Jack Smith’s supersceding indictment against Donald Trump and co-defendants. Is it the beginning of Trump’s road to justice
United States of America v Donald J Trump, Defendant
The strange twists and turns of the SCOTUS leaves one scratching their heads at its inconsistencies
I went back to read what it was they based their opinion on to overturn Roe v Wade which of course led me to Justice Alito’s opinion. This article points out Alito’s confusing arguments from the Court which allows states the right to regulate, legislate abortion. We all know that American conservatives have always wanted the states to be the ultimate arbiter in how citizens are treated by the government. This goes back to the 19th century and their insistence they had the right to own human beings and treat them any way they pleased. In many ways you could make the point that a state having control over a woman’s reproductive choices is another from of enslavement but I digress.
What struck me the most about what the article was pointing out in Alito’s grounds for opposing Roe v Wade at the federal level was this
………. states are entitled to regulate abortion to eliminate “gruesome and barbaric” medical procedures; to “preserve the integrity of the medical profession”; and to prevent discrimination on the basis of race, sex, or disability, including barring abortion in cases of fetal abnormality.
Two examples popped out immediately when I read that. The integrity of the medical profession has been all but destroyed in the state of Florida where
a health care provider or health payor has the right to opt out of participation in or payment for any health care service on the basis of a conscience-based objection
Florida has gone on to say such providers do not have to refer people they deny care to to some other providers, they cannot be held liable for turning away patients and they can themselves sue if someone tries to hold them accountable for abandoning the Hippocratic oath. In other words this single American state can decide the life or death of any resident based on the whim of the physician who is the first point of contact of that resident in need of medical care. Should you be wearing a religiously and constitutionally protected symbol of your faith and you encounter a doctor who holds your religion antiethical to their own beliefs, Florida says you can be denied life saving care and you have no recourse whatsoever. How is that preseving the integrity of the medical profession that Alito says was essential in his opinion? In reality it isn’t but it does reinforce the Right’s insistence that citizens are propety of the state which can define what rights they are willing to give or deny you.
The second inconsistency of Alito’s removal of a federal standard for abortion and giving it to the states, “to prevent discrimination on the basis of race, sex, or disability” is particularly laughable given the latest ruling on 303 Creative. In this case, Gorsuch steps up to the plate to make a distinction between discrimination based on a person’s status–her gender, race, and other classifications–and discrimination based on her message. The Court ruled that Lorie Smith, a Colorado web designer who is opposed to same sex marriage was able to deny service to citizens because she asserted the State was unconstitutionally enlisting her in creating a message she opposes. We all know by now her case was built on a hypothetical, the Court was able to form an opinion on a distinction without a difference or that’s how it appears to my non legal eyes. What the opinion does seem to do is allow businesses the right to refuse service to Americans based on anything other than illegal, seditious behavior.
The conservative spectrum of American thought seems intent on using the courts and state legislatures to abrogate the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness as it has been defined over several centuries of American jurisprudence. The SCOTUS has unilaterally disregarded the hard fought for tenets of modern day rulings in almost unapologetically funny ways. For instance, saying that abortions are no longer necessary and can be discarded because of the easy accecss to contraception while state legislatures increasingly deny availability to contraception for women. Unfortunately very few on the Right see the contradiction of their arguments which members of the SCOTUS seem to relish in providing to the public. The only comfort we can take in is that they are in recess and for now we are spared any more of their confounding rulings
The insurrection of the Republican party continues well after Jan6. Theirs is a back room coup conducted by GOP officials who want to disenfranchise Democrat and progressive voters
This usurpation of voters choices for elected office is taking place in all Republican dominated state governments. Republicans are trying to add to the powers they put in place to limit or discourage voter participation by short circuiting officials voters other than Republicans have put in office by removing them from office with made up charges or excuses or short ciruiting their ability to perform official duties.
Florida’s DeSantis led the charge in taking his state towards its descent into fascism. He removed a Tampa area prosecutor who didn’t fully embrace his bullying tactics at members of the LGBTQ community by alleging Andrew Warren had blanket policies not to prosecute certain kinds of cases. The federal judge ruling on Warren’s dismisal stated categorically that allegation was false but he also declared ‘the Eleventh Amendment prohibits a federal court from awarding declaratory or injunctive relief of the kind at issue against a state official based only on a violation of state law’. With that victory in hand for now DeSantis has set his sights on State Attorney Monique Worrell because of her handling of a case. The particulars aren’t important, the idea is DeSantis can go after anyone within his reach and for any reason and doing so establishes his bona fides as the non-woke, hard nosed, more attractive and polished MAGA candidate for the Republican party.
Florida isn’t the only state that’s decided to circumvent its voters choices to run constituent business. Mississippi has decided to go around an entire administration of its capital city and replace it with governor Tate Reeves’ own Capital Police Force that has been given the expanded responsibility of policing neighborhoods in Jackson. That police force has been accused of excessive brutality towards black citizens of Jackson while patrolling the streets in and around government buildings. Along with this special group of police the GOP run Mississippi state government has also put in place an extra judiciary arm of judges super imposed over the city’s court system designed to adjudicate cases that would give the GOP ability to determine outcomes. All of these reaches from the halls of state government into city government have placed at the disposal some of the city’s financial resources that Jackson has received from the federal government, like the nearly $800 million in federal and other aid Jackson city Mayor Lumumba secured to fix the dilapidated water system the city has been suffering with for almost a century. These changes to the structure of a city that is 80% black and done by a super majority of GOP politicians of the state’s legislature have been done without input from or the ability of the elected officials of Jackson to change. They have simply been presented to them as the way things will be.
