Donald Trump is railing against Judge Arthur Engoron, apparently referring to the judge’s summary judgment ruling in September that found the company and individual defendants broadly committed fraud.
Mostly Monday Reads: Election Daze Edition
Posted: December 4, 2023 Filed under: just because | Tags: #Blabbermouth Trump, #RepublicanCrazyTrain, @repeat1968, Abortion Rights on Ballots 2024, People See Through You, Trump court cases 4 Comments
Good afternoon, Sky Dancers!
The Iowa Caucuses are on January 15th. The New Hampshire primaries are scheduled for January 23rd. Get ready for the cray-cray. Abortion Rights and Trump’s campaign are in the headlines today. As the Boys from South Park say, “I call shenanigans!”
The election in Kentucky has brought a young woman to the front of the abortion debate. This is a Washington Postarticle about her and how she will join the national conversation on a civil right that is very personal and essential for her. “‘Everybody’s daughter’: The rape victim behind Kentucky’s viral abortion ad. Hadley Duvall helped Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear win reelection — and she’s ready to campaign again in 2024.” The feature article was written by Caroline Kitchener.
One month before the governor thanked her for his victory, Hadley Duvall had already won.
Standing in the middle of a football field in mid-October, she looked out at the students of her small Christian university, stunned to be the one wearing the rhinestone tiara. Her classmates could have chosen to honor the student body president ora leading member of the local Bible study. Instead, they’d picked Hadley, the face of a viral ad about abortion and sexual abuse that had begun airing a month earlier, and would soon help Democrats hold the governor’s mansion in one of the most conservative states in the country.
“They don’t hate me,” Duvall,21, recalled thinking as she accepted a bouquet of red roses from her college president. “They made me homecoming queen.”
Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear’s reelection campaign learned aboutDuvall because of a Facebook post about her experience she had written on June 25, 2022, the day after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. The ruling triggered a near-total abortion ban in Kentucky, one of 12 states with a recently enactedban that makes no exceptions for rape or incest. Days after she heard from Beshear’s team, Duvall was sitting in the dining room of a wealthy Beshear supporter she didn’t know, staring into a video camera. She aimed her words directly atthe Republican candidate for governor, who for months had thrown his full support behind the current version of Kentucky’s law before conceding late in the campaign that he was open toadditional exceptions.
“This is to you, Daniel Cameron,” Duvall said in the ad, her blue eyes narrowed in anger.
“To tell a 12-year-old girl she must have the baby of her stepfather who raped her is unthinkable. I’m speaking out because women and girls need to have options. Daniel Cameron would give us none.”
She tells the story of the abuse in detail. So, I have to issue another Content Warning today. It’s about the details of a 12-year-old girl being repeatedly raped by her stepfather.
Republican Campaign Strategist Liz Mair wrote this Op-Ed in today’s New York Times. Mair has a list of clients that are basically in the deplorable basket. “Republicans Are Finding Out That ‘Pro-Life’ Means a Lot of Things to a Lot of People.”
Well, D’oh. Again, we see the Republican obsession with late-term “abortions,” which are usually the result of something gone horribly wrong, incredibly rare, and the OB/GYN profession considered to be deliveries with bad outcomes. Again, they’re not even considered abortions after the point of fetal viability, where babies will be saved if possible. The overwhelming majority are wanted pregnancies and devasting to the women and families involved.
Many conservatives may call themselves pro-life, but in practice, that may be a more aspirational statement than an accurate reflection of hard policy views. Perhaps by figuring out what it now means to be pro-life — and recognizing that pro-life policy is easiest to sell only when it amounts to a ban on abortions later in pregnancy — Republicans can come up with a new approach to the politics of the issue.
Before Roe was overturned, the term “pro-life” covered a lot of ground — which was useful over decades in galvanizing a broad coalition willing to use abortion as a political cudgel. As Republicans are finding out today, “pro-life” means many things to many people.
Reading how these people think about something so complex and personal is not anything I like to do, but it’s necessary. There are a lot of states trying to get abortion rights on their ballots, and Republicans are pulling shenanigans to try to keep the initiatives away from voters. We have to hear what the deplorable are doing so we can fight them at the ballot box. I put a Rolling Stone article up about South Dakota yesterday. Today, I feature this PBS News Hour report from last August. Given what I read about South Dakota, I can’t help but believe that deplorables in states like Ohio haven’t shared their tactics.
Across the country, Republican officials and activists who oppose abortion access have worked to make it harder to pass citizen-led ballot measures and added roadblocks to the process of getting abortion directly on the ballot These attempts to stop voters from weighing in directly on abortion aren’t new, but advocates say the current anti-ballot-measure efforts are taking on a renewed pace and ferocity. As voters even in conservative states have chosen to back abortion rights, GOP legislators and officials have been willing to fundamentally change the rules of democracy.
“We’ve been seeing an acceleration of these attacks on ballot measure processes more every year for the past several years,” said Kelly Hall, executive director of the Fairness Project, which works to pass progressive ballot measures. “And the success that abortion rights advocates have had at the ballot box in 2022 is putting fuel on that already burning fire of red state legislatures wanting to exclude their voters from direct democracy.”
Comer engaging with his constituents. John Buss, @repeat1968
These types of initiatives are definitely part of a democratic republic that Republicans would prefer to disappear in a Trump autocracy. So, how is the Republican plan to overthrow a constitutional democracy going? Well, look at the Trump Campaign. This is from Politico. “Trump’s revenge? GOP braces for daily blasts from ‘orange Jesus.’ His reascension, as nominee or the eventual winner, threatens to spark the same clashes with the Hill GOP that took a heavy toll on the party.”
Congressional Republicans are steeling themselves for a return to daily life with Donald Trump — which means constant, uncomfortable questions about his erratic policy whims and political attacks.
With Trump far ahead of the GOP primary pack and leading President Joe Biden in some polls, Republicans are getting a preview of future shellshock akin to their experiences in 2016 and his presidency. It’s likely to continue for the next 11 months. And perhaps four more years after that.
Trump’s recent call to replace the Affordable Care Act is triggering a particularly unwelcome sense of deja vu within the GOP. Even as many Senate Republicans steered away from Trump over the past couple years, now they’re increasingly resigned to another general election that could inundate them with the former president’s often fact-averse and hyperbolic statements.
But Hill Republicans are girding to treat Trump the third-time nominee the same way they did Trump the neophyte candidate and then president. They’re distancing themselves and downplaying his remarks, which touch on policy stresses like his urge to end Obamacare and political grievances like his vow to come down “hard” on MSNBC for its unfavorable coverage.
“He is almost a stream of consciousness,” said Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), one of only three Senate Republicans who will remain in office after voting to convict Trump in his second impeachment trial — the other four have either already left or plan to next year. It’s “analogous to when every day he would tweet,” Cassidy added, “and 99 percent of the time it never came to anything.”
The article continues to highlight how many Trump critics are leaving their office voluntarily this year rather than face Trump and his army of congressional deplorables. This New York Times article outlines his radical ideas for this election cycle. The byline includes Maggie Haberman, FYI. “Why a Second Trump Presidency May Be More Radical Than His First. Donald Trump has long exhibited authoritarian impulses, but his policy operation is now more sophisticated, and the buffers to check him are weaker.”
Mr. Trump’s violent and authoritarian rhetoric on the 2024 campaign trail has attracted growing alarm and comparisons to historical fascist dictators and contemporary populist strongmen. In recent weeks, he has dehumanized his adversaries as “vermin” who must be “rooted out,” declared that immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country,” encouraged the shooting of shoplifters and suggested that the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mark Milley, deserved to be executed for treason.
As he runs for president again facing four criminal prosecutions, Mr. Trump may seem more angry, desperate and dangerous to American-style democracy than in his first term. But the throughline that emerges is far more long-running: He has glorified political violence and spoken admiringly of autocrats for decades.
As a presidential candidate in July 2016, he praised the former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein as having been “so good” at killing terrorists. Months after being inaugurated, he told the strongman leader of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte, that his brutal campaign of thousands of extrajudicial killings in the name of fighting drugs was “an unbelievable job.” And throughout his four years in the Oval Office, Mr. Trump blew through boundaries and violated democratic norms.
What would be different in a second Trump administration is not so much his character as his surroundings. Forces that somewhat contained his autocratic tendencies in his first term — staff members who saw their job as sometimes restraining him, a few congressional Republicans episodically willing to criticize or oppose him, a partisan balance on the Supreme Court that occasionally ruled against him — would all be weaker.
As a result, Mr. Trump’s and his advisers’ more extreme policy plans and ideas for a second term would have a greater prospect of becoming reality.
This article written by Philip Bump in the Washington Post also addresses Trump’s campaign style. “How Donald Trump uses dishonesty.” He might as well say the quiet part out loud.
Trump spent years trying to get people to buy gold-plated condominiums, apartments gilded with veneers of luxury and class. He spent years trying to get lots of people to buy lots of things, really, with allegations of fraud lingering around him and his company for much of that time. But he was never more successful in parlaying dishonesty into investment than since he embraced a career in national politics in 2015.
His approach that year was groundbreaking for a deceptively simple reason. Republican voters, frustrated by Barack Obama’s election and reelection, had increasingly embraced misinformation about national political issues. The Republican establishment, including elected officials, didn’t know how to deal with this. At first, they tried to co-opt the energy, reframing their desired policy preferences in the vernacular common with the tea party or fringe-right media outlets. But there was still a gap between what those outlets and right-wing commentators were endorsing and what established politicians would say.
Trump closed the gap. He said the things about immigrants that were common on the fringe-right, despite being exaggerated or false. He said the things about the left that those commentators, uncoupled from the party, were claiming on Fox News and in blogs. There was a backlash, including from the GOP establishment, that helped increase the audience for his claims. Republicans — especially the hard-right Republicans who were more likely to vote in primaries — heard him and viewed him not as a dishonest, opportunistic demagogue but as a solitary truth-telling pariah. That everyone in a position to know pointed out that Trump was wrong or lying reinforced his political branding: He was the guy challenging the elite hegemony. “Birds aren’t real,” but for an older generation.
This has been Trump’s sales approach ever since. You can see it in the rhetoric he deployed over the weekend at campaign events in Iowa, reiterating false, debunked claims about election fraud and attempting to reframe President Biden as a threat to democracy. But those are the endpoints of his approach, not the mechanism itself.
Consider this bit of rhetoric Trump offered in support of the idea that it is Biden, not him, who undermines America’s systems and history.
