politics 101 playbook.
Lies, bribes and terror have kept despots in power for eons. Substantive lies are weapons that can enslave and kill. Democracy can survive lies, but only when they are exposed, and shown for what they are. Isn't that key to what genuine justice does?
Back in the 1950s Joe McCarthy attracted a formidable following, intimidating even Ike. When McCarthy attacked the military, that was the last straw, and he was brought to heel. It seems like modern "Republicans" and their wealthy patrons dusted off "Tailgunner Joe's" modus operandi as well as time tested "Divide and Rule" ever advancing despotic corruption in the intervening years.
J. L. It’s all projection. “Let’s accuse Biden of something “. “Why not say that his family accepts bribes through shell companies. I know some people who do that “. “Great! That sounds credible.”
We have had decades of ad hominem attacks against liberals of all kinds and rank. It comes from elected officials, TV personalities, radio hosts, and in print. These are overwhelmingly lies purely to ruin people's reputations. Is there no recourse, no accountability? I really think these people should be taken to court. I would support a legal fund created by the Democratic Party, and anyone else who favors decency. This unpunished vitriol contributes significantly to the political divide. That is the intention. Prince Harry has called the Mirror publishers to account. I wish him a good outcome. Long overdue.
The Republican National Committee and the House Oversight Committee's chair it quotes are the ones who lie outrageously to us. We didn't hire them, but some of us may have voted for them. Expect no less when Republicans are elected to office. Remedy this when next you vote.
As slavery was once considered "normal", even by US presidents, subjugation of women was "normal", as was genocide against native people and quasi-serfdom imposed on workers. "Republicans" have initiated, "normalized" and ratcheted corruption for more that 40 years. Reviewing their latest exploits, at least on their side of it is like reading about one of "those" countries spiraling toward despotism. Yes, we must vote for democracy and integrity, and yes, we must make a bigger thing out of all lies, all the time. Have they no sense of decency?
There was a time when members of Congress risked censure, even from their own party, for making such statements. That said, the Constitution’s speech and debate clause protects them from lawsuits for slander, which Republicans increasing engage in as part of legislative speech.
Regardless, those who lie with abandon to accuse their political opponents of dastardly acts are morally bereft cretins.
Free speech, especially "objectionable speech" is essential, yet presents a conundrum. Perhaps the ultimate problem for governance is how to deal with those who use their share of rights and power abusively. That easy when it's a common thief but thievery can be subtle and like computer code, the law is full of "security flaws' that can be exploited, you patch one and another turns up. It is hard, probably impossible, to maintain a just society on law alone; there must be a preponderant societal commitment to dealing in good faith.
Nixon was impeached for a pattern of abuse of power the "Coverup", and important Republicans went along with it. Nixon's offenses seem almost quaint by today's standards. We became increasingly inured to dishonest, unprofessional public sphere behavior, and have not pushed back against it nearly strongly enough, in my opinion; though current and emerging "Stop the Steal" indictments are strong medicine. We the people are fools if we continue to tolerate the creeping, demonstrable, and worsening use blatant, weaponized lies in the court of public opinion.
I would love to see TUMP be indicted, arrested, tried by the courts, and put in the worst prison in the entire Nation. I want him to get a fair sentence of '' Life without the possibility of parole'' in solitary confinement under the prison. With only rats and other vermin to keep him company. He deserves this after nearly destroying our nation and treasonous crimes he has committed not to mention all of the other criminal activity he has committed. I do not have time to go into all of his crimes as there are so many of them...
Me too, but at best, if he is indeed incarcerated, it will be a form not really all that uncomfortable. We will have to be satisfied with that. Michael Cohen served time, but not in a very heinous place. Fine. What bothers me much more is that his real crimes - the ones you speak to - the ruining of our countries political system of government, the destroying of trust in our leaders, the introduction of widespread and unadulterated corruption at the highest levels of our government, the irreparable damage to the USA's standing throughout the civilized world, all the people who died of Covid because he was too consumed by the economy to enact stricter controls, the furtherance of American inaction on climate change, all that will go unpunished except that he lost his bid at 4 more years. Instead he will get taken down by IMO lesser crimes (unless he gets seditious conspiracy of which he is obviously guilty). The rest - small potatoes in comparison.
The COVID thing is surely numerically and morally among the worst disasters in modern America. As a "wealthy", "educated" nation, we had the opportunity to minimize the death toll, and instead we (or at least the whole friggin' Republican Party behaved like shills for the virus lobby. I am reminded of the creepy scene in Kubrick's 2001 in which the sentient computer kills the dormant crew. It's was remote control, but still murder.
Even if he was incarcerated in a comfortable place it would be hellish for him if he wasn't allowed any social media. He's a true narcissistic psychopath, I believe, and unless he can get validation from outside himself, in his mind it's going to be like he doesn't exist.
HOW CAN DOJ POSSIBLY CHARGE ME, WHO DID NOTHING WRONG, WHEN NO OTHER PRESIDENT’S WERE CHARGED, WHEN JOE BIDEN WON’T BE CHARGED FOR ANYTHING, INCLUDING THE FACT THAT HE HAS 1,850 BOXES, MUCH OF IT CLASSIFIED, AND SOME DATING BACK TO HIS SENATE DAY WHEN EVEN DEMOCRAT SENATORS ARE SHOCKED. ALSO, PRESIDENT CLINTON HAD DOCUMENTS, AND WON IN COURT. CROOKED HILLARY DELETED 33,000 EMAILS, MANY CLASSIFIED, AND WASN’T EVEN CLOSE TO BEING CHARGED! ONLY TRUMP - THE GREATEST WITCH HUNT OF ALL TIME!
And that sums up Trump's entire defense. 'Whataboutism' based on lies. Works well on right-wing media, not so well in court. He's doomed. Or we're doomed. Either way, we're going to live with his legacy for a long, long, time.
I love his defense, Steve. It's 'President Clinton', Trump writes and he's got a point there, doesn't he? What would Andy think? That's Andy Warhol. Wouldn't Andy just love him? Trump and his writings are works of art, Folk Art. It's primitive, but there's an audience out there, don't you think? No one represents Trump better than the man himself; no one else has his style; the French call it panache!
Thanks for the hearty laugh, Fern! “panache” is relevant to tfg in both of its definitions. The most obvious is the second, but the first one applies to the guy’s cartoonish, ridiculous hairstyle:
PANACHE, per the Merriam Webster Dictionary:
1.. an ornamental tuft (as of feathers) especially on a helmet
It's you and me, Rose, so far. We know how to see both sides of his badness and put the cheap-con act where he belongs, on the wall next to a can of Campbell's soup.
I think that Campbell's is a pretty poor excuse for soup, but I still would not want to see it suffer the indignity. Trump is full of sound and fury, but would have been ignored as a childish idiot had he not had pots of money. I suspect that a lot of people who have been raised with authoritarianism and been injured by it, cheer on his shameless misbehavior because (again due to his inheritance) he CAN get away with it, and has. Up until now anyway.
Hillary moving her communications, as US Secretary of State, outside of the .gov domain was intended to insure that future Freedom of Information Act requests would be denied since she was on her private domain not the .gov domain where the law is relevant.
Fortunately for Hillary, James Comey was head of the FBI and ruled that it was not illegal to consciously try to avoid future FOIA requests. Me? I would have ruled it is illegal.
We just cannot have government officials doing business on private domain name email accounts where the Russians can easily hack them, or the Chinese, or my own kids.
And, oh, I remember, the Russians DID hack her emails.
Yeah, I think that what Hillary did there was not nothing; and probably a grunt employee would have suffered official consequences for it. The election eve investigation announcement was weird and probably disastrous, certainly advantageous to Trump, though Trumps constant harping on it is beyond hypocritical. I also thought Bill Clinton's lies (not the dalliance, the lies) were a terrible presidential precedent.
Absolutely “whataboutism”. What is wrong with these people? They hang onto the words of this man like it was the Holy Bible. Even high schoolers know the basic points of discourse when you need to explain important issues; especially when the goal is to change minds. Deflection is top of list, along with Ad hominem arguments. The fact that this man did not disappear off the political spectrum after he lost in 2020 is mind boggling.
Especially in our ever more massive and complicated society where bad decisions seem to have less wiggle room to avoid disaster, I think critical thinking might rank with the "3Rs" as a survival tool. One afternoon is 5th or 6th grade (in the 1950s) my class was told of Nazi propaganda and classic logical fallacies. I got another brief dose in an elective class in High school. Yet how to determine what is real and what is BS or inadequately demonstrated should weave it's way though all basic education, along with challenges with which students practice and refine their skills. I don't think that is happening, the likes of Trump, DeSantis, or MTG would not stand a chance of election. Not that there would be no political conflicts, but a much reduced tolerance for lies in high places. Is one not to some degree dehumanized when being lied to, at least to the extent of the liars intent?
Well, the McCarthy Hearings were called "witch hunts" with good reason, but the "Republican" party has morphed into Witch Hunters Inc. "Justice" Alitio even claimed the authority of one from long ago.
Compare to the usual accuracy and eloquence of Lincoln. It is the fate of our society at stake here. More than one of my elementary school teachers told us that "anyone" could grow up to be president (dunno about blacks and women back then, but we've come a long way). I never suspected a total A-hole would make it, but then world history says otherwise. Now I know why a word like "kakistocracy" (governance by the worst) is in the dictionary.
I remain an "active" member of the ABA. In just two (2) months, August 2023, MARY L SMITH becomes the first indigenous person to lead the ABA. I recently replied to President Elect Smith to take the legal profession into a prominet role on the many issues before the Country specifically pushing a needed ABA response to ongoing sedition & matters before SCOTUS. I will keep LFAA updated when relevant. 🗽
" If Aristotle, Livy, and Harrington knew what a republic was, the British constitution is much more like a republic than an empire. They define a republic to be a government of laws, and not of men. " -John Adams
JL, John Adams' criminal defense of all the Defendant Red Coats brought to trial after the "Boston Massacre" & obtaining two (2) acquittals is the Foundation of due process in our soon to be Country well before 1776. Of course, John had an expert jury consultant, Abigail.
I was aware that he had done so, though not in detail. I see law and policing as inherent;y noble professions when drive by the urge to protect and help, and tools of evil when driven by the urge to dominate. Humans are human and perfection is wishful thinking, even in the system of mathematics, but I think it is within our powers to raise standards considerably, with an aim toward solidarity, not conformity; what Lincoln called "the common right of humanity". Law can help get us all on the same page, as at a 4-way stop. Everybody gets to cross the intersection, but smash-ups are minimized.
In the large corporation my father worked for a number of "important" people were fired for accepting substantial gifts from suppliers to the company because of conflict of interest. Not proven wrongdoing, but because of the elevated risk of doing so (even unconsciously) in conflicts of interest. And what was that about avoiding even the appearance of evil?
My heart goes out to Ukrainians every day, and Russians who don't want this war too.
Claiming their political opponents are doing the very thing that they themselves are doing is the vein of the extremist (MAGA) Republican playbook the last 8 years or so. So transparent yet so many do not see it, it's all so heartbreaking.
It really does sound like Trump might actually be charged. It truly couldn't happen to a more deserving person.
Thanks so much to the author for these letters. (And congrats on being banned from travel to Russia!)
Ukraine was a prosperous, beautiful country just humming along until Putin decided he wanted it. Now it is in shambles. Who can’t see the evil here, transparent indeed.
Not a day goes by that I am not awed by the courage of the civilian population. And to hear Republicans say we should abandon them is just one more reason to resist.
Going back in time to Hitler's invasion of Czechoslovakia and Neville Chamberlin's policy of appeasement. WWII and the Holocaust followed. Fast forward to 2014 and Putin's annexation of Crimea. No Western response. In each case further invasions followed. We learned nothing and did nothing, proving George Santayana's statement to be true: Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. And here in the U.S.? Tens of millions of people advocating for the return to power of a man who sought to destroy our democratic system. What matters most to them? White evangelical supremacy.
Thou shalt not steal. I always say the pendulum swings back but now I wonder how? With all the destruction and Putins relentless anarchistic massacres of a people and country. He still murders his own people. Even villains in Marvel movies lose in the end.
I didn't know so looked it up. From wikipedia: The Dnieper (/(də)ˈniːpər/)[a], also called Dnipro (/dəˈniːproʊ/)[b], is one of the major transboundary rivers of Europe, rising in the Valdai Hills near Smolensk, Russia, before flowing through Belarus and Ukraine to the Black Sea. It is the longest river of Ukraine and Belarus and the fourth-longest river in Europe, after the Volga, Danube, and Ural rivers.[2] It is approximately 2,200 km (1,400 mi) long,[3] with a drainage basin of 504,000 square kilometres (195,000 sq mi). <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dnieper>
Well said. Thank you for that thoughtful and heartfelt comment. President Biden said at the very beginning of the invasion of Ukraine that this was Putin’s war, not the Russian people’s. Bad leadership destroys so much and hurts so many.
"Keep his powder dry" and "square the circle". I love it. If I was still working in GOP politics as a career choice, I'd be wanting to work with Sununu. He has a clue. This is not the Presidential election you want to be running in. Trump and his loyals are toxic...predictable...but insane. Pence will never poll above 5%. DeSantis is a train wreck that barely works in FL and has the weight and power of Disney pushing back at him. The Christian right is VERY predictable. They want us all back in the 1950's. I hate to tell them but Black folks, Gay & Trans folks are all out of the bottle...and they are not going back in...not to please a bunch of folks who have a persecution complex and want to run others and save them from sins they are not committing. The very good news is that Trump is damaged goods and he won't go quietly into the night like Nixon did. He's going to yell and scream IN ALL CAPS...because he needs the attention. That's actually the key to his behavior. He needs the attention and has to be the hero or victim in his never ending reality show. Peace to all. Enjoy your summer.
Totally true...thats a part of their love for the 1950's. Last week I wrote about the Bradley Prize event that we worked on a few weeks ago. Betsy DeVoss was one of the prize winners. The entertainment was early 1950's Rock & Roll...with Chuck Berry Music, Elvis, Buddy Holly & the Shirells. There was only one black performer among them...the lead singer of the Shirells. She was the ONLY black person in the room of about 300. I thought it was funny that Elvis & Chuck were now ok to this group...when their parents and grandparents thought they were Satan in the 50's.
We need a healthy Republican party in this country. This current GOP nightmare is a totally dysfunctional "family" because the daddy is a VERY sick person. I lived through this scenario personally...and it takes awhile to recognize it for what it is, put on the brakes and get off the Titanic. Some folks go down with the ship in denial. Others like Molly Brown survive and thrive. Maybe Sununu is Molly. Romney wants to be...Hogan was never on the ship. Michael Steel left with his integrity in tact. There's hope for healthy...but this election cycle has to play out first. I predict the GOP looses big and Trump leaves the country...we had that debate last week. Biden may win bigger than any President ever.
I agree that the country needs more than one legitimate political party. But I suggest that the moniker "Republican" is tarnished beyond revival. No amount of cleaning and buffing can return it to a status that two whole generations now associate with cultural nonsense and endless corruption.
Somebody, like a Sununu who has a brain, should lead a new center right party with a new name.
And while we are recreating American politics, let's have more than two parties. I am ready for one that is based on these principles:
1. The Climate Crisis and its impact must be discussed every time anything else is discussed.
2. Big money and dark money must be removed from our political system. Elections should be publicly financed.
3. Taxation must be reformed immediately. Pay ratios between CEOs and workers must be put in place. Stock buybacks must be illegal - again. The government must guide the economy - less with interest rate yoyos and more with benevolent policies for the 99%.
4. Voting should be universally easy and safe. Mail in standard. Voter registration automatic with issuance of a SS card.
5. Universal Service for every young person. Doesn't have to be military.
6. Immigration should be welcomed. We need the help. We need to help. Create a path to permanent residency and citizenship. Our birth rate is not enough to maintain our population. We need people to get jobs done, pay taxes and support our social safety net. Basic sense of compassion for fellow humans escaping Hell on Earth. Its win win.
7. Religion must be banned from every public venue, public meeting, public school and anything that is funded by tax dollars. Church revenues and real estate should be taxed.
8. Take some military money and devote it to gun buy backs. Hold gun makers liable for the carnage. Hold gun sellers liable. Hold the parents of punks who slaughter - responsible. Require safe gun storage and safety instruction followed by licensing. You need one to fish to drive. You need a license to kill deer. Why isn't there a license to carry a weapon designed to kill people? Or just outlaw WMDs and their ammunition.
9. Disband illegal paramilitary organizations. "Militias" must be authorized by states - they are now rogue vigilantes. Bust 'em.