For now perhaps the most popular example of the GOP subversion of democratic processes is what happened in Tennessee with the Tennessee Three. The three state legislators were considered for expulsion from the Tennessee state legislature because of their action depicted in the photo below but just a brief history of what goes on in the legislature, as shown in the following video, clearly reveals Tennessee has a Republican majority not interested in following the rules, even those they propose or use.
Recognize any faces in the piece? Is it any wonder the three legislators took to the well of the House with a bullhorn to raise their voices after so many times having their voices ignored or not listened to during the course of conducting state business the ‘correct’ way? An even more blatant sign of the state of democracy in Tennessee is that while three legislators were threatened with expulsion, only two of them, Jones and Pearson were actually expelled. Their expulsion wasn’t based on their adoption of some excessive progressive agenda, antithetical policy foreign to their constituents. Rather theirs was a locally supported and embraced set of goals designed to enhance participation in the political process for all citizens of the state with their last stated goal being to enact some form of common sense gun legislation following the mass shooting and murder of students and staff at a local private school. That type of activism is not acceptable to a majority GOP legislature that only sees the imposition of unpopular policies as the way to success in participatory democracy. The state of Tennessee has threatened to withhold money appropriated to those municipalities that consider returning those expelled lawmakers to office.
Finally these are not the only examples of an out of control Republican party with fascist tendencies to spread policies that are directly opposed by a majority of the constituents of the state. Super majority legislatures are possible because of gerrymandering, the act of drawing voting districts that dilute the effectiveness of non Republican precincts and increase the number of GOP candidates elected to office even while they are a minority within a state’s population. One of the most egregious legacies of the Trump term was its abuse of 2020 census data released by the federal govt as well as a Supreme Court 2019 decision that said gerrymandering for party advantage cannot be challenged in federal court. With no threat to the way voting maps are drawn to increase their presence in state legislatures, Republicans have the ability to act without any regard to what the people of their states want. By electing officials to state office, the Republican party is able to form policy that suits the needs of party officials and lobbyists who support them financially but which are at the same time not in the best interest of the people of the state.
#TriciaCotham
People are eargerly anticipating a Trump indictment because of recent activity surrounding Stormy Daniels. We’ve been down this road before. Trump still roams freely, seditiously across the country #ImprisonDonaldTrump
So this is now the new thing? It’s what we begin the weekend with and it will no doubt lead on most of the news shows along with speculation of an iminent indictment of Trump.
We have to dredge up old outrages to justify new ones? It seems it was a lifetime ago that classified top secret information was found scattered all around Trump’s universe. Trump was caught red handed yet it was the lawyer handling that fiasco at that time whose name figured prominently in discussions regarding the documents, Christina Bobb who has taken the fall and is presently under investigation for obstruction of justice. Nothing will come out as a result of the investigation except to have it kicked further down the road because the Garland DOJ is not interested in pulling all the threads of Donald Trump’s corruption. They just handle and seem concerned with the petty criminals and thugs who rioted on 01/06/2021.
It happened in another lifetime altogether that Trump led an insurrection hell bent on overthrowing the elected government of the United States, yet almost two and a half years later he’s still not been held accountable for that day.
The ultimate goal of Trump and the people in the Biden administration who share being members of the establishment elite class is outrage fatigue. Their hope is the steady non stop scandals they broadcast will lead to a collective abandonment, with the exception of a few diehards, in prosecuting Trump and those closest to him for their illegal behavior so that when nothing is done to him that will be just fine with the rest of the Country.
The more sinister goal of people other than Trump and company is the war of attrition waged by the Trump will allow for the likes of more socially palatable yet politically discordant candidates to assume the mantle for the GOP brought in by the power structure to finish what Trump started.
What does Florida’s HB999 mean for Floridians and America in general?
Everyone should be concerned with the type of legislation like HB999 coming out of Florida. Effectively the language it uses is so broad as to be able to wipe out entire cultures from existence in the state.
We all have heard of the term “woke” and how pervasive it has become in negatively defining the cultural boundaries set by folks like Florida’s governor. No one can really say what “woke” means but it’s usually aimed at diversity, equity and inclusion, DEI, policies or themes that many in the Republican/MAGA party don’t like. It really is as bad a concept and idea to define as it’s proponent below struggles with.
That could mean almost anything and the ambiguity is convenient enough for the proponents of the term to blame failures of policies and institutions they don’t like as being too woke. For example an editorial complaining about SVB falling on hard times can say that it’s collapse was due to the Bank’s paying too much attention to DEI and not how to keep itself solvent and people really think that’s a thing and give it traction in the discourse about the bank’s failure. Of course they completely ignore the impact of Trump era deregulation.
This idea of things being “woke” is behind HB999, which has taken aim at “prohibit(ing) universities or colleges from using any funds to promote, support, maintain, any programs or campus activities that support or adopt diversity, equity and inclusion.” and sharp eyed opponents have every right to be outraged over the implications of the bill. It’s language, as vague and open to interpretation as the term “woke” could limit or remove from college campuses, fraternities, sororities, studies of different ethnicities, centers for different groups of students, impact the way tenure is arrived at for college professors and whether subjects are taught and how.
I’ve never understood the Right’s opposition to diversity and equity. America, since it’s inception has been diverse. Europeans, Africans and indigenous people have always been on the Continent at the same time. Equity and inclusion have been harder to come by and how they are received and implemented in American society have usually been dictated by Europeans motivated by fear of the diminution of their control over wealth. HB999 controls who teaches the new MAGA/GOP narrative of America and can reduce the impact of diversity on Florida’s college campuses to effectively zero. It’s as if it erases the existence from the state of groups of people the government of Florida considers “woke”. They vanish from the curriculum being taught and their ability to organize and address concerns on colleges and universities is not allowed, eliminated. Ethnic cleansing without the blood or the mess, done in the halls of government.