“You know that they’ve labeled parents at school board meetings as domestic terrorists. I mean, can you believe it?” he said in Cedar Rapids. “But they have. You know, when I first heard that — they have actually gone after parents viciously and violently, and when I first heard it, I thought people were just making it up. They haven’t made it up. You’ve seen that.”
They did make it up. This idea that the Biden administration had called parents “domestic terrorists” has been debunked repeatedly. But — because it’s so compelling a reason to despise Biden and because the debunkings don’t permeate right-wing media — the idea has become embedded in anti-Biden lore. He’s right about one thing, though: His supporters have seen that claim, on Fox News and in right-wing commentary for years. It’s false, but they’ve seen it, and here’s Trump glomming onto the idea so that he can put it to higher use: disparaging Biden and his administration as the threat to democracy.
That’s how it works, over and over. He gets buy-in on a familiar claim and then pivots it to his advantage, either by depicting himself in opposition to shared enemies or by leveraging the credibility he earns to make other false statements. Right after this riff, for example, he started talking about how his opponents purportedly cheat in elections. Graham Kates of CBS News reports that “Trump seeks “urgent review” of gag order ruling in New York civil fraud case.” Not even a court can shut this idiot up while he destroys others’ lives.
Former President Donald Trump intends to appeal a ruling that upheld a gag order in his civil fraud trial in New York, with his attorneys saying Monday that they plan to ask the state’s highest court to review the decision.
New York Judge Arthur Engoron issued the order barring Trump from commenting publicly about his staff after the former president published a social media post disparaging Engoron’s clerk on Oct. 3, the second day of the trial. The order was later expanded to apply to attorneys in the case.
The judge found that Trump and his campaign violated the gag order twice, and Trump paid $15,000 in fines, before the appeals court temporarily stayed the order on Nov. 16. That hiatus lasted two weeks, while a panel of judges in the Appellate Division of the New York Supreme Court considered, and then rejected, Trump’s request to have the gag order lifted.
Trump is now seeking an “urgent review” by New York’s highest court, called the Court of Appeals, his attorneys said in a filing. Trump has accused Engoron and the clerk, Allison Greenfield, of bias in his filings.
“Without expedited review, [the defendants] will continue to suffer irreparable injury daily, as they are silenced on matters implicating the appearance of bias and impropriety on the bench during a trial of immense stakes,” Trump attorney Clifford Robert wrote. “Petitioners’ counsel have no means of preserving evidence of or arguments regarding such bias and impropriety at this time, since the Gag Orders also prohibit in-court statements.”
I’m unsure how to endure all this since we must deal with it head-on. I suppose ranting here, going to my local to drink a glass of wine and rant, plus just plain ranting to the dog and cats, will suffice for now. I’m not quite too old to also rant at my elected officials, even though there’s not much they do about anything.
We will also get this mess that Republicans have cooked up to get us to ignore Orange Caligula’s rants. Here’s more of those Crazy Train Republicans as reported by Newsweek. “Joe Biden Impeachment Looks More Likely After Walmart Confrontations: Comer. Who had Walmart Confrontations on their Election Bingo cards? Anyone?
Representative James Comer, chairman of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, said on Sunday that an impeachment of President Joe Biden looks more likely after House Republicans heard from their constituents at Walmart over the Thanksgiving holiday.
The GOP has been investigating Biden over allegations that he intervened and benefited from his son Hunter Biden‘s business dealings with China and Ukraine while he was vice president under former President Barack Obama, including accusations of taking bribes. The allegations have been denied by the White House and Hunter Biden’s lawyers, with Democrats criticizing the GOP’s impeachment inquiries for failing to find any meaningful evidence against the president.
Once the impeachment inquiry is complete, the Judiciary Committee will decide on whether to draw up any draft impeachment articles against Biden to be voted on by the House. Comer has said that a vote could take place by early 2024.
Better let MGT do it, or she will come after you with a machete and whack of little Jim. You remember what she did to Boerbert.
We have a few more weeks before we can actually see voter sentiment instead of reading misleading polls. Hang in here with us!
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
You’ve got covert action
Prejudice to extremes
You’ve got primitive cunning
And high tech means
You’ve got eyes everywhere
But people see through you
You’ve got good manipulators
Got your store of dupes
You’ve got the idiot clamour
Of your lobby groups
You like to play on fears
But people see through you
You’ve got instant communication
Instant data tabulation
You got the forces of occupation
But you don’t get capitulation
‘Cause people see through you
People see through you
People see through you
People see through you
By Bruce Cockburn
Finally Friday Reads: Hyper News Day Edition
Posted: December 1, 2023 Filed under: Breaking News, Feminists, House of Representatives, Human Rights, Israel-Hamas war, January 6 | Tags: #CW Rape Trigger, @repeat1968, Donald Trump Civil Liability, George Santos Expulsion, Judge Sandra Day O'Connor, Liz Cheney Book Interviews, Rape is Never Acceptable 14 Comments
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
Remember when Fridays were always slow? Well, “Quoth the Raven nevermore.” I may have to resort to listing links. I’d like to start with the New York Times Obituary of Former Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, who honorably served as the first woman on the Supreme Court. “Sandra Day O’Connor, First Woman on the Supreme Court, Is Dead at 93. During a crucial period in American law — when abortion, affirmative action, sex discrimination and voting rights were on the docket — she was the most powerful woman in the country.” Her appointment was probably the only good thing Ronald Reagan did during his 8 years of damaging the U.S. economy, among many other things. She struggled with dementia in her final years.
Very little could happen without Justice O’Connor’s support when it came to the polarizing issues on the court’s docket, and the law regarding affirmative action, abortion, voting rights, religion, federalism, sex discrimination and other hot-button subjects was basically what Sandra Day O’Connor thought it should be.
That the middle ground she looked for tended to be the public’s preferred place as well was no coincidence, given the close attention Justice O’Connor paid to current events and the public mood. “Rare indeed is the legal victory — in court or legislature — that is not a careful byproduct of an emerging social consensus,” she wrote in “The Majesty of the Law: Reflections of a Supreme Court Justice,” a collection of her essays published in 2003.
When President Ronald Reagan named her to the Supreme Court in 1981 to fulfill a campaign promise to appoint the first female justice, she was a judge on a midlevel appeals court in Arizona, where she had long been active in Republican politics, though she had friends in both parties. Fifty-one years old at the time of her nomination, she served for 24 years, retiring in January 2006 to care for her ailing husband. As the court moved to the right during that period, her moderate conservatism made her look in the end like a relative liberal.
“Liberal” was undoubtedly not her self-image, but as the court’s rightward shift accelerated after her retirement — her successor, Samuel A. Alito Jr., was notably more conservative — she lamented publicly that some of her majority opinions were being “dismantled.”
There’s some terrific news coming out of the courts reviewing Trump’s involvement in the January 6th insurrection riots. This is from the Washington Post. “Trump not immune from being sued for Jan. 6 riot, judges rule.” The Trumps will be so broke by the time all these civil suits come in. Plus, E Jean is about to get more money also. This link goes to a Newsweek article indicating she’s probably got the basis of yet another lawsuit.
Donald Trump can be held civilly liable for the actions of the mob that attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, an appeals court ruled Friday in a long-awaited decision that could clear the way for lawsuits seeking financial damages from the former president.
The unanimous decision by a federal appeals court in Washington is expected to be appealed and also offers insight into how the court could view Trump’s argument that presidential immunity also protects him from being charged criminally for his efforts to stay in power after the 2020 election.
“When a first-term President opts to seek a second term, his campaign to win re-election is not an official presidential act,” Chief Judge Sri Srinivasan wrote for the three-judge panel. “The Office of the Presidency as an institution is agnostic about who will occupy it next.”
Two U.S. Capitol police officers and about a dozen Democratic lawmakers sued Trump in 2021, saying he potentially instigated violence on Jan. 6 by telling supporters the election was stolen and urging them to march to the Capitol and “fight like hell.”
“More than two years later, it is unnerving to hear the same fabrications and dangerous rhetoric that put my life as well as the lives of my fellow officers in danger on January 6, 2021,” James Blassingame, one of the police plaintiffs, said in a statement. “I hope our case will assist with helping put our democracy back on the right track; making it crystal clear that no person, regardless of title or position of stature, is above the rule of law.”
Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung called the decision “limited, narrow, and procedural,” adding that “the facts fully show that on January 6 President Trump was acting on behalf of the American people, carrying out his duties as President of the United States.”
How can Steven Cheung say these things with a straight face?
So, 100 Republican Congress critters joined all but one Democratic Senators to expel George Santos from Congress. This is breaking news from NBC News. “House votes to expel indicted Rep. George Santos from Congress. The New York Republican is now just the third lawmaker since the Civil War to be expelled from the House of Representatives.”
The House voted overwhelmingly to expel indicted Rep. George Santos on Friday, pulling the curtain down on a tempestuous term in office that was marred by revelations that he’d fabricated parts of his resume, a scathing House ethics investigation and a 23-count federal indictment charging him with crimes such as wire fraud and money laundering.
The vote was 311-114, with two voting present. Santos had already put his winter jacket on, left the chamber and sped through the speaker’s lobby before the vote total was announced.
“It’s over,” Santos said before heading to his vehicle outside the Capitol.
“They just set a new, dangerous precedent for themselves,” he added, noting that he’s the first House member in modern history to be expelled before a federal conviction.
Santos, R-N.Y., had survived two previous attempts to expel him this year — one in May and the other a month ago.
But he began losing significant support just before Thanksgiving after the bipartisan House Ethics Committee issued a damning 56-page report detailing allegations that he had deceived his donors, filed false campaign statements and used campaign money to fund his lavish lifestyle.
Among the things he spent campaign funds on were rent, luxury designer goods, personal trips to Las Vegas and the Hamptons, cosmetic treatments, including Botox, and a subscription to the adult-content site OnlyFans, the report said.
Earlier this week, Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said his leadership team wouldn’t whip the vote one way or the other, instead allowing members to “vote their conscience.” But moments before the vote, he, Majority Leader Steve Scalise, Majority Whip Tom Emmer and GOP Conference Chair Elise Stefanik, one by one, announced their opposition to removing the freshman fabulist.
Johnson had previously signaled he would oppose expulsion, saying: “I personally have real reservations about things. I’m concerned about a precedent that may be set.”
Georgie Porgie just sounds like the nicest guy. This is from HuffPost. “George Santos Accused Of Stealing House Member’s Personal Credit Card Info. GOP Rep. Max Miller of Ohio made the allegation not long before Santos was expelled from Congress.”