10. Universal health care for all now. Expand Medicare to all in stages. And then outlaw private health insurance thieves. Start with Medicare Advantage scams. Pay young people to become doctors and nurses. Instead of loading them with crippling debt and insane liability insurance policies - pay them to become health care pros. Pay them really well - spike nurses, NPs and PAs pay. Pay doctors to enter the areas that are short of help - like PCPs. Why should a dentist or skin doctor or specialty surgeon have a better life than preventive health MDs and ER docs?
I want a new party that is for the planet and all the people.
Got much more. But I need another coffee. I am a loyal Democrat because the alternative is a trip to Hell with Hades. However, too many Dems are GOP lite and too many Dems are beholden to big donors.
But wait!
11. Pay teachers a lot more. Public money for public schools only. Equal money to all schools within a state. Tell the local school board fanatics to take a hike. Many are dedicated volunteers. But none of them should tell my kid what to read. Need money for all this? How about the tax breaks that cities and states offer the Oligarchs and Sports Team uber rich owners? Feed and teach the kids! All the kids. In public schools. Public money should not go to religious indoctrination sites or experimental labs for the affluent and lucky.
Bill...sounds like a platform to me. There was a Natural Law party a few years back. We do have more than 2 parties, but the media will hardly give them any coverage. The Republican party may be tarnished beyond redemption...but it has come back before.
Biden can mentor (after his next term) still too. He has a heart in the place needing modeled and many molds made from. Those tippy toe-ers I almost sympathize for them . It was, still is, a classic lesson (especially in can’t legislate morals) of...WHAT NOT TO DO!
I absolutely love his Christian example. I’d not point fingers at which faction did more damage but more herald Jesus never shoved anything down people’s throats , He just Walked The Path ...loving , doing His best ..for everyone.
Lots of people don’t subscribe to this , I’ll keep ‘the light on ‘ , we’re working for them too. Thanks for being here Mike ❤️
The Republican Party, the party of "small government," is dead. It is Shakespeare's poor player upon the stage, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. Nothing but policies that enrich the already wealthy while pauperizing tens of millions of ordinary Americans, leading them with the Pied Piper of abortion, race, gays and Muslims. It's pathetic to see them stupidly lap up such transparent manipulation.
Mike, I have a problem with ALL Republicans: not one seems to think about the poor or of the importance of unions (the middle class). A for-profit medical system and the attempts to privatize Social Security are horrendous. Republicans scream “crime” when much of it is the result of poverty (poor schools, food deserts, corporate greed, and now climate change WHICH REPUBLICANS DENY). When I look at Republican leaders, I see a lot of bloated bellies, gray faces, frowns, and general negativity, plus immature, unimaginative thinking. Perhaps forty years in the wilderness would bring them back to humanity (TR?).
Would one of you more articulate writers, if you agree, please put this more eloquently?
Virginia your observations are very valid. The issue in a republic or democracy (or any government/monarchy, whatever) those people you describe exist. All ways have, all ways will. Our system needs groups that folks align with. It's just how it works. I'd be happy with no parties, but i don't see how that would function at all. That approach also takes very informed voters who care. About 1/2 of voting age Americans elect our President. Which means about 26% actually vote for the President.
Compassionate people just need to pay attention and work together to elect the best representatives.
Yay for “electoral irrelevance.” Go Gen Z -- and others in the 90M people eligible to vote who don't. As Simon Rosenberg has laid out, let's Get to 55 (winning 55% of the vote) to crush MAGA by supporting young voter registration (every year, 4M turn old enough to vote -- and are overwhelmingly progressive or at least Dem-leaning), and doing everything possible to GOTV!
Surely most of us who participate in this excellent forum agree to support youth voter registration but “support” is an ambiguous word! Most have little contact with 18s to 25s to accomplish actual voter registration. But there is one organization of thousands of youthful volunteers which has been recognized by Forbes magazine as the national leader in getting that voter registration accomplished, namely www.turnup.us/ so please help them get the job done! Many of you have indicated you “like” my appeals in this space but only $137 was donated last week! They need far far more to reach many of the FOUR Million youth who will turn 18 between now and November next year! Please do your part by contributing generously at www.turnup.us/ ----let’s prove that many of us can “donate” as well as “like”? And many thanks!
But ira, has www.turnup.us/ done anything to counter recent news that 13 (?) states (all red) have withdrawn from ERIC's efforts to update voter roles accurately, including ERIC's founding state of Virginia? This seems a sign of impending malevolence toward our voting system and one very much at odds with the Repubs' claims of seeking voter integrity!
The ERIC issue is entirely different from C3 voter registration on the ground. Also as I understand it, ERIC is a voluntary collaboration of state governments.
absolutely!! They did a fabulous job in GA in 22 entirely nonpartisan of course . Did you see the turnout numbers in WI among college students who waited in line for 7 or 8 hours because Wisconsin has among the worst voting laws in the country. Turnup was very active there in encouraging youth participation.
Thankfully there are many organizations working on youth voter registration and turnout. Off the top of my head I can think of half a dozen. ALL GROUPS doing verifiably effective work should be getting donations from older generations who have more money. Clearly, Ira, www.turnup.us/ is a leader. Hurray! Another powerful group is https://www.thecivicscenter.org/ , and while I'm not an expert in comparing and contrasting impacts of nonprofits, it sure looks like both are well worth supporting!
Wow this is catching on; thanks Mimi (I always loved your name and had a sweet Aunt from Queens with your name who would immediately come to help if any of our immigrant family needed help).
Many thanks; you will be very proud of their work and I’m sure they will stay in touch with you! I communicate daily (multiple times) with the brilliant young man Zev Shapiro who started and leads the organization.
Carla: much appreciated. My 501c3 foundation has decided to merge with Turnup because they do it better, faster, and less expensively than we do and we have registered 105,000 (certified no BS) but it took us more than 5 years. Turnup can do that in one weekend through social media. Thanks again for your help.
Think about it; Hillary could have been in her second term right now. So tragic for our country. we would’ve had no January 6 and thousands of people would still be alive following the pandemic. 
The biggest political mistake she and her advisors made was for her to stay with the guy who cheated on her. If she loves him that is the price she was willing to pay, but my realpolitik sense is it was a mistake. Combined with being a woman seeking the Presidency proved too much for those in the fringe states who in many ways control our electoral process. One can never discount the sway of religious belief which our forefathers knew held far too much (male)
Hillary won the popular vote. The voter suppression game played through social media in the swing states to nudge the Electoral College Vote towards trump, was more sophisticated than was ever weaponized before. Most people didn’t realize what was happening. Cambridge Analytica used psy-ops-level manipulation algorithms on the voter suppression activities it unleashed in the ‘16 campaign. They knew exactly the most persuadable lies to feed into the media stream to the most persuadable content-consumers. Then, they either didn’t vote at all, or “virtuously” voted Third Party, believing that Hillary was going to win anyway, and the country would not become a clown-car-driving-off-a-cliff. They were played. And we paid, -many with their lives.
Her husband was indeed her albatross, but as a divorce (I don't know how to put the accent on the "e") she'd never be elected. We've had exactly one divorced president (Reagan) and two bachelor presidents (Buchannan) and (Cleveland) , who married his ward the minute she turned 21. I do not think H. Clinton would have been afforded any slack at all for divorcing her husband.
She would not have been elected New York Senator without her experience as First Lady, not to mention being nominated for President. Bill Clinton was a lot of things, but I don't think he was an albatross. For a different take on Hillary, read "Rodham" by Curtis Sittenfeld, where Hillary meets Bill, but does not marry him.
And we wouldn’t have the 3 clowns on SCOTUS put there by the Federalist Society and tfg. And maybe states wouldn’t be motivated to pass laws that interfere with parental decisions about care for their own children, i.e. trans kids.
A more correct name for his floundering site would be, ''Lies Anti-Social'' There is nothing on that site that even resembles the ''Truth'' It's all lies and total deception.
Hillary moving all of her communications outside of the .gov domain so that she could avoid future Freedom of Information Act requests for her communications was slimy at best, illegal at worst.
By setting up communications in her basement, on a private server, she insured that future Freedom of Information Act requests would be denied because it is her private property. Not government property.
We were slimed again by the Clintons but, apparently, it is NOT illegal to attempt to avoid public disclosure of documents we should own and have access to based on Comey's interpretation of the law.
Honestly, it is sort of a good thing I was not FBI director. Because, I think attempting to avoid Federal Freedom of Information Act requests should be illegal and should carry a legal penalty.
Plus, having a server in your basement while you are Secretary of State? Hmmm, I wonder if the Russians or the Chinese or my own kids could hack it? We will never know will we.
Oh, Wait! The Russians DID hack her email. I forgot. AND? The kid who was in charge of providing server support for the DNC was shot twice in the back at 2am in the morning by somebody.
The Clintons slimed America in ways that I find unacceptable even today.
In fact, It was the Clintons who started the whole downhill race to the bottom of ethical standards in the USA as President.
An approach taken up immediately by George W. Bush following Clinton's big slime.
Mike, stay focused on presently indicted people. Who did Trump show the classified documents to, after he left office? Where did the ones that are missing go? Classified documents held for years, 1000 miles from where they should be, found in the possession of someone who has committed a crime by taking them away from where they should be, are the immediate issue. No one cares about the emails of the person Trump beat in the 2016 election, do they?
Yes, Trump broke the law and, surprisingly, appears to have been or will be charged for that crime. I am surprised honestly.
However, his use of "whataboutism" in the case of Hillary is, at least in my own mind, valid and that makes it relevant to the thread here.
I know I am way out of step with most of my own comments here and certainly out of step with the mainstream of the thread. But, seriously, there will be many people who will use the fact that Hillary was not charged for what should probably have been a crime as a reason not to charge Trump.
So, I think it is relevant to the Trump case, although, selling classified documents is possibly worse that what Hillary was doing. Depending on WHAT she was doing while off the .gov domain.
Mike, yeah, you’re out of step with your usual well-thought-through comments here. The only similarity between Hillary and tfg is documents. She did not steal them so she could sell them to continue the grift. He’s a traitor and whiner.
Meredith, actually I think its important to remember why Queen Hilary was under the microscope. Her conniving did not go unnoticed by many. She knew the rules, but she felt above them. We complain about this type of behavior all the time. Is she any lessor of a scoundrel because trump is worse?
Hillary’s scoudrellyness led to thousands of hours of wasted time, trying to make something of Benghazi, trying to make something of a personal server she used for personal use, as opposed to all the on the record SOS communications which are available for examination. People who want to think badly of Hillary because she is a smart, uppity woman who does not suffer fools gladly will continue to do so.
Trump, on the other hand, betrays his friends (see Kurds in Syria), attempts to corrupt others, (see Zelenskyy as a new President of Ukraine, an example of failure, and most members of the Republican caucus of Congress, with Lindsey Graham a most egregious example of success), sells state secrets to the highest bidder (see Saudi 2 billion dollar “investment” with Trump’s mobster son-in-law), refused to deal with the COVID problem because he couldn’t figure out how to monetize it for himself, and has made verbalizing incestuous thoughts ok in polite society with his talk of dating his daughter.
Please tell me how you see any equivalence between Hillary’s actions and Trump’s actions. Ugh.
My opinion of Clinton is a completely different subject than my comparison of her to trump; completely
She knew better than to use a private server for official work. Uma knew better too. This is but an example of power people who believe rules are for thee, not they. It speaks to character
Bush Jr. Did too. Ivanka and Jared did too. Why single out Secretary of State Clinton? You reveal yourself when you called her Queen Hillary. Sorry I took the bait. If you are really concerned about national security surely we should be talking about current issues with big fish, rather than parsing things that you wish had been a problem umm, how many election cycles ago.? What do you think about Trump’s being indicted is a far more interesting question, don’t you think?
She was a scoundrel and she got away with it. James Comey let her off because her emails were apparently sans any government secrets. A true surprise that the Secretary of State can communicate for a lengthy period of time without discussing confidential information over email.
So, if we believe Comey, we must also believe that Hillary was irrelevant as Secretary of State. None of her communications had anything to do with security.
Old news. Surely current events are more interesting than what went on a long time ago? What do you think about Trump being indicted? That is the question of the day, right?
To be precise: I simply outlined how many folks will view Hillary's ability to avoid being charged for attempting to avoid future Freedom of Information Act requests by moving her emails to private domain name in her basement at home.
To me, that was a crime. To James Comey, it was not because, after examination of her emails, nothing secure was on those emails. Another surprise to me.
BUT, the use of a private domain name instead of the .gov domain name that enables FOIA access to her emails forever?
Jurist don't weigh someone's criminal acts against the alleged acts of the uncharged. Your thinking should disqualify you as a juror. Really, think about it.
I'm no fan of the Clintons but IMHO the race to the ethical standard bottom was kicked off by the Man Who Ruined America, "Saint" Ronnie. The antithesis of Lincoln and Roosevelt and everything they stood for, he took the manhole cover off the political sewer and invited everybody to come on down.
As to the Former Guy, this was his lawyers' last chance to avoid an indictment for obstruction and for unlawful possession of national security documents. Prosecutors routinely afford potential criminal defendants an opportunity to argue their case why they should not be prosecuted. Apparently, nothing in the way of exculpatory evidence was offered on behalf of the former president, nor would one expect that there would be some sort of exculpation that the Federal District Court might find meritorious in a way that would negate the mountain of evidence that has been accumulated showing that he acted willfully and knowingly in hiding national security documents (regardless of their administrative classification within the national security system). Former President Trump's sole defense was that other presidents had not been prosecuted the way it looks like he will be, possibly within the coming week when a formal indictment is expected to issue from the federal grand jury now hearing evidence against him.
In the short run, Trump will be using this indictment as a spur to raise money from his mesmerized supporters. In the long run, however, it is all but announced that the Department of Justice has an interlocking series of indictments in the works, whether it is for his obstruction in the national security documents matter; or a future prosecution for his obstruction and participation in the conspiracy to overthrow the 2020 election results, which nobody is mentioning at this time. But from the factual standpoint, they are all cross referenced and interrelated. There's also the matter, about which there has been little mention in the press, about two post-election investigations that the Trump Campaign commissioned to determine whether there had been any sort of election manipulation that could have resulted in Trump's electoral defeat. And, in fact, we learned today that there had been two such investigative efforts commissioned by the Trump Campaign, each of which informed the former president that there was no manipulation, and that he lost the election fair and square. Prosecutors will be creating a narrative, based upon the two studies mentioned, to establish that the former president knew to an absolute certainty that there was no electoral fraud. And yet, for the three years since the election, Trump has continued to maintain that his reelection was 'stolen' from him, and that this bogus claim was a principal incentive to his followers to storm the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
The facts are not in dispute. What federal prosecutors have been pursuing is evidence relating to Trump's state of mind. To date, there is evidence from a legion of independent third-party sources showing that Trump knew that he lost the election, and rightly so. What comes out in this past week's disclosure about an interview with persons involved in assisting Meadows, Trump's former Chief of Staff, to write a memoir, in which Trump admitted that during the time immediately before he left office, whether in the closing months of 2020, or in January, 2021, that he had gotten into a bitter conflict with the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, where it became known that General Milley had vowed to prevent Trump from going to war with Iran (in particular) in order for Trump to preserve his ability to remain in office by creating a manufactured national emergency. The interview was recorded on audio tape, or some sort of digital device, in which Trump was heard rustling papers in his hands, while he was telling his Interlocutors that it was General Milley who is the architect of a plan to attack Iran, but the Trump was not allowed to show his interviewers the actual documents because of their national security provenance. The story that Trump was peddling that General Milley was the source of the plan to attack Iran is untrue; and factually, it is preposterous, given the nature of the operational planning and programming protocols within the Department of Defense, where the general would have nothing to do with developing war plans. What comes across so vividly is that Trump was using national security documents in order to seek revenge on a government official who opposed him. If further evidence bears the story out, it clearly establishes that Trump's oft-repeated statements that he could declassify documents by merely thinking about it are patently false. It also establishes a plausible motive why Trump might want to retain possession of such documents in order to embarrass or damage the reputation of someone in government whom he despises. This revenge motive dovetails neatly with similar types of actions that Trump engaged in over his entire lifetime, but with particular concern for his treatment of former FBI officials who were looking into Trump's connections with Russians looking to sabotage the upcoming American election. Trump's predilection for revenge-seeking is legendary and well-documented. Investigators have already discounted the notion that Trump might seek to monetize top-secret documents in his possession, by selling them, or by using them to influence foreign powers; or that the former president was holding onto these documents because they were souvenirs of his days as president — Trump is not a reader, and he is not one to scheme to use sequestered information for some future purpose that he might not readily anticipate. He is entirely too pedestrian, with lower-class tastes and proclivities. But in taking revenge against the highest ranking military officer we have, that has the ring of truth to it. And that's what this little tattletale story about Iran appears to be all about. It intuitively makes sense that Trump would want to be in a position to mention that he has a document in his possession that puts his opponent in the wrong. The problem was then, and is now, that is a matter of law he is prohibited from using that document for any purpose whatsoever after he leaves the presidency. But it does give us a dumpster dive into the former president's thinking, such as it is.