#RonDeSantis #fascism #florida #GOP
Marjorie Taylor Green and the politics of “stupid”. I cannot avoid name calling her brand any other way
No, it does not help in any discussion one might have about her style of performative and stupid politics. I began a long time ago trying to understand the direction she was coming from so that I could form a reasonable response to what she had to say but as she became more outrageous in her remarks I was confronted with the old Mark Twin saying
Never argue with an idiot. You’ll never convince the idiot that you’re correct, and bystanders won’t be able to tell who’s who.
Mark Twain
and asked myself how do you reply to nonsense like these
- A wildfire in California was started by a laser “beamed from space and controlled by a prominent Jewish banking family with connections to powerful Democrats
- Bill and Hillary Clinton had John F. Kennedy Jr. killed because he was a political rival
- A plane probably didn’t crash into the Pentagon on September 11, 2001.
- the Black Lives Matter flag represents “a group who wants to erase our history and bring mass destruction to our country through Communism.”
- she joined the chorus of right-wingers saying schools shouldn’t teach children that the U.S. has a history of racism or that LGBTQ+ people exist
- Greene referred to “Pelosi’s gazpacho police spying on members of Congress, spying on the legislative work that we do, spying on our staff and spying on American citizens that want to come talk to their representatives.”
- she called three of her fellow Republicans and the entire Democratic Party supporters of pedophilia because they favored confirming Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the U.S. Supreme Court.
- She claimed “the government totally wants to provide surveillance on every part of your life. They want to know when you’re eating. They want to know if you’re eating a cheeseburger, which is very bad because Bill Gates wants you to eat his fake meat, which is grown in a peach tree dish.”
Looking back at some of those remarks, Green has gone on to say she no longer holds the position that Jewish space lasers are responsible for California’s forest fires and I certainly hope she doesn’t think the Clintons who were 16 and 17 yrs old somehow managed at that young age to infiltrate and influence the US government to kill President Kennedy. With the exception of the blatant antisemitism of that first remark and the obvious “stupidity” of the second it was pretty easy to casually dismiss Green as being really dumb. Dumber than dumb, but then things took a turn for the worse. She started going after the workings of the very government she campaigned so hard to become a part.
“We now know that there was an FBI informant at Mar-a-Lago — who is that and how many other FBI informants are around President Trump on a daily basis, working at his clubs, working at Mar-a-Lago or maybe Bedminster or on his staff? These are the things I want to know, because they’re traitors, they are traitors and they’re helping the deep state. These are the enemies within, these are the real enemies, and they are there to purposely create something against President Trump that is not there.”
Newsweek
We all know how Trump likes to deflect scandal by calling out his opponents and saying simply outrageous things. The classified documents scandal after the attempted coup against America is probably the worst thing that Trump could do because it’s an extension of his insurrection. No matter how you cut it possessing top secret documents in a sieve the likes of Mar-O-Lago is a crime. Sending a MTG out to defend (in reality deflect) away from the charge is a clarion call to all the folks who now inhabit MAGA land to side with other seditionists.
Green has only gotten worse. That last quote was from August, 2022 as the documents scandal was hot and on the minds of everyone. It still should be but an election that changed the nature of Congress occurred and shot Green into the spotlight and leadership roles in the US House of Representatives. Unfortunately she brought her mouth and stupidity along for the ride. With the help of Elon Musk who decided after he bought Twitter to reinstate Green she wasted no time getting back in the swing of things with
Knowing full well the impact such a statement has with her constituents Green evoked images of civil war from the safety of Georgia’s 14th Congressional district, 77% white and as Republican as any in America and firmly embedded in the South. Her fellow caucus members didn’t seem to mind her call for secession and a dissolution of the Union since there was very little if any pushback from them about her comments. How should the rest of the country respond to someone who has made excuses for the insurrection of 2021 and now talks about dividing America even further and whose ideas seem to have gained traction? Comments Green made on the Charlie Kirk Show about such a division appear to amplify the notion a divided America is better than a united one
“Well, once they (people from blue states) move to a red state, guess what? Maybe you don’t get to vote for five years,” Greene concluded, suggesting to disenfranchise her fellow Americans over their political views.
“You can live there, you can work there, but you don’t get to bring your values that you basically created in the blue states you came from by voting for Democrat leaders and Democrat policies,”
Mediate
As offensive and putrid as her remarks are and can be, Green should, I have concluded no longer be dismissed or dealt with derisively as I had done in the past when either I ignored her or hurled offensive adjectives at her because of my justified anger at the things she said. The absence of reasoned, fact based responses or the presence of excessive ridicule and derision only serve to embolden her and make her feel good about her remarks and appearance on the national stage. I came to this latest conclusion about how to deal with Green after joining in on the Laurence Tribe tweeted response, seen above, to Green’s Kirk show appearance. Before considering what it was he said, I was furious he even responded. After all a constitutional lawyer with such a distinguished and long career even taking the time to reply to someone as ignorant about the Constitution and rule of law as Green was blasphemous. But it was reading the thread that substantiated Dr. Tribe’s terse reply and seeing how equally concise and substantive replies to it were that made me see the error of my ways.
