Today, President Joe Biden’s administration released an “economic blueprint” to show how the new laws and policies it has put in place “are rebuilding an economy that works for working families.” The Biden-Harris Economic Blueprint notes that Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris took office in the midst of unprecedented crises, including “an economy that for many decades had been failing to deliver for working families—with workers and middle-class families left behind, stagnating wages and accelerating costs, crumbling infrastructure, U.S. manufacturing in decline, and persistent racial disparities.” In the past year and a half, it says, the Democrats have set the nation “on a new course,” investing in a historic economic recovery based on a long-term strategy to make lasting changes to the economy that will carry the nation into the future, making sure that no one is left behind.
I've thought often recently about what it must be like to be a delusional MAGA zealot. Someone who has no clue that they live in an utterly false reality. They only know the extremes of blind love for Trump and burning hate for Biden and all Democrats. Information to the contrary never penetrates their programmed, single-minded thinking.
In other words, they have no idea that President Biden and Democrats in Congress, whom they despise and disparage with the heat of a thousand suns, have accomplished so many things that are improving their lives now and long into the future.
Could there be a sadder, more tragic irony in America?
Biden cleverly takes the wind out the GOP's sails. The Republicans have wanted to make the election about the economy, and if that economy is recovering, jobs continue to be created, gas prices have dropped significantly, what can they accuse him of, how is he failing? Sure hope this gains lots of traction!
As someone who worked with the administration of classified information—storage, classification downgrading, and declassification—at the Division level and below in the US Army, I need to have someone explain to me how the stash of classified documents at Mara Lago, clearly extracted from required protected storage are not considered compromised and in need of immediate harm-prevention counter-measures. Outside of secure channels, those documents could have been photographed, scanned, hand-copied, and whatever, and, as such, have lost their value as intelligence information; the information is not fixed to the paper once the rules of use—proper security clearance and need-to-know—are compromised. All sensitive documents (those found and those not yet found) need to be recovered and returned to protected status for precautionary reasons since possible further leakage must be prevented, but what is of utmost importance is getting the former president and anyone with access to the information contained in those documents into functioning thumb-screws and under oath in order to try to find out how those documents were moved about and shared. Until serious accountability for those documents can be assured, anyone with the information from those documents in his or her brain needs to be kept in preventative detention to keep further damage from being done, and until counter-measures can be taken to limit further compromising use. For those of us tasked with safeguarding defense information in our principle command entities and in their subordinate units, we were trained to understand implicitly we had the personal responsibility to protect the effectiveness and survival of our command with our own lives. Trump is no longer President, he should never have been trusted with life or death decisions bearing on the durability of our country as a citizen-community of mutual trust, his ability to do further harm must be neutralized—NOW.
When on Facebook, I frequently read comments left on posts that tout this administration’s achievements. Invariably, there are comments left by MAGA Republicans that spew Fox “News” talking points about the evils this Democratic administration has perpetuated. This saddens, infuriates and frustrates me no end. We can shout from the rooftops everything Joe Biden and the Democrats have done for the middle class, for the economy, for foreign affairs, but the MAGAt’s don’t hear, or don’t absorb any of it. The Lincoln Project has managed to buy advertising time on Fox, and has run clever and scathing ads about DT; would it be possible for ad time to be purchased on Fox News that talks about all of the good things that have been accomplished by Joe Biden and the Democrats? And could this maybe cause even the slightest fissure to form in some closed minds? (Hope springs eternal 😁)
I read something that the other day that struck a chord (and a funny bone) with me, it said something to the effect: “Using Fox News as a source in an argument is like claiming to be a Marine Biologist because you watch SpongeBob Squarepants. 🤣🤣
On a happier note, Michigan’s ballot in November will include both an initiative for women’s reproductive rights, and one for expanded voting rights. The MI Supreme Court overruled the Board of Canvassers ruling that neither could be on the ballot due to minor technicalities (like font size and word spacing on the petitions). 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
Trump's attempt to "reverse reality" with his lawsuit against Hillary Clinton and all the others he claimed had conspired against him is literally his "Gaslighting Greatest Hits". I truly wish someone would write a Big Picture account of Trump as having "a life built on gaslighting". There is such a thing as saying great things about yourself to pump up your ego (Muhammad Ali famously did that before every fight). But that was in service of achieving a "recognized good" in the world: winning a boxing match. Trump has used similar language in service of achieving a "recognized bad" in the world: not paying his taxes... not paying for goods received... conning his way into being POTUS so he could use that position to get rich... and more.