Rep. Max Miller (R-Ohio) accused his now-former GOP colleague George Santos of stealing his and his mother’s personal credit card information to make illegal contributions to his campaign — the latest shocking allegation leveled against the indicted ex-New York House member who was expelled from Congress Friday.
“Late yesterday on the floor, I alluded to a personal impact of Rep. Santos’ conduct,” Miller wrote in a letter to colleagues Friday morning. “Earlier this year, I learned that the Santos campaign had charged my personal credit card — and the personal credit card of my mother — for contribution amounts that exceeded FEC limits. Neither my mother nor I approved these charges nor were aware of them. We have spent tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees in the resulting follow-up.”
The letter also alleges that Miller has seen a list of 400 people whom Santos tried to scam through his campaign. “I believe some other members of this conference might have had the same experience,” he added.
Miller’s note to colleagues follows remarks he made on the House floor Thursday directed at Santos: “You, sir, are a crook,” Miller said to him.
If he only would start saying that about Trump now.
As long as we inkled the dread, Sleazy Steve, here’s a headline about him. This is from Politico. “Steve Scalise reveals what’s really happened since McCarthy’s fall. The House Majority Leader illuminates what happened behind closed doors after Kevin McCarthy’s ousting as well as what to expect next on impeachment; why he will vote against expelling George Santos; and how Speaker Mike Johnson is trying to use immigration to tame hardliners when it comes to the spending showdown with Joe Biden.” This link goes to a 32 miute interview with David Duke without the baggage.
I heard this on MSNBC last night and immediately thought that a lot of Israeli anger should be aimed at BiBi. It sounds just like Dubya ignoring warnings about what turned in 9-11 giving him the opportunity entangle us in Afghanistan and Iraq. This is from the New York Times. “Israel Knew Hamas’s Attack Plan More Than a Year Ago. A blueprint reviewed by The Times laid out the attack in detail. Israeli officials dismissed it as aspirational and ignored specific warnings.”
Israeli officials obtained Hamas’s battle plan for the Oct. 7 terrorist attack more than a year before it happened, documents, emails and interviews show. But Israeli military and intelligence officials dismissed the plan as aspirational, considering it too difficult for Hamas to carry out.
The approximately 40-page document, which the Israeli authorities code-named “Jericho Wall,” outlined, point by point, exactly the kind of devastating invasion that led to the deaths of about 1,200 people.
The translated document, which was reviewed by The New York Times, did not set a date for the attack, but described a methodical assault designed to overwhelm the fortifications around the Gaza Strip, take over Israeli cities and storm key military bases, including a division headquarters.
Hamas followed the blueprint with shocking precision. The document called for a barrage of rockets at the outset of the attack, drones to knock out the security cameras and automated machine guns along the border, and gunmen to pour into Israel en masse in paragliders, on motorcycles and on foot — all of which happened on Oct. 7.
The plan also included details about the location and size of Israeli military forces, communication hubs and other sensitive information, raising questions about how Hamas gathered its intelligence and whether there were leaks inside the Israeli security establishment.
The document circulated widely among Israeli military and intelligence leaders, but experts determined that an attack of that scale and ambition was beyond Hamas’s capabilities, according to documents and officials. It is unclear whether Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or other top political leaders saw the document, as well.
Former Congresswoman Liz Cheney’s book is getting lots of attention. She will be interviewed by Rachel Maddow on Monday. Excerpts are popping everywhere. This is from CBS News. “Liz Cheney tells “CBS News Sunday Morning” that the U.S. is “sleepwalking into a dictatorship”.”
JOHN DICKERSON: You say, Donald Trump, if he is re-elected, it will be the end of the Republic. What do you mean?
REP. LIZ CHENEY: He’s told us what he will do. It’s very easy to see the steps that he will take. … People who say, “Well, if he’s elected, it’s not that dangerous because we have all of these checks and balances,” don’t fully understand the extent to which the Republicans in Congress today have been co-opted. … One of the things that we see happening today is a sort of a sleepwalking into dictatorship in the United States.
CHENEY: If you look
at what Donald Trump is trying to do, he can’t do it by himself. He has to have collaborators. And the story of Mike Johnson is a story of, of a collaborator and of someone who knew then – and knows now – that what he’s doing and saying is wrong, but he’s willing to do it in an effort to please Donald Trump. And that’s what makes it dangerous.
DICKERSON: The Speaker of the House is a collaborator to overthrow the last election?
CHENEY: Absolutely.
@repeat1968
She pulls no punches. Just one more and I will let you get on with your day. And, btw, Happy Birthday to BostonBoomer who is still in the hospital but much better! She’s will be going to rehab once she gets out of Covid Isolation.
Check out the byline from this article from Slate. “The World’s Feminists Need to Show Up for Israeli Victims. Solidarity for victims of sexual assault should trump other politics. BY DAHLIA LITHWICK, MIMI ROCAH, TAMARA SEPPER, JENNIFER TAUB, JOYCE WHITE VANCE, AND JULIE ZEBRAK
Of all of the horrors coming out of the Israel-Hamas conflict, among the most horrible are the barbaric murders, rapes, sexual assaults, and kidnappings of women and young girls in Israel during the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas. And yet, deepening this distressing event, there has been a disheartening silence about, or worse, denial of these evils; reticence from the voices here at home in the U.S. who have, in the recent past, embraced other women who needed their support. Israeli and Jewish women find themselves isolated. For the past three decades, women have stood up for other women. When our sisters’ bodies and dignity were targeted and violated, women and allies of all ages and backgrounds organized, supported, and spoke out. Except somehow, not this time.
Since Oct. 7, there has been overwhelming evidence that Israeli women and young girls were not “just” slaughtered, but raped, assaulted, tortured, and kidnapped. This is not overstating things—from our work as prosecutors, lawyers, and feminists, we understand what it takes to build a solid criminal case for sexual assault. Here, there is voluminous evidence, more than what is typically available. While many victims cannot speak for themselves—they are either dead or being held hostage—survivor accounts and videos made by the perpetrators themselves speak for them.
Early on, Hamas circulated a video with the searing image of 19-year-old Naama Levy being dragged by her hair into the back of a truck by a group of men. Her pants were bloody. Slowly, the horror dawned upon us as we watched that she had been the victim of violent sexual assault.
A survivor recounted sexual violence she witnessed while hiding at the Nova rave. She said, “The terrorists, people from Gaza, raped girls. And after they raped them, they killed them, murdered them with knives, or the opposite, killed—and after they raped, they—they did that. They laughed.”
There is a huge list of these atrocities. Please read the article but it is triggering so tread carefully.
I hope you have a peaceful and lovely weekend. I love you all!!
What’s on your reading and bloggingl list today?
Happy Birthday BB!
This Warren Zevon song is one of my favorites. This is an acoustic version done by Jackson Browne.
Finally Friday Reads: The Republican Crazy Train
Posted: November 17, 2023 Filed under: 2024 Elections, A thread for Ranting | Tags: #RepublicanCrazyTrain, @repeat1968, Crazy Clay Higgins, crazy right wing republicans, Elon Musk is a NAZI, George Santos, Ghost Bus, Super Confused Donald 11 Comments
John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
Have you noticed that a good deal of Republican Politicians need some serious intervention and more than a few psychiatric evaluations? As part of my training to be a teacher at university, I was trained to spot issues and quickly send the individual off to the District’s psychologist. I can’t say I know what happens after you get diagnosed with, say, a significant personality disorder or two, but I do know how to recognize symptoms and get the person’s help. It was a massive effort in ’70s education colleges since School Districts could be held accountable for not diagnosing student needs and getting them help as soon as possible. Perhaps it’s time to introduce a similar methodology to aides, staff, and those working daily with Republican officeholders. The amount of abnormal behavior screams at you from your television screen daily. I remember Nixon’s paranoia well, but it didn’t seem like a larger pattern in the party then.
Leave it to Ozzy.
All aboard Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
Ay, ay, ay, ay, ay, ay, ay
Crazy, but that’s how it goes
Millions of people living as foes
Maybe it’s not too late
To learn how to love
And forget how to hate
Mental wounds not healing
Life’s a bitter shame
I’m going off the rails on a crazy train
I’m going off the rails on a crazy train
Let’s go
The Washington Monthly starts at the very head of the rotting fish. “Has Trump Gone Even Crazier? Forget parsing every Biden utterance. The likely GOP nominee is forgetting where he is, stumbling over words, and waxing full fascist.” This is written by James D. Zirin.
While neither Trump nor Biden projects John F. Kennedy’s vigor, Trump, 77, has been even more bizarre of late—doddering and disoriented in a new way.
Listen to what he has been saying lately.
He has repeatedly confused Biden and Obama, even calling Obama the current president. Doctors often ask stroke victims who is the current president to test mental acuity. We all misspeak. But put this in the context of many other indicia of cognitive decline.
Trump doesn’t know where he is. On the stump in Sioux City, Iowa, he said hello to Sioux Falls, which is in South Dakota. Okay, not that big a deal. Of course, his aides later said the teleprompter got it wrong. I wonder whether the aides are still in his employ. Perhaps they are moving boxes in Mar-a-Lago.
Misidentifying world leaders. He described Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, whom he admires, as the “great leader of Turkey.” Recep Tayyip Erdogan is authoritarian like Orban but with an Islamic hue rather than a Christian nationalist drag. Trump has said that Hungary shares a border with Russia. Seven countries border Hungary, but not Russia.
Referring to Kim Jong-Un, the hereditary dictator who rules North Korea, Trump said he was in charge of a country of 1.4 billion people, obviously confusing the Hermit Kingdom of 26 million with the Middle Kingdom of 1.4 billion.
But it’s not just misidentification. It’s the cadence and slurring of speech, too. Trump is having trouble with names. “On purpose” came out as “on perfect.” Adherents of Karl Marx came out as “markers,” not Marxists. He warned that Biden is drifting us into World War II.
Perhaps more worrisome than Trump’s mental miscues is the fact that his authoritarian tendencies have veered into even more fascistic territory, and his insults have become even more intemperate, which is saying something. (Recall that after the first 2016 presidential debate, he flogged Megyn Kelly with a reference to menstruation.) Special Counsel Jack Smith is “deranged.” While this might be understandable since Smith has indicted Trump in a Washington, D.C. federal court for using illegal means to overturn the 2020 election results and in Florida for mishandling classified documents, the bile has boiled over into invective against Smith’s wife and family, whom he insists “despise me much more than he does.”