Green cannot and should not be ignored or made fun of. She and others like her are a clear, present danger to the stability and continuity of the American political process. They’ve already shown their disdain for it and have attempted to destroy and replace it simply because under the rules they themselves have established that political process has not given them the results they want. While we still have in place those very rules and laws, many of them sealed with the consent of this traitorous block of Americans we must always remind them of what the law is, what the process says. It’s not necessary to engage in long drawn out polemics. This piece is far too verbose for the purposes of refuting what she’s said. Sometimes it’s something as simple as the 24 word, one sentence response of a Dr. Laurence Tribe in a tweet to sedition that has the desired effect. Reasoned, responsible resistance is necessary and obligatory. We must hope that the ‘rule of law’ catches up and does its part to reinforce the notion of law and order in American polity
Republicans complain about tax dollars being spent on initiatives they don’t like but will steal money to finance projects they like or that enrich them. Here’s one example
Former professional football player Bret Favre teamed up with Republican state politicians to divert up to $5 million from Mississippi’s Department of Human Services to build of all things a volleyball facility for students at Favre’s alma mater, University of Southern Mississippi. Favre’s daughter attends the school and he was collecting money to build the facility for a sport she was interested in and participating in at the time. Ironic, though Favre starred there as a quarterback for the football team he was fundraising for the volleyball team.
What’s egregious about this all is the money state officials schemed and stole from state coffers was from Temporary Assistance For Needy Families a federally funded program to help poor families in need. If there’s any doubt that poor Mississippians are poor and in need one should only look at statistics for poverty in Mississippi.
The highest poverty rate in the country is in Mississippi, where 19.6% of the population lives in poverty. However, this has improved from 2012, when the state’s poverty rate was nearly 25%. Mississippi has the lowest median household income of any state of $45,792. Mississippi’s educational attainment levels are among the lowest in the U.S., with about 84.5% of adults graduating high school and 22% of adults having at least a Bachelor’s degree.
2019 Poverty Rate in the United States
State officials redirected money from the federal government by rejecting nearly 99% of poor welfare applicants in 2016 and moving those funds to MCEC , Mississippi Community Education Center a non profit which controlled millions in state welfare funds, which then applied the money to projects favored by wealthy and powerful individuals. Thus the poor people of Mississippi became even poorer while the rich took the money earmarked for those most in need to use for items not of necessity but for entertainment and personal enrichment. Not that there is any doubt about this being illegal as well as immoral. Those responsible for the misappropriation of the money, except for Favre, have been disciplined by the court system in Mississippi or fired after investigations but the damage was done and it speaks to a systemic abuse of power and money by state officials.
Earlier this year the city of Jackson and the capital of the state was faced with a crisis in the making for almost a century after flooding exacerbated the water supply and state official claimed there was no safe drinking water available. It’s not like this wasn’t forecast. Since 1922 officials in the state have warned the water supply for the city of Jackson was in peril if the infrastructure that supplied water wasn’t upgraded or improved and money has been “spent” to fix this problem but because of the systemic abuse of state officials to handle money one has to wonder whether that money was really used for what it was intended. For example, an ill-fated water contract with Siemens Inc. originally billed as a way to streamline billing and save money for the city over time, had faulty meters send erroneous bills to customers, if a bill was generated at all.
What Mississippi has to own up to is the fact it has elected officials who have no problem using tax payer money for things they want for themselves while denying services to targeted members of Mississippi based on race, ethnicity and socio-economic status. The poverty rate in Jackson is over 24% yet in the 21st century it still has an infrastructure that delivers water to its citizens that has been complained about since 1922. There’s no one to blame but the officials of the state. Bret Favre was not an outlier he was business as usual.
There used to be a hashtag that said “TrumpIsALaughingStock”. That should trend again after his meeting with Fuentes and Ye
The reason is because a former president of the United States, the “greatest” country in the world, the oldest democracy in human history and a man who claims to be the smartest man, a stable genius was punked by a pedophile, a racist, and an anti-semite. He was set up in the easiest way by people who sought revenge from him by appealing to his vanity and inflating his ego.
People with this kind of motive, vengence, were able to sit down at a table with Trump in his house…a house that might still have classified documents in it…to be able to embarrass and humiliate him before the world. Milo Yiannopoulos is on record saying this whole sordid affair was done to set up Trump ‘just to make Trump’s life miserable’.
Of course Trump threw up his usual tired excuses about not knowing who Fuentes is…that’s the typical GOP line and one he’s used countless times before. It’s ALWAYS gone on to be proven a lie. Repeating it makes them look really stupid; a former POTUS with all at his disposal including a guard detail whose sole purpose is to protect his life and with everything at stake, including possibly his life, doesn’t know who he’s letting into his house? Laughable but not really. Pathetic is more like it.
A twisted fringe of the GOP that claims its opposition houses kidnapped children in the basement of pizzerias to hold them as sex slaves is the home of people like Yiannopoulos. He condoned sexual relations with boys as young as 13 and joked about a sexual encounter he said he had with a Catholic priest as a teenager way back in 2017. Statements like these got him fired from Brietbart, the home of Steve Bannon, an ally of Trump. Yiannopoulos as recently as THIS SUMMER served in Marjorie Taylor Green’s office as an unpaid intern. This is the legacy a deranged narcissist leaves on the Republican party. He associates with pedophiles, virulent racists and anti-semites who go on to say their association with him was solely to make a former POTUS’ life miserable. This is today’s Republican Party. We can laugh now.
Trump in trouble for meeting with anti-semites and white supremacists is nothing new and we should stop pretending it is. We should also stop demanding the GOP denounce him when it is the Party of white supremacy and white Christian evangelism
The GOP has been in the gutter for a long time. The difference between the Party of old and the GOP of today is in how well they look and sound in suits. When the Republican Party was a legitimate party people wore suits that made them look human. They were able to sound intelligent as they explained cogently ideas that some consider antithetical to American interests. Today, however, suits on Republicans are like putting lipstick on pigs. No where was that more apparent than with Donald Trump.