His life long "gaslighting game" deserves to be exposed separate from all the accounts of his individual crimes.
"suggesting that Trump has no grounds to assert executive privilege over the classified information seized."
In other words, you don't retain the privileges of a job you no longer have, especially if you are doing something that has potential to do harm to your former employer. You don't get to drive the company car, you don't get to take home company laptops, you don't get speak as a company representative, or remove the contents of the company safe.
Oh frabjous day! One frivolous suit tossed, one incompetent, half-assed judge given a lesson in the law, and the President gets to give good news to the people. Huzzah!
Two investigations, one by an independent investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller and another by the Republican-dominated Senate Intelligence Committee, revealed that Russia had attacked the U.S. presidential election in 2020 -- wasn't it the 2016 election that was investigated? It's so hard to keep all the investigations straight.
"While Biden and Harris are focused on the economy and the future, the Department of Justice is still handling crises created by the former president."
Yup, we're 18 months and counting, and the Justice Department and House Select Committee are working overtime to expose and begin to clean up the monumental mess left by the would-be Orange Emperor of MAG-A-Lago. I think it's a reasonable guess that all the wealth he might have won't be enough to cover the cost of the judicial hazmat operation(s) required to adjudicate his misdeeds, and the subsequent legislative efforts to erect more guardrails so his minions can't pull of similar stunts in the future.
The real truth of the matter, as we all know, is that there is no "happy place" where we can relax into the assurance that we're safe from what we have experienced dating all the way back to Newt and the "Contract with America". Perhaps we are only now becoming fully aware that ETERNAL VIGILANCE is the only protector of democracy. It can only be divine providence that the articles and amendments to the constitution prevent us from putting a bounty on Trolls. Freedom of speech will guarantee that they'll always be with us. What will it take to send them back to the caves and under the rocks from whence they emerged? Zero tolerance. Historically high participation at the ballot box. Engagement with the media in ways that punish the Echo Chambers of Hatred. Can you even imagine an America where 90%+ eligable voters participate in EVERY national election? I don't think it's exaggerating to say that the vast majority of us want reasonable things from our Government, at all levels. Service, not Stardom. Cooperation, not gladiators in the Roman Coliseum. Courage, not cowardice. Humility, not hubris and hyperbole. Debate, not dunking on one another. Kindness? Decorum? Statesmanship? Do these things exist anymore?
Every time TFG gets close to being caught in one of his illegal schemes, he gets his lawyers to flood the courts with demands, delays and distractions. This special master nonsense
Trump lies. And the entire Republican apparatus spins his bad impulses into worse facts on the ground.'Reversing reality' did not start with Trump.
Smugly, smirkingly, and sanctimoniously turning things on their head - the specious rhetoric of saying things are exactly what they are not, perverting language to pervert history - has been the modus operandi of the GOP since the Southern Strategy. It was the hallmark of the slave states after the failed Confederacy to metamorphose defeated traitors into heritage heroes. It is the hallmark of the racist right wing religious extremists who style themselves 'originalists' and 'textualists' - the only truth of it being that they want to elide the Founders' and Framers' revolutionary message of radical equality and remove every reform which has made progress to that goal, in order to reinstate a dystopia of economic injustice as their New Jerusalem. Elevated by Federalist Society honcho, dark money impresario, and Opus Dei acolyte Leonard Leo living out his arriviste wet dreams as a flash oenophile - turning the holy sacraments of the church into the blood sport of the unrepentant pedophile priests and unreconstructed nazi popes of his youth.
