This is excellent, Matt. I weep for the state of mainstream journalism - they'll never have to guts to write anything like this. I was one of those who joined the so-called "resistance." I thought everything ended the day he won. I literally laid on the couch for a year drinking a bottle of wine. It wasn't until 2020 that I realized what a bubble I was in. That bubble was like hiding in a bunker as time passes you by outside of it and whipping up fear and hysteria about everything you can't see "out there." Watching Jamie Raskin in particular talk about Steve Bannon exposed just how little he actually knows about Bannon himself, but also how little he knows of that world.
For six long years the Democrats had a chance to do the one thing they needed to do to stop Trump: offer something better. Instead, they've served up a meal they're forcing down Americans' throats that they do not want. They believe that all they have to do is get rid of Trump and everyone will suddenly like that meal. In chasing Trump, they've destroyed themselves. There is very little left of them.
What disturbs me more about these hearings, though, is that they seem to be doing a government version of cancel culture: no due process, using the court of public opinion, hoping to change minds and ruin lives but having no actual THERE there. The way they seem to be suggesting it's okay to police speech and opinion is nervous making. The journalists though? Man, zero backbone. What a mess.
For me, the worst part of the bubble is this idea that people will still believe what they are told even after the same people blatantly lied to them the first time around. Look at Officer Sicknick. The story about him being murdered by rioters could have easily been disproven with a simple phone call. The public later found out only one person was actually killed through an act of violence, she was unarmed, and the stories about the rioters being armed to the teeth were proven false. Also while we are on the subject, does any rational person really believe the country was about to be overthrown by a dazed and confused guy dressed up in a combination costume of Flintstone's water buffalo night and a drunken NFL Patriots fan? You cannot keep telling people to believe the next thing after the last five have turned out to be false. It does not even matter if you now have your magical tape recordings, a hundred verifiable eyewitnesses, and thirty hours of video footage of Trump going full world domination supervillain, most people do not care anymore! As for what the committee is actually working with, it is mostly just partisan hackjob hearsay. Which sounds an awful lot like what they were working with the last twenty times. Don't worry people. The walls are closing in this time!
oseph McBride, Nichols’s attorney, told Kelly that he had “viewed three hours of surveillance video captured by Capitol security camera” and discovered that “for reasons that no fair minded or decent human being will ever understand” a Capitol Police officer “begins to pulverize” a woman “about 10 minutes before the lifeless body of Rosanne Boyland was seen lying on the ground, just outside the tunnel.”
According to Kelly, “body-worn camera footage released by the courts … show Boyland on her side not moving as her friend, Justin Winchell, begged for help. ‘She’s gonna die!’ Winchell tries to scream while holding on to Boyland. He turns to the crowd. ‘I need somebody, anybody,’ he pleads. ‘She’s dead! She’s dead!'”
Boyland’s body was then dragged inside the Capitol building by Capitol Police and nothing more was known until, Kelly says, the “D.C. Medical Examiner’s Office concluded Boyland died of a drug overdose,” a verdict now rendered “highly suspicious considering the video footage and first-hand accounts of others about what happened to her that afternoon.”
A police officer’s beating of Rosanne Boyland with a steel baton and a large wooden stick while she laid unconscious in a packed U.S. Capitol tunnel on Jan. 6, 2021 was “objectively reasonable,” according to a D.C. Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) internal affairs investigation.
Video footage reportedly taken after Boyland had fallen unconscious in the tunnel shows MPD Officer Lila Morris beating Boyland with a steel baton and what appeared to be a wooden walking stick.
Morris can be seen on bodycam footage picking up the stick, raising it over her head and striking Boyland several times in quick succession before being pulled back by other officers.
As far as I can tell, there's only one group of people who wouldn't be happy if the full tapes were released, and they are the exact people in charge of the release of the tapes.
Literally everybody I know says "Show the evidence and charge the people who committed crimes that day."
There’s really no doubt that the rioters trying to enter the Capitol building were seeking to obstruct certification of the election. There may be additional footage that hasn’t been released, but it’s not going to obliterate the effects of the footage that already has been.
Thank you for telling the group this. I am astonished that so many people are unaware of Boyland’s murder by that woman cop. The footage has been out there since nearly the beginning.
A woman was unconscious and I witnessed a video of a black female police officer beating the unconscious woman repeatedly with a stick. I have no idea where that video disappeared to.
"[D]oes any rational person really believe the country was about to be overthrown by a dazed and confused guy dressed up in a combination costume of Flintstone's water buffalo night and a drunken NFL Patriots fan?"
Exactly. As many of us thought *while it happened*. But we're not just talking about any old "the country" -- but the most powerful country in world history. Let that sink in. Yet to this day, the prosecution's insane assertion remains the same.
It was the same incredulous feeling I had 9/11 when watching buildings implode on their footprint, *while it was happening*, especially the un-hit Building 7 -- a feat never duplicated before nor since, and critiqued in a formal report by thousands of engineers and scientists.
Based on these things, the US public has to be (a) phenomenally stupid (OK, maybe a decent portion really are), (b) phenomenally naive (that's a stretch in this day and age), phenomenally corrupt (can't be a terribly large portion) and/or (d) phenomenally *In Denial* (ding, ding, ding ... I think we have a winner!!) ...as to what has actually been ramping up now for decades.
How do we get out of this place?? I do believe the global economic disaster freight train now barreling down upon us is about to finally provide the West its long-needed wake-up call.
Despite endless warnings from the media about Trump’s and Republicans’ supposed authoritarian instincts, we are suffocating in an environment of left-wing oppression. Trump might have authoritarian tendencies, but he did not wield authoritarian power.
"Based on these things, the US public has to be (a) phenomenally stupid (OK, maybe a decent portion really are), (b) phenomenally naive (that's a stretch in this day and age), phenomenally corrupt (can't be a terribly large portion) and/or (d) phenomenally *In Denial* (ding, ding, ding ... I think we have a winner!!) ...as to what has actually been ramping up now for decades."
I'll take "What is 'more than one of the above?'" for $500 and the Daily Double, Alex.
Individually, the public seems stupid, but as a group, it seems to have sussed out that COVID is no longer as dangerous as it was, and that Fauci is eerily demented. There's hope in this)))
This is kind of a wild theory but if you look at both the Capitol Police and DOD timelines, the DOD offered to mobilize additional National Guard outside of the DCNG and was turned down a few days before the rally. The SSAA and the HSAA denied based on McConnell and Pelosi based on how that chain of command works. Then Muriel Bowser got involved and sent a letter to Miller denying it formally. They seemed paranoid about the presence of outside Guardsman. When things went south they had to mobilize the guard anyways because they didn't have a choice. The way they were trying to sniff out any Trump supporters in the guard after they got to DC was bizarre. Is it possible that the politicians and DC people bought into the Q stuff? "The military is the way".
As far as the 9/11 stuff. I don't think anyone is in denial. The 1.3 trillion missing from the pentagon the day before. The war game drills the morning of. The problem is that people get lobbed and slammed. I think most of these things are bad actors but I also think they allow bad things to happen and spend more time planning on how to capitalize on them when they do. Then they seed stories that are so crazy to discredit anyone who asks questions. Like the pizza gate thing is a good example of that. Or they get ahead of something by repackaging it with different names. Like it seems pretty clear the Russian pee tape shit show is probably Hunter. The Carter Page deal is almost exactly the deal Hunter made with CEFC. Get in front of it. Change the names. It's a wild thought but nothing else makes sense.
Thanks. I wish I had the time to explore these cases conclusively. I must and will finish Jan 6 at least. It takes just a few damning inconsistencies to recognize a high unlikelihood of good intent, yet of course far more information is needed to prove beyond reasonable doubt, even by public discourse (vs courtroom) standards. It stinks rotten, but is maddeningly elusive.
No matter what Jan 6 Committee comes up with, it is quite simply invalid without properly obtained opposing testimony, given the gravity of the punishments and laws proposed. That point needs to be drive home. The Cheney/Kinzinger fig-leaf is of course laughable, at the very least because they are openly anti-Trump, so their Republican status is a moot point. Not that this will stop them from trying...
"The public later found out only one person was actually killed through an act of violence . . ." Believe it or not, a good portion of the public, dare I say about 50% have not found that out. They still believe Officerf Sicknick was attacked with a fire extinguisher and that 3 or so other people died due to the actions of the insurrectionists.
No. No one thought the Flintstone water buffalo dude was going to single handedly overturn the election. But absolutely the chaos of the armed mob rioting and beating Capitol police and erecting gallows and breaking into offices and chambers was the cover that Pence could have used to do what Trump was asking him to do. That was absolutely the plan. Most of the GOP went along with it too - refusing to certify because they are cowards still afraid of Trump influence on their own re-election chances. And are we really debating how many people died as if the other 150 Capitol police officers who required medical attention don't matter? This was a big fucking deal. And no one is above the law. If that absolute shitshow is allowed to just be swept aside then we are all FUCKED. We can be pissed that Biden isn't doing a good job and STILL recognize that this was the first time in the history of our nation where the LOSER of the election was not going to give up the presidency and Taibbi - I love you but your bias is showing. Knock it off. Interfering with the states and pressuring them to find votes and absolutely conning his voters with the Great $250 Million Dollar fundraising heist to help Trump fight to stay in power and all those other issues that you dismiss with your "oh there might be something criminal there" -- these January 6 hearings are critical. And if it's taking trump's inner circle awhile to find the courage that Cassidy Hutchinson found -- well GOOD FOR THEM for extending it. I mean fault the Biden administration for not doing what they should be doing but these hearings MATTER. You probably would have said Watergate was much ado about nothing too.
"But absolutely the chaos of the armed mob rioting and beating Capitol police and erecting gallows and breaking into offices and chambers was the cover that Pence could have used to do what Trump was asking him to do. That was absolutely the plan.'
It was *impossible* to enforce ANY plan to execute a coup like this in the US. Think of what you are saying: That the combined forces of the entire entrenched bureaucracies, not mention the power of huge industries of all kinds would EVER allow them to get away with such a thing for any more than a few hours -- and then not nail them to the wall 10x worse than they are doing now. People like Navarro, Powell, Giuliani, etc. are simply not that stupid or deluded to execute any kind of unambiguously illegal plan and get away with it (as opposed to, say, testing in some cases legally-uncharted territory). The whole idea that this was their their intent is breathtakingly naive.
Deprogram yourself from the unprecedented, state-of-the-psychology-art/science propaganda we are bathed with in modern America.
You're getting a lot wrong about January 6. So are a lot of other posters.
The focus of Trump's attempt to remain in office after his expiration date was a legal ploy- or more properly an extra-legal ploy.
As for mob violence at the Capitol, there was a lot of it. Obviously. There had to have been, in order to attack a police barrier and successfully overwhelm it, and then force entry to the locked Capitol building by smashing in a window and pouring through the breach.
But the mob violence alone could never have kept Donald Trump in office as President. What Trump was counting on was to turn his Vice President, Mike Pence. Just one little favor from Mike- to disregard the Constitution by refusing to carry out the formal certification of Joe Biden's 2020 election victory, in order to obey the order of his CEO to "return the process to the States", some of whom had already been organized to deliver an "alternate slate of electors" that would have supplied the critical balance of electoral votes required for a Trump victory.
That's the only goal that the Cult Leader cared about, in his last week as President: pressuring Vice President Pence into making the decision to enable an autogolpe on his behalf. Not military coup style; more like Roy Cohen shyster lawyer style. As long as Chief Executive Donald Trump held possession of the White House, he was counting on the informal legal axiom that "possession is 9/10 of the law." An axiom that had undoubtedly proved its practical worth again and again, in the business dealings of the Trump Organization.
If Mike Pence had caved in to Trump's increasingly obnoxious browbeating, the US would have been thrown into a Constitutional crisis without precedent in this history of the nation. A sitting President doesn't get to nullify the Constitution with a fait accomplit designed for the exclusive purpose of enabling him to remain in office as President for another term, and then dare the Supreme Court to nullify his actions.
If you don't realize that was the play, you're fooling yourself. If you realize that and it doesn't bother you, we ain't friends.
I'd like to zero in on this claim that Pence was requested to "disregarding the Constitution":
"But the mob violence alone could never have kept Donald Trump in office as President. What Trump was counting on was to turn his Vice President, Mike Pence. Just one little favor from Mike- to disregard the Constitution by refusing to carry out the formal certification"
(a) Was Pence legally able to refuse to certify the electors? In other words, was his actual, current *legal* role (not merely a traditional role) functional, and not that of a rubber-stamper?
(b) If so, and he *was* legally able to refuse to certify electors, what reasons would be permitted? By whom? via specific law, or court precedent? Or, could he decide for himself?
(a) The answer is "Yes, he can refuse to certify". He/She is not bound by specific reasons.
Bottom line: There is nothing "unconstitutional" about refusing to certify electors. The whole process from then on out -- including any dramatic, precedent-setting football between the Congress, states, and courts -- is still COMPLETELY LEGAL. Not only that, it would have had the chance to exercise the last remaining channel of opposition, and as you assert Biden won, FINALLY put the matter to bed -- So then, what exactly, would be the problem?
The attempt to call this activity a "coup" and an "insurrection" is unmitigated bullsh*t, to stir the passions of a majority of the electorate ... and in turn permit PATRIOT II Act. As for "Joe Biden's 2020 [asserted] election victory, in order to obey the order of his CEO" -- This is your projection of malfeasance, not demonstrated reality.
The ONLY way to reach a "conclusion" here is to hear out both sides. That's how justice works. But that possibility was cut off at the knees by Nancy Pelosi, and so here we are, barreling along down the road to hell...
a) and b) - NO, he wasn't legally able to refuse. It would have been unconstitutional. You've analyzed this wrong - but if you want to see what top constitutional conservative scholars are testifying to under oath, about the very questions you ask, and then incorrectly answer, WATCH THE HEARINGS. Or buy Bill Barr's book. Deprogram yourself man. I bet you think Big Foot is real too.
This clarifies some things here for me about Trump. But I still don't believe he understood at the time anything he was doing was unambiguous illegal and thus would not survive legal challenges. (Also, see my Question 1 below.) It simply makes no sense to do so. He would have had legal advice for this, no matter what he got away with as a businessman, as you suggest, and no matter what preconceptions he came to the office with. He had already been there four years, and knew by then things worked differently than in the Trump Org.
I have little doubt also that he was specifically *set up* for any illegality he unknowingly engaged in, taking advantage of his personal weaknesses to entrap him. The participants would pull out all the stops to make sure it was as airtight as possible, complete with using deep-state turncoat moles like Barr, now being ritualistically flogged in the media until the storm blows over. So, I think the full story is certainly not out yet.
"[T]he US would have been thrown into a Constitutional crisis without precedent in this history of the nation." It would be unprecedentedly dramatic, certainly. But I don't think it would ambiguous, which is the mark of a true, or at least dangerous, crisis. If necessary, Trump and his small team would been removed bodily (possibly by a police force authorized by the law-making Congress 2/3, and supported by SCOTUS), and the National Guard would protect the city from MAGA rioters. As the Establishment has the upper hand, it would certainly have been tamped down. As it happened, Trump DID leave town peacefully, to pursue it later by other means, didn't he? But no one talks about that little detail demonstrating Trump's *actual* intent about obeying the law. Oopsie...
The real problem would be the 100 million citizens who, even if this specific action was proper, that *no one*, for decades, ever addresses their legitimate complaints. And that certainly has little to with Trump.
At this point, there appear to still be these problems:
1. "Just one little favor from Mike- to disregard the Constitution by refusing to carry out the formal certification of Joe Biden's 2020 election victory" - (a) How do we know this action is *necessarily* unconstitutional? If Mike Pence believed as Trump did that there were too many irregularities, and these (still) needed to be properly examined, how would his decision be a violation of the Constitution? Surely he is not just a rubber-stamping figurehead in his role. (b) What in the world makes you think *this very act* would not be completely resisted and sooner or later overturned, by all the-powers-that-be that are arrayed against him, especially the courts? You know, as we are seeing right now? In order words, *legitimate or not*, this would never stand. Thus making all this bluster about Trump being able to *successfully* execute a coup over the United States silly bluster.
2. The vast majority of protesters, some of whom turned rioters, simply cannot all be called "insurrectionists", for the simple reason that they thought they were *preserving* the system rather than overthrowing it. I have not heard anything from the Jan 6 Committee acknowledging this.
3. You must know as well as I that the Jan 6 Committee's primary aim is not to prosecute Jan 6 as much as to make a general claim about the state of the country, that it is riddled with illegitimate resistance, not mere protest -- curiously existing almost exclusively to Republicans and/or white people. This is one of the points of Committee and its supporters harping on the specific charge of "insurrection".
4. "As for mob violence at the Capitol, there was a lot of it. Obviously." I've seen several videos of Antifa-style characters doing the building violence, and MAGAs resisting them. Have each of these people been openly identified and determined to actually be Trumpers-in-drag? What about the Epps character, etc.? That latter one appears not to have been resolved properly at all. Given our long history being snookered, it is obvious that NONE of the official explanations can be trusted at all, and must be bored into relentlessly.
5. How did the protesters get let in? Is this security failure being addressed properly? I'm sure they'll come up with some sophistic explanation.
In short, this is another case of one group's anger and errors getting the full Klieg lights, and are nailed to the wall. Others' malfeasance is completely ignored, and laws are flouted. This has been going on now openly for so long it would be odd if it were NOT resisted. This is a trap that has been set (just as with Russia over Ukraine).
Please watch the hearings. At home, on Youtube. Alone so no one sees that you're venturing outside of approved cult videos. 1. YES, Trump knew what he was doing was illegal - he'd been told this in no uncertain terms by...well EVERYONE except Rudy and Sidney who are batshit crazy and have been disbarred. Trump didn't CARE. He wanted what he wanted. PENCE didn't do trump's bidding because Pence knew he had no grounds to do so. He knew the constitution didn't allow it. He tried HARD to find justification and he found out that he couldn't do it and that what he was being asked to do was illegal. WATCH THE HEARINGS SO YOU CAN QUIT ASKING QUESTIONS THAT HAVE ALREADY BEEN ANSWERED - WITH EVIDENCE TO SUIT EVEN YOU, SHOULD YOU LEAVE YOUR BUBBLE. 3. NO - No this isn't the primary aim. WATCH IT and see for yourself. 4. No you haven't. Also you have a long history of being snookered, that I believe. You are being snookered now, by your loony new sources like 2000 Mules. 5. Watch the hearings and you will see videos of exactly how the trump rioters got in. IN SHORT - you're simply wrong and it's embarrassing. Please educate yourself.
Great reply. Great summary. But Anti-Hip will still disagree with it because he hasn't yet freed himself from the bubble. He's determined to continue to defend trump long after trump's inner circle abandoned him.
You can certainly throw Trump in the goddam woodchipper as far as I'm concerned. He's a disgusting narcissist, and has a dozen other repulsive characteristics, never mind that I simply am not a conservative. Never voted for him, never will.
The ONE thing that I am protesting is the relentless Establishment abandonment of (1) law, and (2) even of democratic principle -- ironically, *in the name* of democratic principle.
This leads me to recognize that a very significant majority of the country simply has no understanding, or worse, no actual acceptance of democracy. Namely, that ALL citizens, which includes ALL PROTESTING citizens, have the right to be heard and respected, and not buffaloed into oblivion. I am a Leftist, but am well aware that Rightists are being treated now as less than persons. This sh*t has now been going on for decades.
I didn't say they'd get away with it. But that was their intent. That was their plan. They thought if they could get Pence to decertify they could send their alternate slate of electors -- which they had already prepared in some states and sent - and they could change the outcome. Could they have? Hopefully not. Hopefully constitutional norms would have prevailed (as they did) but there was enormous pressure on individuals from trump and his lackeys and we are lucky that a small handful of people stood strong against that pressure. And you know - women no longer have a constitutional right to abortion in America. So forgive me if you think I"m being breathtakingly naive, but I don't know what SCOTUS would have done had Pence folded.
"They thought if they could get Pence to decertify they could send their alternate slate of electors"
Is this a plan that uses (any kind of) illegal force? Is it otherwise unambiguously illegal, or is it, rather, testing uncharted legal waters? If neither, then what is the legal objection here? Why can't the process run its course?
Do you think mainstream Democrats and Republicans never do worse? They have the good fortune not to be under Klieg lights nor have all manner of armies, public and private, arrayed against them.
Even if one were to grant you your main premise--"It would be impossible to enforce this kind of coup"--you would have to be completely programmed into ignorance yourself if you did not find the fact that there is direct evidence Trump and John Eastman were *attempting* to do so disturbing.
Such a resistance to the peaceful transition of power has not occurred since the Civil War era, and the election of 1876, which nearly begot a second Civil War itself.
To brush it off as no big deal, especially when Trump plans to run again, and especially when key election operatives and lawyers are planning to follow up on Eastman's legal theories to try and invalidate an electoral victory by someone the Republicans don't like, *and are on the record saying so*, is mind-bogglingly myopic.
Because, even if such a thing happens *and fails*, you are, at that point, functionally living in a failed state. And if you look at the history of failed states, what occurs after their failure is never pretty.