Trump’s ascendancy in the GOP was a trial balloon sent afloat by America’s monied interests who wanted to see just how much of a belligerent, disruptive, despicable politician the people would tolerate. Someone who could convince people to go along with the GOP’s equally objectionable agenda of consolidating wealth in the hands of an increasingly smaller percentage of the public while denying the majority of Americans access to opportunities a democratic society affords. The conventional playbook of pitting one group of people against the other, divide and conquer, has become increasingly difficult because of American diversity.
Trump was brought on board to entertain, amuse and even infuriate us while distracting from the real agenda of the GOP which is unbridled wealth acquisition among the country’s largest companies. Every member of the GOP is on board with that policy. Every last one. Republicans may not like the associates like Nick Fuentes and Kanye West Trump brings on board to keep his brand relevant but they have no doubt about his committment to their cause as long as his allies don’t diminish the base they need to stay in power.
Fuentes and Ye represent not only Trump’s friends and associates but the base of the Republican Party. The only difference between Trump and the GOP is in how palatable they can make their fecal objectives taste to the public at large and how good they can look while doing it. Republicans have looked pretty good in the past convincing the public they’re acting in the interests of the American people. However Trump reaching back to enlist the help of a 24 year old white supremacist college drop out and a 45 year old black rapper anti-Semite is enough to restrain even the most authoritarian Republican from giving Donald Trump the enthusiastic sycophantic praise he was used to receiving while holder of the most powerful office in the world.
Republicans have forgotten that Trump’s ability to withstand attack pales in his ability to give it. The base they share which consists of the likes of Fuentes and anti-semites, black and white will keep them in synch with one another. Republicans need Trump just as much as he needs their affirmation. Either they give one another what they need or as Lindsay Graham once said Trump will spell the end of the Republican Party.
Now that Trump has found himself in the American spotlight the only way to expunge him from it is through his political or natural death. #notmyPresident #NeverTrumper
Please note unlike Trump supporters who when they speak of death or acts that lead to it like ‘hand Mike Pense’ and mean it in the literal sense, the natural death I’m referring to for Trump would come from eating one too many McDonald’s combo meals and dying from obesity or the type of suffocation that comes from telling so many lies that his nose has grown long enough for him to become top heavy and fallen face first onto the ground. Remember Trump had over 30K lies attributed to him at the end of his first term in office and that number has only increased in the two years since. So then, natural death for Trump is his passing away by his own hands and because his time was up.
With that out of the way his political death was impending after the 2022 midterms. Because the GOP didn’t do as well as expected and certainly Trump’s endorsed candidates did rather poorly there were calls by Republicans to get him out of the way. Those who called for him to move forgot Trump is the ultimate narcissist and it was never about what’s good for the Party as much as what satisfies his ego so despite the poor showing of his candidates Trump chose to announce his own candidacy for president in 2024 ONE WEEK later!
That however is what one should expect from a narcissist but what was not expected comes from main stream media and the fact that 2 cable news networks covered the twice impeached, under investigation, former president’s announcement and with that resuscitated Trump’s political career. Any momentum that may have gathered to push Trump out of the way was turned on its head into pushing him back into the spotlight. This was a repeat of Trump in 2015 when he became prominent due to the extraordinary media coverage he received, almost all of it misplaced. He didn’t deserve it but captialized because of it to go on and become POTUS with disastrous results for the country.
Main stream media has to shift its focus from Trump the political newsmaker to Trump the criminal, disgraced, felonious fraud that he has always been. Media also has to stop looking at Trump as a cash cow. It was media’s coverage early on in his political campaigning that profitted greatly from ringing his bell, getting the attention of viewers and readers and generating revenue from a profane, vulgar, political neophyte. However as a former POTUS who had access to sensitive, classified information and America’s military and law enforcement arsenals at his disposal Trump has become an existential threat to American democracy and that should be the prism with which he is viewed.
In the same days before and after the mid term election and Trump’s announcement he would seek office again came news from his own mouth that he used his office to garner a win for a potential opponent for the Republican nomination for President, Ron DeSantis. Certainly newsworthy but not to be outdone by that came a report that Trump weaponized the IRS to go after political opponents and there’s still the mystery of what has happened to the investigation into documents stolen from the government and secreted at Mar-O-Lago and possibly places beyond. No doubt there are countless other stories of Trump scandal that should be written about and explored that are far more meaningful than his return to politics. How can anyone decide whether to vote for him again without answers to these questions and why would a discussion of these issues become obscured with coverage of Trump rallies and the false imagery they are meant by design to convey.
Removing the coverage of Trump’s appearance before throngs of admiring fans adorned in colorful attire from the country’s airwaves and electronic/print venues would probably be the stake in Trump’s heart. He needs that kind of attention to feed his narcissim. Don’t forget in the 90s he would call reporters of various NYC outlets in a disguised voice claiming to be someone to talk about how great “Donald Trump” was or the many utterly comical superlatives he gives himself such as ‘the world’s greatest person’, or ‘there is nobody bigger or better at the military’ than he and on and on goes the ridiculous nature of Trump when left unchallenged. Which is why he should not be allowed to dictate how he is viewed. We know the face he will portray. He is cruel, ignorant, belligerent, a liar, a fraud, a thief, and possibly a traitor but he cannot and should not be viewed ever again as an American politician or political candidate. In order for that to happen and to hasten his political demise he shouldn’t be given coverage that views him in that light ever again. Can an industry that’s built on profit afford to do that? Is American democracy that important?
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The Republican Party neither needs nor wants Donald Trump any more yet he continues to get in their way #goodRiddance #GOPBetrayedAmerica #NotMyPresident
Couldn’t happen to a nicer group of people. The ultimate narcissist and the American fascist party are at odds with one another over who will be the ascendant fringe of American politics.
