Once a legitimate blog. Now just a collection of memes 'n menz.
First: Do not help Republicans. Not in any way. On any issue. Republicans can't pass a budget, or raise the debt ceiling? Tough luck. Do not provide them any bailout votes on any issue. Period, the end.¹
Second: Make Donald Trump own every bad outcome that happens, anywhere in the world while paying special attention to areas where Republicans are particularly vulnerable. Like housing and Ukraine.
BUT WILL THEY DO IT?
Not that I'd ever suggest such a thing… 😈
From Palmer Report:
There's a particularly chilling episode of the old Twilight Zone TV series called "It's a Good Life," a Rod Serling teleplay of a Jerome Bixby short story. It goes like this: A monster lives in a small Ohio village. He is an ordinary-appearing six year old boy named Anthony with extraordinary abilities. His every whim has absolute power. Anthony has caused everyone in the United States to "go away" because they displease him. Everyone else still alive in the village must be nice to him or he will "send them into the cornfield," a euphemism for making them disappear. Anthony can read everyone's thoughts, so everyone must always be thinking exaggeratedly happy thoughts.
The story is a metaphor for a very real existential question that was new to the world when it was first broadcast. What do we do when a madman, a child, a person of no conscience and complete indifference to human suffering, gains total control of the world? How do we behave? How do we keep him from sending us into the cornfield?
Those are questions that are relevant to Americans and citizens of the world today. For the second time in human history, a vindictive monster with hypersensitive feelings is about to be handed the nuclear codes of the most powerful nation on earth, the only true superpower. This monster isn't a six year old boy, he's a stupid, vindictive, hateful old man who will enter his 80th year in six months. The existential question we have is, how is America and the rest of the world supposed to behave? What is going to happen to any one of us if we incur his capricious and arbitrary and easily-triggered wrath?
We are about to learn the answer. Filled with hubris and stupidity, Donald Trump's recent campaign of sabre-rattling at America's allies has elicited some expected responses. While appeasing and flattering and accommodating America's enemies, the man who ran on a promise of no more wars suddenly wants war with Mexico, Canada, Greenland (and its possessor Denmark) and Panama. So far those nations will have none of it. But what harm will America's "Anthony" do to them for their failure to kowtow to him? Will he send them into the cornfield? If so, what form will that take?
Canada's soon-to-exit prime minister Pierre Trudeau says there's not a "snowball's chance in hell" that his country will join America as its fifty-first state. Denmark avers that Greenland is once again not for sale. In response to Trump's claim that the Gulf of Mexico should be rebranded the "Gulf of America," Claudia Sheinbaum, the forthright president of Mexico, jokingly suggested that the US territory that was once part of Mexico should be renamed "Mexican America."
But all joking aside, there could be real world consequences for defying Trump. We already know that the harm he promises to inflict on others is more than theoretical. In his criminal mishandling of the Covid pandemic, Trump withheld PPEs and breathalysers from blue states. In the aftermath of Hurricane Maria Trump denied millions of dollars of aid to Puerto Rico simply because he disliked the mayor of San Juan and because many of the people of the country were brown. Trump deprived his former fixer Michael Cohen of his Constitutional rights and locked him away in the cornfield of solitary confinement merely because he planned to write a book.
This time around, with no voices of sanity to restrain him and no law to answer to, what harm will Trump inflict and on whom? Who is he going to hurt? What lives will he ruin, merely because he can't handle an insult? Who or what nations will get thrown into the proverbial cornfield? We'll learn the answer soon enough.
It's not the job of the president of the United States to hurt people. It's his sworn duty to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States" by faithfully executing his office. Donald Trump has already announced that he plans to fail at his job. He prefers to hurt people instead.
Of course, a man who is constitutionally disallowed from taking office is by definition disqualified from preserving, protecting or defending that Constitution. But a man as hateful and vindictive as Trump can and will do a lot of damage to a lot of people. MAGA is about to find out that damage will extend to many of them. I hope he throws the whole bloody lot of them into the goddamn cornfield.
And then there's 45…
From Palmer Report:
In the week that my city of Los Angeles has been burning, good people of all stripes have come out of the woodwork to help out. Firefighters have arrived here from places as far away as Canada, Mexico, and Oregon. People are lining up around the block to donate food, necessities, and even pet supplies. It's a reminder that there are a lot of good people out there with good hearts.
Then there's Donald Trump, who has spent the entire crisis doing nothing but lying about the crisis. He's dishonestly attacked the Governor of California and Mayor of Los Angeles, who have both been doing a fantastic job. He's spread lies about the water situation here. Trump has, as usual, done nothing but make things worse.
Now Trump is adding insult to injury by posting an image of the Hollywood Hills burning, with the "HOLLYWOOD" sign changed to "TRUMP WAS RIGHT." I don't know what to say about this, other than shut up, you stupid asshole. No one here wants your input, Donald. Remember when you threatened awhile back to let California burn because no one here voted for you? And now all you can offer is a fake picture of the fire with one of our cherished landmarks defaced with your name? I'll stop writing before I curse anymore, but Donald Trump needs to SHUT UP.