"there is direct evidence Trump and John Eastman were *attempting* to do so disturbing"
What I see going on here is this:
(1) Trump, as we all know, has numerous personal weaknesses. These are the places his enemies plan their psy-ops on him.
(2) It is quite plausible and even likely he had moles sabotaging him all over the place, for over four years before during, and after his administration, they learned well his MO; members of his own legal team being no exception. Who was informing all of the named/famed people? The latter don't do their research on their own...
(3) Once they find a way to fully nail Trump to the wall through his Achilles' heels, not only his associates, but also the people who voted for him in 2016 in a "Hail Mary" pass of sheer desperation will have a permanent scarlet letter of association with him, and will be railroaded into all kinds of further subservience, rights denial, if not jail, etc. The playbook has been run many times now, and its just too obvious to too many people.
"To brush it off as no big deal, especially when Trump plans to run again ..."
Understood. That's the plan. Trump is being elevated by Big Media so the Republican NPCs will vote for him, and deny their party the chance to nominate a competent candidate. They did it in 2016 (with shocking results from sloppy end-planning); and they'll do in in 2024 (they certainly won't make the 2016 mistakes again).
We don't live in a failed state. We once lived in functional state that evolved through its flaws. We now live in a state ruthlessly and relentlessly being killed off. Those who want this killing think they've got something better on the other side. That's the howler -- that slick surveillance capitalism combined with communist-style authoritarianism and transhumanism will somehow bring us to nirvana.
When you know you are correct: Give your opponent the floor and he will hang himself.
When you know you are lying (And every single member of the J6 committee knows the narrative they are desperately trying to further is a complete lie) : Never give your opponent the floor. Hence no Bannon testimony on site. Where there is less control than ZOOM! tm.
In the entire history of mankind a rebel force has never overtaken a sitting government without military support. Period.
Hell, just look to Sri Lanka if you will. The folks overran the presidents palace, chased him from the country (but his 'party' is still in power and starting a police/military crackdown). If the military complies (as it most certainly would in the US) then no coup. If the military stands down or supports the rebel, then a coup.
You may wish to watch a couple of very entertaining movies on the subject:
'Seven Days in May'
'Valkryie'
On a side note, what really pisses me off is all of my tax dollars spent on this BS. In economic times like this pursuing any further is insane.
Even if the rebel force fails, however, the *attempt* to overtake a sitting government without using the established political machinery (which in modern Republics like the US is 'voting') can severely disrupt that political machinery and cause severe social and economic disruption in turn.
The crackdown in Sri Lanka is actually proving that right now.
Do you really want to be the guy in 1874 who's saying "This is all overblown, none of this matters", and then have to essentially jumpstart Jim Crow in 1876 to avert another Civil War?
Such disruptions grease the wheels of state repression, then a reaction against state repression. If you're lucky, the latter doesn't result in a Civil War that kills millions of people, just a power grab with terrible consequences, like we had in 1876.
"[a] the *attempt* to overtake a sitting government without using
[b] the established political machinery (which in modern Republics like the US is 'voting')"
Sure, we know ...
(a) the party line of these self-selected mind-readers is that this could ONLY be an attempt to "take over the government" -- rather than "correct failures in government", misguided or not. Any idiot knows the protesters were not looking to *create* a new, non-democratic gov, but instead restoring what they *perceived* were *failures* of democracy in 2020;
and
(b) "the established political machinery [of elections]" could never include the *Vice President* making an actual *decision*, not a rubber-stamp, for any reason -- you know, that might go other than one way? Is he just there for show? Do you simply need to keeping pound that (rubber-stamper) assertion into our heads?
Your claims exemplify how sophists spin. We've all seen it for decades, and we're beyond fed up.
“ (a) the party line of these self-selected mind-readers is that this could ONLY be an attempt to "take over the government" -- rather than "correct failures in government", misguided or not. ”
A group can make up any rationalization it wants for trying to unilaterally overturn the outcome of a democratic election, it doesn’t change the nature of what it’s doing. Countless coups have been carried out against democratic governments under the banner of “correcting” an “incorrect” election outcome. Most of them more or less permanently corrupt the democracies they purport to save.
“ the established political machinery [of elections]" could never include the *Vice President* making an actual *decision*, not a rubber-stamp, for any reason -- you know, that might go other than one way?”
Correct. The Vice President’s role is ceremonial. Again, votes select the president, not the VP. Ironically enough, many of Trump’s lawyers told him so—but he decided to listen to Eastman.
He isn't particularly, although I would hope we could do better than either. My primary concern is that Trump is so abrasive that the backlash in the following term would produce somebody even more vile than Biden.
"[T]his was the first time in the history of our nation where the LOSER of the election was not going to give up the presidency"
Not true. Oh, sure, in the past, the candidates themselves took the dignified route, and let their operatives do the dirty work. So Trump's electors were seriously challenged in 2016. (As someone older than 5, surely you remember The Resistance (R)?) Before that, Bush's re-election and electors were also challenged in 2004, when the Ohio count vs Kerry looked suspicious. And more to the point Bush's election was challenged in 2000 -- *all the way up to the Supreme Court*. In each case, a process of addressing complaints by Democrats was fully and publicly followed. That didn't happen for Republicans in 2020. Can you point to the full, public accounting of the complaints the 2020 election, complete with objections to any dubious or self-serving explanations, published *anywhere*?
"Interfering with the states and pressuring them to find votes and absolutely conning his voters with the Great $250 Million Dollar fundraising heist to help Trump fight to stay in power and all those other issues that you dismiss ..."
These, any many others, are the pieces you've heard, told by ONE SIDE. But there is more than stories going on -- there always is. Anyone who isn't a naif knows there is likely far more going on behind the scenes: various kinds of arm-twisting, veiled threats to end peoples careers, outright blackmail, etc. See below...
"[T]hese January 6 hearings are critical."
You certainly got that right! This is no mere political crisis -- as a public-discourse event, this is a Western-society-wide *epistemological* crisis we are in, not unlike what followed the introduction of the printing press a half-millenium ago. We're likely in the culmination of a ramp-up to a slick new form of totalitarianism, one that has been going on for over 20 years, and arguably since the 1960s ... and you and too many others just don't see it.
All I, for one, am really asking for, here, is for the TWO sides to be able to tell their stories, and have both faithfully communicated to the people by the press, so they can make up their own minds. You know, the way they do, and have done for hundreds of years, in courts of law? Because *no human, or group of humans, has a lock on truth*? That is the basis for the process of science, and for democratic governance? But the demands for equal representation, leading to full and public discovery, have been ruthlessly denied. Why?
If you can't see that only *stories* can be presented -- representations of reality, not reality itself -- and thus need to dealt with under those terms, then we, and democracy, are well and truly cooked.
No, this is the first time they took it, as you say, *all the way up to the Supreme Court* and LOST...and STILL refused to concede and STILL tried to stay in office. There's nothing wrong with recounts. As for pointing to the full, public accounting -- dear GOD man, where have you been? Did you miss the 60+ court challenges? The wall to wall public coverage up until the inauguration? The press conferences? But when the recounts were over (and Biden still won) and when 60+ courts ruled against trump it was time to concede. But trump didn't do that. Trump knew he'd lost - he'd been told that by - oh just about everyone - but he didn't care. He didn't want to give up the Presidency and so he lied to his gullible voters and sent them to the Capital to do just what they did. And if you want a fuller accounting, because two years of it isn't enough for you - read the 72 page report just put out on Thursday by a group of conservatives, including prominent lawyers and retired federal judges, categorically rebutting each of the claims made in court by former President Donald Trump and his supporters over the 2020 election results.
"The report, "LOST, NOT STOLEN: The Conservative Case that Trump Lost and Biden Won the 2020 Presidential Election," looked at more than 60 court cases Trump and his supporters filed and lost in six key battleground states. It reached the "unequivocal" conclusion that the former Republican president's claims were unsupportable -- which Trump's own Department of Homeland Security as well as election officials nationwide debunked days after the 2020 election."
"[R]ead the 72 page report just put out on Thursday by a group of conservatives, including prominent lawyers and retired federal judges, categorically rebutting each of the claims made in court by former President Donald Trump and his supporters over the 2020 election results."
Thank you. That (appears to be) what I asked for. But if it does NOT address the claims made by Navarro, Powell, 2000 Mules, etc. etc. -- then my point continues to hold that the whole exercise CANNOT BE TRUSTED, no matter how good a show is put on. We know at this point that the ongoing COVID and now Ukraine fiascos are propaganda on steroids, and this one looks no different.
The failure of the Russiagate conspiracy theory (comically renamed "collusion" to avoid the taint of the overdone propaganda campaign), in particular, set a precedent as to how far the Establishment will go to destroy not simply Donald Trump, but the national rebellion against corruption and democracy decay that undergirds it, which is the real target. Bernie was a successful sheepdogger on the left, but the next ones who come along will have a far tougher go.
I replied to another questioner here that the 60+ court challenges, including from Supreme Court, themselves are insufficient if they, or rather, the MSM and its resources, do not fully lay out to the public the reasons, AND then allow interactive engagement, of the arguments being promoted. Because their credibility is DEAD.
Why are the Establishments contentions resisted so mightily, not just by me, but by tens of millions of others? A third of the country doesn't just "go mad" for no reason. It is because we have seen with our own eyes, for decades, the kind of creeping criminality in Fed Gov and MSM that has reached a peak during Trump's term. We no longer have ANY faith it can be trusted. Its claims must be PROVED -- ALL OF IT -- and we reserve the right to fight tooth and nail until this is done.
Another thing that must be done here is to keep separate the actions of (1) Trump and his team, and (2) the people who showed up at his rally Jan. 6, the latter of whom have thus far have suffered massively more with far less to blame.
In both cases, we see it entirely plausible that the Jan 6 prosecution is a massive con job with a *story* of connected dots, using cherry-picked evidence, cherry-picked witnesses, embedded double-agents, threats, blackmail, and God knows what other malfeasance, as an existential fight to protect the powers of a few -- specifically, by getting us ready for a "domestic terrorism" PATRIOT II Act, preventing forevermore the "wrong" protests. Our Fed Gov and MSM blew it the last few decades CREATING this monster, designed to protect a now deeply undemocratic system. And the 100 million or so resisting it, and more joining us, are going to be quite a job to tackle, because we all see now the psy-op is now dying and thrashing wildly and carelessly.
The Establishment wants us be wowed by the brilliance of their sophistry and their relentless determination ("resilience") ... yet we also notice they are methodically, both psychologically (stealth wokeness injections everywhere, tying the Republican voters' 2016 Trump "Hail Mary" pass with him personally, etc. etc.) and physically (destroying industry, removing rights, etc. etc.) killing us off. Hard to unsee it at this stage; they've certainly overplayed their hand provoking us (oh yeah, there's now also relentless "news" about the "unprovoked invasion", now being repeated ad nausem, LOL Please!!). And they laugh at us for resisting. ("Resistance"... hmm, where have I heard this word before?).
This Jan 6 juggernaut is most certainly another piece of this ongoing sh*tshow. We may not know *which* pieces are rotten, but we certainly know they're in there.
OMG you need to get out of your bubble. Maybe start by watching the hearings yourself. Watch the STAUNCH CONSERVATIVES who are testifying under oath against trump - which I know that's hard for you to hear since despite your pretense at wanting the truth from "both sides" I'm about 90% positive that you aren't watching the hearings. You're getting a slanted cherry picked spin from one of those nutty conspiracy theory "news" sites. 2000 Mules??? Dude that's propaganda. Yeah, I did watch it. You wanna hear what Navarro REALLY said and did? Watch the hearings with your own two eyes and quit outsourcing your brain. Bill Barr is a "cherry picked" witness?? Cassidy Hutchinson? Pat Cippolone?? Eric Hershmann? IVANKA & JARED?? These are trump's inner circle man! WATCH FOR YOURSELF! What are you scared of? That you -- like trump's inner circle - will discover THE TRUTH and it's not what you want it to be? TRUMP LOST. The 60+ court cases aren't being hidden from the public - they are literally public record! You can read the cases -- all of them -- for yourself! SIXTY COURTS?? You seriously think they all got it wrong?? Many of them were trump appointed judges who voted for him!! Even SCOTUS didn't save him! Because HE LOST and the "evidence" does not exist. Also - this is pointless, because you also think COVID is fake. So enjoy your bubble. You actually seem like you're invested enough and literate enough to break free of it - but you like it in there I think.
"This was a big fucking deal. And no one is above the law. If that absolute shitshow is allowed to just be swept aside then we are all FUCKED."
Swept aside? Just about all those people are in jail (there are some notable exceptions, but I don't see anybody decrying their potential arrest. Quite the opposite). If there was any conspiracy wouldn't we have a plea deal at this point? All those arrests, all those denied bail, where is the coverage of their (actual court) testimony (or charges, or trials)? Its not like some politicians bailed them all out.
What more do you want (that's a rhetorical question, I know you want to use this as an excuse to punish/silence your political opponents)?
I'm not trying to silence anyone. I'd love for them to all testify and tell their side of the story. But trump doesn't want them to testify. Offered to pay for many of their legal defense if they defy the subpoena. Or showed up and took the 5th. And no, we wouldn't have a plea deal at this point. But we might when the hearings and the DOJ investigations commence.
We would have a plea deal among the hundreds arrested if any single one of them had anything to connect their actions to virtually anybody. We do not have that, and the simplest explanation for that lack of evidence, after all this time and all these trials, is because it does not exist.
I know, I know ... overcoming cognitive dissonance is often very painful. "That's what the owners count on." So by all means, take a breather, and come back when you are ready.
Hearings do nothing. They spew hot air and go on and on with nothing changing no one held responsible or prosecuted. Me thinks their all criminals and if one goes they all go. It's all a Kabuki show and why anyone believes it is beyond me.
SOME seek to make him a supervillian. Others see him as a savior who fights COMMUNISM. Someone who will put the people who voted for him first, in stark contrast to Biden who has put the world first on the backs of the US working class.
7.3 MILLION jobs in 2 MONTHS
MAY 2020 Trump Jobs 2.5 million gained ONE MONTH.
JUNE 2020 - Economy added a record 4.8 million jobs in June, 2020
MAY 2021 Biden Jobs 2..2 million gained in first 5 MONTHS
"Most people do not care anymore"? You don't care, obviously, but the majority of Americans care that he committed crimes against the constitution and the people and we believe he should be put on trial. You are totally living in a media bubble, man, and I'm sorry to see Taibbi's put himself in it. You obviously haven't watched the trial.
lol if it was a trial it would be worth watching, because Nancy Pelosi would be testifying. This is a production where one side simply throws shit against the wall and the other side isn't even present.
My mistake. He hasn't watched hearings. Neither have you, apparently. If you watched them and still believe what Trump did and is doing is okay, then you are delusional, under his spell.
I don't care about Trump and would honestly prefer he didn't run in 2024. But anybody who thinks 1/6 is a big deal, much less 'illegal' or 'a threat to democracy' doesn't know anything about 2016 -- when the democrats challenged electors as illegal.
On the other hand, the 1/6 committee itself is illegal and using powers it doesn't legally have. Where's the outcry about the attacks on democracy and the rule of law?
You obviously haven’t been watching the hearings. if you have and still believe that, then you’ve been completely blinded by your ideology. He and anyone who still supports him is welcome to go in and testify under oath to the committee. Even his closest associates and family know that he is guilty. No one will vouch for him under oath.
"Also while we are on the subject, does any rational person really believe the country was about to be overthrown by a dazed and confused guy dressed up in a combination costume of Flintstone's water buffalo night and a drunken NFL Patriots fan? "
Pretend that the 1/6 protesters marched, not on Congress but on the NSA or the CIA.
They would have been shot at as soon as they came in close, and nobody would have bothered waiting for an order to open fire.
"I literally laid on the couch for a year drinking a bottle of wine." Wow, a bottle sometimes lasts me two nights, but a whole year! I wish I could drink that responsibly. :)
Spot on! It's not that trump is so good, it's that the democratic party in so many ways is even worse. There's no labor party in the entire Western world anymore. The coming freezing in the dark recession in Europe May put enough people in the streets to end the neoliberalism agenda. American's gun's but no cojones and no organizational abilities so I expect nothing from them engaged in the culture war's forever.
I’m positive that lots and lots of ‘smart’ people showed the ‘leaders’ of Sri Lanka plenty of models and graphs and projections ‘proving’ how great things would be if the country beat the rest of the world to the punch and jumped on the organic farming bandwagon. And I’m sure those same ‘experts’ spent more than a little time fawning over Sri Lanka’s high ESG score as if it were something tangible.
But ultimately, the bullshitter’s bullshit is exposed — typically via high-speed collision with reality. The real world never seems to conform to the promise of the computer model, and things go disastrously wrong. Lofty promises are replaced with grim realities, and imaginary fortunes vanish to reveal desolate grocery shelves. When this happens, an angry people rise up and withdraw their consent to be governed.
I went to the Netherlands and I didn't see massive pollution anywhere. Where is your evidence that any of this exists, except in your mind. If you think that crushing farmers and making people poor and starving them is going to be good for your cause, you might want to think again. The green myth is finally collapsing. People like you should not be in any position to force changes that are poorly thought out and lead to poverty and starvation. Case #1 is Sri Lanka. Case #2 may be Germany. You want your hometown to be Case #3? Where you can't get food or energy or transportation? We should force people like you to live off the grid and have to hunt for your food and chop wood for food. Your type is dangerous for society. Germany should never have let a petulant uneducated teenager to define their energy policy. Now they will pay.
If the choice is between pollution and factory farming and starvation. I choose the former. But that is not the choice. You pray to a false god.
Are you in favor of starving? Your children starving? Some regulation is good. But the enviros are not serving the environment but rather an anti human political agenda to supposedly save the planet.
A scientist said the ocean is much healthier than 30 years ago but CBS morning cut him off when he said that.(They we’re talking about sharks.) I never thought I’d see a bald eagle here in the Midwest but they are a common sight.
She's willing to starve actual people today in the hope that she can save somebody from starving in the future, when the earth is warmer and we can grow food on more of its surface.
That scientist was lying as is anyone who says things are less than catastrophic. We are about five years away from complete and unavoidable absolute collapse of the ecosystem for the entire planet. My children probably WILL starve and anyone who isn’t in paralyzing panic right now is a damned fool.
There is no science anywhere supporting "complete and unavoidable absolute collapse of the ecosystem for the entire planet" in 5 years or 100 years. Read the IPCC detailed reports, rather than banking on AOC and politicians hell bent on evoking, "paralyzing panic right now." You are likely in the same group panicking over a surge in cases of a now cold-level pandemic virus. They are working you and you cower in fear.
They’ve been saying that since the 70’s. Back then it was an ice age. There are so many predictions of catastrophic collapse in my lifetime that have never happened. The fact that scientist was censored tells me he was saying something that doesn’t fit the narrative. The fact scientists who disagree with the catastrophe model are censored leads me to believe they are onto something. True science thrives of disagreement and debate, not a monoculture of narrative. They said we’d starve in the 70’s. It didn’t happen. People may starve because of these needless regulations. Look at Sri Lanka. Look at the Netherlands. All this fear is about controlling us, not helping the environment.
"American's gun's but no cojones and no organizational abilities"
I am sorry to say that you called this one. It's a bummer.
In the American 2A culture, we arm up precisely because we lack trust in our fellow citizens and especially the federal government. It's nice to have a bunker to sit on in case shit goes south, but it also gets lonely sitting on a bunker.
The democratic party isn't even worse. But they need to step up. Or we need a new party. Republican Party imploded. Dems are a bunch of do-nothings. SOS. We need help. And not looney conspiracy theory nonsense.
They're a tag team. Grit and Tory, it's the same story. No western country to my knowledge is getting better for the majority of it's people. China has brought literally hundreds of millions out of poverty in a couple of generations and has by far the largest "real" economy in the world and the improvements keep coming. Russia since President Putin, ~20 year's has ended the hell imposed on their people by western shock doctrine capitalism and it was continuing to improve before the war. IMHO we are in a seismic change from western hegemonic extractive rentier capitalism led by the chief hegemon usa to a multi polar much more equal, less exploitive societies. Needless to say, the hegemonic exploiters ain't Goin down without a fight and this is only the beginning.
Well said, Sasha. There seems to be something insidious going on here, as Matt suggests. It's like it's being done intentionally to ramp up Trump. If it wasn't already in use, we'd be thinking that 'Trumped-up' was invented to describe this situation. I think the oligarchs are playing both sides of the chessboard and they intend to keep us ricocheting off the bumpers (sorry for the mixed metaphor). He is the Great Set-Up to the Great Reset. We're gearing up for round two.
"In chasing Trump, they've destroyed themselves. There is very little left of them. "
They had to chase Trump because he was opposed to every major power player inside the MIC and the beltway.
The dems were given the chance to inherit the support of the MIC, the neocons, the intel agencies, about a 3rd of GOP congresspersons, the elite billionaires, silicon valley, globalists and many more. All they had to do was turn their back on labor and the religious right ( a shift already well underway under Obama and within the Clinton campaign) and skate to a permanent strangle hold on power. The one unifying theme that drew all ths together and galvanized their colorful base was the resistance or never trump.