Trump is a master at low cunning; and he is shown to be a feral force of nature when it comes to coming after rivals for elective office. We will soon see how this all plays out; but the evidence of Trump's state of mind with respect to the top-secret documents that he was hoarding, and the reasons for him doing so, are becoming all too apparent. There is nothing intellectually elevated about any of this information that is just now coming out. Trump's rationale for keeping these documents hidden away, and working assiduously to prevent their discovery, is not an element of the crime for which Trump will be charged, but his rationale is something that people intuitively understand, in all of its spitefulness and hatred.
Arthur, I would add that the DOJ (or National Archives, I forget which) asked for the return of that document, and the Trump team couldn’t find it. That is not reassuring. Gee, I wonder if there might be a country willing to pay, say, $2 billion to Trump’s son-in-law, for such a document. I wouldn’t dismiss the possibility that he has sold our secrets for gain.
Even if none of this had happened, I find it appalling that an administration would be so disorganized, so slapdash, so unprofessional, as to mislay so many classified documents, even without malign intent. The president’s office should ideally hum along in an organized fashion, not like this.
Yes, I find it frightening that the Executive Branch and the National Archives, with all their rules and protocols, cannot keep track of official US documents, particularly Secret and Top Secret ones. I find that particularly frightening. Isn't someone, from the Archives, charged with pulling in those documents at the end of each work day, fIling them away again? Scarey!
Great analysis! Can you tell me the basis for your statement, "Investigators have already discounted the notion that Trump might seek to monetize top-secret documents in his possession, by selling them, or by using them to influence foreign powers..."
Is seems like an obvious ploy by Trump to use classified documents in negotiations for investments in foreign countries to "sweeten the deal," so to speak. Not that the blackmail motive is at all wrong (imagine all the compromising stuff we have on foreign leaders, not just our own government official), and the two motive would seem to go well together.
That was mentioned on one of the MSNBC news analysis shows. But the narrative is persuasive insofar as it comports with Trump's state of mind prior to departing the White House in January 2021. He doesn't do international finance. He's basically a concierge at his down at the heels golf resorts. That's all he really knows. He's fending off prosecutions. And he's in a panic because the walls are closing in on him. Trump is incapable of thinking strategically. Candidates he supported lost their election bids. His finances are a mess, and his political allies are all small-bore guys who control Red State Republican Party organizations and fundraising operations. They're all in on the grift. That's a world away from top secret documents and espionage.
Your word make much sense, and I bet his panic grows stronger as the ones who are financing this coup from the Right quietly stop taking his calls. He was clearly far out of his league from Day One of his presidency as experienced politician after politician played him like a toddler chasing a piece of candy, especially the Republican ones. For that reason, I wonder how many of those classified documents were an attempt at "kompromat" on his allies, not just his enemies.
Trump's ignorance and vanity stripped away whatever plausibility he might have been able to lend to his lawyers' arguments about his supposed lack of criminal intent. This is an open and shut case, and Trump essentially slammed the exit door on himself.
Any thoughts on what the penalty phase should look like? Any mitigating factors? Term and location of incarceration? That's an awfully smelly 800-pound gorilla ya' got there...
There was a report yesterday evening that a Lieutenant Colonel was sentenced to three years imprisonment for misusing his security clearance. No details, but when you consider the seriousness of the charges, and it's the former president himself against whom the accusations have been lodged. The president has been credibly charged with obstruction. It would be political suicide for the Department of Justice, and legal malpractice for the government to give Trump a pass. My guess would be that consideration for an appropriate sentence would begin at six, maybe seven years. Then there's the matter of scoring, evaluating the former president's crime of conviction against the defendant's so-called 'criminal history' that might include 'prior bad acts' or crimes that have not been formally charged, but for which substantial evidence exists that the defendant participated serious criminal activity in addition to the crimes for which he was convicted. Back when I was handling federal sentencing guideline cases, I learned that a bad actor could expect to see his presumptive sentence enhanced by additional prison time, perhaps at a level where the sentencing judge might be tempted to impose the statutory maximum. But there are countervailing considerations, not the least of which would be that Trump was the source of the January 6 insurrection, and its guiding spirit. That would be prosecuted separately. Conceivably, because law enforcement officers were injured and died as a consequence of the insurrection on January 6, a harsher penalty of imprisonment might be imposed in the future sentencing proceeding.
But, in reality, any substantial prison sentences is likely to be lengthier than the time Donald Trump has yet to live. Trump is also in a serious case of mental decline, and there is every reason to believe that even in prison, Trump might end his days in a benign medical treatment center for aged and infirm inmates serving life terms of imprisonment. I have every reason to believe that within two or three years Trump's cognitive abilities will have so deteriorated that his existence would be no different from that experienced by normal elderly people in a full care facility who are not confined by reason of prison sentence. A seven year prison sentence might be fully deserved, but from a societal standpoint, the punishment ends when the convict can no longer appreciate the fact that he is still in prison, and that seems to be where Donald Trump is heading.
Trump is 76 years old. Any substantial sentence will deflate Trump faster than the Hindenberg airship burned and crashed in 1937. Elmer Stewart Rhodes was convicted of seditious conspiracy, and was sentenced to eight years in prison, but he is still a relatively young man. Therefore, for Rhodes, confinement and deprivation of his liberty is meaningful punishment for the entire length of his incarceration; for Donald Trump, the meaningfulness of confinement to prison really lasts only for so long as he understands why he is there.
Tossing a coin, I think a sentence on the documents case would max out at five years. Putting Trump on ice for five years takes him out of elective politics forever, and it vindicates the Government's objective to punish those who abuse the discretion granted them under the national security laws. Five years, maximum; anything beyond that would be effectively hospice care for which Trump's sentence of conviction would be essentially irrelevant.
There is a world of difference among the GOP presidential wannabes. Trump, of course, uniquely has established a track record which runs the gamut from publicly licking Putin's boots at Helsinki to inciting a insurrection on January 6, 2021. And this traitorous thug is GOP's frontrunner for 2025? But nobody matches DeSantis for pure chutzpah. Who else has banned books and attempted to defraud the Walt Disney Company? Donald Trump is not the only Public Enemy Number One running for POTUS in 2024.
And he is just a horrible as TUMP, or could possibly be even worse. They don't call him ''DeSatan'' for nothing. I would call him the second coming of Adolf Hitler,,
The image of three new Trump lawyers entering the Department of Justice to meet with special counsel Jack Smith suggests a logical Trump legal defense, as he is being inundated with criminal and civil ‘harassment’ in diverse states and courts:
TRUMP IS RUNNING OUT OF LAWYERS WHO ARE WILLING TO RISK THEIR REPUTATIONS (AND LAW LICENSES) STRUGGLING TO DEFEND THE INDEFENSIBLE.
Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell top the list of solon schlemiels who have fallen on their own petards working for this False Fact Felon (FFF). Almost daily we hear of lawyers who are abandoning FFF and turning state’s evidence in an effort to squeeze the stench off their double-breasted suits.
I await the day when FFF, encountering ‘the greatest witch hunt of all time,’ will seek to postpone court proceedings because of his inability to recruit defense lawyers.
FFF without a modern-day Roy Cohn is judicially naked, which is an image that makes me shudder.
Well, one thing is for certain, Trump is predictable. It's really laughable. Who writes in all caps? John Irving certainly got away with it in A Prayer for Owen Meany, but the former President, really!@X&* As I begin to work in my community on the 2024 election, I want to be prepared to answer questions about Harris and her work as VP. Come to realize that I do not know much about the role of VP and her performance. Would love any suggestions for reading. I am in the midst of my 20 year son who is in college and his friends who keep dumping on Biden and Harris. I think the mainstream media is shining light on Biden's not insignificant accomplishments, but I want more on Harris. Thank you!
Stacy: Remember to tell your son, the role of the vice president is basically to be the #1 cheerleader for the president and his/her agenda. It is not to overshadow him/her. It is also one of being a standby in the event the president is unable to perform his/her duties due to death or incapacity where the vice president can (and has in history) immediately assume the presidency so that the office is never "vacant."
Heather and her podcast partner Joanne Freeman did a podcast on the VP office and what it entails, the historical aspect of the office and touched on VP Harris in the role. It’s definitely worth a listen. The podcast is Now & Then.
I'd challenge every anti Biden/Harris utterance that came out of their mouths. “Really? Can you give me an example?” “Really? Why is that an issue or bad?” Etc….treat them like 4 year olds who need to practice being 'nice.' Be Socratic. Logic is a powerful tool when minds are engaged. When they're not engaged, there's no learning. Facts won't help much here if they are just wisecracking to one up each other. Redirect. Redirect. Just like with toddlers.
Why are they dumping on Biden? IF it is the age thing, I would point out that the "Sleepy Joe" moniker is a great shield to hide Dark Brandon---he manages to keep outfoxing the MAGAts who think he's a doddering old man. I must say, I love it!!
Sorry this is in your midsts w/ the 20 year-olds. Check out Simon Rosenberg's videos (mentioned above too) for some fodder for discussion with them if you need it. Not sure where to point you for Harris info. I think we need to focus on pointing out the party platforms and voting for those rather than personalities/people.
I did, especially when he publicly came out in support of gay marriage before Pres Obama did. Thought they were a good team & I suspect Joe had a good mentor-like effect on Obama….just a hunch.
We have a long road ahead of us even if Trump is indicted now and hopefully more. There is a whole ecosystem of the current GOP that would just as easily turn to clown master 2 Ron DeSantis who is worse than Trump. The battle for the soul of America is like the Ukrainians versus the Russians...no end in sight
I think we're going to find that when the indictments drop, we won't experience the joy that we might have imagined. Why? Because the indicted is a pitiful man, in spite of how high he's flown. We were insufficiently wary in 2016 and shortchanged by the electoral college process. Whatever people might have thought about Mrs Clinton, I doubt she would have run so fast and loose over the constitution and the law. When the DOJ, Georgia and New York are done with tfg, we'll feel some grim satisfaction that the law has prevailed, but it'll be a Pyrrhic victory, one we want to file away and forget because under all the details there is just this deep and pervasive sadness about the pain we've endured, the fraction of our populace that has been duped by the swindler extraordinaire and the probability that we have not learned how to prevent it from happening again down the line. The hounds of hell have been unleashed and it will take heroic efforts to send them back where they came from. Indictments won't assuage the pain and suffering we feel for ourselves and the part we all played in this awful drama that persists and spreads across the country.
I have felt the pain and suffered every day as I watched loved ones become cult fools. Time for a breath of fresh air, but a stiff backbone will be needed to survive chump’s legacy of horror. He found every Chink in the armor that other cretins can use. We are exposed as we have not been before. The world knows that.
Relatively very few people in the Electoral College. What most people thought about Mrs Clinton was that she should be President. That's a statistical fact. (Will you ever forget those "debates"?)
It will take decades to repair the damage: the economy, the environment, the court systems, the destruction of the civic discourse, the awful polarization, etc.. The list goes on. America needs a new center right party.
The most important thing about this republican, terrorist coup on our country is that all our darkest shadows have been revealed to us. They are in our face and they stink to high heaven. Repugnant. As they continue to be revealed, we can see the areas in need of strengthening, changes, reclamations to undergird what works in our democracy and what thwarts democracy. Including our trampled justice systems, lack of clear qualifications, job descriptions and oversight for leadership positions. We are the employers and we need to have power to stop liars, belligerence, bullying and incompetence before it enters our doors. Including in our Judicial systems which are hobbled with a corrupt SCOTUS. Time for changes-- it is hard right now, but it is also really good for our country to be this awakened and getting more and more educated by Heather, Joyce, Glenn, Katie, etc. etc on our legal and governmental systems. We know now that Civics MUST be taught in all schools to stop this dumbing down of Americans and how our democracy works. Look at all the GQP's in our government. They are against democracy and the rule of law. They should be banned instead of books. And we pay their damned salaries to thwart our country. We are their Bosses and funders. Time to stand up and demand sanity and clean out those who do not work for democracy and decency. We hold the power. We need to use it.
“THE GREATEST WITCH HUNT OF ALL TIME!” Everything is BIG with tfg. His lies about his own crimes and his “what abouts.” HIllary? He must be in a time warp. Everyday he is closer to being unhinged. And irrelevant in his party and with voters. Coincidentally, while the stolen documents are still in the news, the pool at Mar-a-Lago flooded and possibly destroyed evidence. How inconvenient.
...yet, J L, he remains the master of communicating feelings of hatred for those who presumably have treated him unfairly, those "in power," those who are actually trying to do something to level the playing field, to keep all equal before the law. It ain't the facts that matter for him and his followers but the FEELINGS!
“The Greatest Witch Hunt of all time??” I’m sure the thousands killed in Europe and American during the actual witch hunt hysteria would like a word. Poor little Donny, so unfair 🙄
Right down the street from where I live, in 1692-1693 there was a witch hunt that resulted in 20 executions and five deaths in prison. Over 200 people, mostly poor rural folks from the countryside around Salem, were charged. Donny-baby, your troubles don't compare to the "greatest" witch hunt, even in North America. And unlike those folks, you'll get a measure of justice. So, how about this: Be happy Cotton Mather isn't your prosecutor and shut the ***k up already.
Republicans have been trying to “square the circle” for half of my long life, with the help of the Goebbels of our time, Murdoch. And he has done a masterful propaganda job, even enticing our MSM to follow the money they saw him rake in from “news entertainment/reality show bull Schitt.” Has the treason network (or clones) modified their methods? Just more careful about how they demonize the innocent. Politicians are still fair game, it seems. Still, I will join the indictment party and rejoice as chump circles the drain. But the scum he leaves behind must be scrubbed away…
"I will join the indictment party and rejoice as chump circles the drain. But the scum he leaves behind must be scrubbed away…" That is the perfect description (image) of what we're left with after these many years of hatred and division ginned up to undermine our democracy.
the Republican National Committee promptly tweeted footage of House Oversight Committee chair Representative James Comer (R-KY) suggesting that the “Biden family” has engaged in “a pattern of bribery, where payments would be made through shell accounts and multiple banks,” in a system of “money laundering.”
Politicians can affect millions of of lives, and even lives of generations yet to come. Why is it that they can tell egregious lies with impunity? If we believe in government of the people, by the people, for the people, and we citizens can get in serious trouble in many ways for lying to our own government, how is that that those we hire to manage the government get to lie outrageously to us?
Seems to me the ones in the Fascist/GQP party can lie, tell another lie, and then back that lie up with another lie. When they start in with these false accusations of the Biden family, does anyone ever ask them, '' do they have PROOF of what the Biden family is doing? Many times they go silent when they are asked this, or start to make up some absurd lies that they got from an unnamed fictional source. These cretins have serious mental problems and it seems they don't know right from wrong... it's outrageous that these nutso despots are members of our Congress and running for President. It would be funny if it weren't so dangerous;
I stopped laughing about the Spring of 2016…
That was when I started crying.
The Fall of 2016 saw my wife's caseload (she is a Clinical Psychologist in private practice) increase to beyond full, and stay that way throughout fpotus's term. It did not ablate during Covid. She's worn out.
Anxiety is the disease of the 21st century. I was in practice for almost fifty years, ending in 2017 when I got cancer. When I began no one would admit they were in therapy — and a lot of therapy then was psychoanalytic, which is bullshit. Now, everyone is looking for a therapist. The politics are only one part of it. Most of the problems come from the uncertainty and instability that people feel due to the rapid changes in how the world works. Jobs are unstable, big companies fail, older people get laid-off, companies get bought. There is much less of any feeling of loyalty of the company to the workers and the workers to the company. Yet, work can take up much more time. This has affected family life. Schools are also suffering as there are so many more skills to learn, yet the social pressures have interrupted everything. It has led to at least half the country feeling financial insecurity. The Republicans just want people to work for low wages with no safety net. Billionaires have taken over both parties to some extent, but the Republicans have committed themselves to only the specific billionaires who support them. They rest of the population is there to work for low wages and fight wars. People are exhausted and don't have the time or energy to care about each other.