This is what Biden and the Democratic Party are up against. The Progressive Caucus understands the need for unity, compromise, and step by step advances.. The old unionist Left and the leaders of the early Civil Rights Movement understood voting as political strategy rather than personal expression. It didn't give us Eden but it kept the snakes away.
Has anybody read Aileen Cannon's answers to the Questionnaire for Judicial nominees? Go to page 12 bottom.
"I have tried six cases to verdict, 4 as an Assistant United States Attorney, and two before Administrative agencies as an associate at Gibson, Dunn, and Crutcher LIP. Of the four cases I tried as an AUSA, I was chief counsel in two and Associate Council in two. Of the two administrative proceedings of which I participated; I served as the Associate Counsel. "https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Cannon%20SJQ%20-%20PUBLIC.pdf
That is the extent of her lawyering. Maybe that is enough?
To start, I expect that the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, though not sufficient, was necessary for Americans overall to galvanize around Democratic messaging, wherein we also find a much tougher, much stronger Biden who, in the past few weeks, is connecting far better with audiences relative to both Democratic accomplishments and also the need to engage now in the necessary actions to protect our democracy. Additionally, there is no doubt, in a country that historically has gained rights over time, that taking away a women’s constitutional right to legal access to abortion care has mobilized women and men to an unprecedented degree that I imagine greatly will impact local, state, and federal elections.
Simply put, I expect the conflation of each of the foregoing factors, combined with a DOJ astutely stitching together a blueprint of all the criminal offenses seemingly committed by a command structure up to and including Trump, have precipitated a nationwide shift in momentum to Democrats that conceivably could defy decades of midterm wins for the party not in power.
There is a conservative claim that the $400,000 minimum for people to be audited by the IRS has now been lowered to $200,000. I have not seen this actually verified, by any trustworthy source, yet it is being spread about by wealthy residents in our area, as a way to discredit the Biden Administration's efforts.
September 9, 2022
I've thought often recently about what it must be like to be a delusional MAGA zealot. Someone who has no clue that they live in an utterly false reality. They only know the extremes of blind love for Trump and burning hate for Biden and all Democrats. Information to the contrary never penetrates their programmed, single-minded thinking.
In other words, they have no idea that President Biden and Democrats in Congress, whom they despise and disparage with the heat of a thousand suns, have accomplished so many things that are improving their lives now and long into the future.
Could there be a sadder, more tragic irony in America?
Biden cleverly takes the wind out the GOP's sails. The Republicans have wanted to make the election about the economy, and if that economy is recovering, jobs continue to be created, gas prices have dropped significantly, what can they accuse him of, how is he failing? Sure hope this gains lots of traction!
As someone who worked with the administration of classified information—storage, classification downgrading, and declassification—at the Division level and below in the US Army, I need to have someone explain to me how the stash of classified documents at Mara Lago, clearly extracted from required protected storage are not considered compromised and in need of immediate harm-prevention counter-measures. Outside of secure channels, those documents could have been photographed, scanned, hand-copied, and whatever, and, as such, have lost their value as intelligence information; the information is not fixed to the paper once the rules of use—proper security clearance and need-to-know—are compromised. All sensitive documents (those found and those not yet found) need to be recovered and returned to protected status for precautionary reasons since possible further leakage must be prevented, but what is of utmost importance is getting the former president and anyone with access to the information contained in those documents into functioning thumb-screws and under oath in order to try to find out how those documents were moved about and shared. Until serious accountability for those documents can be assured, anyone with the information from those documents in his or her brain needs to be kept in preventative detention to keep further damage from being done, and until counter-measures can be taken to limit further compromising use. For those of us tasked with safeguarding defense information in our principle command entities and in their subordinate units, we were trained to understand implicitly we had the personal responsibility to protect the effectiveness and survival of our command with our own lives. Trump is no longer President, he should never have been trusted with life or death decisions bearing on the durability of our country as a citizen-community of mutual trust, his ability to do further harm must be neutralized—NOW.