They became the MOAR WOAR party, the darling of the intel community they had never trusted, in league with big bizness and cozy with all the biggest banksters. It was a once in a lifetime political bonanza. They just performed like amatuers and clowns and dropped the ball on lots and lots of mainstream issues while pandering to the excesses of the socially far left wing of their base, to the detriment of all else.
They were given all the power, the US was finally a one party state and the dems blew it.
Personally I think by design. Nobody who is anybody really wants to destroy the illusion of democracy the two party state provides. And the powerful who stood opposed to Trump like to see him and his base humiliated/deemed domestic terror threats etc so that nobody EVER thinks about hijacking either of the parties to run as an oppostion candidate again.
I feel there needs to be a distinction made between your average Joe Democrat (okay maybe Seth or Peter or James) and the DNC. Democrats wanted Bernie Sanders so the DNC took him down. They do all kinds of studies on how to manipulate their base. In terms of the vaccine, I talk about some in my episode Manufacturing Contempt.
And what's generally used to twist their thinking is their white guilt and their compassion--and I'm not saying they have more of the latter than the Republicans. Republicans are being manipulated too and it's an open question of whether Trump is part of it, with or without his knowledge. You're absolutely right about the Dems getting in bed with everyone they'd formerly been against--big intel, big pharma, big banks, high tech censorship, the FBI & CIA. How could they have made that about-face without Trump? The lockdowns & vaccines & Fauci-worship never would have worked without this double-play.
I agree with you about what happened but if we want to change it, I think it's important to analyze how and why.
i hear you about needing a distinction. I am sure that remnants of the anti war left still vote democrat. If you want to discuss solutions and change I am all ears.
Oh now you're really speaking my language! My research is on economic small-scale sovereignty. I don't think that any form of government works for 100's of millions to a billion people. And I look at politics as the determination of policies, not the 'personalitics' that lets us be lazy and not think through WHAT we want rather than WHO we want.
No serious economic change can be described in a soundbite but I'll link one of my episodes that lays the foundation called Build a New Model. And I'll link my book, How to Dismantle an Empire.
Have you ever actually read anything by Steve Bannon? Listened to any of his speeches or comments? In what alternate universe is he actually good on anything?
Further, all Trump did when Republicans controlled the government was pass a massive upper class tax cut and arrest Mexican children. What makes you think he'll do anything else if gets back in office?
And didn't start any wars. And presided over successful peace talks in the Middle East. And oversaw an economy leaps and bounds ahead of what we're in right now.
Biden is printing money and handing it to upper class, politically connected groups. And he will continue to do so by his own admission.
"And oversaw an economy leaps and bounds ahead of what we're in right now."
Not really.
Biden's economy (to the degree a US president really can have much of an effect on the economy versus secular economic trends) is about as good, if not a touch better, than Trump's was at the end of his term.
We have a combination of high inflation (the multi-decade highs began in the last few months of Trump's term) and very low unemployment. The monthly job gains have been slightly better since Biden's inauguration than they were late in the Trump regime.
However, just like Trump's 'miracle economy' was actually just a continuation of the trends already present in the late Obama years, (when unemployment was already low and the job market was already heating up) Biden's economy is just a continuation of the trend we saw in the late Trump years.
That's because the US economy's performance is mostly determined by factors outside of the president's control. They can tweak around the edges using policy levers, but they don't have the kind of power that allows for the kind of radical actions that would actually change trends being driven by the underlying global economic fundamentals. The latter is both the advantage and disadvantage of dictatorships, monarchies, and other systems with powerful, centralized, top-down control structures.
Yes. And, having spent a fair amount of time in China, with an extremely powerful centralized top-down control structure...China is pretty fucked up right now. So, economies work in ways that news media cannot describe or keep up with.
Yeah, this response is pretty typical--"I'm not going to provide any specifics, cite any numbers, or generally address what you're saying but 'everybody knows' the economy is [horrible/awesome/whatever] and you're a dumb-dumb if you don't agree"
It's always telling in these generic evaluations that the respondent is usually asserting that the economy went from 'amazing' to 'awful' the moment a politician they don't like got elected, or from 'terrible' to 'awesome' in the opposite case.
Somehow it always turns out the numbers don't support this politically-driven narrative. For example:
...the latter clearly showing that the inflationary surge was well underway before Biden took office.
So, things actually didn't change dramatically after Biden got elected. We're just seeing the continuation of pre-existing trends. But politics makes people stupid.
This is exactly what I'm talking about. You're tying yourself in knots trying to disprove the reality of people living in the real world. Like Biden bragging about how many jobs he created while no mentioning that it was illegal to go to work through 2020.
Keep talking, you've almost convinced everybody!!!
Agreed. But granting that Presidents do not control monetary policy, do you deny that Biden's cash from copters and his shutting down of oil in this country have been major contributors to the stagflation? Do you deny the historic accomplishment of the Abraham accords, which even Biden praises while he undercuts them by cozying up to Iran?
Thank God for Joe Manchin or it would be even worse.
All tax cuts are upper class because they are practically the only people paying taxes.
The top 1% pay 27% of taxes more or less. Sounds unfair when they control 99% of the wealth the left says (I have heard those exact words). Except the don't, they control about 30% of the wealth.
The bottom 50% meanwhile are net takers from the tax coffers.
I am actually in alignment with Matt about a lot of his economic leftist positions (though not others), but rabble rousing about "tax cuts for the rich" is just silly. The rich are the ones who pay the taxes! Most tax cuts will disproportionately benefit them unless very narrowly focused.
Sorry the facts upset you. yes the rich should pay far more than the rest of us, and as my comment pointed out if you can read, they do.
With fully over a quarter of the bill covered by the top 1%.
I would crack down quite a bit on Wall Street. No more bank bailouts, maybe some sort of transaction tax.
I am actually pro some form of wealth tax, though that would be tricky to implement. probably easiest to implement as a death/inheritance tax, but there are other ways. Combine that with closing huge portions of the tax loopholes and instruments (trusts and such) that the wealthy use to hide their income and wealth from taxation.
Generally lower rates, more consistently/simply enforced. For both corporations, and individuals.
I am not a big fan of the advertising industry, and think it mostly creates want and suffering that doesn't need to be there, so I would probably create a whole apparatus around heavily regulating that.
Outlaw a bunch of risky/predatory lending products.
More protectionism/regulation on imports so companies aren't just exporting jobs/pollution/suffering to other jurisdictions.
A death/inheritance tax would probably either cause massive civil unrest or a civil war. I am not kidding. There are a lot of ranchers, farmers, and other poor people who have little money but highly valuable land that has been in their family for generations. You will not be able to convince them that this will really be targeted at the super wealthy and not a sneaky way for the government to take their land and sell it to corporations (honestly, they are probably right). So, my suggestion is to come up with something else, because believe me when I say, many of them will literally kill to protect their land.
I think eliminating the “step up” loophole for inherited equities would be accepted. How can you really complain that Mom’s 200% stock appreciation gain should be erased when she dies? Let the heirs pay the 15% capital gains tax as they keep the other 85% when they sell.
You are right that land is probably the biggest single obstacle to a wealth tax. For exactly the reasons you discuss. Lots of otherwise quite rich people who keep all that wealth tied up in land and don't have the liquid resources to pay taxes on it.
Agricultural residence exemption. If the land is a) farmed, and b) the inheritor actually lives there, then they get an exception to the inheritance tax.
Concur but the people who disagree with you are actually stupider than they sound and they do not read anything that does not conform to their ideas. Yes the Republicans like to cut taxes. It’s the only thing they actually want to do. And the effects are marginal at best. But while the obvious fact is that high earners are the only one who pay taxes the elephant in the room is they do not represent the truly rich. People who are rich got their money through equity not income. They don’t pay income taxes because their income is nominal. I think Buffet's salary is $150k a year. I don’t like Sen warren but at least she’s right that if you want to tax the rich, you have to tax wealth not income. And what a cluster that would be
LOL, have you bothered to look at Trump's donors? Or the ones funding GOP candidates? A cursory glance would instruct you that the right's just as in bed with the rich elites:
The DNC is on the take from tech and finance oligarchs; the GOP (and, yes, Trump) is on the take from weapon manufacturers and oil/gas/[insert natural resource] oligarchs. And BOTH parties take huge contributions from military contractors.
In essence, you can view the two parties as part of a factional struggle between different groups of rich elites. To the extent that either party and their political figureheads (Trump among them) help the 'little people', it is to shore up their advantage in this struggle. Basically, they must ensure the people are A.) divided along cultural issues that drive them to allegiance with their faction, and B.) given just enough to live on and not complain, so that said people do not turn on them.
It works okay if the society they are attempting to divide retains a middle class; it stops working when the 'buffer' the middle class provides disappears. The US is not there yet, but we could be on our way if we don't manage our inevitable imperial decline properly.
Progressives must reckon with the fact that 74 million people — almost a third of whom came from households making under $50,000—voted for him.
While most voters rank the economy as one of their most important issues, 84% of Trump voters rated the economy as “very important” in 2020, compared to Biden supporters’ 66% cause They have no concept of money.
It was Democrats who CREATED the Cultural divide. DEMOCRATS ARE LOSING THE CULTURE WARS
He gave us three, count them, three!!, fine new Justices of the Supreme Court that actually believe in the constitution as written We are finally seeing that justice is returning to our highest court and for that I will be eternally grateful.
What happens to those of us caught in the flames when you 'burn it all down?" What o you plan to build afterward, and why do you think what follows won't be worse?
put the bad guys on the run for the rest of their lives, get rid of the national bank, restore sound money and renew the constitution to enumerate more of our natural rights......theres a lot to do. if you get burned up, it means you were profiting from a corrupt system. if you cant survive, maybe you shouldn't.
and fyi, the federal reserve is the largest, privately owned banking cartel in the world. thay dont regulat banking. they arebthe prime source of inflation in the world, and the worlds most prolific counterfeiters.
1. eliminate fractional reserve banking. bankers caught doing it go to prison. 2. sound money cant be created from nothing, i.e counterfeited bu govt or a private banking cartel.
3. rights of property, contract, and freedom of association.
Thank you. I have no patience anymore for Keyboard Kastros proclaiming the Revolution from their iPhones. Get to work organizing an Amazon warehouse or some other useful activity or get out of the way.
George Miller answered all of these questions with his MAD MAX quadrilogy. We drive around the desert looking for gas. When people don't want to give us their gas, we kill them and take it. When we're out of gas we're out of gas.
Boy that reduction in SALT deductions sure was a boon to the rich folks, has to be as I’ve heard both Chuck S. and Aunt Nan arguing for some level of repeal
You are way off base with this comment. Many changes happened under Trump. Changes that benefit the working class. For example, every First World country has parental leave, giving parents an income during the child's first year so one parent can stay home. Trump passed 3-months for government workers. Not everyone but a start. Just search and you'll find 30-40 more (e.g., drug pricing, renegotiated trade agreements, and increasing the basic personal exemption along with decreasing tax rates for those earning under 50K).
“Massive upper class tax cut”? Karen, it’s clear you haven’t analyzed reams of available data on this that clearly shows otherwise. You also clearly have no idea what’s going on at the border. In addition, Americans overwhelmingly want and have every right to manage who can immigrate to our country and under what circumstances. I’m not even a Trump fan, but you need to broaden your sources of information. You’re living in an echo chamber of falsehoods. Come out for some fresh air.
OK, time to get back to the "massive upper class tax cut" remark. In the 2017 Act, tax brackets declined for 5 of 7 brackets, declining about 3% for the top 3 brackets and 11.5% for the 4 lower tax brackets. From 2017-2019 incomes grew 14.7% for the top bracket and 15.3% for the lowest bracket. Employment in those 2 years after the new law added 4.3m jobs, approximately. From passage to this year, Federal tax receipts grew 22.3%. Since the rich pay most of the taxes (the top 1% pay 39% of all federal income tax, the bottom 50% pay about 4%), that doesn't sound like a tax cut. What did those nasty corporations do with all their loot? CAPEX grew 33.5% over that period and average hourly earnings rose 16.3%.
Moving on to more subtle things, the mortgage interest tax deduction was lowered to $750k. Does that penalize the poor? No, but it does the rich. So does the SALT cap - that's had a dramatic impact on the well to do, though New York has crafted a workaround which California is copying, so the rich found a loophole around that one. Doubling the standard deduction benefits lower earners, though the loss of the personal exemption will impact families with many kids. It doesn't impact the rich, who itemize. Raising the AMT threshold (they should have raised it more) helps the middle class but does nothing for the rich, who are still subject to it. Doubling the child tax care credit especially helps poor families, thought it shouldn't have been extended to higher earners - a needless giveaway.
There are some other things you might not know. Child tax credits don't count as income when you're calculating income. Neither do most transfer payments like SNAP, welfare, EBT, etc. Those all have immediate real value, but they're not counted as income. If you factor those in, the Gini Coefficient kind of collapses. In the top quintile, there is an average of 2 earners - in the bottom quintile, there is an average of .4 earners per household, i.e. 60% don't work at all. The ratio of income from highest to lowest quintile drops from 17.4x to 3.5x when you compare income per earner rather than per household. In the top quintile, 77% are married households, vs. 17% in the bottom fifth. Education levels are also much lower in the bottom quintile (want to talk about public school education?) and they skew younger as well and are earlier in their careers. These fifths are not static either: 70% of Americans will be in the top quintile at some point in their lives. I've been in all 5, and you may have as well. So those are some real world facts about the "massive upper class tax cut".
I live in Texas and speak decent Spanish. I talk weekly with people who actually live on the border. Your side is LYING. There is no ‘border crisis.’ There are migrants fleeing cartels funded by American right-wingers and drug users, but no ‘invasion.’ I have read the data on the tax cuts: they only benefit the wealthy especially if one accounts for the elimination of services that benefit all of us that result from them.
Let us not forget that the Democrats completely supported the CARES act.
This Red v Blue argument is becoming unbelievably stupid and yet we spin and spin and spin trying to convince one another that the parties really are different. I would think after the complete betrayal of the Democratic Party to support a "woman's right to choose" that this STUPID debate over the "lesser of two evils" would have evaporated by now.
I don't have an answer and that appalls me more than I can say. I just know that we're all being scammed and until we recognize the fraud we will continue to be scammed.
How did the Dems betray women? The Republicans want 10-year-olds* to deliver babies while the Dems discuss tactics yet you don’t see aby differences between the two parties??
*It is not necessary to modify ‘pregnant 10-year-old’ with the phrase ‘rape victim’ because rape is the only way anyone under age 17 gets pregnant. No one still in high school should have sex or anything vaguely like sex. They’re too young to understand, and have always been too young. The existence of ANY marriages between or births to teenagers is a harsh indictment of any society where such things occur.
Sure the Democrats are the "lesser of two evils", that has been obvious for decades. But what have they done to legislate legal abortion? Nothing. All they do is fund-raise off of the issue. When it comes time to appoint a new supreme court justice, they let the Republicans have their way. Pelosi redirected Democratic campaign funds to pro-life candidates over the progressive candidates.
That some women don't see this fraud is heart breaking.
Trump eliminated lots of regulations that freed up the economy- Biden subsequently negated these actions but look where we are now - floating into a recession in the face of steamy inflation brought on by Democrat spending…
Anything Trump did was just around the edges or was for the benefit of his class. Just exactly what Biden is doing. The "little people" gain nothing or almost nothing as different segments are played-off against one another.
Unless you can convince me that Trump would have avoided the Ukraine war, there is no way you can convince me that we still wouldn't be going into recession. It isn't Democratic Spending alone that causes recessions. The US was well on its way into recession long before Trump left office.
Aaron Good in one of his interviews with Ben Norton, brought up Zemurray to bolster his thesis that America is, and has always been, run by criminals.
Often, discussions here get bogged down into a useless debate over which crook is less crooked, and that is solely because of one's naiveté or because certain actions might benefit his "cause" (very limited cause) in some very marginal way.
When politicians’, both Democrats and Republicans, only motivation is to make themselves and their wealthy donors wealthier, why should they “offer something better”? It’s become pretty clear (to me, at least) that that’s all they care about. What other explanation could there be? Neither party actually does anything meaningful for the people they supposedly represent. Just look at the 37 billion dollar increase in the defense budget that was passed… yesterday? Was it yesterday or two days ago? That’s 37 billion more dollars on top of the 803 billion dollars that defense contractors were already getting. And that’s fucking insane. We can’t get healthcare done, but we can sure as fuck give a shitload more money to the defense industry, which donates tons of money to the people “running” this country.
The January 6 hearings, like the Benghazi hearings and countless other hearings before, are just political theatre, with no real goal other than to make sure some dipshit Congressperson or Senator gets their sound bite played on tv later that night. Meanwhile, the world is burning, everybody’s broke, health insurance premiums (if you even have health insurance) are skyhigh, prescription drugs are unaffordable, grocery store shelves are still empty etc etc etc etc etc.
I don’t give a FUCK about the January 6 hearings. And I’m not sure why anybody should or would. I don’t know who these hearings are supposed to appeal to, but it definitely isn’t me. I’m worried about the things that affect my life. I wish the people “in charge” were, too…
Eh, I dunno about that. I mean, one need look no further than the comments section of this very article to see that there are plenty of right-wingers/Trump supporters who are interested in the thing, even if they aren’t watching the actual hearings.
I mean, personally, I thought the Capitol riot was fucking awesome. When I heard it was happening, I actually went inside and watched it on tv for about a half-hour, which isn’t something I would ordinarily do. Obviously, the motivation for the riot was completely misguided (nobody stole any election, dumbasses), but honestly, we should all be rioting at the Capitol every fucking day. I don’t think we could be faulted for showing up and demanding that our elected representatives actually do something more than tax breaks for the wealthy and budget increases for the industries who donate to their campaigns. And if they won’t do that, we’re gonna tear y’all’s shit up.
The fact that these January 6 hearings are getting breathless wall-to-wall coverage and the fact that so MANY people are paying attention to that bullshit and getting all amped up and leaving comments… Meanwhile, the defense budget is almost a trillion dollars a year… I mean, I don’t give a fuck who beat whom with what on January 6, but I definitely do give a fuck about a trillion-dollar-a-year defense budget. I’ll for sure go riot over that.
No. Wr should be doing the hard, boring, girl-cootie work of organzing, voting, keeping schools functioning, all the stuff that spoiled brat boys of whatever age refuse to bothwr with in favor of riots and vandalism. All riots get you is DEAD. Do something that makes a real difference. It won’t look anything like your idiot Mad Max fantasies.
I’ve been doing that. For 30 fucking years. My mom did that for 60+ years. My mom was one of the most hardcore activist/organizers I’ve ever known. Where’d that get her? Where has my own “organizing, voting” gotten me? Where has it gotten you? Nothing’s changed. In fact, it’s gotten worse, so…
You are correct. That's why most discussion is pointless. What seems like a policy failure to outsiders is a success if the people making the policy profit from it.
I mean, seriously, what is it that they’re going to accomplish with that extra 37 billion that they couldn’t accomplish with the 803 billion they were already getting? If 803 BILLION fucking dollars isn’t enough, maybe it’s time for a reckoning.
It’s not a “real-deal Soviet-style show trial.” Like, at all. Because those Soviet trials always ended up with somebody paying a price (usually with their lives or, barring that, the gulag). These January 6 hearings are like every other congressional hearing before it: full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
I was just thinking yesterday about how they dragged Zuckerberg and various other Big Tech executives into Congress for hearings a while back. I’d actually forgotten about it. But that was their chance to break up the big tech monopolies. And they didn’t do shit. Like, why did they even bother? What was the point? When was the last time ANY of these hearings, ever, ended up with any kind of decisive action? Never. It’s all just political theatre that serves no purpose whatsoever.
People saying things like,”If they can do this to Trump, they can do it to anybody,” just makes me laugh. What’re “they” doing, really? Besides grandstanding, I mean? That’s kinda the whole point of the article on which we’re commenting right now, actually, isn’t it? I mean, they either “have” something on Trump or they don’t; so far, it seems like they don’t, so why the fuck are they even bothering with any of this? The obvious answer is to score political points. With whom, I have no idea, but the whole thing is a fucking joke. It’s always a fucking joke. Quit wasting our time and go do your fucking job.
True point, the Stalinist show trials usually had a harsher outcome than the J6 farce likely will have. It is a show trial in the court of public opinion, to wage war on the political opponents of the Democrat party and to keep on board those possible backsliding Democrats who need to be distracted lest they notice $6/gal gas (it is in CA) and 8% inflation. Except for a few true believers (some of whom are on this site), I don't think it is going to work.
But it is wrong to see it entirely unconnected to the apparatus of state. Sure, they don't "have" anything on Trump, but the harassment continues, in various ways, and increasingly shamelessly, in spite of the lack of evidence. So yeah, if that can happen to an ex-president, it can happen to anyone. Not good.