Trump, once the darling of the GOP because of his boorish, nasty behavior towards Republican opponents paved the way in promoting the Party’s philosophy of autocratic oligarchy using schtick and bravado that attracted votes yet distracted people from the dangers of Republican politics. Now, however after a disappointing mid term the Party wants to divorce itself from a man who won’t take “no” for an answer.
What do people expect from a narcissist Donald Trump? The Party wrapped themselves up in his personality. They gave him free reign to redesign their Party anyway he wanted as long as he was winning but didn’t figure out how to install a kill switch to turn him off when needed. The Party fell, just like countless other Americans, to Trump’s ability to sell himself despite the disastrous track record he has left in his wake. Now, the debt has to be paid and it started with the mid terms.
Like so many financial lending institutions, the Party’s leadership has decided to throw Trump under the bus and not give him the credit he thinks he deserves. Calls for him to keep quiet, stay away and otherwise disengage from Party politics are being sent by all the signalers of the Party. Whether Trump listens is another matter. He has already sent signals he will announce a reelection bid in the near future. I hope that announcement means the Party will engage in this internecine fight between a suicidal Trump and an autocratic, derelict party hell bent on controlling American politics until the Party implodes. It has become an irrelevant, irreverent party that has no place in a modern, 21st century, diverse republic.
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#donaldTrump #republicanRascism
Election Eve 2022 and there is a feeling of uneasiness hanging in the night air- #midterm2022 #elections #votingrights
I waited until the evening before the election everyone is saying will be one of the most consequential of modern American history to weigh in on its import. What will America be like 48 hours from now? Will the country be able to carry on as usual or will it have the rumblings of chaos and fear that marked other periods in our history when white nativism and privilege decided to exert itself and turned America into a violent, bloody cauldron where citizens’ rights are abrogated.
When you think about the course of American history it really is time for that kind of turmoil. There have been almost 50 years of American calm where people used their voice in peaceful ways to influence American politics. This of course was after the Civil Rights movements of the 60s which were blood baths. That struggle for civil, human rights along with the dissent against the Vietnam war turned Americans against one another in ways that echoed the internecine strife of the Civil War. Some of the same dark forces that were at work then are present today sharing some of the same goals among them the denial of the right to vote for some in free and fair elections.
When the Biden administration took over government there were three issues it should have dealt with urgently. Arresting Covid and slowing down its death toll, reviving the American economy and installing voting rights legislation that would be able to meet and beat the Republican assault on democracy. Each one of those policy initiatives was vitally important to the longevity of the Republic and all three had to be in place at the same time in order for America to be better than before and more prosperous. Unfortunately only the first two were put in place and so we are now on election eve worrying about the consequences of this election because we have no guarantee all Americans will be able to participate freely and without intimidation in the electoral process.
Jan6 is full of stories of members of the military and law enforcement participating in the insurrection. That fact begs the question can we count on a united states to meet and defeat the violence which may result from a contentious election.
Why Biden didn’t more forcefully look for a way to codify voting rights might well be a question America will ask itself for many years to come. Voting rights and access will benefit all Americans just as covid relief and shoring up the American economy and the middle class. What hurts is the belief that it only benefits a certain segment of the population. That belief is probably shared across the political spectrum otherwise why wouldn’t it be more of a priority? We failed to be persuasive enough to make the case for the relevance, necessity for full fledged voting rights in today’s America and as a result we failed this country. We might have to pay a very big price for our failure.
The attack on Paul Pelosi is a result of Republican disinformation and lies. Their equivocation in denouncing it only insures more attacks will come
One has to ask themselves is that what they, the GOP, want? What comes from Republican messaging about their opponents keeps getting worse for America in general and that’s because all of their messaging is now exclusively based on lies used to generate a physical response from their supporters.
Talk enough about Hillary Clinton and her emails and surround them with lies about child pornography and sex trafficking and you get Maddison Welch a gun wielding vigilante who self-investigated the claims of a child sex ring in a Washington, DC establishment. It didn’t matter the pizza business was over 300 miles from where Welch lived, he went there armed with an AR-15 and a pistol and terrorized the community looking for something someone (it’s always a faceless, nameless person) told him existed. That thing, children held hostage in the basement of a pizzeria and used as sex slaves wasn’t there but that doesn’t matter because it’s the response that counts and it set the standard for how people on the right are expected to respond to GOP messaging. True to form for conspiracists a few days later someone attempted to terrorize Besta Pizza a few doors down for the same reason.
What matters is the response. That someone can start a lie that gets enough traction, no matter how easy it is to disprove it, see through it, gets people to resort to violence is a useful tool for unscrupulous politicians. It seems to be used extensively by today’s politicians on the Right. At the time of the “pizza gate” shootings a lot of press was being given to Trump and his demonization of Hillary Clinton and the email scandal of Trump’s demented mind. At every chance he could Trump railed about the evils of Clinton and left it to the imagination of his supporters what she is responsible for and what should be done about it. Welch considered he was doing something about it.
James T. Hodgkinson the man above went on a shooting rampage against Republicans. He vehemently and inevitably violently opposed Republican ideology. People you might have never heard of were the target of his rage. I share his dislike of today’s Republican Party but not his solution for expressing that dislike. Hodgkinson was an ardent Bernie Sanders supporter at one point and expressed his dislike for Trump on Facebook and to local newspapers but his violence was fueled by internal forces that slowly built up to the day that led him to attempt to kill Republicans. You can read about the journey that led to his violence here. What can be said is he acted out of his own inclinations, not because someone encouraged him to or because a political message was sent out that implied Republicans should be targeted in any way other than via the electoral process. No one forged conspiracies about the dangers of the Republican Party or rhetorically called for action, outside of the political process, to be taken against Democratic opponents that he listened to, bonded with and read. Hodgkinson had simply, on his own and without prompting from anyone except the deep recesses of his own mind become insane. There was no previous violent expression against Republicans he could point too for encouragement, there was only him.