When on Facebook, I frequently read comments left on posts that tout this administration’s achievements. Invariably, there are comments left by MAGA Republicans that spew Fox “News” talking points about the evils this Democratic administration has perpetuated. This saddens, infuriates and frustrates me no end. We can shout from the rooftops everything Joe Biden and the Democrats have done for the middle class, for the economy, for foreign affairs, but the MAGAt’s don’t hear, or don’t absorb any of it. The Lincoln Project has managed to buy advertising time on Fox, and has run clever and scathing ads about DT; would it be possible for ad time to be purchased on Fox News that talks about all of the good things that have been accomplished by Joe Biden and the Democrats? And could this maybe cause even the slightest fissure to form in some closed minds? (Hope springs eternal 😁)
I read something that the other day that struck a chord (and a funny bone) with me, it said something to the effect: “Using Fox News as a source in an argument is like claiming to be a Marine Biologist because you watch SpongeBob Squarepants. 🤣🤣
On a happier note, Michigan’s ballot in November will include both an initiative for women’s reproductive rights, and one for expanded voting rights. The MI Supreme Court overruled the Board of Canvassers ruling that neither could be on the ballot due to minor technicalities (like font size and word spacing on the petitions). 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
We must keep the faith!!
Trump's attempt to "reverse reality" with his lawsuit against Hillary Clinton and all the others he claimed had conspired against him is literally his "Gaslighting Greatest Hits". I truly wish someone would write a Big Picture account of Trump as having "a life built on gaslighting". There is such a thing as saying great things about yourself to pump up your ego (Muhammad Ali famously did that before every fight). But that was in service of achieving a "recognized good" in the world: winning a boxing match. Trump has used similar language in service of achieving a "recognized bad" in the world: not paying his taxes... not paying for goods received... conning his way into being POTUS so he could use that position to get rich... and more.
His life long "gaslighting game" deserves to be exposed separate from all the accounts of his individual crimes.
"suggesting that Trump has no grounds to assert executive privilege over the classified information seized."
In other words, you don't retain the privileges of a job you no longer have, especially if you are doing something that has potential to do harm to your former employer. You don't get to drive the company car, you don't get to take home company laptops, you don't get speak as a company representative, or remove the contents of the company safe.
Oh frabjous day! One frivolous suit tossed, one incompetent, half-assed judge given a lesson in the law, and the President gets to give good news to the people. Huzzah!
Two investigations, one by an independent investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller and another by the Republican-dominated Senate Intelligence Committee, revealed that Russia had attacked the U.S. presidential election in 2020 -- wasn't it the 2016 election that was investigated? It's so hard to keep all the investigations straight.
"While Biden and Harris are focused on the economy and the future, the Department of Justice is still handling crises created by the former president."
Yup, we're 18 months and counting, and the Justice Department and House Select Committee are working overtime to expose and begin to clean up the monumental mess left by the would-be Orange Emperor of MAG-A-Lago. I think it's a reasonable guess that all the wealth he might have won't be enough to cover the cost of the judicial hazmat operation(s) required to adjudicate his misdeeds, and the subsequent legislative efforts to erect more guardrails so his minions can't pull of similar stunts in the future.