But what’s really happening? I honestly haven’t been paying too much attention, but I am aware of the fact that former members of the Trump administration have been subpoenaed and they’ve just blown them off. And faced no consequences, either. Or am I wrong about that? Like I said, I haven’t been paying any attention to it, simply because I know nothing will come of it. But is it really “harassment” if you get subpoenaed and blow it off and you face no consequences? That, to me, perfectly illustrates that nobody involved in this thing is serious about any of it.
The thing that blows my mind is, like, surely the politicians who decided,”Okay, we need to have hearings about January 6,” were aware of all of the “evidence” before deciding on something as serious (and I use the word “serious” VERY loosely haha) as a Congressional hearing. Which means they knew they didn’t really have anything on him. So, again, why the fuck are they doing this? That’s a rhetorical question, I know the answer.
The “$6 gallon of gas” thing is whatever. I live in LA, it’s crazy, but I don’t think that really has anything to do with Biden in the White House (and I own a Tesla haha); I’m sure it’d be $6 a gallon no matter who was president. And the inflation thing really has nothing to do with Biden, either; that’s just a natural result of lowering the inflation rates for what seems like decades now. At some point, there has to be a correction.
But yeah, I dunno. I’m pretty sick of everything, though haha. And if anybody at all “pays a price” as a result of these ridiculous January 6 hearings, you know it’s gonna be some low-level nobody. They don’t have any intention of prosecuting anybody, even IF somebody did something illegal. It’s the same as the the congressional response to the housing crisis in 2008/9. Nobody went to prison, despite there being overwhelming evidence of criminal misconduct. If they didn’t prosecute anybody then, they surely aren’t going to prosecute anybody now. And so I ask again: what is the fucking point?
That’s also a rhetorical question haha. This is no different than the Benghazi hearings or any of the other asinine, waste-of-time Congressional hearings that we’ve suffered through in our lifetimes.
Thanks for your reply. A couple of points: first, yes, if armed members of the FBI comes to your house at dawn and lead you off in shackles, and then force you to incur hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees in defending yourself against bogus charges (as seems to happen regularly) then yeah, that's harassment with consequences. They don't have to send you to jail to punish you. Check with General Flynn about this.
Second point: gas would be nowhere near this high if Trump, not Biden, were president, Biden promised to end fossil fuel use numerous times during the campaign, including in the debates. It's basic to the "climate change" agenda. So you're fooling yourself if you think these high prices are not mostly the result of Biden's policies. Supply disruptions associated with the war in Ukraine added to the cost, but then again, commentators across the political spectrum have acknowledged (grudgingly in some cases) that if Trump were still president, their would have been no war in Ukraine.
But I certainly take your main point: that congressional hearings are an asinine waste of time and money. On that we agree.
Biden - or any other president - might not have the ability to directly alter gas prices, but he certainly sets the tone for industry. His repeated promise to put fossil fuel companies out of business has certainly led oil companies to avoid crucial investment in refining capability, which is one of the primary drivers of gas and diesel prices at the moment. The business literally runs on futures, and Biden and his party have made it clear to the oil companies that he will actively see to it their future is very bleak indeed. This is the essence of green - driving the price of fossil fuels up in order to decrease demand for them. Or as Judge Judy would put it, don't piss on my leg and tell me that it's raining.
I've always said America would make every mistake the rest of the world has ever made (wars, inflations, depressions, pogroms, waste, coups, etc) but that we would do it in a uniquely American way.
The sad thing is that the justice dept and congress can use taxpayer dollars to persue this forever - the people they destroy have to find a way to pay their own legal bills - it seems unfair that they can persue this persecution forever without any regard for how that money could be better spent for the people - and also without any regard for the financial ruin of people being targeted
"I weep for the state of mainstream journalism - they'll never have to guts to write anything like this."
Cry me a river. Their vendetta against the Bad Orange Man revealed to more people what anyone who has studied the history of American journalism is aware of: the corporate press has always been a gaggle of liars-for-hire, and always has been, with a few renegade outliers with literary aspirations (and talent) that just illustrate the generality.
Taibbi's comment on the character of rank-and-file Democrats applies in spades to the straight press corps, which is now merely the PR wing of the Democratic Party.
I think the mistake your making is thinking the press is now "now merely the PR wing of the Democratic Party".
I'm old enough to remember them eating out of GWB's hand, happily serving as stenographers to absolutely transparent propaganda.
Look at them now, calling to Liz Cheney to run as a Democrat.
Trump was not part of the club, which is why they hate him. The press now, as always, grovels before power. Iran-Contra, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan - they shipped for all of it.
Yes. They do suck up to power. Only now it seems like the press (generally speaking) is playing some sort of end-game since it went belly-up over Trump, as if they're going all-in for the current leftist cant. I see nothing but sympathy for everyone on the left and for the forces of globalization, but not for Dementia Joe, who they are circling now that he's been steadily bleeding out into the water, now that his absolute unfitness for office becomes apparent to everyone.
Again, we seem to have different ideas on what "the left" is.
If they don't want to raise taxes on the wealthy, I don't consider them to be on the left.
If they cheerlead for the for-profit military industrial complex without exception, they are not on the left.
If they think Congress should be able to insider trade with impunity, they are not on the left.
I was taught in high school that the "The Left" or pure socialism means that the means of production should be owned collectively; "The Right" means the means of production are privately owned.
When was the last time you saw a newspaper be critical of giving publicly owned land/resources to a private interest?
Did they write about it as much as they try and gin up support to invade Ukraine?
I guess I should say that I don't GAF about cultural issues, which generally seem to cause a lot of people to vote against their own economic interests to combat things they will never have a meaningful impact on their lives. Economics is all that matters.
One may not like the hearings, but I don't understand the 'government cancel culture' and 'no due process' claim; it IS a PUBLIC hearing, with witnesses, with the OPPORTUNITY for trump or anyone else to come and testify or provide evidence or to refute evidence. It is televised, and as far as I know, NO ONE has been denied an opportunity to come and appear before the entire US. Being able to say whatever you want on national TV is the opposite of cancel culture/no due process.
I've heard the opposite -- that people have offered to testify but have been denied. They have been selective about the testimony they've decided to show. Not only that, they have pressured many of those testifying to deliver the testimony they wanted. We all have reason to be skeptical. Cancel culture is about convicting people in the court of public opinion. That means a lack of due process, which guarantees the presumption of innocence and a fair defense. That is not what this is designed to do. It was designed to convict Trump and all of his supporters in the court of public opinion. Anyone canceled has a right to state their case - but it doesn't matter because powerful forces have decided to punish them regardless. They are simply disappeared out of the mainstream. No, it isn't being put in a gulag but it is wrong regardless IMO.
I am not aware of people having been denied the ability to testify. As for pressure on witnesses to speak other than the facts; I would think those with verifiable refutations would be all over the news. I have not seen that. I would agree the hearings appear one sided, but then again by definition they will appear biased. If the purpose of the hearings are to delve into trumps activities, then it IS designed to gather evidence (of wrongdoing usually). That does not mean it's 'cancel culture'. I don't agree there is no due process. It's a hearing, under the same rules of hearings in the past. Different than a trial. I can't agree where you get the idea it's designed to convict trumps 'supporters' in the 'court of public opinion'. I would distinguish between trump supporters and those attacking the Capital (so yes, it is designed to go after 'them'). As for the hearing being designed to go after trump...well yes it is...because why have a hearing unless there is a reasonable belief that some illegal act has been committed. Again, it's not a trial with trial rules. At any rate...I AGREE with you that it's always good to be skeptical! I am...but I'm not of the opinion that this hearing...this PARTICULAR hearing is a sham, or a witch hunt, or illegitimate, or a charade. I have not seen anything to support these claims accept that responders believe it to be so...and that's an opinion, like mine.
brilliant analysis; only thing missing is to put Vince Foster on the witness stand. by your reasoning the hearing would be 'legitimate' if Pelosi and Epps were witnesses....please brush up on what constitutes a congressional hearing...you can find info at govinfo.gov
No, it's already illegitimate because there is no representation of the other side of the story and there is another side of the story. They are only asking questions and offering testimony that bolsters their prosecution case against Trump. Not to mention, a 100% complicit media casting Trump and his supporters already as not just guilty "insurrectionists" but racists on top of that. How dangerous this is for so-called Democracy. Look at Twitter or any major news outlet - they are not even aware that there is another way to tell this story. It's horrifying.
And by the way: if we ever do get Pelosi on the stand, maybe we can ask her about her hubby's stock trades...speaking of corruption...
I'll say it again: I'm far less concerned with 500 aging rednecks rampaging through the halls of Congress than I am about the thousands of paid lobbyists that rampage through those halls, mostly unreported, on a daily basis. That, ladies and gentlemen, is the real threat to our "democracy." Don't let Liz Cheney, etc., tell you otherwise.
You gotta be kidding...this is not a "hearing," it is a televised kangaroo court ostensibly to "get to the bottom" of what happened on J6, but in reality designed to get Trump. Hey, you were the one who suggested that it was a full and fair proceeding...if so, why isn't Pelosi on the stand?
And, just in case you don't know, Vince Foster is dead, and Pelosi and Epps are alive. But funny you would bring up his name.
It is a show trial. The kangaroo court itself is responsible for choosing witnesses to testify about a riot they want us to believe was a deliberately planned "insurrection," and no testimony has proven anything but the extent and depth of irrational hatred for the Bad Orange Man.
No cross examination? No Republican appointees? (Pelosi rejected the names given her by the Republicans and instead picked the two most anti-Trump Republicans.) The whole thing is a charade.
yes, Pelosi did reject most of the names (I would have loved to have the Jim Jordan on) ...as for charade that's an opinion...just like mine. As for 'Cross examination'...brush up on what a hearing is.
Trump's appeal comes from his ability to punch the left square in the mouth and get away with it. The preening, obnoxious, and judgmental Borg consisting of the Professional Left, media and politicians are a pretty off-putting bunch. Especially when they consider you un-American or illogical for disliking them.
Just because Trump is not cut out to be a world leader doesn't mean it isn't delicious if he makes fun of Brian Stelter or Elizabeth Warren.
Cut out to be a world leader????? You have got to be kidding. Take a look around and then look through history. Which of the sainted ones are you referring to? The leader is the one who has people follow him and sometimes he rises from the ashes and history makes judgements than no one could foresee. Trump was a success because he fought his enemies for 4 long yrs and also turned the country around and had it moving in the right direction much like Reagan did in the 80's.
Yeah well, the bar was rather low. Just look at the last twenty years. He somehow managed to beat out a destructive neocon whose granddaddy was involved in a literal fascist coup attempt (good old Prescott) and a cult of personality neoliberal who got elected by decrying all of the horrible things from his predecessor and then went and expanded them while doing everything he could to shred the Constitution. The last American president I truly respected was Eisenhower. As much as I want a president of principles, liberty, character, and intelligence, candidates tend to be in rather short supply.
In 2016 I thought that Trump was the only Republican that Hillary could beat, but it turned out that Hillary was the only Democrat that Trump could beat.
That’s the entire problem, too. The democrats refuse to say that that is what was true. They are still mad that the one person they saw as the weakest candidate beat the one person they wanted to force innocent voters to elect. Now. All they want is vengeance on voters. It’s not even about Trump. It’s about people that voted for Trump.
Hardly, I remember the clowns in the primaries that year. Sanders could have beat anyone else on the Republican ticket and I think Rubio could have taken Hillary without too much trouble (the thought of Rubio in the White House makes my skin crawl). The rest of them were always going to go down in flames. Look up some old articles from primary season. They are worth a laugh these days.
Don't get me started on Prescott Bush. One of these days I will retrieve Geronimo's skull from its unholy interment at the Yale campus and properly return it to his ancestors in the Chiricahuas.
You know one day I will learn to stop asking questions I really don't want to know the answer to but today is not that day. What did crazy old Prescott do this time?
Nobody who was not in the Skull & Bones Secret Society at Yale (alumni: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Skull_and_Bones_members) knows exactly what they do with what is left of Geronimo. What do children of the Eastern elite, inheriting -- not earning -- their power, do with the remains of a proud Western Native man who defied their authority? Cute things? Fun things?
I will note that Theodore Roosevelt invited Geronimo to ride at his inaugural parade. American history has its Geronimos, its Bull Mooses, and its Prescott Bushes.
I was just really depressed in 2004 when I did not have the option of voting for a guy for President who wasn't in Skull & Bones.
I like Ike too, but the legacy and blowback of the Dulles Brothers ( State Dept and CIA ) foreign policy ( coups etc. ) are a nasty stain on this country.
Remember at the time, the legacy of Lenin, Stalin, and the NKVD was fresh in everyone's minds. The Soviet Union was a lot more ruthless than they would be in the later parts of the Cold War. Don't forget about their coups and aftermaths in places like Lithuania just a few years earlier.
Two wrongs don’t make a right. We overthrew with false flags Mossagegh in Iran strictly because he wanted to nationalize Iranian oil. Their own resources. The British, what would become BP, and we didn’t like that, so we installed the Shah which led to the 1979 Revolution and the installation of a theocracy. Iran was a secular, educated, almost “Western” democracy before we fucked that up. The Middle East never really recovered and we’re still experiencing the blowback today. Then there’s Guatemala, and the rest of the Americas, etc…
Is it just an all around, “I hate the guy and everything he does “? That makes reasoning and thoughtful consideration to impossible. Therefore easy to ignore.
Yes it’s true. Now we have a POTUS with senile dementia (at the least) gearing up with killing people ( to the last Ukrainian), poking the Bear& messing with Taiwan. Makes no difference if it’s a donkey or elephant in the white mans house.
It is perhaps the misty soft-focus haze of memory, but to Reagan's credit he seemed to be able to *fake* not having senile dementia better than Biden does.
"Just because Trump is not cut out to be a world leader"
It's funny you would say that, given the progress Trump made in advancing Middle East peace, getting Communist China to back up, getting the NATO Euro-deadbeats to pay (some) of their obligations, opening a dialogue with Kim Jung Un, renegotiating NAFTA, etc. Not to mention warning Frau Merkel to get off Russian energy. fruitlessly as it happened, but at least he tried. Turns out, it's creepy Joe who is not "cut out to be a world leader."
Count me as someone who, at the outset of the Trump administration, expected little of Trump as a world leader, and was pleasantly surprised in this regard by the end of his term.
I know that the demonization of Trump is hard to resist, but we have to remain fair minded. But agreed, I am hoping Trump will pass the baton to DeSantis, who looks like the real deal to me.
The Borg is the Establishment, the MICIMATT, as Ray McGovern calls it. The rest of us go through austerity hell (which is ramping up, once again) to support these clowns who don't manufacture or innovate anything of value (which the US was good at 30 years ago).
When Hillary (and the Establishment) lost, her refusal to accept her loss (blaming it on Trump, the Russians, Jill Stein and Tulsi Gabbard, Wikileaks and Bernie Sanders, among many others) and the State Media's relentless "Bombshell! Bombshell! The walls are closing in!" showed just how unfair and broken our political system is. Trump is an insane clown, but the DC circus car is full of them. What will happen next in this surreal comedy? Will we see the GOP taking Congress and investigating Joe and Hunter for the duration of Biden's term? It was clear from the First Trump impeachment that the Intelligence Agencies are running (and ruining) our country. Puppet Ukraine was set up, first with the Orange Revolution (2005) and then with the Maidan Coup (2014); as Nuland said, the US had invested $5 billion just to provoke Russia, and they were not about to allow Trump to get in the way of their "consensus policies" as Vindman put it (after all, Trump was only the POTUS, in charge of foreign policy.) Prosecution/ persecution of Trump allowed a lot of bad precedents to be set. I suspect we will be seeing much more of this wasteful Kabuki theatre if and when the GOP takes Congress. And retaliates.
There are plenty of brains in DC and I have watched them fail us and this nation over and over. Sometimes it takes more than a brain and a nice personality. It takes guts and the ability to withstand the storm. Jimmy Carter was no dummy but he sure did make a mess of things. Truman was no genius but he knew where the buck stopped.
"Jimmy Carter was no dummy but he sure did make a mess of things."
Everybody likes to hate on Carter, but whoever got elected in '76 was fucked no matter what. If Reagan had gotten in 4 years earlier people would speak of him in the same scornful tone. That said, people seem to forget that Reagan's first term was pretty rocky -- the economy was pretty similar to what we're experiencing now.
He was a corporate solution to the Nixon/Ford problem, and it turned out Brezezinski and pols inside the administration were effective in multiple administrations and the ones in Carter administration that didn't go as far as some wanted in FP were replaced (see the October Surprise with Iran-Reagan)
Jimmy Carter wanted to pull all American troops off the 38th parallelDMZ, and when Brezhnev heard about this, he was like “That idiot is going to start a war!!! Tell him no!”
The story I heard about the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan is that Brezhnev was drunk and scrawled the basics of the plan on a cocktail napkin. Seems about right. The US invasion of Afghanistan, well...
Trump with work ethic is probably more accurate, nothing I have seen from DeSantis has demonstrated high intelligence (he's just less of a shitshow than Trump, but then again Trump is a hard personality out infotain).
Yes to everything you said, and I hope you're right about DeSantis. I want more of it, more of punching these vile cretins in the mouth, these people who mock and ridicule ordinary people and workers. They deserve so much worse, but I'll take what I can get.
Pretty much the whole woke program. The idea that there isn't much economic opportunity in this country or that all its problems fall at the feet of rich people and corporations (certainly many do, but hardly all). The generally reflexive anti-Americanism, anti-science/evidence and anti-tradition bent to much of the approved left discourse.
Massive blind eye/shoulder shrug to the ruination of the concept of censorship/free speech/independent press.
And generally a raft of pretty shitty and ineffective economic policies. I tend to agree that corporate dominance of the economy and rising inequality are problems our society should address. But mostly think the leftist solutions are pure garbage that will make everyone poorer and not help anyone.
You need to reform capitalism/market economics from a position of respect, because it is frankly the best tool in our economic toolbox. Fuck even the USSR knew that, Stalin and Lenin knew that (look up the NEP). So you can't have a bunch of childish 20 something "yay post-capitalism" morons running around setting your economic policy.
More free college for all, more $150k Art history degrees, and when the economy cannot find productive work for them it is General Mill's and Amazon's fault!
Our modern economics and political economy is in bad need of patching. But it just needs patching. So many on the left want to burn it down and replace it with stuff that clearly isn't going to work and is only appealing because it is easy answers and free money. until as we are seeing right now the inflation monster comes.
UBI? A joke, unless you are actually going to let the people who misuse it suffer and roll back the other programs.
Right on with all your comments up until UBI. It can't be "misused" it's your income. it's just using government money (yes much printed from thin air by Jerome) to directly benefit people as opposed to the current shit show of indirect benefits.
The problem with most government programs is if you work you lose them. If you pay people not to work they won't. UBI still incentivizes work.
"You need to reform capitalism/market economics from a position of respect, " YES!
1) If we give everyone a say $25k/year UBI, when someone spends that on booze and gambling, or fucking Amway are we still also going to have the other social safety net we are supposedly eliminating to provide the UBI? Because if we don't take away those other support structures it doesn't really get us anywhere. It is also ruinously expensive.
2) You are wildly underestimating how much it would disincentivize work. Anyone with experience raising even lightly spoiled teenagers into adulthood knows that providing even a child raised upper middle class, a lower middle class floor on their existence, or even a "poor" floor on their existence where they aren't in the street, incentivizes like 40% of them to never make anything of themselves.
Why get a job when I can smoke pot all day, play CoD and live in this ratty motel on my UBI? That type of behavior among people who would otherwise be productive members of society would skyrocket. And that is a very bad thing.
You take most people and kick them out into the world if they are say a college dropout, and make them work or be on the streets, and a huge portion of them will find a way to be at least a marginally productive member of society. Provide them a path where they they do not need to work to support themselves, and you are just entrenching a permanently non-working underclass. And let me tell you once someone hasn't held a job for 3-5 years, they don't get more employable they get less so. UBI is like begging to triple or quintuple the number of NEETs.
I think you need to calibrate the number so that "basic" is absolute basic. 25K is too much. 12K a year seems more reasonable. The idea is to give you a "net not a hammock"
One issue with the left is every lower class or person down on their luck is a "victim" and it's not their fault. To your point the reality is there are pieces of shit in society who don't want to do jack and good people who need a hand. UBI will enable pieces of shit to do more (less?) jack shit. But it will also give a leg up to the good people (essentially leveling the playing field with the upper classes who give "UBI" to their offspring in the form of help from Mom and Dad). The mental health dividend for the good people to have groceries covered at least would be huge. I am willing to accept the pot smoking COD players as I think the program would be a net benefit to society. There will be 100% propensity to consume and drive economic activity at least from the the layabouts.
We also need our "leaders" to stop blaming the man for everyone's ills and reenforcing personal responsibility and duty. "Ask not..." This "not your fault" framing is destructive and tragic for the US.
You may well be right here Martin and I may be wrong - I do think it is worth a try... We bailed out millionaire bankers in the GFC as Matt so effectively wrote about. Time to give the little guy a place at the trough.