Yesterday I saw fire trucks roll by from the Albany Fire Department and the Harrisburg Fire Department. These folks drove their trucks thousands of miles to come to our city of Los Angeles and help fight our fires. The response from all around the nation (and the world) has been nothing short of wonderful. That is, of course, with the exception of Trump and his fellow slime balls.
We've got Donald Trump making up nonsensical lies about our Governor and our Mayor, while spewing childlike gibberish about how water supposedly works. We've also got Trump posting fake imagery of the Hollywood sign on fire with the words changed to "TRUMP WAS RIGHT."
We've also got "Speaker" Mike Johnson publicly threatening to withhold federal aid from Los Angeles for political reasons. This is even as Elon Musk posts an endless manic stream of rubber room level insane tweets about the entire situation. These people are simply disgusting.
Simply put, there's a time for decency. We've got all these firefighters from around the nation pouring into Los Angeles, and none of them are making their assistance conditional on any political leanings. Nor does anyone in Los Angeles care about the personal political leanings of these firefighters. These are simply decent people offering to help us, and we're unconditionally grateful to them. That goes the same for all the people around the nation who have been donating to the Red Cross in Los Angeles and so on. Americans are simply helping Americans, the same way we California liberals spring into gear to help whenever there's a disaster in a red state. It's simply about decency.
It's the precise opposite of what we're seeing from Trump and his Republican allies. They're reading the room very, very wrong. The American people do not want to see anyone playing politics right now. As usual, Trump is blowing it. And as usual, his Republican Party is going right along with his mistake. If that's how they want to play it, fine. We'll use it as fuel for destroying them in the midterms.
Please tell us where you think the tap is, you fucking moron.
Is it in the room with you right now?
From John Gruber:
Alan Feuer and Charlie Savage, reporting for The New York Times:
Jack Smith, the special counsel who indicted President-elect Donald J. Trump on charges of illegally seeking to cling to power after losing the 2020 election, said in a final report released early Tuesday that the evidence would have been sufficient to convict Mr. Trump in a trial, had his 2024 election victory not made it impossible for the prosecution to continue.
"The department's view that the Constitution prohibits the continued indictment and prosecution of a president is categorical and does not turn on the gravity of the crimes charged, the strength of the government's proof or the merits of the prosecution, which the office stands fully behind," Mr. Smith wrote.
He continued: "Indeed, but for Mr. Trump's election and imminent return to the presidency, the office assessed that the admissible evidence was sufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction at trial."
The Times includes a link to the full 174-page first volume of the report. Without having read it yet, I'll just say this. It should go without saying that Trump's actions are Trump's responsibility. Trump is the already convictedfelon of far lesser crimes, and he should have been (and perhaps, years from now, will be) the convicted felon of the grave crimes against the nation itself that Jack Smith's special counsel team investigated and charged him with.
But Joe Biden deserves blame for the fact that Trump wasn't tried before the 2024 election. I take no pleasure in saying it because I like Biden, a lot, and in most other ways I agreed with his policies and his numerous accomplishments over the last four years. But with regard to Donald Trump, Biden just fucking blew it. It's that simple. Biden wrongly believed that after the 2020 election, and exacerbated by Trump's embarrassing refusal to accept defeat and his ham-fisted attempt at a coup-by-morons on January 6, that Trump was finished, politically. Like Nixon after Watergate, but with even deeper ignominy. Biden thought his own election was proof that the MAGA fever had broken, and the American electorate had returned to some sort of pre-Trump "normalcy". So Biden appointed Merrick Garland, a feckless cowardly fool, as Attorney General, and under Biden and Garland's direction the Justice Department slow-walked the pursuit of justice against Trump for his crimes, thinking it would be better for the nation — a nation, again, that Biden plainly but wrongly assumed was ready to put Donald Trump in the ash heap of history — not to aggressively prosecute Trump as though time was of the essence, so as to remove any possible appearance that they were pursuing his prosecution for political reasons.
What a grave mistake. I hope it winds up not mattering much in the grand scheme of history, but there's a pit in my stomach telling me it will. Jack Smith wasn't appointed Special Prosecutor by Garland until 18 November 2022. Smith was the right man for the job, but he should have been appointed at the very start of the Biden administration in early 2021. That year and a half of abject dithering was the difference between putting Trump on trial and convicting him of the crimes we literally watched him commit on TV, and seeing Trump run out the clock with procedural delays until he had the chance to be reelected, which he was. And now here we are on the cusp of Trump serving a second term in the White House without ever standing trial for his serious crimes against the nation. The urgency was dire, but Biden and Garland acted as though they had all the time in the world, until they realized their mistake far too late.
Biden is like the protagonist in a horror movie who defeats the villain but doesn't finish him off, congratulates himself, and turns his back on his foe and starts walking off into the sunset. All the while, with the audience screaming, "Finish him off! He's getting back up! Turn around! Oh god, I can't watch…"
Supposedly.
And apparently 70 million people looked at this steaming pile of shit and thought, "Yeah…that's better than a black woman."