I hit "like," although there's not much to like there. Now we need someone to list all the positive things going for the world, but not me, I'm off to listen to my favorite Jerry Garcia album, "Old and In the Way."
Here's another little positivity for you:
https://www.whitehouse.gov/invest/?utm_source=invest.gov&utm_medium=email
Yes, it was a great record and we all miss Jerry, Did you know that there was a song years before that by Charlie Poole: Old and Only in the Way
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sr8c1UNVZcM
Love the title!
OAITW, you, my friend, have said a mouthful. And every bit if it is gospel.
I spent over 26 years in firefighting and law enforcement. I was medically forced to retire at 45. I’m now 71, soon to be 72, and yo this very day I have extremely bad nightmares of crap I went through, did, had to do. After I was forced to retire, I had to sell my gun collection to pay bills.
The state of Florida, in all of its glory refused my medical, even though the doctor called them, sent them my records, and informed them I would not be back to work once he released me from the hospital. All this before he told me I was through.
My first check from the state was a whopping $236! They cut my retirement 78% because I was only 45 years old, even though I had over 25 years invested in the retirement under hazardous duty. The state Retirement Board sent me a letter informing me that my medical had been denied because they deemed I was able to gain other employment and work.
So, married, raising 4 children (2 in elementary school, 2 in diapers at home) my income was $236 a month until my doctor finally got my social security started in 2002.
I’m basically telling this because I am one of those that you speak about. I am one of those that should have tried to go to a therapist. I refused. I was stubborn. I was foolish. And today, I’m alone, broken down, broken, and just came out of living in the woods, and under a bridge for over two months. The only reason I’m not still there is my youngest son learned about my homelessness and came up here and found me. Put me in a motel two nights while he and his wife located this apartment they put me in. I have nothing, but things are just that. Material dust collectors.
OAITW, your are spot on with that assessment. My wife does not want a 50 year career; she's been licensed for 30 years and wants to retire at 62. Another constant in her practice is the toxic work environment of one of our city's largest employers; she's on the State provider panel and gets a fair number of state employees in her caseload.
The dysfunction of the medical industrial complex is in part why I have opted out. Churn of providers and churn of patients, just like churn in jobs and churn of low-paid co-workers preclude stable and supportive relationships. Humans are evolutionarily wired to thrive in communities, and they're all fragmenting. All except the billionaires' club. (They have paid communities of sycophants).
Many MAMMONITES ! You came, into the World , with NOTHING YOU Will GO OUT, of the World ....with NOTHING ! WAKE UP ! MANKIND !!
Why didn't anyone anticipate that the combined "World Wars" was an unavoidable reality update that globalization was already here, and had been unfolding for a long while, at least since the French and USAmerican Revolutions? Change is not new, and will continue. People trained on Chinese Checkers are very disturbed when they are brought to the chess board. So, what's new. Our "reality community", or community of responsibility, is not USAmerican isolationism, which MTG and her gang know nothing about. Community is constituted by a common need to confront common dangers and opportunities. Climate change, the atom, world-level movement of populations, and super-charged global market capitalism, are beyond the competence level national institutions. In post-pioneer USAmerica, Congress governed and the president executed. We now live in at least an extra-national reality—chess and dominoes are played differently—where the president of the USA is functionally a representative standing between our national community and the global community. Our governing institutions designed to have Congress govern according to the "will of the (national) people", now depend perversely upon a constitutionally built executive ill suited to "represent" the will of the US citizen as members of the global people. New or evolved institutions take time to accommodate new conditions, but institutions of self-governance are adapting by confronting the postwar condition and the frank reality (in the information age) that people generally want to consent to how they are governed. Game-changers are what games do.
Not surprisingly, too many of us are looking for individual solutions rather than collective political action. Yes, plenty of us manage to combine the two, but individualism is a national flaw and I hope it doesn't kill us. (Paradoxically enough, the party that champions individualism has been out-organizing the Democrats, aka "the left of center," for decades.)
Ally, in 2016, my physician, when I told her how depressed I was, told me that every psychiatrist and psychologist that she knew was overwhelmed with patients, and that prescriptions for antidepressants had skyrocketed. For me, even with Biden in office and knocking it out of the park, I'm locked in a state of agitation, because of the continued slide of this country toward fascism. The fact that the "No Labels" party is ginning up enthusiasm for third party candidates, potentially handing the presidency back to tFg, just worsens the situation.
I totally agree, that is an extremely concerning--and disconcerting--development. I've been sharing articles about their (true) purpose and the source of their funding: Koch, Mercer...all funds from RW sources 😤🤬🤬. The Rs are clearly worried and going all out to win by any means necessary.
Why doesn't the MSN point out the true reason for this move? Any fool should know that a third-party candidate doesn't stand a chance of winning, so the only purpose would be to swing the race in a generally unintended direction. Unfortunately, Americans tend to be naive about who's behind these schemes. If they weren't, tFg would never have been elected in the first place, and by the time the '24 election occurs, he'll more than likely be a convicted felon.
When I went for my annual in 2017, I mentioned how I felt to my doctor and she said she had heard many say the same thing. Thankfully, your wife has been doing good work for all those upset by death star and the pandemic...partly his fault for downplaying it. Kudos to her and hope for some rest.
She has scaled back quite a bit this past year. It has been delightful.
Good.
"The Fall of 2016"
Sounds like the title to a tragedy.
It does indeed.
seriously!
I stopped laughing in 2000 when the SC decided Dubya Bush should be president.
The bloodless coup of 2000. We’ve been through this before, the only difference was Bush is not insane. He’s for sure a criminal, but like all the Republican POTUS’s in our lifetime, they’re not held accountable. It’s like after they leave office they walk away with a clean slate, no worries. Meanwhile, Democrat POTUS’s bear a great deal of wasted scrutiny from their Republican counterparts.
You can bet there’s no way Republicans are going to escape the wrath of pro-choice voters. Which overwhelmingly vote to restore access to abortion unfettered.
This single issue is what people are voting on. It’s unconstitutional to deny access to medical care due to their sex. Then heap a good scoop of self-righteousness, sprinkle of fascism and a dollop of willful ignorance, you’ve got yourself a Nazi sundae. Hope the fascists choke on it. 🍨
Years ago, while on a boat ride around Lake Tahoe, we passed the multi-structure lakefront compound of an extremely wealthy Bay Area real estate developer. I asked, more rhetorically that seriously, why would he build such a huge vacation home. A friend replied, “Because he can.” That’s been a catch phrase for my husband and me ever since.
Why does Comer lie with impunity? Because he can. He’s a member of Congress, after all.
That seems so foreign to me. Whenever I think of what my life would be if I were really rich, that's the image that come to me -- drifting from beautiful room to beautiful room of a huge house, alone, pestering the servants for conversation and a sense of connection. The vision make me shiver, and explains to me why so many rich people have such odd social/political obsessions.
In all honesty, the gentleman who built this compound was a genuine philanthropist who was a 1st or 2nd generation America, attended Stanford on a full scholarship and, through his successful business, gave back to the community three-fold through the foundation he and his wife created.
I was using the comment "Because he can" not as criticism of him, but as criticism of Comer.
Nor was I criticizing him, either, although the concept of "do it bigger merely because I can" seems designed to create a lot of waste in many circumstances. And I'm sure there are many people with lives and personalities big enough to fill mansions.
But that's not me, and I suspect that's not like a lot of rich people. Like so many things, I bet some "do" rich better than others.
That's when I got involved in electoral politics as I never had before (even though I live in relatively sane Massachusetts), switched my voter registration from Unenrolled to Democrat, and became active in the local Democratic group.
And I, in the Spring of 2015.
Didn't you see where grassass and gomer said they don't care if they have any proof.
This is all show to make Biden numbers go down.
Remember that howdy doody guy (faux) said it was all a ploy to make Hilary unelectable and it worked.
And that is what we are fighting against.
We may not have any proof that Biden did anything wrong, but we feel like he did.
Everything rePUKES say is nothing but projection.
They have to keep feeding their base what they know they need to hear out of fear of them waking up.
Yeah, they certainly don't want any of them becoming "woke".
And they are certainly do not want educated people....only those believers!
And there are a fair number of "educated" believers, too--as strange as that seems.
Mr. Kravetz, you hit the nail fair and square on the head!!!
It looks like a religion exactly to the extent that it relies on faith instead of evidence. Since it's really hard to rationally convince people to kill themselves and others, they have to turn to religion-style techniques to persuade them. It's a very time-honored tool and also explains why both government and religion have been struggling for centuries with how to accommodate the new guy, science.
They are bringing in the bucks as they tell lies to the public!
Do not forget that Sen. Chuck Grassley was an active participant in the Jan. 6 insurrection, and if Pence had gotten into the Secret Service limo and disappeared, Grassley would have taken over as President pro tem of the Senate, and would have carried out the conspiracy by overturning the certification of the official electoral votes from the states, in cooperation with the 147 Republicans who went along with this ploy. I hope Jack Smith rounds up all of them and truly cleans house.....
I know yesterday afternoon, those three Trump attorneys that left the meeting in the federal building didn’t look happy at all. I hope that Smith told them to go suck on a bottle of buttermilk because their client was going to prison for a very long time!
I hope so too.
Beth, I don't believe for a minute that Biden has done anything wrong, especially since the only "source" of the accusations is the insane, lying right wing. They are lying, and it's nothing new. Dirty politics has been their gameplan ever since McCarthy/Cohn ruined careers and lives during the Communist Scare.
You're very right, but please change your posture slightly. I don't believe anything they say either, but if they find any real corroborated evidence, I'll look at it. I no longer listen to them, but I like evidence, wherever it comes from. I'm not going to be a Republican.
Dirk, my posture will not change unless the right wing is able to demonstrate that actual wrongdoing occurred. If that happens, I'll certainly inform myself and make a decision at that point. Remember, the accusations regarding Hunter and the rest of the Bidens have been circulating for several years, with no concrete evidence, just vague allegations. Especially considering the source of these allegations, it would be terribly naive to take them at face value. If concrete evidence can be presented, I'll take it into consideration. I do recognize that Hunter used very poor judgment to take a position in the then-corrupt Ukrainian machine, using his father's position as capital. If that's all that is revealed, then the right wing could have pointed out the obvious and dropped it. Either way, like you, I won't be voting for any Republicans.
So I'm sorry, Ms. Fleming, because my first comment, I see now, is poorly phrased, I didn't mean to imply a criticism. Much of our current political discourse seems to be little more than operatives hoping to present information, even verifiable facts, in such a way as to make an unprepared listener to leap to a desired conclusion on the basis of non-rational prejudices. I can't reasonably imagine this practice is limited to Republicans, since it's really just an extension of common persuasive techniques. What's frightening is that this common, pandering-to-prejudice technique is so dangerously effective in the hands of skilled, morals-free, influencers in such an interconnected environment.
You hit their technique spot on. After all, I seen lots of "evidence" about Hunter Biden from his detractors -- about his addictions, his struggle, his wealth, too, and his directorships -- he's clearly been a busy boy, just like the rest of his family.
What they never seem to give is evidence of wrongdoing. Instead, they just tell you facts about Hunter's life and then look at you, hoping your prejudices will take it from there. It's a technique that works very well on those who don't constantly challenge their own prejudices, and I despair at ever finding and challenge all of my own.
grassass and gomer!
Not only projection. When this “stuff comes out
I always think they are telling us something they did or they are themselves in a takes one to know one way.
Great names. It is beyond nuts to say that they don't care about proof. Gassy should have been put out to pasture long ago.
He and Feinstein both! For her to continue "be there" when there could be someone put in place of her IF she would retire? Thats just wrong. Only seeing what the news is saying - she shouldnt be there. Its really sad. But certainly someone should be able to rectify this!
Agree.
I have to really question what in the world are her constituents thinking? In California, for Petes sake - considering its mainly Democratic. Wouldnt you think they would want someone mentally capable of representing them? Puzzling.
The same goes for some other fossilized Senate specimens--both Republican AND Democrat, I'm sorry to say.
Agreed.
There needs to be limits they can serve. The president is two terms, the House and Senate should be the same. This serving 6-8 terms is stupid. Look at the South Carolina senator that served until he died, or died right after he finally retired. Strom Thurmond.
ZERO integrity!!! The press needs to a better job calling these wackos out for their blatant BS.
Jennifer Rubin just published a terrific article about how the press should treat their lies. (gifted) https://wapo.st/3NfCBJM
Thank you! What a great article -- but will the media follow any of Rubin's suggestions. :/
I sure hope so. If not, we all need to call them out for it. (And not just to each other on this forum.)
As always she hits every single nail on the head! One of the commenters had a really good list of questions to ask Requbs. If only.....
They just make up more 💩 that never existed. It goes beyond lying. It’s as if they are psychotic, living in a delusional world of their own making.
It’s a deliberate strategy. Cause as much pain as possible for the other side. In the USA, it is issues of Identity Politics. In Russia/Ukraine it’s artillery.
No doubt it’s deliberate. All the experts on authoritarianism and political violence have been warning repeatedly that the road to fascism is paved with deterioration of TRUTH.
It seems the US just got a later start, but lately we’re on the same road as Russia. Hoping we succeed in flushing the 💩 into the fiery magma and elevating the TRUTH 🙏🤞🏼
YES !! " The TRUTH ! WILL ! SET YOU FREE ! Read it & Believe! THE HOLY BIBLE ! Thank You ! Christy ! BLESSINGS !
Yes, but we are being drowned in their vomit! Tell the DOJ to earn their money... scour the country of lies!!!
Eww, that hit my gag reflex.
I suspect you’re right. What a mess.
That's exactly what they're doing and Bannon is the major contributor and proponent of this strategy. It is one he called "flooding the zone with 💩." It worked in '16 and they're hoping to win with it again in '24. We can't let them. Vote. Vote. Vote. Vote. Vote.
I’m not sure about “funny”. Look what happened when we allowed them to gain control of the House. Could you imagine where this country will be if they get the Senate, and White House, again? It will become the United Communist States. Under dictatorship, the likes of Trump, or even worse, Robert Kennedy, Jr., whose a Democratic presidential candidate, but is farther right than Trump!
Geeze! What the hell is happening to the people???
What the hell is happening to the people???
People haven't changed sadly, knucklehead just gave them permission to say it out loud.
Exactly, Marj! Knucklehead hates the same people they hate and he says so out loud. Permission granted! So frustrating!
Yep....all the nastiness has been around for a long time....and death star gave carte blanche for people to be openly awful. Now rudeness rules everywhere.
Fine. Take names and remember who and where they are, for the future. They have exposed themselves and we do not have to let them crawl back under their rocks.....
Just out of curiosity, why did you predict that it would be called the "United Communist States," as opposed to something else. If that was a mistype, that's fine, too.
Dirk, actually, it wasn’t a misprint. It was meant to show that if we don’t get out and get our jobs done, the Trumpublicans will regain majority in the Senate, keep the House, and regain the Presidency in 2024. And, if we aren’t careful, they’ll get supermajority in the House and Senate. Plus gain state legislative seats, more so than they have now.
If that happens, 2024 could very well be the last election this country ever sees. It will be converted to a dictatorship first thing, and every right we have now is gone.
This is what Trump wants. This is what he’s fighting for.
Oh, I think there's an unpleasantly high chance that you are correct in all particulars, and that's exactly their plan. I was merely wondering why you thought they would change the name to the "Communist" states, instead of something like the "Republican Federation," "Beulahland," or maybe even the "National Socialist American Worker's Party."
Dirk, you have great suggestions on the new name, but I don’t see the last one you suggested. They don’t give a damn about the American working class of people. Plus, they will have nothing more to do with anything titled anything close to “America”, “American”, or any semblance of freedom.
I think United Fascist States would be more apt.
"or start to make up some absurd lies that they got from an unnamed fictional source" or Donald Trump
“People are saying . . .”
A favorite saying in law school, "the absence of evidence is not evidence." That seems to be a really novel concept for a lot of people.
We taught the same thing in law enforcement academy. But, now, in this situation it seems with the Trumpublicans the saying may have altered just a bit. “The absence of evidence is good. That’s evidence of wrongdoing needing to be investigated.” Dumbest bunch of sheep I’ve ever seen. What’s worse, most all of them are graduates of Ivy League universities as lawyers, doctors, and the like. Geeze!!!
I think their training and education is really evidence that all the innuendo and misinformation from such sources is deliberate. I wish I could file a Bar complaint against lawyers for lying outside the courtroom, not just inside.
To answer your question "... does anyone ever ask them ..." That is the job of JOURNALISTS, who unfortunately have been taught that they must be impartial to the point of not confronting Repugnant Party Right Wing LIES.