The national dialogue has been captured by D.C. pay-to-play revolving door thugs paid to ignore the across the board installation of a Marxist commissariat and the intended world installation of a CCP/WEF style totalitarian financial feudalism. J6 makes us squirm in our seats because we know that it, like countless other political airballs is a sideshow distraction. When totalitarian financiers say that by 2060 "..you will own nothing and be happy.." they mean it. And it's the same grifting monkey. Access to an easily manipulated subsistence level labor pool and unfettered access to the exploitation of natural resources without responsibility or consequence.
I dislike the leftists who think that somehow they are entitiled to the hard earned money that I have earned. i dislike the leftist politicies that say an eagle egg is an eagle but a human egg is not a human. I dislike the leftist politicies that want me to buy into the insanity that you can mutilate your body and pretend you are a woman and force me to go along with your clear insanity.
You apparently have no idea what the word bigot means but then I don't expect you to since you and your friends are constantly changing the vocabulary to meet your pathetic needs, which seem to be many. I was not born with a silver spoon I had to work to be able to buy it. I suggest you and your friends do the same. If you work for a living you come to appreciate what you have and don't stand around whining about what others have. Envy is the worst leftist policy. It is the foundation of your beliefs. You want everyone to be envious of what others have.
Yeah, these folks really do think someone else owes them a living...but when you have no work ethic, zero zilch nada, maybe that is your fallback position.
, magical monetary theory , defund the police , locking down the schools , support for the suppression of speech, use of political violence , double mastectomies on young girls to make them boys, exporting pollution by having other countries pump oil, opposing nuclear power . I could go on but why bother
Bothering is important. ENVY and hatred drives these people. It is important that there are voices speaking out against their perverted views. and they are perverted. Only an insane person would castrate their own sons and mutilate their own daughters. Mutilating children is beyond the pale and those of us who are sane must speak out against it. Volcanoes accepting human sacrifice have nothing on these mentally ill people who are being supported by a bunch of blind sheep.
I suspect a continual majority of voters is far less enchanted with Bernie’s version of socialism than Matt and his mentor Noam can be. There’s nothing about capitalism in the Constitution, but it’s the economic system that produces the results more Americans want. I think of it as a constant experiment among some 200 nations. At the moment I think socialism/communism/collectivism has about 20 fans worldwide. Must be a capitalist conspiracy.
Thucydides the Ancient Greek historian warned that it is dangerous in a democracy—having defeated an opponent politically—to follow that up by prosecuting him in the courts. Taking revenge like that creates intense polarization among the citizens, increases sympathy for the “victim” among his own partisans, creates mutual bitterness, and can spiral into outright violence. That is: political defeat is enough punishment of an opponent. Thucydides’ example is a detailed discussion of the outbreak of civil war on the island-state of Corcyra (modern Corfu): The Peloponnesian War, Book 3, chapters 69-85.
That is advice from 2,400 year ago. It’s old, but it comes from a practical politician in democratic Athens.
Very on point: “The leaders in the cities, each provided with the fairest professions, on the one side with the cry of political equality of the people, on the other of a moderate aristocracy, sought prizes for themselves in those public interests which they pretended to cherish, and, recoiling from no means in their struggles for ascendancy, engaged in the direct excesses; in their acts of vengeance they went to even greater lengths, not stopping at what justice or the good of the state demanded, but making the party caprice of the moment their only standard, and invoking with equal readiness the condemnation of an unjust verdict or the authority of the strong arm to glut the animosities of the hour. Thus religion was in honor with neither party; but the use of fair phrases to arrive at guilty ends was in high reputation. Meanwhile the moderate part of the citizens perished between the two, either for not joining in the quarrel, or because envy would not suffer them to escape.“
Take a look at Book 3, chapter 82 on the shocking flexibility and changeability of the meaning of words and language during a period of political crisis.
He's quoting a Dead Wise Man. Does Thucydides being white (that also depends on your definition of white; he was Greek) invalidate what he said? Also, what he said is utterly pertinent to the current situation. If you have an equally relevant and wise quote from a Non-White Person, please share it with us.
As an aside, Socrates lived at the same time as Thucydides. I.F. Stone's "The Trial of Socrates" deals with some of these same events. Socrates (via Plato) emphasized that the biggest virtue was wisdom, and that the most wise should rule. Some of Socrates's best students (most wise) became rulers and were vicious and vile, particularly to their defeated political opponents.
Aristotle (and Stone), with the benefit of that recent history, emphasized character as a more important virtue. Stone was good with Socrates drinking the hemlock!
You might also look at the increasing political persecutions in ancient Rome as it slowly spiraled out of control from Republic into despotism. Famous podcaster Mike Duncan's Storm Before the Storm is a good intro book.
Yes, their is very little that is new under the sun...but you would have to learn that history in school, instead of learning that their are 57 genders and that men can get pregnant.
What did Thucydides, or extrapolations from his positions, say about what if someone doesn't admit their political defeat? How is that "enough punishment"? Or something. I'm not even sure how to phrase the question. Dems persecution of Trump while in office was insane, but what about now, i.e., the hearings, etc. etc....(?).
I know the story is correct, I'm just not sure how it applies in this case. (My personal opinion is Thucydides gets over quoted in application to modern political issues, much as he was misapplied recently in reference to Chinese confrontations.)
The left is concentrated in the cities. All the non-left would have to do is impose a trucking embargo on I-95 from DC to Boston. Who drives the trucks in this country? Not a woke blogger for Bolde who lives in Park Slope.
They will be out of food and gasoline in about 72 hours.
There will be shooting and stupidity somewhere, not everywhere, but it'll happen. I'm still not buying the idea of Civil War, simply because most people don't want it. For starters, where's the front line? Or, is it pickup truck loads of loons driving through Dem voting areas just randomly shooting people? How does it work?
Imagine the scene outside some New York City courthouse, or up in Albany: a replay of Jan 6, with thousands and thousands of angry Trump partisans, many of them now armed, confronting riot police …That’s not a fantasy; that’s a prediction. See the sequence in Thucydides Book 3, chapter 70, on the political use of prosecutions in court by both sides at Corcyra and what then occurred in tbe city…
OK, sure. Why not? But that's not civil war. That's just a bunch of guys too fucking stupid to figure out what to do to make their lives better, faced off against a bunch of guys at least half of whom probably sympathize or outright want to join in. Then what? A bunch of morons standing around, threatening to shoot, then shooting and then....what? Secede from....what?
To achieve....what (?)
I'm certainly not predicting no shooting; we got shooting all the time already. But, war has to have an aim and an end goal, and the apparent aim of the aggrieved is....what?
Personally, I'm all in favor of Texas, West OR/Idaho Panhandle, etc. seceding. Let 'em go. I'm into experimentation; let's see what they do with all their freedom.
And... a personal plea... Let's leave Thucydides out of it. Everyone reading Thucydides and interpreting it to whatever they think it means for the current time is ridiculous. Even Thucydides experts are bemoaning his constant references nowadays.
Perhaps the left is engaging in civil war right at the moment and has been for some time. Who is their opponent? Some ill-defined, monolithic entity that they fear? Is it a concept they fear? A set of values?
I don't think either side, Right or Left, has a clue about what to do or where to go, so those most confused and clueless want a cage match to settle it. Fine. I know a generation of folks in China that went through a revolution, and they have assured me, we do NOT want a revolution. It's an attractive sound bite for clueless folks.
And, who are the "strong" that are going to survive? Actually, never mind. I don't want to know. These conversations are idiotic.
True, while everybody is confused, some have a glimmer of understanding. But it's only a glimmer and no guarantee.
History will bat last. And the strong will certainly survive. As events unfold, it will take some humility to recognize who the strong are and emulate them.
Thucydides was certainly misused in Graham Allison’s work “The Thucydides Trap”, on China and the U.S. Thucydides is not a determinist. Allison has been taken to task on this by real Thucydides experts, which Allison is not.
The framers knew this and it informed their decisions not have a direct democracy but rather a representative Republican form of government. Basically every time an elected someone was unsuccessful in war or anything else, there would be some kind of trial, then banishment or death. However the pendulum swung, someone would suffer. See Socrates Apology (which isn’t an apology in our sense of the word). Socrates was a soldier, and a philosopher and teacher of the youth but he ran afoul of some faction in power at some point and was forced to drink the Hemlock. It’s all madness when the mob is allowed to demand the power of the state be used against their political opposition for just being the political opposition.
I’m with you brother. Being a dem wasn’t just how I voted, it was tied up in my identity, as well as my relationship with my family and friends. I don’t even know what to say about the party anymore. I’m not even sure what happened to it and when. They have gone nuts. Trump was an ass, but he wasn’t satan. He just wasn’t good at being president. When I look back at his presidency I just see a wasted opportunity. Trump was a democrat for most of his life. There will never be an opportunity lost like that again. People like trump are so easy to manipulate into doing what you want because of his serious personality flaws. He wants to be loved and he’s easily flattered.
There will never be a Republican president again who would have eagerly done something to cut his own throat. Take DACA. Trump wanted to do something for the Dreamer kids. We all did, no? But Trump said something stupid and Dick Durbin ran to the first camera he saw and had to tell the whole world because the short term gain was more important than the long term victory and the Dems seemed to want the issue and not to solve it. Had they filed his stupid remarks away to be used at a later date (like the next election) and just complimented him on his tie, wife, kids, brilliance, or whatever else worked to soften him up, they would have solved the issue, or at least got something. Had Trump did something on DACA he would have cut his own legs out because his bases big thing is immigration. But if all the big media sung his praise he wouldn’t have cared but they weren’t gonna do that because they had chosen their strategy which was maximum outrage over everything all the time. So we got nothing, the Dreamers got nothing, but the partisanship was made even worse and everyone retreated to their bunkers where reality and pragmatism go to die. rinse, repeat and cry for four years. The democrats wagered that anger would be better than success, or the two were synonymous, and maybe that was a good bet but the whole country suffered for it and here we are. McCarthyite show trials on one side and dedication to the Great Trumpster on the other. It makes me sick.
I think the Russia stuff probably did it in for me. It was just so toxic, and it obviously was an effort that involved the press itself. It went on for so long and started to become so ridiculous I just kinda gave up. The press seemed to give up on pretending they were objective and dived headfirst into activism. Congress has become a cesspool of rich pricks and glory hounds that spend all their time raising money for themselves, spending ungodly amounts of our kids, kids, kids future tax revenue and, sadly, investigating each other with greater alarmity. They have delegated power to everyone else, which makes me wonder, why even engage in the election process? Locally it makes sense but our congresscritters don’t actually want to do the hard work of governing and the bureaucracies seem to be run by younger and younger leftist nut jobs who no sense of shame at all. And they could care less about me unless of course I was transgender, non-white, gay, somehow disabled or a female (preferably a combination of all of the above). I’m not any of those things so in the new religion I’m the sinner and I must repent, which I’m never gonna do. I’m just gonna vote Republican and hope for the best. I used to despise very moralistic Christian’s but gosh darn, they seem like the normal people these days. It’s like the nut jobs in the democrat party think they are pulling me more to the left by promoting all sorts of weird stuff, but the reality is (and this was totally predictable) they are pushing me to the right. And I’m uncomfortable here.
There's nothing they love so much as an opportunity to revel in righteous indignation, and the media knows they can turn people against anything and make them spaz out simply by appending the Bad Orange Man w/Mean Tweets to it.
People need to altogether junk the left vs. right paradigm. Most people know it’s fake. They just don’t really have a sense of vision or alternative. And you know what they say, “where there is no vision, the people perish.”
If I were a political advisor, which I’m not, I would make the following recommendations:
1) Trump should run and offer Tulsi Gabbard the spot for Vice President
2) Return the Republican Party to the party of Lincoln
3) #2 would mean harkening back to Lincoln’s classic program for building America, which goes a little something like this:
“My politics are short and sweet, like the old woman's dance. I am in favor of a national bank. I am in favor of the internal improvement system, and a high protective tariff. These are my sentiments and political principles. If elected, I shall be thankful; if not it will be all the same.”
The only thing that matters now is changing the rules of the game.
I think the last couple weeks make it a shoo in for DeSantis if he'd just go for it. Anyone continuing to stick with Trump after the hearings...ok, they're in their own bubble. If they're not convinced at this point... Anyone with a brain knows it, that's why they'd shift to DeSantis in a second if he'd just go for it.
I’m an old (75) gal and while I don’t think our generation is any worse than others, at some point it must be acknowledged that with rare exceptions, cognition fades as we get past 70, if not sooner.
David Gosselin, truth be told, the populist turn in the GOP that Trump represents is returning the Republicans to the party of Lincoln. It was a workers/working class party until the corporations took it over in the 1870s and kept control of it until 2016. The GOP opposition to slavery was based, in part, because Lincoln and others in the party knew that a slave labor economy made it almost impossible for a poor white man to rise economically.
That's why the GOP establishment hated Trump so much. He screwed up 150 years of the party elite playing it base for suckers every four years. The evil program continues in the form of the "Lincoln Project," that cynically invokes Abe in the name of returning the party to the control of the globalist elite.
"People need to altogether junk the left vs. right paradigm. Most people know it’s fake. "
Only the modern FUBAR version is.
Left and Right have each existed through thick and thin, for over two centuries now, because the represent *fundamental* needs in a government "of, for, and by the people":
--Right prioritizes the individual-based needs for freedom
--Left prioritizes the social-based needs for fairness
The priorities of the majority will shift back and forth, but neither will ever go away, because both are eternally necessary. The tragedy is that both Left and Right have now long been taught by their self-interested "leaders" that their unprioritized needs are not only unnecessary, but wrong/toxic.
Absolutely -- but I believe the reason is that we don't really understand why L/R exist in the first place, eternally, each waxing and waning over time.
So I've been working to simplify it to their essence and evangelize that, instead of having us all go numb and totally give up on it. That, I think, would make us even more confused and unable to organize opposition to the existing mind-f*ckery system.
"Trump should run and offer Tulsi Gabbard the spot for Vice President"
It's a lovely dream. The current shitshow over former President Trump would pale in comparison to what would happen if he died in office (he's old!) and we got President Gabbard.
I've cycled through so many analogies, metaphors and historical parallels in trying to make sense of the apocalpytic never-ending nervous breakdown that Trump engendered in his political opponents.
I still think Ahab v Dick works pretty well, or the Left v Nixon or the Northern blueblood reaction to Andrew Jackson, but right now this is starting to look more like Mia Farrow after Woody ran off with Soon-Yi (I guess in this analogy, the Left is Mia, Donald is Woody, and Soon-Yi is the American govt.)
This has become a full-time scorched-earth Fatal Attraction level assault aimed at the total personal and professional destruction of one man. No cost is too high, no accusation too minor, all prior principles are irrelevant, there will be no mercy, no truce, as long as the heart still beats and burns with hatred it will devote every last cent and every last ounce of energy to getting revenge.
The Democrats woke up on November 8, 2016, absolutely certain that the country and the world were in their pocket, that the first female president would follow the first black president, that the Arc of History™ was bending their way, that their neoliberal/United Colors of Benetton utopia was about to be locked in for at least another generation or two—and when all that was stolen away by the literal incarnation of all they hate, a crass lewd greedy carnival barker, it was a shock so painful, a repudation so violent, it created some sort of psychotic break that they will never recover from.
What happens when an entire political party/movement has a complete mental breakdown? We're living thru it now...Maybe their fever will break a few years after he's dead, but definitely no sooner.
Remember, Trump was every politicians friend when donated to their political campaigns and causes. They were confused and mocking as to why the only public office Trump ever ran for was President, but they didn't hate him then, either. They only started hating him after he won "their" political game, them more so when he fulfilled on the campaign promises he made - something they seldom considered themselves after being elected time and again.
Every time I get ready to quit substack and cancel my subscription to the writers I support, someone writes an article reminding me why I need to not do that yet. The article Matt wrote is rarely seen in our media; something objectively honest calling balls and strikes. Trump out of office has done more to destroy the democrats than he did in office. As long as they continue to support tech billionaires and transgender story time and ignore working class Americans trying to survive the economy and raise their kids , they will continue to lose. Bernie doesn’t give a shit about us, Elizabeth warren is a buffoon and AOC a co-opted disappointment. I dislike Trump and at the same time trust him more than any of the democrat flavor of the moment to do the right thing for working class Americans, Democrat elite and media( but I repeat myself) opinion be damned. Trump 2024. That man not worried about a reelection and not giving a crap about impeachment would be a marvel to watch.
When Trump was originally elected, he had significant majorities in both houses of Congress. What did he do with those majorities that constituted 'the right thing for working class Americans?' What leads you to believe he would do anything else if he got back into office?
I disagree with the basic premise. Trump had Romney and his confederates in the Senate and Paul Ryan in the House. If you think anything that includes them is a majority, I disagree. It was RINO‘s with the usual byproduct they produce. The fact that Trump was able to shame them to NOT cooperate with democrats was a win by itself. Tax policy( remember the evil tech billionaires even repatriated some company profits) , and oil policy are two quick examples. The immigration policy is another. Those were done with no significant RINO support until shamed. Trump did other things such as moving the embassy to Jerusalem and recognizing it as the capitol of Israel which multiple US REPUBLICAN Presidents lied about doing while campaigning and never did. Trump, for all his over emotional bluster, did everything he could to try to do his major promises. Remember in the end he tried to get out of Afghanistan and REPUBLICAN and DEMOCRATS stopped him together. That was another in a long list of examples of the US government’s corruption.
Biden abided by Trump’s Afghanistan withdrawal date but gets no credit for it. Moving the embassy to Jerusalem was a terrible decision done entirely to please the Israel Apartheid settlers and should be revoked as soon as possible. (Israel is a complete shit of an ‘ally’ and the sooner we ditch them the better.) Finally, why is failing to work with Democrats in itself praiseworthy? We’re half the country. If O have to listen to Trump, he should have to listen to me.
Obama had the same. Obama claimed (as did Biden in the March 15, 2020 CNN primary debate with Bernie) that the very first thing he would do as President would be to codify Roe vs Wade into federal law. Once elected, he said it was not a high priority (or even a low priority). He gave us Romneycare and pretended it was not a big sellout to the insurance companies. Obama at least had been a Senator, clueless Trump had no experience at all in government.
"Obama claimed (as did Biden in the March 15, 2020 CNN primary debate with Bernie) that the very first thing he would do as President would be to codify Roe vs Wade into federal law."
Democrats have absolutely lost *all* credibility on this, and for that reason -- playing political football with it for nearly FIFTY years. Hence, the ridiculous and irrational shrillness of their whining, over the hard work they now have to do that they should have started in 1973. Except now, they are in complete denial over what is necessary (actually changing the damn law(s)), instead wanting to "bomb" the Supreme Court.
Trump was hated in both houses of Congress by both Parties for two reasons: he wasn't 'one of them' and he exposed their collective grift to the world and wasn't polite about it. As far as 'right for working class' goes, income tax rates went down, energy prices went down, employment for everyone, especially minorities went up. All good things for working class Americans despite the hatred for Trump in Washington DC and the plutocrats around the world.
Minority wages went up. He had things humming until COVID(interestingly a infectious virus created in a enemies lab funded by us and “mistakenly” released)
"Bernie doesn't give a shit about us" got my attention. If this were true, why did they torpedo his campaign twice? What are you referring to, specifically?
Bernie said he didn't want to be the next Ralph Nader (you know, someone who stuck to his ideals and principles, and was punished by fellow Democrats). I'm sure Bernie is happy with "my good friend Joe's" policies. I always suspect that if Manchin or Sinema fall in line with the Democrats' agenda, another two or three will pop up to take their place in dissent.
You cannot blame everything on the Parliamentarian and Putin (or maybe you can?)
Glen Greenwald brings this up all the time. On the really important votes, there always seem to be a group of Democrats who won't line up and do what they're told. And they rotate around so none of them take too much heat for it.
I'm not saying that he's not on the grift, but he did write a book that sold well. A million or 2 from that isn't inconcievable.
Somewhere i saw a piece that totalled up his income over the past couple of decades - salary, SS, etc. And it wasn't inconcievable that it totalled up to a million or two over the years.
Bernie voted for the Ukraine spending package. I’ve told my progressive friends - you all are pro war. DNC did torpedo his campaign twice though. GOP did the same to Ron Paul.
The Democrats have lied so continuously, censored people and pushed such flagrant propaganda that anything Trump has really done on the laundry list just pales. 1/6 was a reaction to the whole squirrely build up to that election and all the shenanigans propagated by the left that were so obvious to the people there.
Was 1/6 going too far, yes. But gaslighting it as though it was unprovoked is just more dishonesty when the root causes were so clear to so many. I really don't care about 1/6 when weighed against the broader, insidious agenda that this radical left administration is pushing.
Where was the coverage on 5/29 when the Presidential chapel was set on fire? When 100 officers were actually injured by the actually violent mob that day? That double-think is now obvious to masses of people and they aren't going to stop the momentum for the cause that the Democrats have created with their ongoing deceptions.
On any equitable scale, 1/6 was FAR more peaceful than the summer of riots driven by HFA, the DNC and BLM. 1/6 was far more peaceful than the 5/29 assault on the Whitehouse. People are not dumb enough to ignore these distortions.