Trump called Nancy Pelosi a “crazed lunatic” and continued to joke about the hammer assault on her 83-year-old husband, Paul, by a crazed, seemingly pro-Trump intruder who was convicted on multiple felony accounts on Thursday.
From bad to wurst. In a Veterans Day speech in New Hampshire, Trump called his political enemies “vermin,” channeling the dehumanizing language of OG fascists Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini and arguing paradoxically—and paranoically—that the pests are also “radical left thugs” who pose a greater threat to the United States than Russia, China, or even North Korea. He promised to “root out” the vermin if he regained power.
And, if you dare call out the reference to vermin or blood as Hitlerian, his spokesman threatens that your “entire existence will be crushed when President Trump returns to the White House.”
In New Hampshire, he also called himself a “very proud election denier.” Are there humble election deniers?
Jewish and Latino groups, as well as an untold number of columnists, have condemned his statement that undocumented immigrants were “poisoning the blood of our country,” the kind of volk talk that sounded better in the original German.
Deranged people, as we all have learned, can be dangerous. While it can be hard to diagnose if the unhoused man who regularly yells at you at the street corner has just plateaued or will be given to a violent attack, Trump’s policy pronouncements have become more incendiary and more insane, if that were possible.
The list of policy pronouncements should have a chilling effect on any person who values the U.S. Constitution. But, crazy is at all levels of U.S. Federal and State Republican officials. 
The Economist had this headline today. “Donald Trump poses the biggest danger to the world in 2024. What his victory in America’s election would mean.” Are any other media outlets listening or are the too focused on Joe Biden’s Age?
A shadow looms over the world. In this week’s edition we publish The World Ahead 2024, our 38th annual predictive guide to the coming year, and in all that time no single person has ever eclipsed our analysis as much as Donald Trump eclipses 2024. That a Trump victory next November is a coin-toss probability is beginning to sink in.
Mr Trump dominates the Republican primary. Several polls have him ahead of President Joe Biden in swing states. In one, for the New York Times, 59% of voters trusted him on the economy, compared with just 37% for Mr Biden. In the primaries, at least, civil lawsuits and criminal prosecutions have only strengthened Mr Trump. For decades Democrats have relied on support among black and Hispanic voters, but a meaningful number are abandoning the party. In the next 12 months a stumble by either candidate could determine the race—and thus upend the world.
This is a perilous moment for a man like Mr Trump to be back knocking on the door of the Oval Office. Democracy is in trouble at home. Mr Trump’s claim to have won the election in 2020 was more than a lie: it was a cynical bet that he could manipulate and intimidate his compatriots, and it has worked. America also faces growing hostility abroad, challenged by Russia in Ukraine, by Iran and its allied militias in the Middle East and by China across the Taiwan Strait and in the South China Sea. Those three countries loosely co-ordinate their efforts and share a vision of a new international order in which might is right and autocrats are secure.
Because maga Republicans have been planning his second term for months, Trump 2 would be more organised than Trump 1. True believers would occupy the most important positions. Mr Trump would be unbound in his pursuit of retribution, economic protectionism and theatrically extravagant deals. No wonder the prospect of a second Trump term fills the world’s parliaments and boardrooms with despair. But despair is not a plan. It is past time to impose order on anxiety.
The greatest threat Mr Trump poses is to his own country. Having won back power because of his election-denial in 2020, he would surely be affirmed in his gut feeling that only losers allow themselves to be bound by the norms, customs and self-sacrifice that make a nation. In pursuing his enemies, Mr Trump will wage war on any institution that stands in his way, including the courts and the Department of Justice.
This nutter is from Louisiana and believe me, the majority of us are super embarrassed by him. The YouTube below is about Representative Clay Higgin’s “Ghost Bus” comment to the Director of the FBI. Higgins evidently believes that January 6th was a false flag operation by the deep state in the Homeland Security Department. FBI Director Christopher Ray had to remind him that the FBI was not part of that Department.
Higgins represents Southernmost Louisiana which is basically Cajun Country. He was a police captain know for his tough on crime, often violent approach to gangs in the area. Here’s more on the craziness of Representative Clay Higgins from The Guardian. “Republican praises January 6 attacker’s ‘good faith and core principles’ Louisiana congressman Clay Higgins asks judge to show leniency to Ryan Nichols, charged with assaulting police at US Capitol.”
Seeking leniency for a January 6 rioter charged with assaulting police, the Louisiana Republican congressman Clay Higgins – a former law enforcement officer himself – saluted the man’s “good character, faith and core principles”.
In video taken during the attack on Congress on 6 January 2021, the rioter was seen to say: “It’s going to be violent and yes, if you are asking, ‘Is Ryan Nichols going to bring violence? Yes, Ryan Nichols is going to bring violence.’”
Nichols, in an affidavit, admitted posting the video, attacking officers with pepper spray and urging rioters on with shouts including, “This is not a peaceful protest”
In court in Washington last week, Nichols, of Longview, Texas, pleaded guilty to two charges: obstruction and assaulting, resisting or impeding police and obstruction of an official proceeding.
More than 1,000 arrests have been made over the attack and hundreds of convictions secured, some for seditious conspiracy. Donald Trump, who incited the riot as he attempted to overturn his 2020 presidential election defeat by Joe Biden, faces 17 charges related to his election subversion, four federal and 13 at state level in Georgia.
Nine deaths have been linked to the attack staged by the former president’s supporters, including law enforcement suicides.
Higgins’ own website describes him as having “spent much of his career dedicated to uniformed service [as] an army veteran and law enforcement officer”. It also says he is “widely regarded as one of the most conservative members of Congress”.
Nonetheless, in a letter dated 7 November, he asked the US district judge in Nichols’s case, Royce C Lamberth, to show leniency when passing down sentence.
“Sir,” Higgins wrote. “I submit to you this letter in support of Ryan Taylor Nichols. He is a man of good character, faith, and core principles.
“I humbly ask that he receive fair consideration of the whole of circumstances regarding his case, condition, and background. He has already served nearly two years in the District of Columbia jail in pretrial confinement, which has been destructive to his physical (liver issues) and mental health (PTSD).”
Nichols had been under house arrest since 22 November 2022 and had “not sought to flee nor shown any indication of dangerous activity”, Higgins said.
He added: “Prior to his arrest, Mr Nichols had no criminal background and served honorably in the United States Marine Corps. He continued to serve domestically in a search and rescue capacity, even being publicly recognised for his heroic actions on national television.”
So, that cartoon sums up Higgin’s views of thugs pretty well. I’m sure you can all name at least 5 crazy Republicans in Congress. Now, add Higgins to that list. Right Wingers with money, businesses, and platforms that serve as Republican enablers and donors are equally as nuts these days. I’ve heard more than a few references to Henry Ford’s wingnuttery and the bat shit crazy Elon Musk. Musk is placing NAZI propaganda on X quite close to the ads he relies on for revenues. This is from MediaMatters for America. “As Musk endorses antisemitic conspiracy theory, X has been placing ads for Apple, Bravo, IBM, Oracle, and Xfinity next to pro-Nazi content. CEO Linda Yaccarino previously claimed that brands are “protected from the risk of being next to” toxic posts.” This is reported by Eric Hananoki.
Update (11/16/23): IBM released a statement to the Financial Times saying that it has “suspended all advertising on X while we investigate this entirely unacceptable situation.” Media Matters will update if the other major companies in this report take any similar actions.
As X owner Elon Musk continues his descent into white nationalist and antisemitic conspiracy theories, his social media platform has been placing ads for major brands like Apple, Bravo (NBCUniversal), IBM, Oracle, and Xfinity (Comcast) next to content that touts Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party. The company’s placements come after CEO Linda Yaccarino claimed that brands are “protected from the risk of being next to” toxic posts on the platform.
Yaccarino has been trying to bring advertisers back to the platform by claiming it’s safe for business. She’s also claimed that X (formerly Twitter) has been “demonstrating its absolute commitment to combating antisemitism on the platform” and that “antisemitism is evil and X will always work to fight it on our platform.”
But her boss last night endorsed the pernicious antisemitic conspiracy theory that Jewish people are supporting “hordes of minorities” who are “flooding” into the country to replace white people. That conspiracy theory was the same one that motivated the deadly 2018 Tree of Life synagogue shooting.
X has also reinstated numerous accounts of bigots and paid far-right extremists, apparently including a pro-Hitler and Holocaust denier account, as part of its creator ad revenue sharing program.
During all of this Musk-induced chaos, corporate advertisements have also been appearing on pro-Hitler, Holocaust denial, white nationalist, pro-violence, and neo-Nazi accounts. Yaccarino has attempted to placate companies by claiming that “brands are now ‘protected from the risk of being next to’ potentially toxic content.”
But that certainly isn’t the case for at least five major brands: We recently found ads for Apple, Bravo, Oracle, Xfinity, and IBM next to posts that tout Hitler and his Nazi Party on X
You may see the ads placements and the offending material at the link. CNN has this analysis by Allison Morrow. “With antisemitic tweet, Elon Musk reveals his ‘actual truth’.”
Elon Musk has publicly endorsed an antisemitic conspiracy theory popular among White supremacists: that Jewish communities push “hatred against Whites.”
That kind of overt thumbs up to an antisemitic post shocked even some of Musk’s critics, who have long called him out for using racist or otherwise bigoted dog whistles on Twitter, now known as X. It was the multibillionaire’s most explicit public statement yet endorsing anti-Jewish views.
ICYMI: Musk was responding to a post Wednesday that said Jewish communities “have been pushing the exact kind of dialectical hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them.” The post also referenced “hordes of minorities” flooding Western countries, a popular antisemitic conspiracy theory.
It’s the kind of post you can find easily on X these days, and likely would have gone unnoticed had Musk, with more than 160 million followers, not re-shared the post with the comment: “You have said the actual truth.”
The antisemitic conspiracy theory — which posits that Jews want to bring undocumented minority populations into Western countries to reduce White majorities in those nations — is often espoused by hate groups.
It’s the same conspiracy echoed in the final written words of Robert Bowers, the convicted murderer of 11 people at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018. His last social media post said that a Jewish nonprofit dedicated to aiding refugees “likes to bring invaders in that kill our people.” The mass shooting was the deadliest attack against Jews in American history.
Musk, in subsequent posts, expounded on his views. He wrote that he does not believe hatred of White people extends “to all Jewish communities.” But then he singled out the Anti-Defamation League, claiming that it promotes racism against White people.