The real truth of the matter, as we all know, is that there is no "happy place" where we can relax into the assurance that we're safe from what we have experienced dating all the way back to Newt and the "Contract with America". Perhaps we are only now becoming fully aware that ETERNAL VIGILANCE is the only protector of democracy. It can only be divine providence that the articles and amendments to the constitution prevent us from putting a bounty on Trolls. Freedom of speech will guarantee that they'll always be with us. What will it take to send them back to the caves and under the rocks from whence they emerged? Zero tolerance. Historically high participation at the ballot box. Engagement with the media in ways that punish the Echo Chambers of Hatred. Can you even imagine an America where 90%+ eligable voters participate in EVERY national election? I don't think it's exaggerating to say that the vast majority of us want reasonable things from our Government, at all levels. Service, not Stardom. Cooperation, not gladiators in the Roman Coliseum. Courage, not cowardice. Humility, not hubris and hyperbole. Debate, not dunking on one another. Kindness? Decorum? Statesmanship? Do these things exist anymore?
Every time TFG gets close to being caught in one of his illegal schemes, he gets his lawyers to flood the courts with demands, delays and distractions. This special master nonsense
"Trump reversed reality ..."
Trump lies. And the entire Republican apparatus spins his bad impulses into worse facts on the ground.'Reversing reality' did not start with Trump.
Smugly, smirkingly, and sanctimoniously turning things on their head - the specious rhetoric of saying things are exactly what they are not, perverting language to pervert history - has been the modus operandi of the GOP since the Southern Strategy. It was the hallmark of the slave states after the failed Confederacy to metamorphose defeated traitors into heritage heroes. It is the hallmark of the racist right wing religious extremists who style themselves 'originalists' and 'textualists' - the only truth of it being that they want to elide the Founders' and Framers' revolutionary message of radical equality and remove every reform which has made progress to that goal, in order to reinstate a dystopia of economic injustice as their New Jerusalem. Elevated by Federalist Society honcho, dark money impresario, and Opus Dei acolyte Leonard Leo living out his arriviste wet dreams as a flash oenophile - turning the holy sacraments of the church into the blood sport of the unrepentant pedophile priests and unreconstructed nazi popes of his youth.
This is what Biden and the Democratic Party are up against. The Progressive Caucus understands the need for unity, compromise, and step by step advances.. The old unionist Left and the leaders of the early Civil Rights Movement understood voting as political strategy rather than personal expression. It didn't give us Eden but it kept the snakes away.
Has anybody read Aileen Cannon's answers to the Questionnaire for Judicial nominees? Go to page 12 bottom.
"I have tried six cases to verdict, 4 as an Assistant United States Attorney, and two before Administrative agencies as an associate at Gibson, Dunn, and Crutcher LIP. Of the four cases I tried as an AUSA, I was chief counsel in two and Associate Council in two. Of the two administrative proceedings of which I participated; I served as the Associate Counsel. "https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Cannon%20SJQ%20-%20PUBLIC.pdf
That is the extent of her lawyering. Maybe that is enough?
To start, I expect that the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, though not sufficient, was necessary for Americans overall to galvanize around Democratic messaging, wherein we also find a much tougher, much stronger Biden who, in the past few weeks, is connecting far better with audiences relative to both Democratic accomplishments and also the need to engage now in the necessary actions to protect our democracy. Additionally, there is no doubt, in a country that historically has gained rights over time, that taking away a women’s constitutional right to legal access to abortion care has mobilized women and men to an unprecedented degree that I imagine greatly will impact local, state, and federal elections.
Simply put, I expect the conflation of each of the foregoing factors, combined with a DOJ astutely stitching together a blueprint of all the criminal offenses seemingly committed by a command structure up to and including Trump, have precipitated a nationwide shift in momentum to Democrats that conceivably could defy decades of midterm wins for the party not in power.
In paragraph 13, don’t you mean the 2016 election? 🤔 Just trying to keep things straight in my mind.
Shouldn't TFG have been subject to the consequences of filing frivolous lawsuits by now?
There is a conservative claim that the $400,000 minimum for people to be audited by the IRS has now been lowered to $200,000. I have not seen this actually verified, by any trustworthy source, yet it is being spread about by wealthy residents in our area, as a way to discredit the Biden Administration's efforts.