Good points. And the attempt by James Hodgkinson to assassinate 25 Republican members of Congress on June 14, 2017 was far worse than January 6. Yet there never has been a "June 14" committee. And the Republicans never attack Senator Sanders, for whom Hodgkinson had worked in the 2016 election.
The difference is that a U.S. Ambassador and 3 other officials were assassinated in Benghazi because Secretary of State Clinton refused requests from the Ambassador for six months for proper protection for them. That was a genuine issue that had to be investigated.
The January 6 committee has not investigated the one thing that IS comparable: The murder of Ashley Babbitt by Capitol Police officer Michael Byrd. The committee WOULD be legitimate if that was the primary concern of its investigation, but it has not come up.
Benghazi didn't need the 33 hearings and 7 Congressional investigations (1 would have been plenty), but it got them for political grandstanding purposes. Rinse and repeat for the many, many collusion hearings and Jan 6 investigations.
No one in American history (and perhaps all history) has been examined more closely - legally, politically, socially, personally - than Donald J Trump. That examination has been by sworn Trump enemies in both major political parties, the major media, social media - everyone, everywhere it seems.. It amazes me that one with the high intelligence and political savvy of Matt Taibbi would write, "For the moment I’d prefer to bypass entirely the question of which of all those offenses Trump was actually guilty (my guess would be some, including some of the serious ones, .....". Really, Matt! With that 6+- year anal examination, what have they truly found? NOTHING. Trump may well be the most honest, non-corrupt person ever to even aspire to the Oval Office. As our somewhat demented POTUS says, "C'mon man!"
If you’re just going by smoke, the potential corruption of Biden is off the charts compared to Trump. But no one in the media who claim “democracy dies in darkness” seem to care.
Yeah, speaking of which, have you seen the latest Hunter video where is coming down the slide into the pool and then stroking his wang as he gets out? The pervy apple did not fall far from the tree.
Brings to mind the Laureate University scandal, Mena Arkansas drug money laundering, and all those $300K to $700K "speeches" (including $500K from Putin for Bill's speech at the Moscow bank in 2010 when Hillary was Secretary of State).
Trump sells his name. Hillary sold access to the Office of the Secretary of State of the US. Corruption is completely bipartisan with no accountability.
Well Kathy, from my view, it looks to me like the whole DC establishment from Pelosi on down, hell Biden himself, are just one great big group of hustlers.
Amazing the number of people that get elected who have average incomes but leave office millionaires. Never mind the technocrats I work with in DC. Jesus, the money they make from deals that they cut once they leave government is astounding. I have watched millions and millions of dollars be wasted on what can only be described as well disguised fraud. I have watched senior government officials cut some shady deals right before they leave government. Actually watched one CIO of a major department force a deal with Oracle for millions on software the rest of the organization did not think was needed and did not want only for him to retire and take a position with Oracle. Do not even get me started on the crap that goes on at CDC and NIH or FDA or FDIC or the SEC or anyplace that you have regulators that impact large businesses. HELL...even the Bureau of Land Management.
There are no saints in DC or in the federal government. I have worked with them for 22 yrs and I have seen way too much. Trump almost looks minor league in his grift.
Yes, those were hideous crimes for which DJT paid the price. Now, refresh my memory: Was Mr. Trump "fined"? Prosecuted" Served time? All were great "nothing burgers", amplified by the 90%+ hostile press and "never-Trumpers" and others who apparently still suffer from Trump derangement syndrome. No one's perfect or even close but really, is that what prompts you to join the insane, insipid ignorant progressives still looking for ANYTHING bad about DJT? Really!!
With 40K subscribers (including me) paying $50.00 annually, Matt Taibbi doesn't HAVE to write anything except what he wishes to write. It's just that even those with high-IQ's and tremendous writing skills like Matt who once were once squarely on the "progressive" side of things who see the political, social, cultural truth, still seem to lack the ability to say anything positive about Trump without adding a few "progressive" caveats.
What a scary comment. Bobbing for apples in that koolaid. Dude has a well documented history of being shady and corrupt all before he made it to the White House.
6 years of legal, social and personal examination by people who hated him has turned up nothing remotely significant. If ANYTHING significant had been found, Trump would have been prosecuted. No Kool Aid here, just logic and observation which I recommend highly for those with TDS.
Whatever. Most politicians have tons of skeletons in their closets. Read some history books if you can still find them. Am laughing out loud how DT twisted so many peoples minds.Will say he didn’t start any new wars. AND didn’t STEAL $$ from Afghanistan; Byedone did that.
Which is truly catastrophic for Afghani children, women, men, elders …. In my seventh decade I doubt I’ll ever vote again. LOTE is beyond stupid. NO did not vote for byedone or DT.
The DNC is going to rue the day they spent so much time attacking Trump only to be running against DeSantis instead. Sure, some people will fall for the "HE'S TRUMP 2.0" hyperbole, but not nearly as many as will ALREADY reflexively vote against Trump.
Critical issue all the politics carefully avoid or ignore is voters attitudes shaped by jabs and mandates and growing community of vax injured already know and respect DeSantis that's a passionate national network built around medical freedom.. hope he does run.
Everybody is complaining about the Dems' shallow Prez bench. Maybe if I trim and dye my moustache and run as "Adolf Kashmarov" against DeSantis as the NazBol candidate I will have a shot.
Donald Trump was the worst person ever elected President, I never voted for him, and it would be a disaster if he ever got a second term, but I also think the January 6th committee is no better than an orchestrated Kangaroo court. Too many people believe it is okay to throw reason out the window because Trump is such a bad and dangerous person. I don’t and won’t.
The January 6th hearing shouldn’t be called a hearing at all, it is a presentation of facts where the facts and their presentation are carefully edited to make the Democrats’ case. Snippets of taped testimony taken out of context, a complete lack of cross examination, and heavy use of hearsay make me think that the committee really only has a weak circumstantial case. They are relying on the media to blow things out of proportion and force the Justice department to prosecute Trump. This is politics and the media is cooperating with them when it should be skeptical of their motives. The truth is the committee hasn’t presented very much that hasn’t already been reported and not much of substance except for outlandish behavior by Trump. We already knew he was a boorish cretin.
I am old enough to have watched the Watergate hearings. The surprises during those hearings were genuine ones that no one on the committee saw coming because the witnesses were testifying to those things for the first time publicly. The January 6th committee is staged. They have gathered the evidence and are only presenting evidence that tells the story they want to tell.
You don’t have to like Trump to realize it could be hyperbole, you just have to be reasonable.
It would be nice if reason were the only thing Democrats were throwing out the window. Unfortunately they also are jettisoning rule of law, constitutional safeguards, governmental separation of powers, and basic civility with it.
That's where (fortunately) most reasonable people draw the line.
I am not any kind of a fan of the two-party system, but at this point the Republican party is kind of an open canopic jar into which the desert winds settle and rustle, bringing their debris.
Set? Anubis? Let's have at it. Mind my Imsety; it's delicate.
Except for the first line, I agree with all this. Thank you.
Although Trump is certainly (on many occasions, though not all) boorish, outrageous, criminal, incompetent, etc., I happen to believe he was just what was needed -- a person narcissistic enough to not back down from the now-truly-existential threat to the future of government-by-the-people. That was, and is, his job, and, ironically, in toto, he's performing *that* quite well. And I believe it's hard to see this now, but if (actual) democracy survives and is not successfully supplanted by 1984/BNW, that's how historians 50 years hence will judge it.
And (too much of) the Establishment *just doesn't get it*. Remember that line from late-20th-century feminism?
Historians seem to focus on functional competence when rating presidents.
But on the basis of Machiavellian, anti-democratic corruption -- arguably more relevant and thus important -- there are numerous contenders. Trump is certainly not at the top of this latter list. History may prove him to be near the bottom.
With you here. Tricky D. made as many bad moves as good ones (off the gold standard, #1), but the choice I posit here is Biden vs. Nixon -- Joe's good moves to bad moves ratio at this point is something like 1:10, if you're feeling charitable.
Whatever else one may think of his Robin, Heinz Kissinger, the dude knows how shit works in the international system.
You have not read Caro’s four volume tour de force on LBJ? What a corrupt, disgusting, ignorant, venal man. Clearly worse then Trump. That being said he got the civil rights bills passed.
You exhibit a short historical perspective: Andrew Jackson arguably attempted genocide, James Buchannan's ineffective presidency made the Civil War inevitable, Andrew Johnson derailed Reconstruction, and Woodrow Wilson brought Jim Crow into the Federal government, jailed political opponents and set up a government propaganda bureau (the Committee on Public Information) that Goebbels said was his model. Trump? A lout (but so was Jackson by all accounts), half-cocked policy ideas, bizarrely often following on a spot-on analysis of a problem everyone else wanted to ignore, but the worst person ever elected President? Really?
I didn't vote for him either time either, but nor did I vote for the other corrupt wannabe Caesar that the Democrats put up to oppose him.
I agree with your description but I also agree with the committee’s objective to deny tfg another term. The idiots who attacked Congress can rot in jail.
They attacked congress? With what? If they rioted, they should be prosecuted, but the over the top accusations of treason are what got the Dems the ridicule of most of the country.
This isn't a defense of Trump. It's calling out the Democrat incompetence, greed and lowest common denominator thinking. They're going to lose this year and in 2024, but will never once blame themselves.
“They attacked Congress?” Yes they did - do you think they would break into the Capitol if Congress was not in session to certify the election. This was at best apurposeful violent riot and at worst an attempt to overthrow the government.
C'mon man, get off the kool-aid...if the "insurrectionists" were so bad, how come so many of he charges were misdemeanors of one sort or another? Do you really deserve to "rot in jail" for that?
Unless and until we get a full and fair investigation into the origins and nature of the "insurrection" (including all the video) we shouldn't be so quick to rush to judgment about this. But again, turn off the MSNBC, etc. It's confusing you.
They didn't break into the Capitol. They were waved in open doors by Capitol police. I watched it happen in real time via streaming. I have been to the Capitol. You couldn't break into it without explosives if they didn't want you to. There were also several instigators captured on video who were shortly after identified as far left and Democrat i.e. Antifa, FBI, and Journalists. None of them have been prosecuted.
It was an attempt to overthrow the government. Just not by the side you think it was.
I agree, the only useful purpose of the J6 committee is to peel off enough DJT votes to defeat him if he gets nominated. They will never find 12 jurors who wil unanimously convict him, regardless of his guilt.
Sorry, if Trump gets the nomination he wins over Biden or Harris. No one thinks the committee is peeling away DJT votes. It may actually be peeling away DEM votes. Americans don't like show trials. Sorry again, the future looks bleak, you're gonna need shades.
I think you are right. There is a building rage against the democrats right now. Which, I also think partially explains the political realignment taking place.
One reason that Trump won in the first place was his utter willingness to attack the politically correct. One would think the democrats would have backed off that if for no other reason than political survival. But NOPE...they tripled down on it with "woke", transgender ideology etc.
IF Trump runs and IF he wins the nomination and IF he wins a general election, it will be almost entirely due to the failures of the democrats to govern, their obsessions with cultural correctness and the extraordinary amount of time wasted on chasing Trump that could have been better used to achieve real goals.
IF Trump gets re-elected, it will be a result of an astounding failure of the democrats to appear remotely normal or useful and not due to overwhelming support for Trump personally.
The dems did this to themselves.
They need more Manchin's and fewer members of the Squad.
Michael Moore said that electing Trump was the biggest FU in history by the average voter to the DC establishment. Trump's re-election would be the 2nd. The angrier the democrats make the country, the more likely that it to happen.
January 6th was a riot. Not an insurrection. Covid was not the biggest threat most people faced on a daily basis. Neither is global warming. Nor Ukraine. Nor trans rights. Not even abortion rights for biological men. Believe it or not!
Most Americans rightly despise the elite expert class. They despise you guys because you are completely ineffective at solving any of the problems of working people.
The stupidity coming from experts with ivy league degrees has become more and more obvious as we masked outside, sprayed our groceries, wore rubber gloves, watched vaccines fail to stop spread, saw only children at near zero risk being forced to mask, and are now just one election away from another round of restrictions, closures, new vaccine mandates, and increased masking.
So, yeah, average people know the elites hate Trump. That’s why they support him. He’s a giant raised middle finger at you preachy narcissistic credentialed imbeciles.
One thing that I think the left has a blind spot to with regards to January 6:
Many on the right (or center-right or center) did not like what happened on Jan6. But many of these same people have been MUCH more disgusted by the what they perceive, I think rightly, as the holding of political prisoners with regards to Jan 6. They see people being held for months without Due Process and they become furious. All the Jan6 show trials do for those people is push them more into Trump’s corner. They feel the system is rigged against them. And they can point out examples of a system that is so corrupt at its core that they are seen as second class citizens. And it’s not just by Democrats, but by members of their own party. This is why Trump resonated with them. He spoke to a segment of society that felt as though the system was against them... and everyday it appears that the system tries harder and harder to prove his point.
Ain’t it funny how when it’s Russia, we get that jailing your political opponent is the first step to authoritarianism, but when it’s ourselves, it’s either “LOCK HER UP” or “Mueller, all I want for Christmas is you!”
Well, pretend that Julian Assange or Chelsea Manning were locked up in Russia for revealing government secrets; pretend that Jeffrey Epstein were to have died under similar circumstances in a Russian jail.
We would be dutifully informed, via wall-to-wall nonstop MSM coverage, about how this proves yet again the lawlessness and totalitarianism inherent in Russia, how evil the regime is, etc. etc.. No evidence needed, no investigation necessary, what are you on their side?
But when it's our team, our government? Our Ukrainian pets? Our Israeli "clients"? Or our Saudi frenemies?
Crickets..... hey everyone, Obama got a puppy! Everyone look at the cute puppy! Awwwww
Saint Obama is still revered. Threw millions out of their homes and made the banksters richer so that they could buy the homes for pennies on the dollar and rent them back and again kick the renters out so they could jack up the rent. It's going on now. Expanded the war in Afghanistan, deported more Hispanics than any president in history. Prosecuted more whistle blowers than all presidents before him combined. Destroyed Libya, which had the highest UN development index in Africa and Clinton gloated in public. Almost did the same in Syria using jihaddi mercenaries like Carter Brezinski did in Afghanistan. Presided the worst recovery in memory. Created Obama care high deductible Scam rather than medicare for all. "Turns out I'm really good at killing people"! Barak Obama in public stated that. If that isn't proof of a false narrative still being Believed despite all evidence to the contrary, I don't know what is.. Oh yeah, the Ukraine narrative is.
Funny how Chelsea Manning has gotten dropped down the memory hole. Early on, there was much media talk of how her gender identity disorder was a signifier of mental illness and indirectly or directly responsible for her "traitorism." A decade later, gender identity disorder is cool, hip, and mainstream, but "traitorism" is worse than ever. So... does not compute with the narrative.
I don't pretend to understand "her" gender identity (cats don't really encounter this sort of confusion) but I try to call balls and strikes, regardless.
Self-awareness is not something American's are particularly good at. (Though I do think Hillary should be put somewhere under a jail, but I think that about a lot of politicians.)
It is very nasty of me, but I think that every politician who advocated "enhanced interrogation" should themselves be subject to "enhanced interrogation." Since it is, as they explained, fundamentally harmless and in the best interests of the citizens of the United States of America.
Our jails here in America are too barbaric for any morally serious person to advocate that another human being be incarcerated in them. Well, except the kind of jail that Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump would get sent to if we actually jailed our political opponents.
While I agree in principle and I agree that we need alternatives for many of the crimes we jail people for, I would not say as an absolute that *no* human being deserves to be jailed in our system.
And the January 6 people and Julian Assange, among others, would disagree that we don't actually jail people for political reasons.
Which is doubly rich, considering that the Ukrainian "Institute of National Remembrance" (an official Ukrainian government body) claims that Ukrainians are "pure blooded Slavs" while Russians are "intermixed".
"Why, that sounds like straight up Nazi 'race science'!" you say?
Pretty much, yup. Not to mention that how many times Ukraine has been invaded.
In Ukraine's defense, it's kinda like Poland -- doomed by geography. It can't *not* be invaded. You have to invade it on the way to invading other places you actually want to invade.
But people who are themselves likely as "mixed" as any ethnicity on the planet probably shouldn't get all "Blood And Soil", no matter how much their buddies Hitler and Himmler talked like that.
EDIT: some Wehrmacht general said something to the effect that "People who look like Himmler probably shouldn't talk about 'pure breeding' and 'racially superior bloodstock' and things like that."
This is excellent, Matt. I weep for the state of mainstream journalism - they'll never have to guts to write anything like this. I was one of those who joined the so-called "resistance." I thought everything ended the day he won. I literally laid on the couch for a year drinking a bottle of wine. It wasn't until 2020 that I realized what a bubble I was in. That bubble was like hiding in a bunker as time passes you by outside of it and whipping up fear and hysteria about everything you can't see "out there." Watching Jamie Raskin in particular talk about Steve Bannon exposed just how little he actually knows about Bannon himself, but also how little he knows of that world.
For six long years the Democrats had a chance to do the one thing they needed to do to stop Trump: offer something better. Instead, they've served up a meal they're forcing down Americans' throats that they do not want. They believe that all they have to do is get rid of Trump and everyone will suddenly like that meal. In chasing Trump, they've destroyed themselves. There is very little left of them.
What disturbs me more about these hearings, though, is that they seem to be doing a government version of cancel culture: no due process, using the court of public opinion, hoping to change minds and ruin lives but having no actual THERE there. The way they seem to be suggesting it's okay to police speech and opinion is nervous making. The journalists though? Man, zero backbone. What a mess.
For me, the worst part of the bubble is this idea that people will still believe what they are told even after the same people blatantly lied to them the first time around. Look at Officer Sicknick. The story about him being murdered by rioters could have easily been disproven with a simple phone call. The public later found out only one person was actually killed through an act of violence, she was unarmed, and the stories about the rioters being armed to the teeth were proven false. Also while we are on the subject, does any rational person really believe the country was about to be overthrown by a dazed and confused guy dressed up in a combination costume of Flintstone's water buffalo night and a drunken NFL Patriots fan? You cannot keep telling people to believe the next thing after the last five have turned out to be false. It does not even matter if you now have your magical tape recordings, a hundred verifiable eyewitnesses, and thirty hours of video footage of Trump going full world domination supervillain, most people do not care anymore! As for what the committee is actually working with, it is mostly just partisan hackjob hearsay. Which sounds an awful lot like what they were working with the last twenty times. Don't worry people. The walls are closing in this time!
Two people were killed....the police beat another protestor to death outside.
There’s a brand new glitch in the matrix: AOC is now calling J6 “an inside job.”
I saw that. Her histrionic cluster b personality accidentally glitches to the truth sometimes
On that, we can agree...........remember how fast the Dems about-faced on witnesses at impeachment 2.0 when the GOP stated they would call Pelosi?
Nancy just about barfed out her dentures today when the Orange name was uttered. Go long on your Polydent holdings.
Ooooh, juicy. I do hope she names names.
Inside of her mind only
Other than Babbitt, I only heard of heart attacks, overdoses, and I think someone getting trampled.
https://headlineusa.com/capitol-police-2nd-homicides-j6/
oseph McBride, Nichols’s attorney, told Kelly that he had “viewed three hours of surveillance video captured by Capitol security camera” and discovered that “for reasons that no fair minded or decent human being will ever understand” a Capitol Police officer “begins to pulverize” a woman “about 10 minutes before the lifeless body of Rosanne Boyland was seen lying on the ground, just outside the tunnel.”
According to Kelly, “body-worn camera footage released by the courts … show Boyland on her side not moving as her friend, Justin Winchell, begged for help. ‘She’s gonna die!’ Winchell tries to scream while holding on to Boyland. He turns to the crowd. ‘I need somebody, anybody,’ he pleads. ‘She’s dead! She’s dead!'”
Boyland’s body was then dragged inside the Capitol building by Capitol Police and nothing more was known until, Kelly says, the “D.C. Medical Examiner’s Office concluded Boyland died of a drug overdose,” a verdict now rendered “highly suspicious considering the video footage and first-hand accounts of others about what happened to her that afternoon.”
But don't worry, the cops have investigated the cops and the cops found that the cops did nothing wrong:
https://www.worldtribune.com/d-c-police-internal-affairs-declares-beating-of-rosanne-boyland-objectively-reasonable/
A police officer’s beating of Rosanne Boyland with a steel baton and a large wooden stick while she laid unconscious in a packed U.S. Capitol tunnel on Jan. 6, 2021 was “objectively reasonable,” according to a D.C. Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) internal affairs investigation.
Video footage reportedly taken after Boyland had fallen unconscious in the tunnel shows MPD Officer Lila Morris beating Boyland with a steel baton and what appeared to be a wooden walking stick.
Morris can be seen on bodycam footage picking up the stick, raising it over her head and striking Boyland several times in quick succession before being pulled back by other officers.
Beatings are always objectively reasonable when they are conducted by the authorities. See also "enhanced interrogation."
Defund the capitol police.
Jake Lang is facing serious prison time for dragging her out. Somebody made a documentary about it. https://rumble.com/v17h6qx-the-truth-of-january-6th.html
Holy shit man!