X did not respond to requests for comment.
This confuses me to no end because other than the late Sammy Davis, Jr., I thought all European Jews were white. I just don’t get this weird view of race and gender where some right wing nut gets to have purity standards based on some genetic code only they seem to know. I hope this sinks X for good but all that will do is likely get an even more outrageous set of hate crimes against our Jewish population. I have issues with the Bibi’s government and with the entire concept of Zionism but for goodness’ sake, having policy differences with a nation does not mean I hate its people. It certainly doesn’t mean I blame any American Jewish person for what the approach is now to the West Bank either. I also do not blame the population of the West Bank or Gaza on the actions of Hamas. All this right winger craziness torched to a burnt earth strategy by messianic cults just makes me very sad.
So, we need to address the continuing saga which is Congressman George Santos. He appears to be the only Drag Queen that right wing Republicans want to keep around. After he announced he would not be running for reelection this week, he likely believed his expulsion was less likely. That’s not a good assumption, gurl! The AP has this breaking news headline. “Ethics chairman launches a new bid to expel George Santos after a withering report on his conduct.”
The chairman of the House Ethics Committee announced Friday he has filed a resolution to force a vote on expelling Rep. George Santos, R-N.Y., from Congress, one day after the committee issued a withering report detailing substantial evidence that Santos converted campaign donations for his own personal use.
Santos easily survived an expulsion vote earlier this month as lawmakers in both parties stressed the need to allow due process, as Santos is also facing nearly two dozen charges in federal court. But the release of the committee’s findings has generated new momentum for ousting the scandal-plagued freshman. Shortly after the report was released, Santos announced he would not seek reelection.
“The evidence uncovered in the Ethics Committee’s Investigative Subcommittee investigation is more than sufficient to warrant punishment and the most appropriate punishment, is expulsion,” said Rep. Michael Guest, R-Miss.
Mary Trump wrote a lot about some of the pathology of her Uncle Donald. She really slammed him for his NAZI rhetoric. I’ll just let her discuss the Republican Crazy Train. She’s got far better credentials than me. All I see are people with scads of delusions of grandeur. That would be representative of Jill Stein too as far as I am concerned. You can check out her substack here.
Stein’s Candidacy: Mary Trump also weighed in on Jill Stein’s announcement that she would run for office in 2024 on behalf of the Green Party. Calling her a “pro-Putin hack,” Mary Trump noted that she played a spoiler to Hillary Clinton’s presidential run in 2016.
“She had no chance of winning; and the only candidate whose chances she was going to hurt was Hillary Clinton. That was precisely the point,” Mary Trump said.
The psychologist said her stance against Stein was not simply because of the enormous damage she did eight years ago, but also because in those intervening years, she has done nothing. “She’s a fraud whose only purpose seems to be lining her own pockets in the service of undermining the only party that has a shot at saving American democracy,” the ex-president’s niece said.
Look Ahead: Mary Trump also said the focus in the coming weeks would be “Whether or not Donald’s mental decline is worsening or just becoming more obvious as the stressors in his life compound” and “Will the corporate media focus, in a serious and sustained way, on his multiplying verbal gaffes and cognitive errors.”
The psychologist noted that Donald Trump’s dangerous rhetoric has been ramping up and he was not only echoing Hitler but was also sometimes quoting the German dictator. While Hitler promised to “get rid of the communist vermin,” the ex-president in his “Veteran’s Day” message promised to get rid of “the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country.
Yes, once again I’m reporting all the news that no one really wants to hear. I just want to keep scaring everyone into voting for anyone but these crazy people.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Finally Friday Reads: All the News that’s fit to Scream About!
Posted: November 10, 2023 Filed under: 2024 Elections, 2024 presidential Campaign | Tags: @repeat1968, abortion rights, Accessible Birth Control, Ayatollah Mike Johnson, Ballot Initiatives, Republican Taliban, The Trump Court Reality Show 11 Comments
@repeat1968, John Buss
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
There are some surprising and unsurprising headlines today as we find out precisely how undemocratic and undedicated to the U.S. Constitutional some certain officials are. There’s one headline that has surprised and given me some relief that shining light on the Courts can bring about some positive results. Let’s start with that!
This is from The Independent. Andrew Feinberg reports this breaking news. “Judge rejects Trump bid to delay classified documents trial. Judge Aileen Cannon’s order left room for her to aid the president who nominated her to the bench by delaying his trial at a later date.” Maybe she’s seen the sunlight the press has thrown on her little outback courtroom.
The judge overseeing the criminal case against former president Donald Trump in the Southern District of Florida has rejected the ex-president’s most recent attempt to delay his trial on charges that he violated the Espionage Act and obstructed a probe into how he still had classified documents at his home long after his presidency had ended.
In an order issued on Friday, Judge Aileen Cannon rejected Mr Trump’s request to delay the trial that she scheduled for 20 May 2024 earlier this year.
Judge Cannon, who was nominated to the bench by Mr Trump and confirmed just weeks before he left office, left open the possibility that she would step in to aid his efforts to push any trial back until after next year’s presidential election in hopes that he will win and be able to order prosecutors to drop the charges after he is sworn in for a second term.
She wrote in her order that she would consider more requests to delay Mr Trump’s trial during a scheduling conference on 1 March.
Mr Trump’s attorneys had asked her to grand an extension of several months in the trial schedule, citing what they described as delays in accessing evidence the government has turned over as part of the pre-trial discovery process.
PBS has further information. “Trump’s classified documents trial won’t be delayed but federal judge moves back other deadlines.” So, it was mixed news. Here’s a reminder that Trump’s got a lot of appearances in a lot of court dockets.
The decision from Cannon is notable given that she had signaled during a hearing this month that she was open to pushing back the trial date, pointing to the other trials Trump faces as well as the mounds of evidence that defense lawyers need to review. Trump’s lawyers had complained about the burden of scouring more than 1 million pages of evidence that prosecutors have produced. Prosecutors had resisted any effort to delay, saying they’d already taken steps to make the evidence easier for the defense to review.
Trump is currently set for trial on March 4, 2024, in Washington on federal charges that he plotted to overturn the 2020 presidential election, which he lost to Democrat Joe Biden. He also faces charges in Georgia accusing him of trying to subvert that state’s vote, as well as another state case in New York accusing him of falsifying business records in connection with hush money payments to porn actor Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 election.
In addition, Trump has been sued in a business fraud case in New York, where a trial is taking place. Trump has denied wrongdoing in all of the cases, claiming without evidence that they are part of a politically motivated effort to prevent him from returning to the White House.
Vanity Fair continues to spotlight Trump’s plan to replace our democratic republic with an autocratic one. This is written by Eric Lutz. “Donald Trump Isn’t Even Trying To Hide His Authoritarian Second-Term Plans. The former president is telling the country exactly what he wants to do. Are voters listening?”
Sit for a minute with these comments the GOP frontrunner for president has made on national television in recent days. “They’ve released the genie out of the box,” Donald Trump said in a Univision interview aired Thursday, referring to the four indictments he faces that he insists are attempts to interfere with his 2024 campaign. “If I happen to be president, and I see somebody who’s doing well and beating me very badly, I say, ‘Go down and indict them.’”
“Now that he indicted me,” Trump said at a rally a day earlier of Joe Biden, who did not indict him, “we’re allowed to look at him…He did real bad things. We will restore law and order to our communities. And I will direct a completely overhauled [Department of Justice] to investigate every Marxist prosecutor in America for their illegal, racist-in-reverse enforcement of the law.”
It is easy to overlook these kinds of pronouncements from the former president, given the frequency with which he makes them. But it’s also important to really take them in—to listen to his threats with fresh ears, as if you haven’t heard him say some version of them a thousand times before. Here is the frontrunner for the Republican nod—and possibly the presidency—vowing to use the government to go after political opponents. A second Trump term “would be the end of our country as we know it,” Hillary Clinton warned in an appearance on the View Thursday, “and I don’t say that lightly.”
Clinton, of course, has long been the subject of Trump’s threats of political prosecution. “Lock her up!” was something of an unofficial slogan of his 2016 campaign—a rally refrain as ubiquitous as “Build the wall!” and “Drain the swamp!” and “Make America Great Again!” But it was never just about his 2016 opponent; “lock her up,” like other Trump catchphrases, was really more of a mnemonic—one he has repurposed in attacks on Biden, Anthony Fauci, and others who have been cast as villains in the MAGAverse. These authoritarian threats are not tit-for-tat responses to his own indictments, as he suggested this week. They’ve always been a central tenet of his movement.
Sit for a minute with these comments the GOP frontrunner for president has made on national television in recent days. “They’ve released the genie out of the box,” Donald Trump said in a Univision interview aired Thursday, referring to the four indictments he faces that he insists are attempts to interfere with his 2024 campaign. “If I happen to be president, and I see somebody who’s doing well and beating me very badly, I say, ‘Go down and indict them.’”
“Now that he indicted me,” Trump said at a rally a day earlier of Joe Biden, who did not indict him, “we’re allowed to look at him…He did real bad things. We will restore law and order to our communities. And I will direct a completely overhauled [Department of Justice] to investigate every Marxist prosecutor in America for their illegal, racist-in-reverse enforcement of the law.”
It is easy to overlook these kinds of pronouncements from the former president, given the frequency with which he makes them. But it’s also important to really take them in—to listen to his threats with fresh ears, as if you haven’t heard him say some version of them a thousand times before. Here is the frontrunner for the Republican nod—and possibly the presidency—vowing to use the government to go after political opponents. A second Trump term “would be the end of our country as we know it,” Hillary Clinton warned in an appearance on the View Thursday, “and I don’t say that lightly.”
Clinton, of course, has long been the subject of Trump’s threats of political prosecution. “Lock her up!” was something of an unofficial slogan of his 2016 campaign—a rally refrain as ubiquitous as “Build the wall!” and “Drain the swamp!” and “Make America Great Again!” But it was never just about his 2016 opponent; “lock her up,” like other Trump catchphrases, was really more of a mnemonic—one he has repurposed in attacks on Biden, Anthony Fauci, and others who have been cast as villains in the MAGAverse. These authoritarian threats are not tit-for-tat responses to his own indictments, as he suggested this week. They’ve always been a central tenet of his movement.
Though this bluster is nothing new, it has taken on an even more menacing overtone recently: Trump, who is leading Biden in some recent polls, is running for a second term on an explicitly authoritarian platform—and allies like Stephen Miller are already plotting to clear the way for him to make good on his threats, to remove the roadblocks that kept his autocratic fantasies from being fully realized in his first term.