Which brings us to today and the violence acted out against Nancy and David Pelosi. David Depape went to a specific residence after subscribing to an assortment of lies and conspiracies about a definite political opponent of Trump. I hope her address is a matter of public record but nonetheless he broke in looking for her and eventually assaulted her husband. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know he was inspired by GOP opposition to Pelosi’s reign as Speaker of the House. Marjorie Taylor Green has said Pelosi is a traitor and underscored the penalty for treason is death. It’s clear the line she’s drawing. Trump going as far back as 2017 has called Pelosi a nasty, vindictive, horrible person and considers her a disgrace. Kevin McCarthy who might become Speaker if Republicans take the majority in the House said it would be hard not to hit Pelosi with the speaker’s gavel should he get the position. WaPo reports on attempts as far back as 2010 by Republicans to demonize and discredit Pelosi hatched in order to make her the face of their opposition and inevitably Depape’s rage.
This then is the difference between the main American political parties. The GOP is led by a narcissist who delights in hurling invective at his opponents and encourages his supporters to do the same. A majority of them have accepted his challenge and engaged in conspiracy banter aimed at whoever Trump says deserves it. Attacks directed at GOP opponents are centered, coordinated and multifaceted. For example the Pelosi attack was not only political but personal AFTER it was exposed as a political hit job which Republicans originally discounted. Meanwhile attacks on Republicans by the left is fragmented and disparate and are not encouraged by Democratic officials and routinely denounced by them when/if they occur. There doesn’t seem to be any hope Republicans will be as forceful in their repudiation of violence as a political tool and in the absence of swift and punitive punishment for such expressions of violence towards political opposition America can only expect to see more David Depapes and Maddison Welches.
Trump lies and America’s violence continuum
I have written the DOJ will not prosecute Trump but absent any prosecution American democracy cannot expect to continue on its present trajectory. The longer Trump goes unpunished the worse his affinity for lying and the use of his bully pulpit to gas light and incite racial, religious hatred will become. The Washington Post back in 2021 said in it’s article highlighting Trump’s span of lies during his administration
When The Washington Post Fact Checker team first started cataloguing President Donald Trump’s false or misleading claims, we recorded 492 suspect claims in the first 100 days of his presidency. On Nov. 2 alone, the day before the 2020 vote, Trump made 503 false or misleading claims as he barnstormed across the country in a desperate effort to win reelection.
This astonishing jump in falsehoods is the story of Trump’s tumultuous reign. By the end of his term, Trump had accumulated 30,573 untruths during his presidency — averaging about 21 erroneous claims a day.
What is especially striking is how the tsunami of untruths kept rising the longer he served as president and became increasingly unmoored from the truth.
We have learned that Trump’s lies are purposeful. He has been told some of his statements are lies and even has admitted to others that he knows what he says is not the truth but he says it anyway. Politicians like him are able to strike a chord with elements of society that tend towards violence. We’ve seen that already in the events of Jan6 and this is why he cannot be allowed to continue to lie unabated.
Lies regarding racial animosity and immigration are themes that have sparked intense murderous violence in America’s past. Such violence historically has usually led to changes in policy or in one case an entire local govt and that hasn’t been lost on Trump et co.
The lynching of 11 Italian immigrants in New Orleans in 1891, please make a mental note of that year, who were accused of murdering a police official of the city of New Orleans happened at a time when immigration was a hot button issue in America. Five of the people lynched were not tried at all for the murder but were executed. Three were tried and acquitted for that offense and three saw their case end in a mistrial yet all were victims of a mob mentality that was stoked in anti-immigration rhetoric of the times. It goes without saying no one responsible for these 11 murders was punished and attempts by the federal govt to compensate the families of the victims was fought by the Congress which managed to reduce the original amount suggested by the president at the time of $25,000 down to slightly over $2,000 per victim. The practical effect of this act of genocide on a burgeoning Italian community in New Orleans was shortly after the lynching, the city passed an ordinance giving control of all New Orleans dock work to the newly formed Louisiana Construction and Improvement Corporation, a business headed by several of the lynch mob leaders. Italian waterfront merchants and workers, who had been making remarkable economic progress up to then, were thus eliminated as competitors. Left unpunished and essentially rewarded, people aligned with the mob mentality which murdered New Orleans’ Italian immigrants went on to continue lynching of immigrants in the state based on a lie.
Seven short years later in Wilmington, NC an entire govt changed hands. Described by some in the parlance of the day as a race riot caused by the black citizens of Wilmington what happened in 1898 is also known by many as a violent overthrow of a duly elected government by a group of white supremacists much like the Jan6 insurrection. It was fomented by lies and simmering white resentment at the political participation and coalition between African-Americans and white Southern Republicans in what was called a fusionist govt. This agitation resulted in scores of innocent black citizens killed and the complete withdrawal and overthrow of a duly elected local government in Wilmington.
These two historical examples point to the necessity of dealing with lies in a timely, concise, definitive way. Whataboutism and equivocation have no place in combating the political rhetoric used by Trump and his MAGA movement supporters. WaPo gets it right when it called the increased number of Trump lies at the end of his term a “tsunami”. Why are we waiting for a corresponding wave of violence to accompany it?
White American paternalism has been around for a very long time
How the Founding Fathers dealt with the issue of owning human has a lot to do with the politics of the Country since its founding to the modern era.