Thanks for this. Sim Com...yeah, that's why they are sitting on that surveillance footage.
I have to wonder how many people on this thread will continue to justify what happened/ is happening. I'm going with an over/under of five.
As far as I can tell, there's only one group of people who wouldn't be happy if the full tapes were released, and they are the exact people in charge of the release of the tapes.
Literally everybody I know says "Show the evidence and charge the people who committed crimes that day."
There’s really no doubt that the rioters trying to enter the Capitol building were seeking to obstruct certification of the election. There may be additional footage that hasn’t been released, but it’s not going to obliterate the effects of the footage that already has been.
Wow. That’s one of the most messed up things I’ve read and didn’t know
Of course you didn’t know. They don’t want you to know
Thank you for telling the group this. I am astonished that so many people are unaware of Boyland’s murder by that woman cop. The footage has been out there since nearly the beginning.
Yea a couple people overdosed on egg McMuffins and stroked out
A woman was unconscious and I witnessed a video of a black female police officer beating the unconscious woman repeatedly with a stick. I have no idea where that video disappeared to.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/video-shows-officer-striking-motionless-woman-on-ground-during-capitol-riot
This has a couple videos.
“Flintstones’ water buffalo night” wins the thread.
Ditto!!!!
"[D]oes any rational person really believe the country was about to be overthrown by a dazed and confused guy dressed up in a combination costume of Flintstone's water buffalo night and a drunken NFL Patriots fan?"
Exactly. As many of us thought *while it happened*. But we're not just talking about any old "the country" -- but the most powerful country in world history. Let that sink in. Yet to this day, the prosecution's insane assertion remains the same.
It was the same incredulous feeling I had 9/11 when watching buildings implode on their footprint, *while it was happening*, especially the un-hit Building 7 -- a feat never duplicated before nor since, and critiqued in a formal report by thousands of engineers and scientists.
Based on these things, the US public has to be (a) phenomenally stupid (OK, maybe a decent portion really are), (b) phenomenally naive (that's a stretch in this day and age), phenomenally corrupt (can't be a terribly large portion) and/or (d) phenomenally *In Denial* (ding, ding, ding ... I think we have a winner!!) ...as to what has actually been ramping up now for decades.
How do we get out of this place?? I do believe the global economic disaster freight train now barreling down upon us is about to finally provide the West its long-needed wake-up call.
Despite endless warnings from the media about Trump’s and Republicans’ supposed authoritarian instincts, we are suffocating in an environment of left-wing oppression. Trump might have authoritarian tendencies, but he did not wield authoritarian power.
For the love of Pete, Trump was unable to get a Team R Congress to repeal Obamacare.
Worst.authoritarian.ever.
Building 7 is just incredibly inconvenient, isn't it? Collapsed all by itself. These things happen to buildings sometimes.
Clip from REPO MAN: "Natural causes." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOXvDGRvX70
"Dude, that's such old news, man ... time to move on!"
And, good clip :)
It is very ugly to realize 9/11 happened over twenty years ago.
I used to joke that Private Snuffy, born on 9/11/01, would be fighting in Afghanistan with no clue why he was there. I wasn't too far off.
"Based on these things, the US public has to be (a) phenomenally stupid (OK, maybe a decent portion really are), (b) phenomenally naive (that's a stretch in this day and age), phenomenally corrupt (can't be a terribly large portion) and/or (d) phenomenally *In Denial* (ding, ding, ding ... I think we have a winner!!) ...as to what has actually been ramping up now for decades."
I'll take "What is 'more than one of the above?'" for $500 and the Daily Double, Alex.
I concede that *is* the correct answer!
Individually, the public seems stupid, but as a group, it seems to have sussed out that COVID is no longer as dangerous as it was, and that Fauci is eerily demented. There's hope in this)))
This is kind of a wild theory but if you look at both the Capitol Police and DOD timelines, the DOD offered to mobilize additional National Guard outside of the DCNG and was turned down a few days before the rally. The SSAA and the HSAA denied based on McConnell and Pelosi based on how that chain of command works. Then Muriel Bowser got involved and sent a letter to Miller denying it formally. They seemed paranoid about the presence of outside Guardsman. When things went south they had to mobilize the guard anyways because they didn't have a choice. The way they were trying to sniff out any Trump supporters in the guard after they got to DC was bizarre. Is it possible that the politicians and DC people bought into the Q stuff? "The military is the way".
As far as the 9/11 stuff. I don't think anyone is in denial. The 1.3 trillion missing from the pentagon the day before. The war game drills the morning of. The problem is that people get lobbed and slammed. I think most of these things are bad actors but I also think they allow bad things to happen and spend more time planning on how to capitalize on them when they do. Then they seed stories that are so crazy to discredit anyone who asks questions. Like the pizza gate thing is a good example of that. Or they get ahead of something by repackaging it with different names. Like it seems pretty clear the Russian pee tape shit show is probably Hunter. The Carter Page deal is almost exactly the deal Hunter made with CEFC. Get in front of it. Change the names. It's a wild thought but nothing else makes sense.
Thanks. I wish I had the time to explore these cases conclusively. I must and will finish Jan 6 at least. It takes just a few damning inconsistencies to recognize a high unlikelihood of good intent, yet of course far more information is needed to prove beyond reasonable doubt, even by public discourse (vs courtroom) standards. It stinks rotten, but is maddeningly elusive.
No matter what Jan 6 Committee comes up with, it is quite simply invalid without properly obtained opposing testimony, given the gravity of the punishments and laws proposed. That point needs to be drive home. The Cheney/Kinzinger fig-leaf is of course laughable, at the very least because they are openly anti-Trump, so their Republican status is a moot point. Not that this will stop them from trying...
Blah, blah, blah.
Do you actually have something intelligent to add to the conversation?
“The 1.3 trillion missing from the pentagon the day before.”
Oh please. The entire US gov’t. budget (including SS) was $2 trillion in 2001 and the defense budget was $300:billion. How’d they do that?
Sorry it was 2.3 trillion dollars in missing transactions. https://youtu.be/zb6P7U1S-P8
I’d say it’s more disinterest than denial, but certainly some people are in denial.
"The public later found out only one person was actually killed through an act of violence . . ." Believe it or not, a good portion of the public, dare I say about 50% have not found that out. They still believe Officerf Sicknick was attacked with a fire extinguisher and that 3 or so other people died due to the actions of the insurrectionists.
I saw an otherwise interesting and otherwise well-informed lecturer the other assert that Sicknick was "beaten to death" by the crowd on January 6.
Yup.
https://euphoricrecall.substack.com/p/stop-sensationalizing-the-capitol
No. No one thought the Flintstone water buffalo dude was going to single handedly overturn the election. But absolutely the chaos of the armed mob rioting and beating Capitol police and erecting gallows and breaking into offices and chambers was the cover that Pence could have used to do what Trump was asking him to do. That was absolutely the plan. Most of the GOP went along with it too - refusing to certify because they are cowards still afraid of Trump influence on their own re-election chances. And are we really debating how many people died as if the other 150 Capitol police officers who required medical attention don't matter? This was a big fucking deal. And no one is above the law. If that absolute shitshow is allowed to just be swept aside then we are all FUCKED. We can be pissed that Biden isn't doing a good job and STILL recognize that this was the first time in the history of our nation where the LOSER of the election was not going to give up the presidency and Taibbi - I love you but your bias is showing. Knock it off. Interfering with the states and pressuring them to find votes and absolutely conning his voters with the Great $250 Million Dollar fundraising heist to help Trump fight to stay in power and all those other issues that you dismiss with your "oh there might be something criminal there" -- these January 6 hearings are critical. And if it's taking trump's inner circle awhile to find the courage that Cassidy Hutchinson found -- well GOOD FOR THEM for extending it. I mean fault the Biden administration for not doing what they should be doing but these hearings MATTER. You probably would have said Watergate was much ado about nothing too.
"But absolutely the chaos of the armed mob rioting and beating Capitol police and erecting gallows and breaking into offices and chambers was the cover that Pence could have used to do what Trump was asking him to do. That was absolutely the plan.'
It was *impossible* to enforce ANY plan to execute a coup like this in the US. Think of what you are saying: That the combined forces of the entire entrenched bureaucracies, not mention the power of huge industries of all kinds would EVER allow them to get away with such a thing for any more than a few hours -- and then not nail them to the wall 10x worse than they are doing now. People like Navarro, Powell, Giuliani, etc. are simply not that stupid or deluded to execute any kind of unambiguously illegal plan and get away with it (as opposed to, say, testing in some cases legally-uncharted territory). The whole idea that this was their their intent is breathtakingly naive.
Deprogram yourself from the unprecedented, state-of-the-psychology-art/science propaganda we are bathed with in modern America.
You're getting a lot wrong about January 6. So are a lot of other posters.
The focus of Trump's attempt to remain in office after his expiration date was a legal ploy- or more properly an extra-legal ploy.
As for mob violence at the Capitol, there was a lot of it. Obviously. There had to have been, in order to attack a police barrier and successfully overwhelm it, and then force entry to the locked Capitol building by smashing in a window and pouring through the breach.
But the mob violence alone could never have kept Donald Trump in office as President. What Trump was counting on was to turn his Vice President, Mike Pence. Just one little favor from Mike- to disregard the Constitution by refusing to carry out the formal certification of Joe Biden's 2020 election victory, in order to obey the order of his CEO to "return the process to the States", some of whom had already been organized to deliver an "alternate slate of electors" that would have supplied the critical balance of electoral votes required for a Trump victory.
That's the only goal that the Cult Leader cared about, in his last week as President: pressuring Vice President Pence into making the decision to enable an autogolpe on his behalf. Not military coup style; more like Roy Cohen shyster lawyer style. As long as Chief Executive Donald Trump held possession of the White House, he was counting on the informal legal axiom that "possession is 9/10 of the law." An axiom that had undoubtedly proved its practical worth again and again, in the business dealings of the Trump Organization.
If Mike Pence had caved in to Trump's increasingly obnoxious browbeating, the US would have been thrown into a Constitutional crisis without precedent in this history of the nation. A sitting President doesn't get to nullify the Constitution with a fait accomplit designed for the exclusive purpose of enabling him to remain in office as President for another term, and then dare the Supreme Court to nullify his actions.
If you don't realize that was the play, you're fooling yourself. If you realize that and it doesn't bother you, we ain't friends.
I'd like to zero in on this claim that Pence was requested to "disregarding the Constitution":
"But the mob violence alone could never have kept Donald Trump in office as President. What Trump was counting on was to turn his Vice President, Mike Pence. Just one little favor from Mike- to disregard the Constitution by refusing to carry out the formal certification"
(a) Was Pence legally able to refuse to certify the electors? In other words, was his actual, current *legal* role (not merely a traditional role) functional, and not that of a rubber-stamper?
(b) If so, and he *was* legally able to refuse to certify electors, what reasons would be permitted? By whom? via specific law, or court precedent? Or, could he decide for himself?
(a) The answer is "Yes, he can refuse to certify". He/She is not bound by specific reasons.
(b) The answer is "Yes" ... The rest, including Congress' role following disputes over this, can be found in, for example, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_Count_Act#Role_of_the_vice_president It's not worth boring people with the details.
Bottom line: There is nothing "unconstitutional" about refusing to certify electors. The whole process from then on out -- including any dramatic, precedent-setting football between the Congress, states, and courts -- is still COMPLETELY LEGAL. Not only that, it would have had the chance to exercise the last remaining channel of opposition, and as you assert Biden won, FINALLY put the matter to bed -- So then, what exactly, would be the problem?
The attempt to call this activity a "coup" and an "insurrection" is unmitigated bullsh*t, to stir the passions of a majority of the electorate ... and in turn permit PATRIOT II Act. As for "Joe Biden's 2020 [asserted] election victory, in order to obey the order of his CEO" -- This is your projection of malfeasance, not demonstrated reality.
The ONLY way to reach a "conclusion" here is to hear out both sides. That's how justice works. But that possibility was cut off at the knees by Nancy Pelosi, and so here we are, barreling along down the road to hell...
a) and b) - NO, he wasn't legally able to refuse. It would have been unconstitutional. You've analyzed this wrong - but if you want to see what top constitutional conservative scholars are testifying to under oath, about the very questions you ask, and then incorrectly answer, WATCH THE HEARINGS. Or buy Bill Barr's book. Deprogram yourself man. I bet you think Big Foot is real too.
Thank you.
This clarifies some things here for me about Trump. But I still don't believe he understood at the time anything he was doing was unambiguous illegal and thus would not survive legal challenges. (Also, see my Question 1 below.) It simply makes no sense to do so. He would have had legal advice for this, no matter what he got away with as a businessman, as you suggest, and no matter what preconceptions he came to the office with. He had already been there four years, and knew by then things worked differently than in the Trump Org.
I have little doubt also that he was specifically *set up* for any illegality he unknowingly engaged in, taking advantage of his personal weaknesses to entrap him. The participants would pull out all the stops to make sure it was as airtight as possible, complete with using deep-state turncoat moles like Barr, now being ritualistically flogged in the media until the storm blows over. So, I think the full story is certainly not out yet.
"[T]he US would have been thrown into a Constitutional crisis without precedent in this history of the nation." It would be unprecedentedly dramatic, certainly. But I don't think it would ambiguous, which is the mark of a true, or at least dangerous, crisis. If necessary, Trump and his small team would been removed bodily (possibly by a police force authorized by the law-making Congress 2/3, and supported by SCOTUS), and the National Guard would protect the city from MAGA rioters. As the Establishment has the upper hand, it would certainly have been tamped down. As it happened, Trump DID leave town peacefully, to pursue it later by other means, didn't he? But no one talks about that little detail demonstrating Trump's *actual* intent about obeying the law. Oopsie...
The real problem would be the 100 million citizens who, even if this specific action was proper, that *no one*, for decades, ever addresses their legitimate complaints. And that certainly has little to with Trump.
At this point, there appear to still be these problems:
1. "Just one little favor from Mike- to disregard the Constitution by refusing to carry out the formal certification of Joe Biden's 2020 election victory" - (a) How do we know this action is *necessarily* unconstitutional? If Mike Pence believed as Trump did that there were too many irregularities, and these (still) needed to be properly examined, how would his decision be a violation of the Constitution? Surely he is not just a rubber-stamping figurehead in his role. (b) What in the world makes you think *this very act* would not be completely resisted and sooner or later overturned, by all the-powers-that-be that are arrayed against him, especially the courts? You know, as we are seeing right now? In order words, *legitimate or not*, this would never stand. Thus making all this bluster about Trump being able to *successfully* execute a coup over the United States silly bluster.
2. The vast majority of protesters, some of whom turned rioters, simply cannot all be called "insurrectionists", for the simple reason that they thought they were *preserving* the system rather than overthrowing it. I have not heard anything from the Jan 6 Committee acknowledging this.
3. You must know as well as I that the Jan 6 Committee's primary aim is not to prosecute Jan 6 as much as to make a general claim about the state of the country, that it is riddled with illegitimate resistance, not mere protest -- curiously existing almost exclusively to Republicans and/or white people. This is one of the points of Committee and its supporters harping on the specific charge of "insurrection".
4. "As for mob violence at the Capitol, there was a lot of it. Obviously." I've seen several videos of Antifa-style characters doing the building violence, and MAGAs resisting them. Have each of these people been openly identified and determined to actually be Trumpers-in-drag? What about the Epps character, etc.? That latter one appears not to have been resolved properly at all. Given our long history being snookered, it is obvious that NONE of the official explanations can be trusted at all, and must be bored into relentlessly.
5. How did the protesters get let in? Is this security failure being addressed properly? I'm sure they'll come up with some sophistic explanation.
In short, this is another case of one group's anger and errors getting the full Klieg lights, and are nailed to the wall. Others' malfeasance is completely ignored, and laws are flouted. This has been going on now openly for so long it would be odd if it were NOT resisted. This is a trap that has been set (just as with Russia over Ukraine).
Stupid. Verbose. Followed by really verbose.
Please watch the hearings. At home, on Youtube. Alone so no one sees that you're venturing outside of approved cult videos. 1. YES, Trump knew what he was doing was illegal - he'd been told this in no uncertain terms by...well EVERYONE except Rudy and Sidney who are batshit crazy and have been disbarred. Trump didn't CARE. He wanted what he wanted. PENCE didn't do trump's bidding because Pence knew he had no grounds to do so. He knew the constitution didn't allow it. He tried HARD to find justification and he found out that he couldn't do it and that what he was being asked to do was illegal. WATCH THE HEARINGS SO YOU CAN QUIT ASKING QUESTIONS THAT HAVE ALREADY BEEN ANSWERED - WITH EVIDENCE TO SUIT EVEN YOU, SHOULD YOU LEAVE YOUR BUBBLE. 3. NO - No this isn't the primary aim. WATCH IT and see for yourself. 4. No you haven't. Also you have a long history of being snookered, that I believe. You are being snookered now, by your loony new sources like 2000 Mules. 5. Watch the hearings and you will see videos of exactly how the trump rioters got in. IN SHORT - you're simply wrong and it's embarrassing. Please educate yourself.
Great reply. Great summary. But Anti-Hip will still disagree with it because he hasn't yet freed himself from the bubble. He's determined to continue to defend trump long after trump's inner circle abandoned him.
You can certainly throw Trump in the goddam woodchipper as far as I'm concerned. He's a disgusting narcissist, and has a dozen other repulsive characteristics, never mind that I simply am not a conservative. Never voted for him, never will.
The ONE thing that I am protesting is the relentless Establishment abandonment of (1) law, and (2) even of democratic principle -- ironically, *in the name* of democratic principle.
This leads me to recognize that a very significant majority of the country simply has no understanding, or worse, no actual acceptance of democracy. Namely, that ALL citizens, which includes ALL PROTESTING citizens, have the right to be heard and respected, and not buffaloed into oblivion. I am a Leftist, but am well aware that Rightists are being treated now as less than persons. This sh*t has now been going on for decades.
I don’t know. My recollection of the Flintstones is that the water buffalo with the gavel was the boss and that’s that. Them’s the rules.
I didn't say they'd get away with it. But that was their intent. That was their plan. They thought if they could get Pence to decertify they could send their alternate slate of electors -- which they had already prepared in some states and sent - and they could change the outcome. Could they have? Hopefully not. Hopefully constitutional norms would have prevailed (as they did) but there was enormous pressure on individuals from trump and his lackeys and we are lucky that a small handful of people stood strong against that pressure. And you know - women no longer have a constitutional right to abortion in America. So forgive me if you think I"m being breathtakingly naive, but I don't know what SCOTUS would have done had Pence folded.
"They thought if they could get Pence to decertify they could send their alternate slate of electors"
Is this a plan that uses (any kind of) illegal force? Is it otherwise unambiguously illegal, or is it, rather, testing uncharted legal waters? If neither, then what is the legal objection here? Why can't the process run its course?
Do you think mainstream Democrats and Republicans never do worse? They have the good fortune not to be under Klieg lights nor have all manner of armies, public and private, arrayed against them.
Spend more time in the garden, less time online.
Even if one were to grant you your main premise--"It would be impossible to enforce this kind of coup"--you would have to be completely programmed into ignorance yourself if you did not find the fact that there is direct evidence Trump and John Eastman were *attempting* to do so disturbing.
Such a resistance to the peaceful transition of power has not occurred since the Civil War era, and the election of 1876, which nearly begot a second Civil War itself.
To brush it off as no big deal, especially when Trump plans to run again, and especially when key election operatives and lawyers are planning to follow up on Eastman's legal theories to try and invalidate an electoral victory by someone the Republicans don't like, *and are on the record saying so*, is mind-bogglingly myopic.
Because, even if such a thing happens *and fails*, you are, at that point, functionally living in a failed state. And if you look at the history of failed states, what occurs after their failure is never pretty.
Trump is running in '24 and will likely win.
Don't do anything drastic.
"there is direct evidence Trump and John Eastman were *attempting* to do so disturbing"
What I see going on here is this:
(1) Trump, as we all know, has numerous personal weaknesses. These are the places his enemies plan their psy-ops on him.
(2) It is quite plausible and even likely he had moles sabotaging him all over the place, for over four years before during, and after his administration, they learned well his MO; members of his own legal team being no exception. Who was informing all of the named/famed people? The latter don't do their research on their own...
(3) Once they find a way to fully nail Trump to the wall through his Achilles' heels, not only his associates, but also the people who voted for him in 2016 in a "Hail Mary" pass of sheer desperation will have a permanent scarlet letter of association with him, and will be railroaded into all kinds of further subservience, rights denial, if not jail, etc. The playbook has been run many times now, and its just too obvious to too many people.
"To brush it off as no big deal, especially when Trump plans to run again ..."
Understood. That's the plan. Trump is being elevated by Big Media so the Republican NPCs will vote for him, and deny their party the chance to nominate a competent candidate. They did it in 2016 (with shocking results from sloppy end-planning); and they'll do in in 2024 (they certainly won't make the 2016 mistakes again).