It’s possible to forget just how close he did come that first time around and to get desensitized to his repeated threats, praise for dictators, and other outrages. Which is why it’s so important to remain clear-eyed about the danger he represents. As Clinton warned, “Trump is telling us what he intends to do. Take him at his word.”
Read more at the link. Liz Dye from Public Notice has a good reminder for us, too. “Trump’s right, the system is RIGGED. In his favor. Imagine being a rich white guy complaining that the legal system is stacked against you.”
On Monday, Donald Trump took the witness stand in his civil fraud trial in New York and proved once again that there is a “two-tiered justice system” in this country … just not in the way that he thinks. In fact, he’s treated far better than most criminal defendants, and has gotten away with behavior which would have gotten anyone not named Donald Trump held in contempt of court.
…
On top of the abuse, Trump spewed preposterous lies under oath. For instance, he’s still insisting that Mar-a-Lago is worth upwards of one billion dollars, despite having agreed to massive encumbrances on its future development which decrease its value. As the New Republic notes, Trump signed a deed of development with the National Trust for Historic Preservation in 2002 stating that “the Club and Trump intend to forever extinguish their right to develop or use the Property for any purpose other than club use.”
But on the witness stand Trump was adamant that he still retains the right to subdivide and develop the property.
“‘Intend’ doesn’t mean we will do it,” he smirked.
Later he was confronted with evidence from Forbes Magazine that his former CFO Allen Weisselberg had lied on the witness stand. Trump sidestepped the question, saying, “I have very little respect for Forbes. I haven’t dealt with them for years. I believe they are out of business actually.” In fact, he screamed at Forbes reporter Dan Alexander on Truth Social just a month ago when the magazine dropped him from its Forbes 400 list.
Trump’s lies on Monday included his constant refrain that he has an “IRONCLAD DISCLAIMER CLAUSE!” which immunizes him from consequences for overestimating his net worth by a billion dollars in an effort to get banks to lend him money. The judge already rejected this get-out-of-jail-free card on September 26, noting that New York law places the “onus for accuracy squarely on defendants’ shoulders” as the party in the transaction with more complete knowledge.
“If you want to know about the disclaimer clause, read my opinion again. Or for the first time, perhaps,” the court reminded Trump when he trotted out the disclaimer.
“You’re wrong in the opinion,” Trump retorted, showing once again that he wasn’t going to be bound by any normal standard of behavior. And then he pulled out a piece of paper from his pocket with the rejected disclaimer language on it, saying “I’d love to read this, your honor, if I could, if I’m allowed to do that.”
To be clear, witnesses simply cannot introduce uncorroborated evidence on the stand under direct examination. Trump knows this perfectly well, and so do his lawyers, so it was no surprise that Justice Engoron put the kibosh on this little stunt.
“Shocker. I’m shocked,” Trump muttered sarcastically, affecting to be once again oppressed by a manifestly unfair legal system, stacked against the poor, defenseless former president.
The Republicans have no clear plan on how to avoid the government shutdown. Mike Johnson and his clan of incompetence and theocracy is a disaster happening in prime time. This is from NPR. “Speaker Johnson navigates ‘mission impossible’ to avoid shutdown, without clear plan.”
Speaker Mike Johnson is learning quickly that, although he may have received unanimous support to get the gavel, the sharp divisions among House Republicans over spending bills remain.
Two times this week, Johnson, R-La., was forced to pull federal budget bills from the floor after it became clear that Republican opposition meant they would fail to pass.
Now, there are just seven days left before the federal government is due to shutdown at the end of the day on November 17, not enough time to pass the full suite of annual budget bills.
Despite the time crunch, Speaker Johnson has not announced the details of his plan for a stopgap funding measure, which would temporarily extend government funding in order to allow lawmakers to sort out their disagreements on the full budget.
The Transportation and Housing funding bill, which leaders pulled from the floor late Tuesday, ran into problems when a group of Republicans from the Northeast opposed the bill’s funding cuts to Amtrak. Conservatives insisted they remain in the bill.
Johnson pulled the Financial Services and General Government funding measure on Thursday, after moderate members of his conference opposed a provision in the bill that would have overruled Washington, D.C.’s abortion law.
One of the members opposed to the bill, Rep. John Duarte of California, pointed to Tuesday’s election results in several states showing voter pushback to Republican efforts to restrict abortion rights.
“The American people are telling us very clearly they don’t want Washington, D.C., meddling in their abortion rights,” Duarte said. “That’s clear and we’re trying to make sure we can deliver on that.”
The Financial Services bill also faced opposition over funding for a new FBI headquarters, which the government announced this week would be built D.C.’s Maryland suburbs.
After a proposed amendment to bar any funding for the building failed, conservatives including Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz and Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan threatened to vote against final passage of the bill.
Yes. You read that right. This is from Raw Story. “
Another government funding bill from Republicans was pulled on Thursday morning after many leaders refused to back several pieces of the bill, including one aimed at overturning a law that barred companies from discriminating against employees who use birth control.
The birth control plank was just one of dozens of amendments that were added to the bill from Republican lawmakers, as House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) pledged to pass the budget by the Nov. 17 shutdown deadline.
According to Politico, there were more than 100 amendments proposed in all, including some that drew rebukes from swing-district Republicans.
Rep. Max Miller (R- OH) called it “embarrassing” and “incredibly upsetting” that House GOP leadership had to pull the final passage of the funding bill, reported CNN’s Annie Grayer. He went on to bash his colleagues for hyper-partisan amendments to bills that must pass to keep the government open.
The law being targeted by the House GOP is a local Washington, D.C. ordinance that prevents any employer from discriminating against a worker who seeks contraception or family planning services. The GOP bill would block that from taking effect.
In an interview Sunday, Johnson was asked by Fox’s Shannon Bream about some of his extreme opinions and bills regarding birth control.
“I really don’t remember any of those measures,” he told her.
This is the discussion as voters from deep red states continue to enshrine Roe v. Wade in state constitutions via ballot measures. Even Nebraska is getting a ballot measure to its voters. Republicans are entirely hogtied from their previous positions as voters dump their ideas against reproductive freedom. The Democratic Party is rushing to get the issue on as many state ballots as possible. Now, they’ve got reason to go even farther. This is from AXIOS.
After Ohio’s vote Tuesday to protect abortion rights, Democrats are rushing to get similar measures on the ballot next year in key states such as Arizona, Nevada and Florida — partly to boost President Biden and down-ballot Democrats.
Why it matters: In the face of bleak polling on the economy, abortion continues to be a winning issue for Democrats — one that could motivate otherwise uninspired voters to turn out and keep the White House in the party’s hands.
- Voters now have explicitly endorsed abortion rights via ballot initiatives in seven states since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year — in California, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Montana, Vermont and now Ohio.
- The wins are boosting confidence among Democrats that similar ballot measures — and candidates who cast the high court’s Dobbs ruling as a government assault on individual rights — can help the party ride the backlash in the 2024 elections.
- In private and with a group of abortion-rights organizers in Miami last month, Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff has described Democrats’ path to victory in 2024 as “Dobbs and Democracy,” according to two people familiar with his comments.
- A White House spokesperson said that Emhoff’s “public comments speak for themselves.”
What to watch: There’s now added urgency to efforts to get abortion-rights initiatives on 2024 ballots in battleground states of Arizona, Nevada and Florida as well as Republican-dominated Nebraska and South Dakota, advocates tell Axios.
- Groups also are working to enshrine abortion access in Colorado’s state constitution, while ending restrictions on the use of public funds to pay for abortions. Biden won Colorado in 2020.
Zoom in: Florida has the earliest deadline for voter signatures to get a measure on the 2024 ballot — Feb. 1 — and organizers have been trying to get national Democrats more involved in their efforts.
- “If you’re really interested in affecting turnout in Florida in 2024, then the place to put your money is in this ballot initiative because it’s going to pay off all the way down the ballot,” said Anna Hochkammer, executive director of Florida Women’s Freedom Coalition.
Reality check: Florida has one of the nation’s most difficult processes for getting a state constitutional amendment initiative on the ballot, and some national Democrats believe proponents there began organizing too late.
- Any ballot initiative requires more than 890,000 signatures with at least half of the state’s 28 congressional districts represented — and the conservative state Supreme Court could still throw it off the ballot, as Florida’s attorney general is already arguing they should.
- Florida has veered to the right in recent years, but Biden lost to former President Trump by just 3 percentage points in 2020.
- The coalition of advocacy groups behind the effort, called Floridians Protecting Freedom, is nearing 500,000 signatures. It launched the campaign in May.
- Meanwhile, presidential candidate Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.) has leaned into the issue in the other direction, signing a six-week abortion ban into law earlier this year.
Zoom out: The Dobbs decision ignited an active network of fundraising and spending in support of abortion-rights initiatives that hasn’t been matched by anti-abortion groups.
Imagine a country where abortion rights are the primary turn-out reason! Or birth control! Mike Johnson is like the poster child for white Christian nationalism’s oppression of everyone! “The Key to Mike Johnson’s Christian Extremism Hangs Outside His Office. The newly elected House Speaker has ties to the far-right New Apostolic Reformation — which is hell-bent on turning America into a religious state. ” This is from The Rolling Stone, written by Bradley Onishi and Mattew D. Taylor.
THE AMERICAN PUBLIC has had much to learn about Mike Johnson over the past two weeks. Until his surprise elevation to House Speaker, the Louisiana representative was an obscure, mild-mannered, and bookish four-term back-bencher. He is a former constitutional lawyer and hardly the type of political figure who jeers during a State of the Union address, or gets caught in a Beetlejuice groping scandal, or shows up on cable news to take a victory lap after ousting the leader of his own party. Johnson is focused, methodical, and up until now was happy to operate behind the scenes.
He’s also a dyed in the wool Christian conservative, and there’s a flag hanging outside his office that leads into a universe of right-wing religious extremism as unknown to most Americans as Johnson was before he ascended to the speakership.
Johnson slots firmly within the more hardline evangelical wing of the Republican coalition. He holds stringent positions on abortion, thinks homosexuality is a lifestyle choice that should not be recognized under legal protections against discrimination, defends young earth creationism, blames school shootings on the sexual revolution of the 1960s, and questions the framework of the separation of church and state. “The founders wanted to protect the church from an encroaching state, not the other way around,” he has said.