I totally agree with you, and it's sickening to me too that they are keeping things from the voters like that. The Rethuglicans know they can't win elections if they are fully exposed to their lying and deceitful ways. Disgusting is what it is..
Agreed and I really like your last line. Putting liars and paranoid people in charge of anything is never good.
As I first read that section of Heather’s letter, I reacted just like you. I thought Biden should sue tfg snd the Republican Party for libel! Something has to stop this egregious trend!!! Freedom of speech does not convey the right to damage the reputation of political opponents with falsehoods.
Sue the bastards!!
LOL Harvey,it’s funny anyhow ...but the example so marvelously being continued by ‘our President’ is let’s focus on the real issues as he rolls up his sleeves each day ( BRAVO!) .
Those falling off the cliff...you know , the ones with all the holes in their feet from their last shots/still smoking guns....won’t benefit much with damage control. Let them keep loading up ...
...we have better things to do , mates...better things to do ☺️
I rarely go on Twitter these days, but did see Professor Richardson push back on the "Biden family" suggestion, reminding in her tweet that 45 had his family "engaged."
Engaged?? What an understatement!
LOL, indeed, Maggie!
TFG might have his family “engaged”, but his dear daughter has thrown daddy’s ass under a big bus. She was questioned under a subpoena, wasn’t she?
Yes, she was, but whatever did she say is what I'd like to know.
You aren’t kidding. I bet she spilled her guts. With the stuff her hubby pulling with Saudi Arabia, it wouldn’t surprise me if the two of them didn’t move over there to get the hell away from “daddy”.
But, he’s already got in bed with the Saudi’s and created this professional golf thing that’s now teamed up with the professional golf organization here in the United States.
Stunning development with PGA caving. Seems like money always wins.
Yes, telling lies early gives time for them to spread like wildlife. We’ve seen this before. With and without tfg, it’s a red epidemic.
If it bleeds, it leads. So we remain one of the least informed of all developed countries.
J L,
This is a really tough one. "how is that that those we hire to manage government get to lie outrageously to us?"
I don't think it is illegal to lie in most cases of sending out a lie outside of being on a stand in a courtroom as a witness.
Perfectly legal. And, moreover, Trump lied with every sentence while he was President and is not being charged with lying. He is being charged with stealing apparently.
Lying is legal.
Lastly, the American people have shown a huge appetite for consuming lies as Fox News readily proves on a daily basis.
Americans love, love, love to be lied to.
Whoda thunk the “Space Alien in you cookie jar” headlines that screamed at us in the grocery store would become mainstream practice?
When I was a kid and saw an adult reading that claptrap while they waited in line at the checkout counter I thought “this is how I separate serious people from the buffoons”
Dave,
I remember in high school a rumor about one of my female classmates circulated that she was pregnant. This was back in a place and time where girls were required to drop out of school if they got pregnant.
Turns out she was not pregnant, BUT, after the mess the rumor made of her life, she dropped out of school anyway.
I remember how everyone was talking about it. I cannot say I participated by talking because, I was mostly surprised since she was well outside the circle of girls who were well known as accessible. But, I sure did listen with interest and no I did nothing to tamp the rumors down.
When the girl stopped showing up at school I felt bad for, umm, the rest of my life.
But I remember how everyone flocked to the lie and grew it into the truth even though, in the end, it was a lie.
I’d like to go back in time and shake some compassion into the kid I was sometimes. The bad stuff can be haunting. The good news is, I can recognize some of it now. Maturity can encourage wisdom, huh?
I can only say I did not participate in spreading any rumor because the girl was totally outside those known as accessible. However, I did not contest the rumor when I heard it either.
I stayed out of it. Which, makes me guilty. I did not actually believe the lie and I did nothing to put a stop to it or support her. I was a coward.
Maturity comes with regrets Dave, for me. I try not to let it bother me too much, and, it is one reason I never drink alcohol. For some reason, if I drink alcohol, the stuff I did in the past haunts me.
:-)
Acts of omission can be as damaging as acts of commission. Your brain knows this. Thank you for being good to your brain.
I had an exercise I used to do back when I was instructing law enforcement officers at the state academies. I had a single sentence written in a piece of paper. I showed it to the first officer on one side of the class. I had them disperse it to the officer behind them until it travelled through the entire class (usually 25-30 officers). At the other end, I had the final officer write in the board exactly what he was told. I then wrote what the original sentence was.
You’d be really shocked to know the difference in the two. Absolutely no comparison at all.
Mike, that is exactly the danger ⚠️ of ‘hearsay’. I was fortunate to sit on a grand jury in NYC for a long stretch, and the first thing we were told was about that term. Inadmissible as evidence.
I heard a story about myself that had circulated in the MA town I live in now that was twisted into an unrecognizable braid. The village mentality adores gossip. And that is now the viscous, mo even more, the deadly trademark of the Republican Party.
Yep. The village is not a bunch of nice folks trying to help each other. Sometimes anyway.
Not at all! Villages really are a bunch of nice folks trying to help each other. It's just that villages are so boring that you have to burn somebody at the stake every now and then just to liven things up.
Yikes!
Ages ago we would buy a couple of these hilarious rags, tuck them in our backpacks as “reading material” before a days-long hike into the wilderness…..in the evening around a campfire (if allowed) or camp stove, we would read the stories and howl with laughter.
Barbara,
Mark Twain once said, “A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes.”
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/76-a-lie-can-travel-half-way-around-the-world-while
Who was responsible for putting that crap in our faces while we waited in line???
Right next to the Enquirer was Mad Magazine. The smart adults were reading that
The people who owned the grocery store chain who made money selling it.
Making money on lies is the American way Christy. No doubt.
Well, how else was I to learn about Hillary raising her alien baby and midgets training to be astronauts by tumbling in dryers??
I recall laughing my butt off because I saw on the cover of Weekly World News that Clinton (I THINK it was him) was with the same space alien as Ross Perot!!
And who can ever forget Bat Boy???? :D
When I was in high school I took an elective summer school class, Language and Persuasion. I learned about Dale Carnegie, “it’s possible to change other people’s behavior by changing one’s behavior towards them.”
Subliminal messages, Vance Packard, “The Hidden Persuaders” 1961. I graduated in 1964 and was fascinated by the way hidden messages can affect behavior. I pictured a subliminal message scrolling across the movie screen making me do something unethical or immoral or just making me hungry for popcorn. I was too naive to be scared until I watched “The Manchurian Candidate.” All these books and movies must be on the DeSatin’s Banned list. What people think without a foundation of understanding. They might be stuck in childhood problem solving and thinking.
Still true - there just seem to be far more buffoons these days.....
But Mike. Defamation can be costly. E. Jean Carroll proved that.
Yes,
Defamation can be costly. You are correct Bill. No doubt.
But, the cost of suing for defamation is, generally, well outside the financial wherewithal of, say, folks like me.
E. Jean Carroll probably had some financial help from someone who looked at her case and thought it might be worth funding.
Good point, Mike. Perhaps there should be a "Go Fund me" for the "Biden family" defamation lawsuit?
People have a need to hear that which will justify their bias.
It is also a way to keep the mind-controlled programming going so the cult members do not Wake Up. Woke is bad in the alternate universe.
Hmmm. Mike I don't believe lying is legal. There are an awful lot of lawyers who would tell you differently.
It does appear that, beginning with Newt Gingrich and Reagan lying became the accepted norm for the Republican Party. The MAGAs in true "1984" (the book) fashion now believe there is no such thing as truth.
I thought about trying to draft a retired-lawyer type response to Mike S's assertion, going down all the situations where lying is expressly illegal, usually by statute, none of which apply to public statements. Sure defamation and slander may apply, but very difficult to prove and you run into governmental immunity. Quantum meruit could conceivably apply, but again, you'd have to get around immunity and their habitual lying actually hurts your case.
And that's when I stopped, because I realized that as disgusting as it is, Mike S. is essentially correct: unless a specific law forbids it, lying is generally legal in the U.S.
Dirk, I am very sorry to be right. Very seriously.
Thanks for the post though.
Barbara.
IF lying is illegal, outside of being on a witness stand, then the law is essentially never enforced that I can perceive anyway.
Right now Jamie Dimon is claiming he never heard of Epstein before 2019 even though Epstein was a JP Morgan client from 2012 or so. Do you think the gov will arrest the guy they go to to bail out banks for them….for lying?
Naw. C’mon.
It is human to love confirmation bias and righteous superiority. I love it myself. My awareness of it allows me (mostly) not to get sucked in and insist upon evidence.
J.L., you make the point: "Politicians can affect millions of of lives, and even lives of generations yet to come." You are sooooo right, and the person who comes to my mind is Frances Perkins, FDR's Secretary of Labor and the architect of the New Deal (though FDR gets the credit.) Perkins' philosophy of government is to the point: "The people are what matter to government, and a government should aim to provide all the people under its jurisdiction the best possible life." All the people. Amen to that. This is also posted in my home office.
And even a commenter on here seems to buy the Biden crime family bull Schitt. WTF
Those are the paid shills that show up as “Little Donald Segretti” clones
He's not a paid shill. In this case, he's got a different opinion and perhaps a perspective that we need to pay attention to.
We have an inadequate press, which is so worried about bottom line that they forgot to care about the truth. The ownership of the press is a big problem. That is something that needs fixing if we are to have a democracy.
Very true. One big difference between Watergate and now was more frequent, more robust and more fearless investigative journalism, or so it seems to me. The post Reagan/Friedman governmental bias toward facilitating profit over people is blatant and profoundly anti-democratic. The former CEO of CBS put it in a nutshell; https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/general-news/leslie-moonves-donald-trump-may-871464/
Sadly, all too sadly, under the right emotional circumstances, outright lying works, esp for audiences already prone to believe. GOP has been running this for a very long time. Straight out of the Nazi, but hardly only the Nazi, politics 101 playbook.
Lies, bribes and terror have kept despots in power for eons. Substantive lies are weapons that can enslave and kill. Democracy can survive lies, but only when they are exposed, and shown for what they are. Isn't that key to what genuine justice does?
Back in the 1950s Joe McCarthy attracted a formidable following, intimidating even Ike. When McCarthy attacked the military, that was the last straw, and he was brought to heel. It seems like modern "Republicans" and their wealthy patrons dusted off "Tailgunner Joe's" modus operandi as well as time tested "Divide and Rule" ever advancing despotic corruption in the intervening years.
J. L. It’s all projection. “Let’s accuse Biden of something “. “Why not say that his family accepts bribes through shell companies. I know some people who do that “. “Great! That sounds credible.”
I think of projection as a narcissistic delusion, but this is treachery.
Remember 2020 and the lies delivered during that election campaign? Buckle up... 2024 will be magnitudes worse.
How long can a nation's people choose to sit in an imaginary chair before it falls?
We have had decades of ad hominem attacks against liberals of all kinds and rank. It comes from elected officials, TV personalities, radio hosts, and in print. These are overwhelmingly lies purely to ruin people's reputations. Is there no recourse, no accountability? I really think these people should be taken to court. I would support a legal fund created by the Democratic Party, and anyone else who favors decency. This unpunished vitriol contributes significantly to the political divide. That is the intention. Prince Harry has called the Mirror publishers to account. I wish him a good outcome. Long overdue.
The Republican National Committee and the House Oversight Committee's chair it quotes are the ones who lie outrageously to us. We didn't hire them, but some of us may have voted for them. Expect no less when Republicans are elected to office. Remedy this when next you vote.
As slavery was once considered "normal", even by US presidents, subjugation of women was "normal", as was genocide against native people and quasi-serfdom imposed on workers. "Republicans" have initiated, "normalized" and ratcheted corruption for more that 40 years. Reviewing their latest exploits, at least on their side of it is like reading about one of "those" countries spiraling toward despotism. Yes, we must vote for democracy and integrity, and yes, we must make a bigger thing out of all lies, all the time. Have they no sense of decency?
I so agree with you..you and I would be in jail already
And there are plenty of real world examples.
There was a time when members of Congress risked censure, even from their own party, for making such statements. That said, the Constitution’s speech and debate clause protects them from lawsuits for slander, which Republicans increasing engage in as part of legislative speech.
Regardless, those who lie with abandon to accuse their political opponents of dastardly acts are morally bereft cretins.
Free speech, especially "objectionable speech" is essential, yet presents a conundrum. Perhaps the ultimate problem for governance is how to deal with those who use their share of rights and power abusively. That easy when it's a common thief but thievery can be subtle and like computer code, the law is full of "security flaws' that can be exploited, you patch one and another turns up. It is hard, probably impossible, to maintain a just society on law alone; there must be a preponderant societal commitment to dealing in good faith.
Nixon was impeached for a pattern of abuse of power the "Coverup", and important Republicans went along with it. Nixon's offenses seem almost quaint by today's standards. We became increasingly inured to dishonest, unprofessional public sphere behavior, and have not pushed back against it nearly strongly enough, in my opinion; though current and emerging "Stop the Steal" indictments are strong medicine. We the people are fools if we continue to tolerate the creeping, demonstrable, and worsening use blatant, weaponized lies in the court of public opinion.
Dump is shaking in his boots. Good. Thank you, Heather, for clarifying this ongoing, history-making news. I am definitely on indictment watch....
I would love to see TUMP be indicted, arrested, tried by the courts, and put in the worst prison in the entire Nation. I want him to get a fair sentence of '' Life without the possibility of parole'' in solitary confinement under the prison. With only rats and other vermin to keep him company. He deserves this after nearly destroying our nation and treasonous crimes he has committed not to mention all of the other criminal activity he has committed. I do not have time to go into all of his crimes as there are so many of them...
Me too, but at best, if he is indeed incarcerated, it will be a form not really all that uncomfortable. We will have to be satisfied with that. Michael Cohen served time, but not in a very heinous place. Fine. What bothers me much more is that his real crimes - the ones you speak to - the ruining of our countries political system of government, the destroying of trust in our leaders, the introduction of widespread and unadulterated corruption at the highest levels of our government, the irreparable damage to the USA's standing throughout the civilized world, all the people who died of Covid because he was too consumed by the economy to enact stricter controls, the furtherance of American inaction on climate change, all that will go unpunished except that he lost his bid at 4 more years. Instead he will get taken down by IMO lesser crimes (unless he gets seditious conspiracy of which he is obviously guilty). The rest - small potatoes in comparison.
The COVID thing is surely numerically and morally among the worst disasters in modern America. As a "wealthy", "educated" nation, we had the opportunity to minimize the death toll, and instead we (or at least the whole friggin' Republican Party behaved like shills for the virus lobby. I am reminded of the creepy scene in Kubrick's 2001 in which the sentient computer kills the dormant crew. It's was remote control, but still murder.
Even if he was incarcerated in a comfortable place it would be hellish for him if he wasn't allowed any social media. He's a true narcissistic psychopath, I believe, and unless he can get validation from outside himself, in his mind it's going to be like he doesn't exist.
“….all the people who died of Covid because he was too consumed by the economy to enact stricter controls…”
No it was his vanity that prevented him from enacting stricter controls. He felt doing so would ‘make him look bad’. He is such a baby!
Thanks for this. Trying to turn TFG into some sort of victim would, in the words of my brother in law, “make a maggot puke.”
It's cheesy, but the image is vivid and somehow apropos.
Avatar
Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump
16h
HOW CAN DOJ POSSIBLY CHARGE ME, WHO DID NOTHING WRONG, WHEN NO OTHER PRESIDENT’S WERE CHARGED, WHEN JOE BIDEN WON’T BE CHARGED FOR ANYTHING, INCLUDING THE FACT THAT HE HAS 1,850 BOXES, MUCH OF IT CLASSIFIED, AND SOME DATING BACK TO HIS SENATE DAY WHEN EVEN DEMOCRAT SENATORS ARE SHOCKED. ALSO, PRESIDENT CLINTON HAD DOCUMENTS, AND WON IN COURT. CROOKED HILLARY DELETED 33,000 EMAILS, MANY CLASSIFIED, AND WASN’T EVEN CLOSE TO BEING CHARGED! ONLY TRUMP - THE GREATEST WITCH HUNT OF ALL TIME!
And that sums up Trump's entire defense. 'Whataboutism' based on lies. Works well on right-wing media, not so well in court. He's doomed. Or we're doomed. Either way, we're going to live with his legacy for a long, long, time.
I love his defense, Steve. It's 'President Clinton', Trump writes and he's got a point there, doesn't he? What would Andy think? That's Andy Warhol. Wouldn't Andy just love him? Trump and his writings are works of art, Folk Art. It's primitive, but there's an audience out there, don't you think? No one represents Trump better than the man himself; no one else has his style; the French call it panache!