This WaPo article on the attempts of a living African-American to discover his family history is the bridge between American paternalism past and present. William England discovered his great grandmother was conceived by a slave who was impregnated by her owner, an Alabaman legislator who figured prominently in the antebellum South’s history. Ella Clay, England’s great grandmother was just another slave to her white father as far as the man who conceived her was concerned. England seemed to want to attribute some humanity to the father of his great grandmother by saying he allowed her to have her wedding in his house. Of course she went on to live a life of slavery and slavish subservience to white paternalism. Rape of enslaved women by white masters was common during the years of slavery. It was a way to staff the work force and increase the wealth of the rapist because the product of such violence was always deemed a slave and slaves were by far the biggest asset of plantation owners.
Nineteeenth century American white male paternalism resembles present day Right male paternalism in the way men of today interact with women and the human beings that interaction creates. The anti-abortion movement says women have no recourse, legal or otherwise in what happens to their bodies, regardless whether it is through rape or incest or physical threats to womens’ bodies while men who rape and ravish them go on living lives full of choices. These men have a choice whether to be responsible for their children or their sexual partners or completely abandon them a la Herschel Walker et co. and continue the commercialization of women’s bodies. Whereas genteel Southern men could copulate with women of color indiscriminately and dehumanize and enslave children from such a union 21st century Right males use women’s bodies for sexual pleasure and can absolve themselves of any responsibility to raise children, completely abandoning them to their sexual partners, the family of their partners or the State. These same Right males who bemoan the intrusion of the State in THEIR affairs don’t mind that the same state should take care of the human beings they leave behind. The right to rape women seems to be a common thread that runs in paternalism of the 19th through 21st century and women and the children they are forced to bear are the ones who suffer.
Finally this parting shot at southern culture and the myth of it being a righteous movement designed to advance a distinct, positive way of life of American life. Antebellum southern America resembles its MAGA successor in another key point and that is its adherence to myth and lies. From the above mentioned article is this tidbit
Long after the war, the Clay family perpetuated a myth about life on Southern plantations. Virginia Clay — rumored to have had a long affair with Jefferson Davis — became a leader in the United Daughters of the Confederacy, the group that erected Confederate monuments across the South and idealized “The Lost Cause” in the early 20th century. Virginia’s memoir, “A Belle of the Fifties,” described the glittering social life she enjoyed before the end of slavery. The UDC promoted Virginia’s book across the country, helping create the perception that led to “Gone with the Wind” and generations of rosy pictures of a bygone Dixie.
The reliance on a lie and the immoral behavior of those who advance that lie seem to be another common data aspect antebellum southern white paternal America shares with MAGA Republican paternal of today’s America. Before, during and after American slavery the history of the country was steeped in death, the enslavement and disenfranchisement of people of color. Today’s right MAGA inspired movement seems to share similar goals of returning American culture to an antebellum paternalism.
Mass Murder at the hands of a 15 year old is becoming common in today’s America
When you hear the gun crowd say, ‘guns don’t kill people, people do’, kick them to the curb. Such bumper sloganeering has no place in a developed, mature democracy like America unless you want to bury your head in the sand and let the pandemic of mass murder continue. What took place in Raleigh, North Carolina where a 15 year old went on a rampage in his community and killed 5 people including his older brother may be new to Raleigh but it’s happened before and that’s the problem.
Back in 1998 two boys down in Arkansa killed five people in their school when those two were 11 & 13 years old. Yeah….an eleven year old child along with his thirteen year old buddy killed four students and a teacher. Their names were Mitchell Johnson and Andrew Golden. They had nine firearms and 2,000 rounds of ammunition. Luckily none of their weapons were semi automatic rifles. Imagine the death toll they could’ve inflicted as they lay in ambush as students and staff filed out into the open. Remember this; they were just 11 & 13 years old. Let that sink in for a minute………………….In the state where they lived, they were tried as juveniles and released when they reached 21 years old. Moving on to the present where,
in Raleigh, Austin Thompson 15 years old walked around his neighborhood for several hours killing people at random. He was described by eyewitnesses as between 13-16 years of age, small, very young. One has to wonder whether his victims who when they first laid eyes on him saw the same small statured boy described by 911 callers whose appearance made them stifle their flight response to danger just long enough for him to kill them. Torres, one of the shooter’s victims, was a police officer on his way to work. Eventually the boy was taken into custody and whisked to the hospital with bullet wounds to the head and body. It’s unclear whether he attempted to kill himself or was shot by police.
There’s no mention in published reports about the boy’s parents who rightfully deserve attention if for no other reason than whether there were firearms in the home. It’s also unclear what type and how many weapons the boy used in his murder spree but I certainly hope a 15 year old boy living a suburban life with parents couldn’t go out and get weapons from the streets. Maybe that IS possible but for now the parents have a responsibility to monitor, influence and correct the behavior of their children for it’s the parent people usually go to to inform and ask about why children behave the way they do. Unfortunately it’s too late for corrective action on the part of the parent. That now is the responsibility of the State. So, that said, Mr. and Mrs Thompson why did your boy have access to guns and go out and kill five people including your other son? It’s a reasonable two part question to ask parents of juvenile murderers. What was going on with your child emotionally, mentally, psychologically and where and how did they get hold of firearms.
People with guns kill people and as the lethality and rapidity of firearms becomes more potent who has access to these weapons of death should become a priority of the State. Yes, it must be regulated by the State because as much as 2nd Amendment people want to complain about infringement and regulation it is also the responsibility of lawmakers to insure the safety of the citizens of the state. Common sense gun legislation is the key . Parents with juvenile children in the house should not have firearms within the reach of immature children and when those children get ahold of their parents’ weapons and commit acts of violence parents should pay the price for their parental neglect. As of this writing there are over 500 acts of mass shootings commited by people with firearms in America. If that doesn’t bother you perhaps you don’t belong in a structured lawful society.
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