Johnson was also integral to Donald Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election. As The New York Times has reported, he collected signatures for a brief supporting a Texas lawsuit alleging, without evidence, irregularities in election results; served a key role in the GOP’s attempts to prevent the certification of Biden’s election; and touted Trump’s conspiracy theories about election fraud, even saying, “You know the allegations about these voting machines, some of them being rigged with this software by Dominion, there’s a lot of merit to that.”
If this was all we knew about Mike Johnson, we could accurately say that he is a full-bore, right-wing Christian and an election denier who dabbles in conspiracy theories — qualities that might give one pause before putting him second in line to the presidency. But there is another angle to Johnson’s extremism that has received less scrutiny, and it brings us back to that flag outside his office.To understand the contemporary meaning of the Appeal to Heaven flag, it’s necessary to enter a world of Christian extremism animated by modern-day apostles, prophets, and apocalyptic visions of Christian triumph that was central to the chaos and violence of January 6. Earlier this year we released an audio-documentary series, rooted in deep historical research and ethnographic interviews, on this sector of Christianity, which is known as the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR). The flag hanging outside Johnson’s office is a key part of its symbology.
Read up on NAR. They’re a frightening bunch of inquisitors who are hell-bent on turning us into their ‘Christian’ idea of the Taliban states. You can read more about them at The New Republic. Did I mention Mike Flynn is one of them?
On 20 January, 1994, a group of 120 churchgoers at Toronto Airport Vineyard Church fell to the floor in hysterical laughter, some of them barking like dogs and roaring like lions.
Randy Clark, the visiting preacher from St. Louis who sparked the outburst, proudly described them as “drunk” on the Holy Spirit. But that raucous week sparked what’s come to be known as the Toronto Blessing, a twelve-and-a-half-year revival that attracted visitors from scores of countries to a crusade that, 30 years later, has transformed into what might be the most influential force in Christianity today: the New Apostolic Reformation. And they have one clear goal in mind—ruling over the United States and, eventually, the world.
They sound perfectly insane. Am I right? If you haven’t gotten enough, try this article by The Nation. It’s written by Jeet Heer. “The Folksy Fanaticism of Mike Johnson. The new speaker of the House combines Christian nationalism and MAGA.”
Yet, if Johnson is a mystery man to the world at large, to the power brokers of the religious right his new role is no surprise. They’ve been grooming Johnson for this position for many years.
In a deeply researched article in The Washington Spectator, journalist Anne Nelson documents how Johnson’s path to power was facilitated by the Council for National Policy (CNP), an outfit founded in 1981 “by a group of right-wing fundamentalists and oil barons” that works “largely behind the scenes, to reshape America into a country that protects gun rights, counters federal regulation, favors plutocrats, and rolls back the social progress wrought by the New Deal and the Great Society.”
At a 2019 meeting of the CNP in New Orleans, Executive Director Bob McEwen singled out Johnson, expressing the group’s prophetic hope: “As we go through the success of this next election, we can then take the leadership that needs to be done. If we were to choose a person to represent our values, who would be skilled, likeable, loveable, loves his country and loves the Lord, it would be [Mike Johnson] our speaker tonight.”
Like Johnson himself, the CNP is shrouded in a protective obscurity. It doesn’t have the fame of such right-wing institutions as the Federalist Society, the Heritage Foundation, or the Family Research Council. But the CNP gains its power by effectively networking between these institutions and elected Republicans. In particular, it was the CNP that officiated over the fateful marriage between the profane Donald Trump and the leaders of the religious rights.
As Nelson reports, in 2016 CNP strategists “rallied a thousand ‘Mega-Christian Leaders’ to New York City on behalf of Donald Trump’s struggling campaign. They had already defined the terms of the deal: the previous March, CNP Board of Governors member Leonard Leo had met with Trump to present him with a list of ultra-conservative candidates for the federal judiciary.”
Trump’s unshakable bond with the holy rollers who call themselves “Mega-Christian leaders” has puzzled many observers. After all, there has never been a major American political figure so starkly sacrilegious as Trump, so utterly bereft of any biblical knowledge (remember the “Two Corinthians” gaffe?), so purely committed to his own self-aggrandizement at the expense of any traditional values.
However, this will be interesting as Trump can read the writing on the wall in all these ballot initiatives. There’s a breach in the damn of ignorance. “The Pro-life Movement Is Fuming at Donald Trump. Should he care? Its supporters will vote for him anyway.” This is from The Atlantic. It’s reported by Elaine Godfrey.
A few weeks ago, the Texas anti-abortion activist Mark Lee Dickson told me that he viewed Donald Trump as the Constantine of the anti-abortion movement: a man who, like the Roman emperor, had been converted to a righteous cause and become its champion.
“There are some who believe that Constantine was a sincere Christian and others who believe that he wasn’t,” Dickson said. Regardless of whether Trump is genuinely opposed to abortion rights, “he was good for Christianity and the pro-life movement.”
The Rolling Stone reports on a rally meant to make Trump Pro-life again. They’re just another bunch of suckers that Trump has thrown under the bus. Unfortuantely, he gave them a lot before we could stop him.
IN ANOTHER SIGN of the political havoc the Dobbs decision continues to wreak on the Republican party, protesters upset over Donald Trump’s stance on abortion gathered outside the former president’s rally in South Florida on Wednesday.
They weren’t pro-choice, though — they were anti-abortion activists upset that Trump, the one person most directly responsible for the end of Roe v. Wade, is in their view, caving on abortion.
In recent months, Trump has privately bemoaned the fact that the GOP is “getting killed on abortion” — even as he seeks to shore up support from the anti-abortion groups and religious figures who helped secure his victory in 2016.
A dozen members of the anti-abortion political action group Students for Life, which endorsed Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020, gathered outside the president’s rally in Hialeah on Wednesday holding signs that read “Make Trump Pro-Life Again.”
“We’re out here to send a message not only to Trump, but to the whole GOP party that we want our candidates to be unapologetically and fundamentally pro-life,” said Mary-Logan Miske, a campus organizer with Students for Life. Over the past year, Trump had failed that test, in her view. “He blamed pro-lifers for the loss of our midterms. He said that this issue, [abortion], isn’t a federal issue. And his latest thing was he basically said that DeSantis passing a heartbeat bill was a terrible, terrible thing.”
But don’t forget Ayatollah Mike! This is from The Guardian. ‘”Mike Johnson, the new speaker of the House, is a gender extremist.Gender conservatism does not tend to attract as much notice as the other pillars of the far-right ideology, but it is central to the Republican ideology ” This is written by Moira Donegan. And hands off my pants Mickie!
But the picture that has emerged instead of the once-obscure Louisiana congressmen has not been that of the typically cynical climber, maneuvering corporate heights in pursuit of their own ambition without regard to ethics. Instead, the revelations that have emerged about Mike Johnson since his ascent to the speakership paint a picture of a fevered zealot: in thrall of baroque and morbid religious fantasies; beholden to a regressive, bigoted and morbid worldview; and above all, obsessed – with a lurid and creepy enthusiasm – with sex, and how he thinks it should be done.
The enforcement of a Christian sexual morality and a strict gender hierarchy of men over women have not been incidental or minor themes of Johnson’s career: they have been its primary goal, one he pursued doggedly through his pre-congressional life. As a lawyer, he worked against gay marriage, and to uphold Louisiana’s criminal ban on gay sex, writing briefs that described homosexuality as “inherently unnatural” and “a dangerous lifestyle” which he compared to pedophilia and bestiality. He still opposes marriage equality, and led efforts to squash the speakership candidacy of Tom Emmer last month in part because of Emmer’s support for gay marriage rights. Along the way, Johnson has authored a national version of Florida’s so-called “don’t say gay” bill, which would outlaw mentions of homosexuality at schools, hospitals and other federally funded facilities. He opposes access to transition-related healthcare for adolescents and adults alike, and both he and his wife have worked to advance so-called “conversion therapy”, an abusive, homophobic practice that has been outlawed in several states.
It probably goes without saying that Johnson, like many Republicans and nearly all of the party’s luminaries, favors a national ban on abortion, which he calls a “holocaust.” While more savvy Republicans like Glenn Youngkin have attempted to frame themselves as “moderates” by placing their preferred abortion bans at supposedly more amenable points in pregnancy, like 15 weeks, Johnson has made no such effort: he has sponsored legislation that would ban abortion nationwide at all stages of pregnancy, establishing a “right to life” for fertilized eggs that supersedes women’s rights to dignity and self-determination.
His sweeping antagonism to abortion rights has extended to several kinds of birth control, such as IUDs, implants and many birth control pills. In his career as a lawyer for the Alliance Defending Freedom – a rightwing legal shop spearheading efforts to advance Christian gender conservatism through litigation – he argued that the most popular kinds of hormonal birth control, and those that are controlled by women, are equivalent to abortion and should therefore be banned. When the House advanced a bill to codify the right to contraception after the US supreme court’s Dobbs ruling in 2022, Johnson voted against it. He has since played dumb on the issue, claiming he does not remember his opposition to birth control in an interview with Shannon Bream of Fox News.
In light of his aggressively misogynist and anti-gay views on public policy, it is likely not surprising that Johnson also advances a disturbing and sexist view of the private sphere. He has condemned no-fault divorce, the liberalized regime of divorce law that was won by feminists in the 20th century, and which allowed women to initiate divorce and to exit marriages without having to prove either infidelity or abuse to a court. Johnson says that women’s freedom to leave marriages, along with their freedom to elect out of motherhood when they choose, is responsible for mass shootings.
We will get rid of your theocratic nonsense one ballot initiatve at a time if need be! Boo fucking who you fascists assholes! (I’m channelling my inner JJ!)
So, this is getting to be a high stakes election year with high stakes high jinx. Hang in there! We’re here for each other! VOTE BLUE!
What’s on your reading and blogging list today!
Mostly Monday Reads: Disorder in the House, the Senate, the Courtroom … you name it!
Posted: November 6, 2023 Filed under: The Right Wing, The Trump Family Crime Syndicate | Tags: @repeat1968, Are all Republicans Corrupt? Asking for a friend., Ayatollah Mike Johnson, crazy right wing republicans, White Christian Nationalism 14 Comments
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
It’s too bad we can’t get a camera in the New York State Courtroom today. Trump’s testimony is as bad as you would imagine. Plus, how do you get a payroll check from the U.S. Government and not have a bank account? Tommy Tuberville is still holding up hundreds of military promotions despite a showing of contempt and song by fellow Republicans. The leader and members of the Chaos Party do their thang!