Thanks for the hearty laugh, Fern! “panache” is relevant to tfg in both of its definitions. The most obvious is the second, but the first one applies to the guy’s cartoonish, ridiculous hairstyle:
PANACHE, per the Merriam Webster Dictionary:
1.. an ornamental tuft (as of feathers) especially on a helmet
2.. dash or flamboyance in style and action
Good morning, Fern!
It's you and me, Rose, so far. We know how to see both sides of his badness and put the cheap-con act where he belongs, on the wall next to a can of Campbell's soup.
I think that Campbell's is a pretty poor excuse for soup, but I still would not want to see it suffer the indignity. Trump is full of sound and fury, but would have been ignored as a childish idiot had he not had pots of money. I suspect that a lot of people who have been raised with authoritarianism and been injured by it, cheer on his shameless misbehavior because (again due to his inheritance) he CAN get away with it, and has. Up until now anyway.
An ornamental tuft. Ya mean that rat nest on top of his head?
Yeap! When the wind hits it just so, it transforms from nest to tuft.
"and he's got a point there, doesn't he?"
Absolutely Trump has a good point.
Hillary moving her communications, as US Secretary of State, outside of the .gov domain was intended to insure that future Freedom of Information Act requests would be denied since she was on her private domain not the .gov domain where the law is relevant.
Fortunately for Hillary, James Comey was head of the FBI and ruled that it was not illegal to consciously try to avoid future FOIA requests. Me? I would have ruled it is illegal.
We just cannot have government officials doing business on private domain name email accounts where the Russians can easily hack them, or the Chinese, or my own kids.
And, oh, I remember, the Russians DID hack her emails.
Slimed by the Clintons one more time.
Yeah, I think that what Hillary did there was not nothing; and probably a grunt employee would have suffered official consequences for it. The election eve investigation announcement was weird and probably disastrous, certainly advantageous to Trump, though Trumps constant harping on it is beyond hypocritical. I also thought Bill Clinton's lies (not the dalliance, the lies) were a terrible presidential precedent.
Seriously, it is 2023.
Absolutely “whataboutism”. What is wrong with these people? They hang onto the words of this man like it was the Holy Bible. Even high schoolers know the basic points of discourse when you need to explain important issues; especially when the goal is to change minds. Deflection is top of list, along with Ad hominem arguments. The fact that this man did not disappear off the political spectrum after he lost in 2020 is mind boggling.
He will not go away as long as they come and cheer. His self-esteem needs idiots cheering him. They are the deplorables.
Especially in our ever more massive and complicated society where bad decisions seem to have less wiggle room to avoid disaster, I think critical thinking might rank with the "3Rs" as a survival tool. One afternoon is 5th or 6th grade (in the 1950s) my class was told of Nazi propaganda and classic logical fallacies. I got another brief dose in an elective class in High school. Yet how to determine what is real and what is BS or inadequately demonstrated should weave it's way though all basic education, along with challenges with which students practice and refine their skills. I don't think that is happening, the likes of Trump, DeSantis, or MTG would not stand a chance of election. Not that there would be no political conflicts, but a much reduced tolerance for lies in high places. Is one not to some degree dehumanized when being lied to, at least to the extent of the liars intent?
It’s not a witch hunt if you don’t actually get to burn a witch.
Michigan Man’s tweet yesterday: “Witch caught. Hunt over.”
Burn baby burn.
Oh funny !
Also chilling....
Yes, so sadly 🫤
Well, the McCarthy Hearings were called "witch hunts" with good reason, but the "Republican" party has morphed into Witch Hunters Inc. "Justice" Alitio even claimed the authority of one from long ago.
My grammar, spelling and punctuation might not always be perfect, but aren't his tweets appalling?! THIS will forever be a former POTUS. Shame!!
A twice impeached former POTUS who can't spell and has the caps lock stuck on his keyboard.
Or his brain stuck on himself.
Compare to the usual accuracy and eloquence of Lincoln. It is the fate of our society at stake here. More than one of my elementary school teachers told us that "anyone" could grow up to be president (dunno about blacks and women back then, but we've come a long way). I never suspected a total A-hole would make it, but then world history says otherwise. Now I know why a word like "kakistocracy" (governance by the worst) is in the dictionary.
1850 BOXES!!! President Biden is going to need a bigger house, Corvette, garage, that’s all I can say.
I wish the American Bar Association would put some presure on the payoffs received by members of Scotus.
I remain an "active" member of the ABA. In just two (2) months, August 2023, MARY L SMITH becomes the first indigenous person to lead the ABA. I recently replied to President Elect Smith to take the legal profession into a prominet role on the many issues before the Country specifically pushing a needed ABA response to ongoing sedition & matters before SCOTUS. I will keep LFAA updated when relevant. 🗽
Thank you, Bryan!
Thank you for both the information here regarding Mary Smith, and about your continuing involvement in your professional organization, Counselor.
Likewise Officer.
Thank you. We need that. ABA can do a lot of good by reminding US of the law.
Certainly rule of law, admissible evidence, due process & pro bono work but, i want to see Amicus Briefs filed at SCOTUS. Judges are ABA members too.
And the why of rule of law.
" If Aristotle, Livy, and Harrington knew what a republic was, the British constitution is much more like a republic than an empire. They define a republic to be a government of laws, and not of men. " -John Adams
JL, John Adams' criminal defense of all the Defendant Red Coats brought to trial after the "Boston Massacre" & obtaining two (2) acquittals is the Foundation of due process in our soon to be Country well before 1776. Of course, John had an expert jury consultant, Abigail.
I was aware that he had done so, though not in detail. I see law and policing as inherent;y noble professions when drive by the urge to protect and help, and tools of evil when driven by the urge to dominate. Humans are human and perfection is wishful thinking, even in the system of mathematics, but I think it is within our powers to raise standards considerably, with an aim toward solidarity, not conformity; what Lincoln called "the common right of humanity". Law can help get us all on the same page, as at a 4-way stop. Everybody gets to cross the intersection, but smash-ups are minimized.
*pressure
In the large corporation my father worked for a number of "important" people were fired for accepting substantial gifts from suppliers to the company because of conflict of interest. Not proven wrongdoing, but because of the elevated risk of doing so (even unconsciously) in conflicts of interest. And what was that about avoiding even the appearance of evil?
Yes!!
My heart goes out to Ukrainians every day, and Russians who don't want this war too.
Claiming their political opponents are doing the very thing that they themselves are doing is the vein of the extremist (MAGA) Republican playbook the last 8 years or so. So transparent yet so many do not see it, it's all so heartbreaking.
It really does sound like Trump might actually be charged. It truly couldn't happen to a more deserving person.
Thanks so much to the author for these letters. (And congrats on being banned from travel to Russia!)
Ukraine was a prosperous, beautiful country just humming along until Putin decided he wanted it. Now it is in shambles. Who can’t see the evil here, transparent indeed.
Not a day goes by that I am not awed by the courage of the civilian population. And to hear Republicans say we should abandon them is just one more reason to resist.
Post war reparations. Make the oligarchs pay
Going back in time to Hitler's invasion of Czechoslovakia and Neville Chamberlin's policy of appeasement. WWII and the Holocaust followed. Fast forward to 2014 and Putin's annexation of Crimea. No Western response. In each case further invasions followed. We learned nothing and did nothing, proving George Santayana's statement to be true: Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. And here in the U.S.? Tens of millions of people advocating for the return to power of a man who sought to destroy our democratic system. What matters most to them? White evangelical supremacy.
Thou shalt not steal. I always say the pendulum swings back but now I wonder how? With all the destruction and Putins relentless anarchistic massacres of a people and country. He still murders his own people. Even villains in Marvel movies lose in the end.
I’d like to see all these thugs lose everything.
Destroying the dam is another atrocity. Isn’t the Dnipro the Danube when it is farther west?
I didn't know so looked it up. From wikipedia: The Dnieper (/(də)ˈniːpər/)[a], also called Dnipro (/dəˈniːproʊ/)[b], is one of the major transboundary rivers of Europe, rising in the Valdai Hills near Smolensk, Russia, before flowing through Belarus and Ukraine to the Black Sea. It is the longest river of Ukraine and Belarus and the fourth-longest river in Europe, after the Volga, Danube, and Ural rivers.[2] It is approximately 2,200 km (1,400 mi) long,[3] with a drainage basin of 504,000 square kilometres (195,000 sq mi). <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dnieper>
Thanks to all of you! I had seen the length of it, but mistakenly thought it went further west with more name changes.
Well said. Thank you for that thoughtful and heartfelt comment. President Biden said at the very beginning of the invasion of Ukraine that this was Putin’s war, not the Russian people’s. Bad leadership destroys so much and hurts so many.
"Keep his powder dry" and "square the circle". I love it. If I was still working in GOP politics as a career choice, I'd be wanting to work with Sununu. He has a clue. This is not the Presidential election you want to be running in. Trump and his loyals are toxic...predictable...but insane. Pence will never poll above 5%. DeSantis is a train wreck that barely works in FL and has the weight and power of Disney pushing back at him. The Christian right is VERY predictable. They want us all back in the 1950's. I hate to tell them but Black folks, Gay & Trans folks are all out of the bottle...and they are not going back in...not to please a bunch of folks who have a persecution complex and want to run others and save them from sins they are not committing. The very good news is that Trump is damaged goods and he won't go quietly into the night like Nixon did. He's going to yell and scream IN ALL CAPS...because he needs the attention. That's actually the key to his behavior. He needs the attention and has to be the hero or victim in his never ending reality show. Peace to all. Enjoy your summer.
Most women aren't going back in the bottle either. Roe v Wade energized a lot of voters.
If the red states considering legislation to eliminate No Fault Divorce really push that, they will lose more women voters as well.
Notice Thomas wants to take on parts of the Fourteenth Amendment but not all. He’s sparing interracial marriage.
I noticed that right away...
Totally true...thats a part of their love for the 1950's. Last week I wrote about the Bradley Prize event that we worked on a few weeks ago. Betsy DeVoss was one of the prize winners. The entertainment was early 1950's Rock & Roll...with Chuck Berry Music, Elvis, Buddy Holly & the Shirells. There was only one black performer among them...the lead singer of the Shirells. She was the ONLY black person in the room of about 300. I thought it was funny that Elvis & Chuck were now ok to this group...when their parents and grandparents thought they were Satan in the 50's.
I’m reminded of Madeleine Albright’s quip “ it took me a long time to find my voice and I’m not going to shut up now.”
Well written Mike! Good perception of Sununu , he’s hopeful for the New Republican Party which I hope emerges after this fiasco culminates.
We need a healthy Republican party in this country. This current GOP nightmare is a totally dysfunctional "family" because the daddy is a VERY sick person. I lived through this scenario personally...and it takes awhile to recognize it for what it is, put on the brakes and get off the Titanic. Some folks go down with the ship in denial. Others like Molly Brown survive and thrive. Maybe Sununu is Molly. Romney wants to be...Hogan was never on the ship. Michael Steel left with his integrity in tact. There's hope for healthy...but this election cycle has to play out first. I predict the GOP looses big and Trump leaves the country...we had that debate last week. Biden may win bigger than any President ever.
I agree that the country needs more than one legitimate political party. But I suggest that the moniker "Republican" is tarnished beyond revival. No amount of cleaning and buffing can return it to a status that two whole generations now associate with cultural nonsense and endless corruption.
Somebody, like a Sununu who has a brain, should lead a new center right party with a new name.
And while we are recreating American politics, let's have more than two parties. I am ready for one that is based on these principles:
1. The Climate Crisis and its impact must be discussed every time anything else is discussed.
2. Big money and dark money must be removed from our political system. Elections should be publicly financed.
3. Taxation must be reformed immediately. Pay ratios between CEOs and workers must be put in place. Stock buybacks must be illegal - again. The government must guide the economy - less with interest rate yoyos and more with benevolent policies for the 99%.
4. Voting should be universally easy and safe. Mail in standard. Voter registration automatic with issuance of a SS card.
5. Universal Service for every young person. Doesn't have to be military.
6. Immigration should be welcomed. We need the help. We need to help. Create a path to permanent residency and citizenship. Our birth rate is not enough to maintain our population. We need people to get jobs done, pay taxes and support our social safety net. Basic sense of compassion for fellow humans escaping Hell on Earth. Its win win.
7. Religion must be banned from every public venue, public meeting, public school and anything that is funded by tax dollars. Church revenues and real estate should be taxed.
8. Take some military money and devote it to gun buy backs. Hold gun makers liable for the carnage. Hold gun sellers liable. Hold the parents of punks who slaughter - responsible. Require safe gun storage and safety instruction followed by licensing. You need one to fish to drive. You need a license to kill deer. Why isn't there a license to carry a weapon designed to kill people? Or just outlaw WMDs and their ammunition.
9. Disband illegal paramilitary organizations. "Militias" must be authorized by states - they are now rogue vigilantes. Bust 'em.
10. Universal health care for all now. Expand Medicare to all in stages. And then outlaw private health insurance thieves. Start with Medicare Advantage scams. Pay young people to become doctors and nurses. Instead of loading them with crippling debt and insane liability insurance policies - pay them to become health care pros. Pay them really well - spike nurses, NPs and PAs pay. Pay doctors to enter the areas that are short of help - like PCPs. Why should a dentist or skin doctor or specialty surgeon have a better life than preventive health MDs and ER docs?
I want a new party that is for the planet and all the people.
Got much more. But I need another coffee. I am a loyal Democrat because the alternative is a trip to Hell with Hades. However, too many Dems are GOP lite and too many Dems are beholden to big donors.
But wait!
11. Pay teachers a lot more. Public money for public schools only. Equal money to all schools within a state. Tell the local school board fanatics to take a hike. Many are dedicated volunteers. But none of them should tell my kid what to read. Need money for all this? How about the tax breaks that cities and states offer the Oligarchs and Sports Team uber rich owners? Feed and teach the kids! All the kids. In public schools. Public money should not go to religious indoctrination sites or experimental labs for the affluent and lucky.
I will join the Alstrom party! Might even run!👍🙏👊
What a brilliant summary, Bill. I believe it is what a real majority of Americans hope for in the future.
Absolutely wonderful progressive ideas, and thanks!
Sign me up.
Bill...sounds like a platform to me. There was a Natural Law party a few years back. We do have more than 2 parties, but the media will hardly give them any coverage. The Republican party may be tarnished beyond redemption...but it has come back before.
🙌 YES!
Biden can mentor (after his next term) still too. He has a heart in the place needing modeled and many molds made from. Those tippy toe-ers I almost sympathize for them . It was, still is, a classic lesson (especially in can’t legislate morals) of...WHAT NOT TO DO!
I absolutely love his Christian example. I’d not point fingers at which faction did more damage but more herald Jesus never shoved anything down people’s throats , He just Walked The Path ...loving , doing His best ..for everyone.
Lots of people don’t subscribe to this , I’ll keep ‘the light on ‘ , we’re working for them too. Thanks for being here Mike ❤️
The Republican Party, the party of "small government," is dead. It is Shakespeare's poor player upon the stage, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. Nothing but policies that enrich the already wealthy while pauperizing tens of millions of ordinary Americans, leading them with the Pied Piper of abortion, race, gays and Muslims. It's pathetic to see them stupidly lap up such transparent manipulation.
Mike, I have a problem with ALL Republicans: not one seems to think about the poor or of the importance of unions (the middle class). A for-profit medical system and the attempts to privatize Social Security are horrendous. Republicans scream “crime” when much of it is the result of poverty (poor schools, food deserts, corporate greed, and now climate change WHICH REPUBLICANS DENY). When I look at Republican leaders, I see a lot of bloated bellies, gray faces, frowns, and general negativity, plus immature, unimaginative thinking. Perhaps forty years in the wilderness would bring them back to humanity (TR?).
Would one of you more articulate writers, if you agree, please put this more eloquently?
Virginia your observations are very valid. The issue in a republic or democracy (or any government/monarchy, whatever) those people you describe exist. All ways have, all ways will. Our system needs groups that folks align with. It's just how it works. I'd be happy with no parties, but i don't see how that would function at all. That approach also takes very informed voters who care. About 1/2 of voting age Americans elect our President. Which means about 26% actually vote for the President.
Compassionate people just need to pay attention and work together to elect the best representatives.
Let’s all hope we get a little peace this summer. But these rabid, braying bullies just won’t shut up.