Let’s go with the Trump Trial first. The Washington Post has live updates if you’re not up to TV coverage that describes the craziness. “Donald Trump testifying in New York civil fraud trial.” I’m listening to Brahams because what goes better with Trump drama than a music style described as both “difficult” and “too cosy.” Or, as I liked to tell my buddy who played classical like me in high school, “Stop pounding the keys so damned much.”
This is one of the major dramatic moments where Trump kept pounding the keys. “Trump sticks to his guns on Mar-a-Lago value, despite evidence. Lawyers for the attorney general’s office questioned former president Donald Trump on Monday about the values he has claimed for Mar-a-Lago, one of his most prominent properties but one of minor importance to his business.”
“He ruled against me without knowing anything about me! He ruled against me and said I was a fraud before he knew anything about me!” Trump said, raising his voice on the witness stand. “The fraud is on the court, not on me.”
Alrighty, then! Oh, there’s much, much more! This is from CNN. “Trump testifies in New York civil fraud trial. Trump: “Everybody” within Trump Organization is responsible for identifying internal fraud.” Is this dank comedy or what?
Donald Trump testified that ultimately “everybody” within the Trump Organization is responsible for identifying internal fraud, following questions from New York’s assistant attorney general.
“I would say everybody,” Trump responded to questioning.
In the years before he became president of the United States, employees would bring issues to him or other management executives to be resolved.
He recalled instances where building managers may have been illegally renting apartments to pocket the money themselves.
When it came to the financial statements, he said he figured Mazars USA, the accounting firm that Trump and his businesses used, would flag any issues. “I would assume Mazars would come and recommend something and we’d amend that procedure,” Trump said.
Just prior to the lunch break, Kevin Wallace from the New York attorney general’s office told the former president, “We’ll get through this particular document much more quickly if you say, ‘I don’t know,” while questioning him about a document addressing the cash flow for one of Trump’s buildings that shows a financial loss.
Trump then responded, “I don’t know.”
The property in question was 40 Wall St., one of the properties that is part of the lawsuit.
My music has now switched to Strauss as every court reporter describes Trump waltzing around the facts, evidence, and reality.
I keep wondering how anyone in that room can keep a straight face. So, let’s see how things are faring with the Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, who keeps track of his own and his son’s porn intake and insists that he doesn’t have a bank account. How much stupidity and arrogance can one party handle? This is from The New Republic. “Mike Johnson and His Son Monitoring Each Other’s Porn Intake Is Worse Than You Think. The House speaker admitted to a wild new detail about his personal life. And it’s a bigger deal than it seems.” Many are arguing that this is a National Security Threat, which seems to be just par for the course for every Republican these days. They’re all National Security Threats from the top down. They are all also quite creepy.
This comes with a background of Mendelssohn’s Waldschloss or Forest Castle. “Surrounded by carnations in bloom, The lovely forest women sit, Singing their songs in the wind.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson’s unusual porn habits could have ramifications for the entire country.
In a newly resurfaced video from 2022, the newly minted speaker admitted that he and his son monitor each other’s porn intake using a third-party subscription software called Covenant Eyes that watches all their electronic devices. For $16.99 a month, the app drafts a habit report and shares it with an “accountability partner,” which in Johnson’s case is his teenage son Jack.
“What it does, real simply, is it has an algorithm and a software—it’s way above my head how it works, but—it scans, you obviously opt into it, but it scans all the activity on your phone or your devices, your laptop, what have you. We do all of it. Then it sends a report to your accountability partner,” Johnson said.
“My accountability partner right now is Jack, my son. He’s 17. So he and I get a report about all the things that are on our phones, all of our devices, once a week. If anything objectionable comes up, your accountability partner gets an immediate notice,” Johnson explained.
“I’m proud to tell ya, my son has got a clean slate,” he added.
How many of you want to bet Jack has a friend with a phone that doesn’t include spying parents? Plus, magazines are still around at your local truck stop and there are a hell of lot of those in Shreveport/Bossier City.
Aside from the weirdness of having your son watch your porn intake—and vice versa—the implications of having one of the most prominent leaders in government under the watchful eye of an intrusive software have not been lost on some, who believe the app could pose a national security risk.
“A US Congressman is allowing a 3rd Party tech company to scan ALL of his electronic devices daily and then uploading reports to his son about what he’s watching or not watching…. I mean, who else is accessing that data?” tweeted the user Receipt Maven, who first resurfaced the video.
Ayatollan Mike doesn’t need an App to be a threat to the entire nation. But still, where’s your damned bank accounts Bubba? This is from The Daily Beast. “House Speaker Mike Johnson Skirts Question on Personal Bank Account.” Oh, Mozart is perfect for this one. It makes your brain function nicely. I’m sure no one in Shreveport believes this. “The newfound Speaker said he was a “man of modest means” in a Fox interview.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) responded on Sunday to a report by The Daily Beast that highlighted his apparent lack of a bank account on his financial disclosure.
The response, however, did not actually answer whether he had one.
Fox News Sundaymoderator Shannon Bream pressed Johnson on whether he had a bank account, citing a Vanity Fairwrite-up of The Daily Beast’s report and noting that “there’s been so much made about it.”
“Can you clear that up for us?” Bream asked.
Johnson did not.
“Look, I’m a man of modest means,” Johnson said. “I was a lawyer, but I did constitutional law, and most of my career has been in the nonprofit sector. We have four kids, five now, that are very active. And I have kids in graduate school, law school, undergraduate. We have a lot of expenses, but I can relate to everybody else. My father was a firefighter, right? I didn’t grow up with great means. But I think that helps us to be a better leader because we can relate to every hard-working American family. That’s who we are. And I think it governs and helps govern my decisions and how I lead.”
Okay, he’s a government employee, They all get their checks deposited into a bank account automatically. This is fishy as fuck.
The Daily Beast reported on Wednesday that Johnson had not disclosed a personal bank account or one of his family members in his seven years in Congress, a trait that’s likely due to a modest, paycheck-to-paycheck lifestyle. Experts told The Daily Beast that the lack of disclosure raised questions about his financial health, particularly since Johnson has taken out a mortgage and personal loans.
“He owes hundreds of thousands of dollars between a mortgage, personal loan, and home equity line of credit, so where did that money go?” Jason Libowitz, the communications director for the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, told The Daily Beast. “If he truly has no bank account and no assets, it raises questions about his personal financial wellbeing.”
Then, there’s the Senator Tommy Tuberville. The military is watching you dude. This is from Military.COM “Senate Finally Confirms 3 Top Military Officers After Fellow Republicans Erupt in Anger over Tuberville Blockade.”
Chiefs of the Navy and Air Force, as well as the second-in-command at the Marine Corps, were confirmed Thursday by the Senate after a wild week that saw the leader of the Marines hospitalized and Republican senators unleash fury at the member of their party responsible for blocking the promotions of nearly 380 generals and admirals.
The Senate voted overwhelmingly to confirm Adm. Lisa Franchetti as chief of naval operations, making her the first woman to sit on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Gen. David Allvin as chief of staff of the Air Force. The chamber also unanimously approved Lt. Gen. Christopher Mahoney to get a fourth star and be the assistant commandant of the Marines, allowing him to step in as acting commandant while Gen. Eric Smith remains hospitalized for an undisclosed medical emergency.
I wonder if it’s possible to get past all this attention-grabbing right wing drama in time to pass a budget and not close down the Government?
Just one more about these creeps and then I may go back for a nap. These people are exhausting! This is from Salon. It’s written by Chaucey DeVega. “”Apocalypticism”: Polling expert reveals the root of “panic among conservative White Christians”. “That core belief explains so much of the extremism and the proclivity toward violence on the political right.”
This year’s American Values Survey, conducted by the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) with the Brookings Institution, shows that the American people are very conflicted and increasingly do not possess a shared set of beliefs or values across a wide range of political issues. Key findings include a growingly disproportionate amount of support for political violence, a willingness to ignore the rule of law to win political power, and a belief in untrue conspiracy theories amongst Republicans as compared to Democrats. Antidemocratic beliefs are even more acute, the survey found, among white evangelical Protestants who yearn for a return to “traditional American values” in a country they believe “is moving in the wrong direction.”
How can the American people and their leaders solve the many problems facing the country if they cannot even agree on what they are – or on basic facts and the nature of reality and the truth more generally?
I asked Robert P. Jones, founder and president of PRRI, to help make sense of the survey results that show a divided American public, the enduring power and growing dangers of Trumpism and the role of White Christian nationalism in House Speaker Mike Johnson’s swift ascendence. Jones is the author of the New York Times bestseller “The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy and the Path to a Shared American Future.”
…
The new survey’s findings about the rise in support for political violence are particularly troubling. We found that the numbers of Americans who say that “Things have gotten so far off track that true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save the country” has gone up over the last few years, from 15% to 23%. Those feelings are disproportionately on the right. One in three Republicans believe that as compared to only 13% of Democrats. We also found troubling links between white Christian nationalism and political violence. Among those who believe that America was intended by God to be a promised land for European Christians, nearly four in ten believe they may have to resort to violence to save the country.
Okay, I’m going back to my usual playlist. Y’all have a very good week. I wish I could tell you to avoid the TV but we have an election coming up and it’s a big one. Remember that Ayatollah Mike told us the next two years would be important to America. We should be worried about that. If you really want to get depressed read about the Florida Friday Summit Appearance where booing every one but Trump was a state sport on display. This is from the New York Times. “DeSantis and Trump Bring Their Campaign Battle Home to Florida. At a state party summit, Gov. Ron DeSantis and former President Donald J. Trump both argued that Florida was their turf. For the crowd, Mr. Trump’s assertion seemed to ring truer.”
But the crowd at the summit was clearly in no mood to hear any digs at the former president, and candidates who criticized Mr. Trump were heckled. When former Gov. Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas said that he believed Mr. Trump would probably be found guilty in one of the criminal cases he was facing, the boos were ferocious.
And Chris Christie, the former governor of New Jersey who has become an outspoken Trump critic, was jeered immediately after he took the stage.
Mr. Christie was not dissuaded, firing back at the crowd, “Your anger against the truth is reprehensible.”
Be very afraid. This song’s for Ayatollah Mike.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
peej
Carissa
bostonboomer
dakinikat
ecocatwoman
mablue2
Mama Lopez
peggysue22
quixote
skydancingguestblogger
Mona (aka Wonk the Vote)
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