It's what they do. None of this turns on a dime, or overnight. Resist when needed and tune them out otherwise. Peace
Yay for “electoral irrelevance.” Go Gen Z -- and others in the 90M people eligible to vote who don't. As Simon Rosenberg has laid out, let's Get to 55 (winning 55% of the vote) to crush MAGA by supporting young voter registration (every year, 4M turn old enough to vote -- and are overwhelmingly progressive or at least Dem-leaning), and doing everything possible to GOTV!
Surely most of us who participate in this excellent forum agree to support youth voter registration but “support” is an ambiguous word! Most have little contact with 18s to 25s to accomplish actual voter registration. But there is one organization of thousands of youthful volunteers which has been recognized by Forbes magazine as the national leader in getting that voter registration accomplished, namely www.turnup.us/ so please help them get the job done! Many of you have indicated you “like” my appeals in this space but only $137 was donated last week! They need far far more to reach many of the FOUR Million youth who will turn 18 between now and November next year! Please do your part by contributing generously at www.turnup.us/ ----let’s prove that many of us can “donate” as well as “like”? And many thanks!
But ira, has www.turnup.us/ done anything to counter recent news that 13 (?) states (all red) have withdrawn from ERIC's efforts to update voter roles accurately, including ERIC's founding state of Virginia? This seems a sign of impending malevolence toward our voting system and one very much at odds with the Repubs' claims of seeking voter integrity!
The ERIC issue is entirely different from C3 voter registration on the ground. Also as I understand it, ERIC is a voluntary collaboration of state governments.
Ira, do they have a plan to GOTV after registering them? Hope so—important to see it all the way to the end.
absolutely!! They did a fabulous job in GA in 22 entirely nonpartisan of course . Did you see the turnout numbers in WI among college students who waited in line for 7 or 8 hours because Wisconsin has among the worst voting laws in the country. Turnup was very active there in encouraging youth participation.
Also, Field Team 6 has registered over 2+M voters. I am post carding and encouraging others to do so.
Thankfully there are many organizations working on youth voter registration and turnout. Off the top of my head I can think of half a dozen. ALL GROUPS doing verifiably effective work should be getting donations from older generations who have more money. Clearly, Ira, www.turnup.us/ is a leader. Hurray! Another powerful group is https://www.thecivicscenter.org/ , and while I'm not an expert in comparing and contrasting impacts of nonprofits, it sure looks like both are well worth supporting!
Different orgs approach the issue differently.
Done!
Wow this is catching on; thanks Mimi (I always loved your name and had a sweet Aunt from Queens with your name who would immediately come to help if any of our immigrant family needed help).
OK, Ira, you got me!
Many thanks; you will be very proud of their work and I’m sure they will stay in touch with you! I communicate daily (multiple times) with the brilliant young man Zev Shapiro who started and leads the organization.
I'm sure my own dear departed friend Zev is proud of my decision to donate to your friend Zev!
that is very sweet thanks
Me too!
Carla: much appreciated. My 501c3 foundation has decided to merge with Turnup because they do it better, faster, and less expensively than we do and we have registered 105,000 (certified no BS) but it took us more than 5 years. Turnup can do that in one weekend through social media. Thanks again for your help.
Thanks Ira, you just nudged me into making a monthly donation instead of just thinking about it.
Daphne: that is wonderful thank you! Please pass it on to your friends!
Just donated and forwarded link to half dozen people. Thank you. I prefer to put $ to good use where it'll make a difference.
Wonderful indeed; that is the spirit we need to promote to save our democracy! This is really serious, folks—- www.turnup.us/
Done!
Bill: we have been communicating w each other for some time so many thanks once again.
Done!
Jenny: many thank you for your participation; we need to wake up America! Our democracy is in peril !
Done, thanks Ira!
Sandra, we appreciate you coming to help this very worthy nonpartisan youth org!
And on that note, it’s time for me to start writing more postcards. Onward!
Trump tries one of his old hits. “BUT HER EMAILS!!!”
Peter “BUT HER EMAILS” is the 2nd stanza of BENGHAZI.
Hillary is _still_ living in his head, rent free. She must have a big smile on her face.
Think about it; Hillary could have been in her second term right now. So tragic for our country. we would’ve had no January 6 and thousands of people would still be alive following the pandemic. 
Women would still have agency over their own bodies.
The biggest political mistake she and her advisors made was for her to stay with the guy who cheated on her. If she loves him that is the price she was willing to pay, but my realpolitik sense is it was a mistake. Combined with being a woman seeking the Presidency proved too much for those in the fringe states who in many ways control our electoral process. One can never discount the sway of religious belief which our forefathers knew held far too much (male)
political power than observable reality.
Hillary won the popular vote. The voter suppression game played through social media in the swing states to nudge the Electoral College Vote towards trump, was more sophisticated than was ever weaponized before. Most people didn’t realize what was happening. Cambridge Analytica used psy-ops-level manipulation algorithms on the voter suppression activities it unleashed in the ‘16 campaign. They knew exactly the most persuadable lies to feed into the media stream to the most persuadable content-consumers. Then, they either didn’t vote at all, or “virtuously” voted Third Party, believing that Hillary was going to win anyway, and the country would not become a clown-car-driving-off-a-cliff. They were played. And we paid, -many with their lives.
Her husband was indeed her albatross, but as a divorce (I don't know how to put the accent on the "e") she'd never be elected. We've had exactly one divorced president (Reagan) and two bachelor presidents (Buchannan) and (Cleveland) , who married his ward the minute she turned 21. I do not think H. Clinton would have been afforded any slack at all for divorcing her husband.
Ally There is convincing evidence that Buchanan was gay. At least this prevented scandalous relationships with the other sex.
She would not have been elected New York Senator without her experience as First Lady, not to mention being nominated for President. Bill Clinton was a lot of things, but I don't think he was an albatross. For a different take on Hillary, read "Rodham" by Curtis Sittenfeld, where Hillary meets Bill, but does not marry him.
While we’re riding the Way Back machine, think of the USA pre Bush v Gore
I think about that all of the time.
And we wouldn’t have the 3 clowns on SCOTUS put there by the Federalist Society and tfg. And maybe states wouldn’t be motivated to pass laws that interfere with parental decisions about care for their own children, i.e. trans kids.
It's all he's got.
Plus his MAGA caps...
Plus his ministry of Truth Social.
A more correct name for his floundering site would be, ''Lies Anti-Social'' There is nothing on that site that even resembles the ''Truth'' It's all lies and total deception.
But the faithful have such an appetite for “total deception”
Yes, they sure do, and they are addicted to it too.. So sad that there are so many of them.
(Laughter). Room 101 is waiting.
And caps in his "Truths" messages!
Sadly,
Trump does have a point Peter.
Hillary moving all of her communications outside of the .gov domain so that she could avoid future Freedom of Information Act requests for her communications was slimy at best, illegal at worst.
By setting up communications in her basement, on a private server, she insured that future Freedom of Information Act requests would be denied because it is her private property. Not government property.
We were slimed again by the Clintons but, apparently, it is NOT illegal to attempt to avoid public disclosure of documents we should own and have access to based on Comey's interpretation of the law.
Honestly, it is sort of a good thing I was not FBI director. Because, I think attempting to avoid Federal Freedom of Information Act requests should be illegal and should carry a legal penalty.
Plus, having a server in your basement while you are Secretary of State? Hmmm, I wonder if the Russians or the Chinese or my own kids could hack it? We will never know will we.
Oh, Wait! The Russians DID hack her email. I forgot. AND? The kid who was in charge of providing server support for the DNC was shot twice in the back at 2am in the morning by somebody.
The Clintons slimed America in ways that I find unacceptable even today.
In fact, It was the Clintons who started the whole downhill race to the bottom of ethical standards in the USA as President.
An approach taken up immediately by George W. Bush following Clinton's big slime.
Mike, stay focused on presently indicted people. Who did Trump show the classified documents to, after he left office? Where did the ones that are missing go? Classified documents held for years, 1000 miles from where they should be, found in the possession of someone who has committed a crime by taking them away from where they should be, are the immediate issue. No one cares about the emails of the person Trump beat in the 2016 election, do they?
Meredith,
Yes, Trump broke the law and, surprisingly, appears to have been or will be charged for that crime. I am surprised honestly.
However, his use of "whataboutism" in the case of Hillary is, at least in my own mind, valid and that makes it relevant to the thread here.
I know I am way out of step with most of my own comments here and certainly out of step with the mainstream of the thread. But, seriously, there will be many people who will use the fact that Hillary was not charged for what should probably have been a crime as a reason not to charge Trump.
So, I think it is relevant to the Trump case, although, selling classified documents is possibly worse that what Hillary was doing. Depending on WHAT she was doing while off the .gov domain.
Mike, yeah, you’re out of step with your usual well-thought-through comments here. The only similarity between Hillary and tfg is documents. She did not steal them so she could sell them to continue the grift. He’s a traitor and whiner.
ML,
Trump is indeed a traitor and a whiner. No argument from me.
I do stand substantially surprised that he appears he will be indicted. I did not think it possible.
Good advice to stay focused. Thanks.
I need to follow my own advice more?
Meredith, actually I think its important to remember why Queen Hilary was under the microscope. Her conniving did not go unnoticed by many. She knew the rules, but she felt above them. We complain about this type of behavior all the time. Is she any lessor of a scoundrel because trump is worse?
Hillary’s scoudrellyness led to thousands of hours of wasted time, trying to make something of Benghazi, trying to make something of a personal server she used for personal use, as opposed to all the on the record SOS communications which are available for examination. People who want to think badly of Hillary because she is a smart, uppity woman who does not suffer fools gladly will continue to do so.
Trump, on the other hand, betrays his friends (see Kurds in Syria), attempts to corrupt others, (see Zelenskyy as a new President of Ukraine, an example of failure, and most members of the Republican caucus of Congress, with Lindsey Graham a most egregious example of success), sells state secrets to the highest bidder (see Saudi 2 billion dollar “investment” with Trump’s mobster son-in-law), refused to deal with the COVID problem because he couldn’t figure out how to monetize it for himself, and has made verbalizing incestuous thoughts ok in polite society with his talk of dating his daughter.
Please tell me how you see any equivalence between Hillary’s actions and Trump’s actions. Ugh.
My opinion of Clinton is a completely different subject than my comparison of her to trump; completely
She knew better than to use a private server for official work. Uma knew better too. This is but an example of power people who believe rules are for thee, not they. It speaks to character
Bush Jr. Did too. Ivanka and Jared did too. Why single out Secretary of State Clinton? You reveal yourself when you called her Queen Hillary. Sorry I took the bait. If you are really concerned about national security surely we should be talking about current issues with big fish, rather than parsing things that you wish had been a problem umm, how many election cycles ago.? What do you think about Trump’s being indicted is a far more interesting question, don’t you think?
No.
She was a scoundrel and she got away with it. James Comey let her off because her emails were apparently sans any government secrets. A true surprise that the Secretary of State can communicate for a lengthy period of time without discussing confidential information over email.
So, if we believe Comey, we must also believe that Hillary was irrelevant as Secretary of State. None of her communications had anything to do with security.
Old news. Surely current events are more interesting than what went on a long time ago? What do you think about Trump being indicted? That is the question of the day, right?
Investigated
over and over and over and over and over……ad nauseam (nauseam-like your post)
PS. I’ll take BC in the WH and HC as SOS any day of the week
Vermont,
My apology for morning nausea. I certainly hope I am the cause of it and not any other possible sources of nausea in the morning.
:-) :-)
You took the bait, hook and sinker.
To be precise: I simply outlined how many folks will view Hillary's ability to avoid being charged for attempting to avoid future Freedom of Information Act requests by moving her emails to private domain name in her basement at home.
To me, that was a crime. To James Comey, it was not because, after examination of her emails, nothing secure was on those emails. Another surprise to me.
BUT, the use of a private domain name instead of the .gov domain name that enables FOIA access to her emails forever?
In my own mind that is illegal.
Key "in my own mind""
:-)
But that is relevant because, Trump is communicating with the minds of people and those minds are what determines whether he is convicted by a jury.
Plus, those minds also determine what is fair in America. Me?
I think arresting and jailing Trump is fair given his lifetime of crime without consequence.
BUT, many people will take Trump's side because Hillary got off. This is relevant for a jury trial.
Jurist don't weigh someone's criminal acts against the alleged acts of the uncharged. Your thinking should disqualify you as a juror. Really, think about it.
I'm no fan of the Clintons but IMHO the race to the ethical standard bottom was kicked off by the Man Who Ruined America, "Saint" Ronnie. The antithesis of Lincoln and Roosevelt and everything they stood for, he took the manhole cover off the political sewer and invited everybody to come on down.
As to the Former Guy, this was his lawyers' last chance to avoid an indictment for obstruction and for unlawful possession of national security documents. Prosecutors routinely afford potential criminal defendants an opportunity to argue their case why they should not be prosecuted. Apparently, nothing in the way of exculpatory evidence was offered on behalf of the former president, nor would one expect that there would be some sort of exculpation that the Federal District Court might find meritorious in a way that would negate the mountain of evidence that has been accumulated showing that he acted willfully and knowingly in hiding national security documents (regardless of their administrative classification within the national security system). Former President Trump's sole defense was that other presidents had not been prosecuted the way it looks like he will be, possibly within the coming week when a formal indictment is expected to issue from the federal grand jury now hearing evidence against him.
In the short run, Trump will be using this indictment as a spur to raise money from his mesmerized supporters. In the long run, however, it is all but announced that the Department of Justice has an interlocking series of indictments in the works, whether it is for his obstruction in the national security documents matter; or a future prosecution for his obstruction and participation in the conspiracy to overthrow the 2020 election results, which nobody is mentioning at this time. But from the factual standpoint, they are all cross referenced and interrelated. There's also the matter, about which there has been little mention in the press, about two post-election investigations that the Trump Campaign commissioned to determine whether there had been any sort of election manipulation that could have resulted in Trump's electoral defeat. And, in fact, we learned today that there had been two such investigative efforts commissioned by the Trump Campaign, each of which informed the former president that there was no manipulation, and that he lost the election fair and square. Prosecutors will be creating a narrative, based upon the two studies mentioned, to establish that the former president knew to an absolute certainty that there was no electoral fraud. And yet, for the three years since the election, Trump has continued to maintain that his reelection was 'stolen' from him, and that this bogus claim was a principal incentive to his followers to storm the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
The facts are not in dispute. What federal prosecutors have been pursuing is evidence relating to Trump's state of mind. To date, there is evidence from a legion of independent third-party sources showing that Trump knew that he lost the election, and rightly so. What comes out in this past week's disclosure about an interview with persons involved in assisting Meadows, Trump's former Chief of Staff, to write a memoir, in which Trump admitted that during the time immediately before he left office, whether in the closing months of 2020, or in January, 2021, that he had gotten into a bitter conflict with the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, where it became known that General Milley had vowed to prevent Trump from going to war with Iran (in particular) in order for Trump to preserve his ability to remain in office by creating a manufactured national emergency. The interview was recorded on audio tape, or some sort of digital device, in which Trump was heard rustling papers in his hands, while he was telling his Interlocutors that it was General Milley who is the architect of a plan to attack Iran, but the Trump was not allowed to show his interviewers the actual documents because of their national security provenance. The story that Trump was peddling that General Milley was the source of the plan to attack Iran is untrue; and factually, it is preposterous, given the nature of the operational planning and programming protocols within the Department of Defense, where the general would have nothing to do with developing war plans. What comes across so vividly is that Trump was using national security documents in order to seek revenge on a government official who opposed him. If further evidence bears the story out, it clearly establishes that Trump's oft-repeated statements that he could declassify documents by merely thinking about it are patently false. It also establishes a plausible motive why Trump might want to retain possession of such documents in order to embarrass or damage the reputation of someone in government whom he despises. This revenge motive dovetails neatly with similar types of actions that Trump engaged in over his entire lifetime, but with particular concern for his treatment of former FBI officials who were looking into Trump's connections with Russians looking to sabotage the upcoming American election. Trump's predilection for revenge-seeking is legendary and well-documented. Investigators have already discounted the notion that Trump might seek to monetize top-secret documents in his possession, by selling them, or by using them to influence foreign powers; or that the former president was holding onto these documents because they were souvenirs of his days as president — Trump is not a reader, and he is not one to scheme to use sequestered information for some future purpose that he might not readily anticipate. He is entirely too pedestrian, with lower-class tastes and proclivities. But in taking revenge against the highest ranking military officer we have, that has the ring of truth to it. And that's what this little tattletale story about Iran appears to be all about. It intuitively makes sense that Trump would want to be in a position to mention that he has a document in his possession that puts his opponent in the wrong. The problem was then, and is now, that is a matter of law he is prohibited from using that document for any purpose whatsoever after he leaves the presidency. But it does give us a dumpster dive into the former president's thinking, such as it is.
Trump is a master at low cunning; and he is shown to be a feral force of nature when it comes to coming after rivals for elective office. We will soon see how this all plays out; but the evidence of Trump's state of mind with respect to the top-secret documents that he was hoarding, and the reasons for him doing so, are becoming all too apparent. There is nothing intellectually elevated about any of this information that is just now coming out. Trump's rationale for keeping these documents hidden away, and working assiduously to prevent their discovery, is not an element of the crime for which Trump will be charged, but his rationale is something that people intuitively understand, in all of its spitefulness and hatred.
Yep, nailed him
Arthur, I would add that the DOJ (or National Archives, I forget which) asked for the return of that document, and the Trump team couldn’t find it. That is not reassuring. Gee, I wonder if there might be a country willing to pay, say, $2 billion to Trump’s son-in-law, for such a document. I wouldn’t dismiss the possibility that he has sold our secrets for gain.
Even if none of this had happened, I find it appalling that an administration would be so disorganized, so slapdash, so unprofessional, as to mislay so many classified documents, even without malign intent. The president’s office should ideally hum along in an organized fashion, not like this.
Yes, I find it frightening that the Executive Branch and the National Archives, with all their rules and protocols, cannot keep track of official US documents, particularly Secret and Top Secret ones. I find that particularly frightening. Isn't someone, from the Archives, charged with pulling in those documents at the end of each work day, fIling them away again? Scarey!
Write a newsletter, not a protracted comment please! What’s the bottom line here? Thanks!
Yes, Arthur should have his own Substack account. I would definitely read it.
Wow, thank you for making this whole situation more clear.
Great analysis! Can you tell me the basis for your statement, "Investigators have already discounted the notion that Trump might seek to monetize top-secret documents in his possession, by selling them, or by using them to influence foreign powers..."
Is seems like an obvious ploy by Trump to use classified documents in negotiations for investments in foreign countries to "sweeten the deal," so to speak. Not that the blackmail motive is at all wrong (imagine all the compromising stuff we have on foreign leaders, not just our own government official), and the two motive would seem to go well together.
So why have they discounted it?
That was mentioned on one of the MSNBC news analysis shows. But the narrative is persuasive insofar as it comports with Trump's state of mind prior to departing the White House in January 2021. He doesn't do international finance. He's basically a concierge at his down at the heels golf resorts. That's all he really knows. He's fending off prosecutions. And he's in a panic because the walls are closing in on him. Trump is incapable of thinking strategically. Candidates he supported lost their election bids. His finances are a mess, and his political allies are all small-bore guys who control Red State Republican Party organizations and fundraising operations. They're all in on the grift. That's a world away from top secret documents and espionage.
Your word make much sense, and I bet his panic grows stronger as the ones who are financing this coup from the Right quietly stop taking his calls. He was clearly far out of his league from Day One of his presidency as experienced politician after politician played him like a toddler chasing a piece of candy, especially the Republican ones. For that reason, I wonder how many of those classified documents were an attempt at "kompromat" on his allies, not just his enemies.
Trump's ignorance and vanity stripped away whatever plausibility he might have been able to lend to his lawyers' arguments about his supposed lack of criminal intent. This is an open and shut case, and Trump essentially slammed the exit door on himself.
Any thoughts on what the penalty phase should look like? Any mitigating factors? Term and location of incarceration? That's an awfully smelly 800-pound gorilla ya' got there...
There was a report yesterday evening that a Lieutenant Colonel was sentenced to three years imprisonment for misusing his security clearance. No details, but when you consider the seriousness of the charges, and it's the former president himself against whom the accusations have been lodged. The president has been credibly charged with obstruction. It would be political suicide for the Department of Justice, and legal malpractice for the government to give Trump a pass. My guess would be that consideration for an appropriate sentence would begin at six, maybe seven years. Then there's the matter of scoring, evaluating the former president's crime of conviction against the defendant's so-called 'criminal history' that might include 'prior bad acts' or crimes that have not been formally charged, but for which substantial evidence exists that the defendant participated serious criminal activity in addition to the crimes for which he was convicted. Back when I was handling federal sentencing guideline cases, I learned that a bad actor could expect to see his presumptive sentence enhanced by additional prison time, perhaps at a level where the sentencing judge might be tempted to impose the statutory maximum. But there are countervailing considerations, not the least of which would be that Trump was the source of the January 6 insurrection, and its guiding spirit. That would be prosecuted separately. Conceivably, because law enforcement officers were injured and died as a consequence of the insurrection on January 6, a harsher penalty of imprisonment might be imposed in the future sentencing proceeding.
But, in reality, any substantial prison sentences is likely to be lengthier than the time Donald Trump has yet to live. Trump is also in a serious case of mental decline, and there is every reason to believe that even in prison, Trump might end his days in a benign medical treatment center for aged and infirm inmates serving life terms of imprisonment. I have every reason to believe that within two or three years Trump's cognitive abilities will have so deteriorated that his existence would be no different from that experienced by normal elderly people in a full care facility who are not confined by reason of prison sentence. A seven year prison sentence might be fully deserved, but from a societal standpoint, the punishment ends when the convict can no longer appreciate the fact that he is still in prison, and that seems to be where Donald Trump is heading.
Trump is 76 years old. Any substantial sentence will deflate Trump faster than the Hindenberg airship burned and crashed in 1937. Elmer Stewart Rhodes was convicted of seditious conspiracy, and was sentenced to eight years in prison, but he is still a relatively young man. Therefore, for Rhodes, confinement and deprivation of his liberty is meaningful punishment for the entire length of his incarceration; for Donald Trump, the meaningfulness of confinement to prison really lasts only for so long as he understands why he is there.
Tossing a coin, I think a sentence on the documents case would max out at five years. Putting Trump on ice for five years takes him out of elective politics forever, and it vindicates the Government's objective to punish those who abuse the discretion granted them under the national security laws. Five years, maximum; anything beyond that would be effectively hospice care for which Trump's sentence of conviction would be essentially irrelevant.
There is a world of difference among the GOP presidential wannabes. Trump, of course, uniquely has established a track record which runs the gamut from publicly licking Putin's boots at Helsinki to inciting a insurrection on January 6, 2021. And this traitorous thug is GOP's frontrunner for 2025? But nobody matches DeSantis for pure chutzpah. Who else has banned books and attempted to defraud the Walt Disney Company? Donald Trump is not the only Public Enemy Number One running for POTUS in 2024.
And he is just a horrible as TUMP, or could possibly be even worse. They don't call him ''DeSatan'' for nothing. I would call him the second coming of Adolf Hitler,,
The image of three new Trump lawyers entering the Department of Justice to meet with special counsel Jack Smith suggests a logical Trump legal defense, as he is being inundated with criminal and civil ‘harassment’ in diverse states and courts:
TRUMP IS RUNNING OUT OF LAWYERS WHO ARE WILLING TO RISK THEIR REPUTATIONS (AND LAW LICENSES) STRUGGLING TO DEFEND THE INDEFENSIBLE.
Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell top the list of solon schlemiels who have fallen on their own petards working for this False Fact Felon (FFF). Almost daily we hear of lawyers who are abandoning FFF and turning state’s evidence in an effort to squeeze the stench off their double-breasted suits.
I await the day when FFF, encountering ‘the greatest witch hunt of all time,’ will seek to postpone court proceedings because of his inability to recruit defense lawyers.
FFF without a modern-day Roy Cohn is judicially naked, which is an image that makes me shudder.
I do love the "FFF" although personally I now refer to him as "The Indicted One"
I assume I will soon have to change that to "The Multiply Indicted One"
:)
Need a “love this” option. FFF indeed
Well, one thing is for certain, Trump is predictable. It's really laughable. Who writes in all caps? John Irving certainly got away with it in A Prayer for Owen Meany, but the former President, really!@X&* As I begin to work in my community on the 2024 election, I want to be prepared to answer questions about Harris and her work as VP. Come to realize that I do not know much about the role of VP and her performance. Would love any suggestions for reading. I am in the midst of my 20 year son who is in college and his friends who keep dumping on Biden and Harris. I think the mainstream media is shining light on Biden's not insignificant accomplishments, but I want more on Harris. Thank you!
VP Kamala Harris: Former U.S. Senator and 32nd Attorney General-CA, 2004-2010
VP Harris to be leading voice on gun violence for Biden-Harris administration:
https://news.yahoo.com/vp-harris-leading-voice-gun-173822243.html
VP Harris' speech in Tennessee re ousting of the "two Justins" - 19 minutes:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IG_yyofT58s
VP Harris' trip to Africa (Ghana, Tanzania, Zambia):
https://www.npr.org/2023/03/24/1165609421/vice-president-harris-is-visiting-africa-next-week-part-of-a-pushback-to-china
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/march-26-2023?
VP Harris trip to Caribbean:
https://jamaica-gleaner.com/article/caribbean/20230526/us-vice-president-kamala-harris-meet-caribbean-leaders
VP Harris trip to United Arab Emirates:
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2022/05/16/readout-of-vice-president-harriss-trip-to-united-arab-emirates/
But wait, there's more! Check out https://www.whitehouse.gov/administration/vice-president-harris/
Stacy: Remember to tell your son, the role of the vice president is basically to be the #1 cheerleader for the president and his/her agenda. It is not to overshadow him/her. It is also one of being a standby in the event the president is unable to perform his/her duties due to death or incapacity where the vice president can (and has in history) immediately assume the presidency so that the office is never "vacant."
Heather and her podcast partner Joanne Freeman did a podcast on the VP office and what it entails, the historical aspect of the office and touched on VP Harris in the role. It’s definitely worth a listen. The podcast is Now & Then.
https://podcasts.voxmedia.com/show/now-then
It's the one titled "Veep"
I'd challenge every anti Biden/Harris utterance that came out of their mouths. “Really? Can you give me an example?” “Really? Why is that an issue or bad?” Etc….treat them like 4 year olds who need to practice being 'nice.' Be Socratic. Logic is a powerful tool when minds are engaged. When they're not engaged, there's no learning. Facts won't help much here if they are just wisecracking to one up each other. Redirect. Redirect. Just like with toddlers.
Why are they dumping on Biden? IF it is the age thing, I would point out that the "Sleepy Joe" moniker is a great shield to hide Dark Brandon---he manages to keep outfoxing the MAGAts who think he's a doddering old man. I must say, I love it!!
Sorry this is in your midsts w/ the 20 year-olds. Check out Simon Rosenberg's videos (mentioned above too) for some fodder for discussion with them if you need it. Not sure where to point you for Harris info. I think we need to focus on pointing out the party platforms and voting for those rather than personalities/people.
I also hear, "where is Harris? Has she done anything?"
To which i reply, "Where was Pence? Where was Gore? Do any VPs do anything as VP? What is VP job description?"
Yes, and did anyone notice Biden when Obama was in the oval office?
I did, especially when he publicly came out in support of gay marriage before Pres Obama did. Thought they were a good team & I suspect Joe had a good mentor-like effect on Obama….just a hunch.
Exactly
We have a long road ahead of us even if Trump is indicted now and hopefully more. There is a whole ecosystem of the current GOP that would just as easily turn to clown master 2 Ron DeSantis who is worse than Trump. The battle for the soul of America is like the Ukrainians versus the Russians...no end in sight
He gonna get caught, just you wait and see.
"Why is everybody always pickin' on me?"
Greatest witchunt in the history of the world.
Or even the Universe; and beyond.
I think we're going to find that when the indictments drop, we won't experience the joy that we might have imagined. Why? Because the indicted is a pitiful man, in spite of how high he's flown. We were insufficiently wary in 2016 and shortchanged by the electoral college process. Whatever people might have thought about Mrs Clinton, I doubt she would have run so fast and loose over the constitution and the law. When the DOJ, Georgia and New York are done with tfg, we'll feel some grim satisfaction that the law has prevailed, but it'll be a Pyrrhic victory, one we want to file away and forget because under all the details there is just this deep and pervasive sadness about the pain we've endured, the fraction of our populace that has been duped by the swindler extraordinaire and the probability that we have not learned how to prevent it from happening again down the line. The hounds of hell have been unleashed and it will take heroic efforts to send them back where they came from. Indictments won't assuage the pain and suffering we feel for ourselves and the part we all played in this awful drama that persists and spreads across the country.
I have felt the pain and suffered every day as I watched loved ones become cult fools. Time for a breath of fresh air, but a stiff backbone will be needed to survive chump’s legacy of horror. He found every Chink in the armor that other cretins can use. We are exposed as we have not been before. The world knows that.
Relatively very few people in the Electoral College. What most people thought about Mrs Clinton was that she should be President. That's a statistical fact. (Will you ever forget those "debates"?)
Imagine… She could have been in her second term right now. 🥲
All over the world, women marched, wearing pants suits and pink pussy hats. We felt united. We didn't know how desperately bad it was going to get.
It will take decades to repair the damage: the economy, the environment, the court systems, the destruction of the civic discourse, the awful polarization, etc.. The list goes on. America needs a new center right party.
The most important thing about this republican, terrorist coup on our country is that all our darkest shadows have been revealed to us. They are in our face and they stink to high heaven. Repugnant. As they continue to be revealed, we can see the areas in need of strengthening, changes, reclamations to undergird what works in our democracy and what thwarts democracy. Including our trampled justice systems, lack of clear qualifications, job descriptions and oversight for leadership positions. We are the employers and we need to have power to stop liars, belligerence, bullying and incompetence before it enters our doors. Including in our Judicial systems which are hobbled with a corrupt SCOTUS. Time for changes-- it is hard right now, but it is also really good for our country to be this awakened and getting more and more educated by Heather, Joyce, Glenn, Katie, etc. etc on our legal and governmental systems. We know now that Civics MUST be taught in all schools to stop this dumbing down of Americans and how our democracy works. Look at all the GQP's in our government. They are against democracy and the rule of law. They should be banned instead of books. And we pay their damned salaries to thwart our country. We are their Bosses and funders. Time to stand up and demand sanity and clean out those who do not work for democracy and decency. We hold the power. We need to use it.
It really is daunting, but I so appreciate people working to make it better!
Great comment but I d make swindler…. PLURAL, 😉
“THE GREATEST WITCH HUNT OF ALL TIME!” Everything is BIG with tfg. His lies about his own crimes and his “what abouts.” HIllary? He must be in a time warp. Everyday he is closer to being unhinged. And irrelevant in his party and with voters. Coincidentally, while the stolen documents are still in the news, the pool at Mar-a-Lago flooded and possibly destroyed evidence. How inconvenient.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/05/politics/mar-a-lago-pool-flood-suspicions-prosecutors-trump-investigation-classified-documents/index.html
And exactingly how do you flood a room by draining a swimming pool?
Per Just 🏛 Security this am, "technical equipment" in the storage room was not damaged by the flood.
Good to know!!
You are using logic, JL! Remember with whom you are dealing with.
His mouth is big but his heart (and 'hands") are minuscule.
Also, what's left of his brain is microscopic.
...yet, J L, he remains the master of communicating feelings of hatred for those who presumably have treated him unfairly, those "in power," those who are actually trying to do something to level the playing field, to keep all equal before the law. It ain't the facts that matter for him and his followers but the FEELINGS!
“The Greatest Witch Hunt of all time??” I’m sure the thousands killed in Europe and American during the actual witch hunt hysteria would like a word. Poor little Donny, so unfair 🙄
Right down the street from where I live, in 1692-1693 there was a witch hunt that resulted in 20 executions and five deaths in prison. Over 200 people, mostly poor rural folks from the countryside around Salem, were charged. Donny-baby, your troubles don't compare to the "greatest" witch hunt, even in North America. And unlike those folks, you'll get a measure of justice. So, how about this: Be happy Cotton Mather isn't your prosecutor and shut the ***k up already.
Exactly!
Would laugh, but…
Republicans have been trying to “square the circle” for half of my long life, with the help of the Goebbels of our time, Murdoch. And he has done a masterful propaganda job, even enticing our MSM to follow the money they saw him rake in from “news entertainment/reality show bull Schitt.” Has the treason network (or clones) modified their methods? Just more careful about how they demonize the innocent. Politicians are still fair game, it seems. Still, I will join the indictment party and rejoice as chump circles the drain. But the scum he leaves behind must be scrubbed away…
"I will join the indictment party and rejoice as chump circles the drain. But the scum he leaves behind must be scrubbed away…" That is the perfect description (image) of what we're left with after these many years of hatred and division ginned up to undermine our democracy.