We don't live in a failed state. We once lived in functional state that evolved through its flaws. We now live in a state ruthlessly and relentlessly being killed off. Those who want this killing think they've got something better on the other side. That's the howler -- that slick surveillance capitalism combined with communist-style authoritarianism and transhumanism will somehow bring us to nirvana.
STOP.
Retire. Please.
I know. It's tough when the marks don't just roll over for you any more. I feel for ya'!
This is why we don't ban speech, ladies and gentlemen. We simply hand over the microphone and allow people to speak.
When you know you are correct: Give your opponent the floor and he will hang himself.
When you know you are lying (And every single member of the J6 committee knows the narrative they are desperately trying to further is a complete lie) : Never give your opponent the floor. Hence no Bannon testimony on site. Where there is less control than ZOOM! tm.
Just about the time my faith in humanity is restored, a poster like that comes along.
Wow. This is just...
In the entire history of mankind a rebel force has never overtaken a sitting government without military support. Period.
Hell, just look to Sri Lanka if you will. The folks overran the presidents palace, chased him from the country (but his 'party' is still in power and starting a police/military crackdown). If the military complies (as it most certainly would in the US) then no coup. If the military stands down or supports the rebel, then a coup.
You may wish to watch a couple of very entertaining movies on the subject:
'Seven Days in May'
'Valkryie'
On a side note, what really pisses me off is all of my tax dollars spent on this BS. In economic times like this pursuing any further is insane.
Even if the rebel force fails, however, the *attempt* to overtake a sitting government without using the established political machinery (which in modern Republics like the US is 'voting') can severely disrupt that political machinery and cause severe social and economic disruption in turn.
The crackdown in Sri Lanka is actually proving that right now.
Do you really want to be the guy in 1874 who's saying "This is all overblown, none of this matters", and then have to essentially jumpstart Jim Crow in 1876 to avert another Civil War?
Such disruptions grease the wheels of state repression, then a reaction against state repression. If you're lucky, the latter doesn't result in a Civil War that kills millions of people, just a power grab with terrible consequences, like we had in 1876.
"[a] the *attempt* to overtake a sitting government without using
[b] the established political machinery (which in modern Republics like the US is 'voting')"
Sure, we know ...
(a) the party line of these self-selected mind-readers is that this could ONLY be an attempt to "take over the government" -- rather than "correct failures in government", misguided or not. Any idiot knows the protesters were not looking to *create* a new, non-democratic gov, but instead restoring what they *perceived* were *failures* of democracy in 2020;
and
(b) "the established political machinery [of elections]" could never include the *Vice President* making an actual *decision*, not a rubber-stamp, for any reason -- you know, that might go other than one way? Is he just there for show? Do you simply need to keeping pound that (rubber-stamper) assertion into our heads?
Your claims exemplify how sophists spin. We've all seen it for decades, and we're beyond fed up.
“ (a) the party line of these self-selected mind-readers is that this could ONLY be an attempt to "take over the government" -- rather than "correct failures in government", misguided or not. ”
A group can make up any rationalization it wants for trying to unilaterally overturn the outcome of a democratic election, it doesn’t change the nature of what it’s doing. Countless coups have been carried out against democratic governments under the banner of “correcting” an “incorrect” election outcome. Most of them more or less permanently corrupt the democracies they purport to save.
“ the established political machinery [of elections]" could never include the *Vice President* making an actual *decision*, not a rubber-stamp, for any reason -- you know, that might go other than one way?”
Correct. The Vice President’s role is ceremonial. Again, votes select the president, not the VP. Ironically enough, many of Trump’s lawyers told him so—but he decided to listen to Eastman.
So would you consider the Dutch farmers spraying manure all over the government buildings in the same vein? Or the French yellowshirts, or....
Again, without the requisite level of firepower to overcome the opposing force you can not win.
Again, for reference see: Egypt and Morsi
I'll post the spoiler - Died 17 June 2019 (aged 67) in Tora Prison, Cairo, Egypt after being ousted by.....the military!
Good grief.
"Gentlemen, Trump gets to stay in office because he had a plan. Somebody tell Biden the bad news."
Taibbi is right, the only thing I worry about is that someday Trump gets back in office. And the democrats are FUCKING MAKING IT HAPPEN!
Why is Trump worse than Biden?
He isn't particularly, although I would hope we could do better than either. My primary concern is that Trump is so abrasive that the backlash in the following term would produce somebody even more vile than Biden.
But mostly, I just wanted to quote Total Recall.
"[T]his was the first time in the history of our nation where the LOSER of the election was not going to give up the presidency"
Not true. Oh, sure, in the past, the candidates themselves took the dignified route, and let their operatives do the dirty work. So Trump's electors were seriously challenged in 2016. (As someone older than 5, surely you remember The Resistance (R)?) Before that, Bush's re-election and electors were also challenged in 2004, when the Ohio count vs Kerry looked suspicious. And more to the point Bush's election was challenged in 2000 -- *all the way up to the Supreme Court*. In each case, a process of addressing complaints by Democrats was fully and publicly followed. That didn't happen for Republicans in 2020. Can you point to the full, public accounting of the complaints the 2020 election, complete with objections to any dubious or self-serving explanations, published *anywhere*?
"Interfering with the states and pressuring them to find votes and absolutely conning his voters with the Great $250 Million Dollar fundraising heist to help Trump fight to stay in power and all those other issues that you dismiss ..."
These, any many others, are the pieces you've heard, told by ONE SIDE. But there is more than stories going on -- there always is. Anyone who isn't a naif knows there is likely far more going on behind the scenes: various kinds of arm-twisting, veiled threats to end peoples careers, outright blackmail, etc. See below...
"[T]hese January 6 hearings are critical."
You certainly got that right! This is no mere political crisis -- as a public-discourse event, this is a Western-society-wide *epistemological* crisis we are in, not unlike what followed the introduction of the printing press a half-millenium ago. We're likely in the culmination of a ramp-up to a slick new form of totalitarianism, one that has been going on for over 20 years, and arguably since the 1960s ... and you and too many others just don't see it.
All I, for one, am really asking for, here, is for the TWO sides to be able to tell their stories, and have both faithfully communicated to the people by the press, so they can make up their own minds. You know, the way they do, and have done for hundreds of years, in courts of law? Because *no human, or group of humans, has a lock on truth*? That is the basis for the process of science, and for democratic governance? But the demands for equal representation, leading to full and public discovery, have been ruthlessly denied. Why?
If you can't see that only *stories* can be presented -- representations of reality, not reality itself -- and thus need to dealt with under those terms, then we, and democracy, are well and truly cooked.
No, this is the first time they took it, as you say, *all the way up to the Supreme Court* and LOST...and STILL refused to concede and STILL tried to stay in office. There's nothing wrong with recounts. As for pointing to the full, public accounting -- dear GOD man, where have you been? Did you miss the 60+ court challenges? The wall to wall public coverage up until the inauguration? The press conferences? But when the recounts were over (and Biden still won) and when 60+ courts ruled against trump it was time to concede. But trump didn't do that. Trump knew he'd lost - he'd been told that by - oh just about everyone - but he didn't care. He didn't want to give up the Presidency and so he lied to his gullible voters and sent them to the Capital to do just what they did. And if you want a fuller accounting, because two years of it isn't enough for you - read the 72 page report just put out on Thursday by a group of conservatives, including prominent lawyers and retired federal judges, categorically rebutting each of the claims made in court by former President Donald Trump and his supporters over the 2020 election results.
"The report, "LOST, NOT STOLEN: The Conservative Case that Trump Lost and Biden Won the 2020 Presidential Election," looked at more than 60 court cases Trump and his supporters filed and lost in six key battleground states. It reached the "unequivocal" conclusion that the former Republican president's claims were unsupportable -- which Trump's own Department of Homeland Security as well as election officials nationwide debunked days after the 2020 election."
"[R]ead the 72 page report just put out on Thursday by a group of conservatives, including prominent lawyers and retired federal judges, categorically rebutting each of the claims made in court by former President Donald Trump and his supporters over the 2020 election results."
Thank you. That (appears to be) what I asked for. But if it does NOT address the claims made by Navarro, Powell, 2000 Mules, etc. etc. -- then my point continues to hold that the whole exercise CANNOT BE TRUSTED, no matter how good a show is put on. We know at this point that the ongoing COVID and now Ukraine fiascos are propaganda on steroids, and this one looks no different.
The failure of the Russiagate conspiracy theory (comically renamed "collusion" to avoid the taint of the overdone propaganda campaign), in particular, set a precedent as to how far the Establishment will go to destroy not simply Donald Trump, but the national rebellion against corruption and democracy decay that undergirds it, which is the real target. Bernie was a successful sheepdogger on the left, but the next ones who come along will have a far tougher go.
I replied to another questioner here that the 60+ court challenges, including from Supreme Court, themselves are insufficient if they, or rather, the MSM and its resources, do not fully lay out to the public the reasons, AND then allow interactive engagement, of the arguments being promoted. Because their credibility is DEAD.
Why are the Establishments contentions resisted so mightily, not just by me, but by tens of millions of others? A third of the country doesn't just "go mad" for no reason. It is because we have seen with our own eyes, for decades, the kind of creeping criminality in Fed Gov and MSM that has reached a peak during Trump's term. We no longer have ANY faith it can be trusted. Its claims must be PROVED -- ALL OF IT -- and we reserve the right to fight tooth and nail until this is done.
Another thing that must be done here is to keep separate the actions of (1) Trump and his team, and (2) the people who showed up at his rally Jan. 6, the latter of whom have thus far have suffered massively more with far less to blame.
In both cases, we see it entirely plausible that the Jan 6 prosecution is a massive con job with a *story* of connected dots, using cherry-picked evidence, cherry-picked witnesses, embedded double-agents, threats, blackmail, and God knows what other malfeasance, as an existential fight to protect the powers of a few -- specifically, by getting us ready for a "domestic terrorism" PATRIOT II Act, preventing forevermore the "wrong" protests. Our Fed Gov and MSM blew it the last few decades CREATING this monster, designed to protect a now deeply undemocratic system. And the 100 million or so resisting it, and more joining us, are going to be quite a job to tackle, because we all see now the psy-op is now dying and thrashing wildly and carelessly.
The Establishment wants us be wowed by the brilliance of their sophistry and their relentless determination ("resilience") ... yet we also notice they are methodically, both psychologically (stealth wokeness injections everywhere, tying the Republican voters' 2016 Trump "Hail Mary" pass with him personally, etc. etc.) and physically (destroying industry, removing rights, etc. etc.) killing us off. Hard to unsee it at this stage; they've certainly overplayed their hand provoking us (oh yeah, there's now also relentless "news" about the "unprovoked invasion", now being repeated ad nausem, LOL Please!!). And they laugh at us for resisting. ("Resistance"... hmm, where have I heard this word before?).
This Jan 6 juggernaut is most certainly another piece of this ongoing sh*tshow. We may not know *which* pieces are rotten, but we certainly know they're in there.
OMG you need to get out of your bubble. Maybe start by watching the hearings yourself. Watch the STAUNCH CONSERVATIVES who are testifying under oath against trump - which I know that's hard for you to hear since despite your pretense at wanting the truth from "both sides" I'm about 90% positive that you aren't watching the hearings. You're getting a slanted cherry picked spin from one of those nutty conspiracy theory "news" sites. 2000 Mules??? Dude that's propaganda. Yeah, I did watch it. You wanna hear what Navarro REALLY said and did? Watch the hearings with your own two eyes and quit outsourcing your brain. Bill Barr is a "cherry picked" witness?? Cassidy Hutchinson? Pat Cippolone?? Eric Hershmann? IVANKA & JARED?? These are trump's inner circle man! WATCH FOR YOURSELF! What are you scared of? That you -- like trump's inner circle - will discover THE TRUTH and it's not what you want it to be? TRUMP LOST. The 60+ court cases aren't being hidden from the public - they are literally public record! You can read the cases -- all of them -- for yourself! SIXTY COURTS?? You seriously think they all got it wrong?? Many of them were trump appointed judges who voted for him!! Even SCOTUS didn't save him! Because HE LOST and the "evidence" does not exist. Also - this is pointless, because you also think COVID is fake. So enjoy your bubble. You actually seem like you're invested enough and literate enough to break free of it - but you like it in there I think.
STOP NOW.
"This was a big fucking deal. And no one is above the law. If that absolute shitshow is allowed to just be swept aside then we are all FUCKED."
Swept aside? Just about all those people are in jail (there are some notable exceptions, but I don't see anybody decrying their potential arrest. Quite the opposite). If there was any conspiracy wouldn't we have a plea deal at this point? All those arrests, all those denied bail, where is the coverage of their (actual court) testimony (or charges, or trials)? Its not like some politicians bailed them all out.
What more do you want (that's a rhetorical question, I know you want to use this as an excuse to punish/silence your political opponents)?
Burt. You. Stupid. Move along.
Go stick a knife in someone's back Borgia. What are you trying to be here, the retarded chorus?
I'm not trying to silence anyone. I'd love for them to all testify and tell their side of the story. But trump doesn't want them to testify. Offered to pay for many of their legal defense if they defy the subpoena. Or showed up and took the 5th. And no, we wouldn't have a plea deal at this point. But we might when the hearings and the DOJ investigations commence.
"But trump doesn't want them to testify"
Irrelevant.
We would have a plea deal among the hundreds arrested if any single one of them had anything to connect their actions to virtually anybody. We do not have that, and the simplest explanation for that lack of evidence, after all this time and all these trials, is because it does not exist.
Patience. It isn't over yet. And it's very relevant. He doesn't want them to testify because he doesn't want the actions to be connected. Stay tuned.
I was feeling crazy alone in this comment thread until I found yours. Thank you for the sanity check!
I know, I know ... overcoming cognitive dissonance is often very painful. "That's what the owners count on." So by all means, take a breather, and come back when you are ready.
Hearings do nothing. They spew hot air and go on and on with nothing changing no one held responsible or prosecuted. Me thinks their all criminals and if one goes they all go. It's all a Kabuki show and why anyone believes it is beyond me.
Yup.
https://euphoricrecall.substack.com/p/stop-sensationalizing-the-capitol
SOME seek to make him a supervillian. Others see him as a savior who fights COMMUNISM. Someone who will put the people who voted for him first, in stark contrast to Biden who has put the world first on the backs of the US working class.
7.3 MILLION jobs in 2 MONTHS
MAY 2020 Trump Jobs 2.5 million gained ONE MONTH.
JUNE 2020 - Economy added a record 4.8 million jobs in June, 2020
MAY 2021 Biden Jobs 2..2 million gained in first 5 MONTHS
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/05/record-job-gains-heres-where-the-jobs-are-in-one-chart-may-2020.html
Like the shit that you're "told'' by taibbi is any different than the shit from other numbskulls.
But when he does it, it's fun. It's called "style."
"Most people do not care anymore"? You don't care, obviously, but the majority of Americans care that he committed crimes against the constitution and the people and we believe he should be put on trial. You are totally living in a media bubble, man, and I'm sorry to see Taibbi's put himself in it. You obviously haven't watched the trial.
lol if it was a trial it would be worth watching, because Nancy Pelosi would be testifying. This is a production where one side simply throws shit against the wall and the other side isn't even present.
My mistake. He hasn't watched hearings. Neither have you, apparently. If you watched them and still believe what Trump did and is doing is okay, then you are delusional, under his spell.
I don't care about Trump and would honestly prefer he didn't run in 2024. But anybody who thinks 1/6 is a big deal, much less 'illegal' or 'a threat to democracy' doesn't know anything about 2016 -- when the democrats challenged electors as illegal.
On the other hand, the 1/6 committee itself is illegal and using powers it doesn't legally have. Where's the outcry about the attacks on democracy and the rule of law?
Some of us remember life before Trump, you know.
You obviously haven’t been watching the hearings. if you have and still believe that, then you’ve been completely blinded by your ideology. He and anyone who still supports him is welcome to go in and testify under oath to the committee. Even his closest associates and family know that he is guilty. No one will vouch for him under oath.
Punk.
"Also while we are on the subject, does any rational person really believe the country was about to be overthrown by a dazed and confused guy dressed up in a combination costume of Flintstone's water buffalo night and a drunken NFL Patriots fan? "
Pretend that the 1/6 protesters marched, not on Congress but on the NSA or the CIA.
They would have been shot at as soon as they came in close, and nobody would have bothered waiting for an order to open fire.
Dumb shit.
You're a mean troll when you've been drinking.
The piano's been drinking, not me.
And This Time I mean it! 😉😁
"I literally laid on the couch for a year drinking a bottle of wine." Wow, a bottle sometimes lasts me two nights, but a whole year! I wish I could drink that responsibly. :)
Well, there was that wedding party in Cana . . .
Hahahaha that was my first thought too -
Still seems that you guys need help with your drinking. Let me know and i will be happy to help you finish the bottle.
Spot on! It's not that trump is so good, it's that the democratic party in so many ways is even worse. There's no labor party in the entire Western world anymore. The coming freezing in the dark recession in Europe May put enough people in the streets to end the neoliberalism agenda. American's gun's but no cojones and no organizational abilities so I expect nothing from them engaged in the culture war's forever.
You're exactly right. Sri Lanka was just the first governmental casualty of the green agenda.
https://simulationcommander.substack.com/p/were-not-gonna-take-it
I’m positive that lots and lots of ‘smart’ people showed the ‘leaders’ of Sri Lanka plenty of models and graphs and projections ‘proving’ how great things would be if the country beat the rest of the world to the punch and jumped on the organic farming bandwagon. And I’m sure those same ‘experts’ spent more than a little time fawning over Sri Lanka’s high ESG score as if it were something tangible.
But ultimately, the bullshitter’s bullshit is exposed — typically via high-speed collision with reality. The real world never seems to conform to the promise of the computer model, and things go disastrously wrong. Lofty promises are replaced with grim realities, and imaginary fortunes vanish to reveal desolate grocery shelves. When this happens, an angry people rise up and withdraw their consent to be governed.
Farmers in the Netherlands and EU are rising up because of the restrictions on fertilizer.
It won't be the last. The insanity has to go by any means necessary.
So you’re in favor of as much pollution and factory farming as possible. Where are you storing your extra planet?
I went to the Netherlands and I didn't see massive pollution anywhere. Where is your evidence that any of this exists, except in your mind. If you think that crushing farmers and making people poor and starving them is going to be good for your cause, you might want to think again. The green myth is finally collapsing. People like you should not be in any position to force changes that are poorly thought out and lead to poverty and starvation. Case #1 is Sri Lanka. Case #2 may be Germany. You want your hometown to be Case #3? Where you can't get food or energy or transportation? We should force people like you to live off the grid and have to hunt for your food and chop wood for food. Your type is dangerous for society. Germany should never have let a petulant uneducated teenager to define their energy policy. Now they will pay.
If the choice is between pollution and factory farming and starvation. I choose the former. But that is not the choice. You pray to a false god.
Dumb. Get less dumber.
Are you in favor of starving? Your children starving? Some regulation is good. But the enviros are not serving the environment but rather an anti human political agenda to supposedly save the planet.
A scientist said the ocean is much healthier than 30 years ago but CBS morning cut him off when he said that.(They we’re talking about sharks.) I never thought I’d see a bald eagle here in the Midwest but they are a common sight.
She's willing to starve actual people today in the hope that she can save somebody from starving in the future, when the earth is warmer and we can grow food on more of its surface.
That scientist was lying as is anyone who says things are less than catastrophic. We are about five years away from complete and unavoidable absolute collapse of the ecosystem for the entire planet. My children probably WILL starve and anyone who isn’t in paralyzing panic right now is a damned fool.
There is no science anywhere supporting "complete and unavoidable absolute collapse of the ecosystem for the entire planet" in 5 years or 100 years. Read the IPCC detailed reports, rather than banking on AOC and politicians hell bent on evoking, "paralyzing panic right now." You are likely in the same group panicking over a surge in cases of a now cold-level pandemic virus. They are working you and you cower in fear.
They’ve been saying that since the 70’s. Back then it was an ice age. There are so many predictions of catastrophic collapse in my lifetime that have never happened. The fact that scientist was censored tells me he was saying something that doesn’t fit the narrative. The fact scientists who disagree with the catastrophe model are censored leads me to believe they are onto something. True science thrives of disagreement and debate, not a monoculture of narrative. They said we’d starve in the 70’s. It didn’t happen. People may starve because of these needless regulations. Look at Sri Lanka. Look at the Netherlands. All this fear is about controlling us, not helping the environment.
I am so sorry for you that you believe that. I hope you can find help.
We’ve been five years away from catastrophe for decades now. The original information used to make the terrifying predictions is obviously faulty.
Do you honestly need it explained to you what a ridiculous false dichotomy your statement is, Karen, "Lawyer in Austin"?
"American's gun's but no cojones and no organizational abilities"
I am sorry to say that you called this one. It's a bummer.
In the American 2A culture, we arm up precisely because we lack trust in our fellow citizens and especially the federal government. It's nice to have a bunker to sit on in case shit goes south, but it also gets lonely sitting on a bunker.
The democratic party isn't even worse. But they need to step up. Or we need a new party. Republican Party imploded. Dems are a bunch of do-nothings. SOS. We need help. And not looney conspiracy theory nonsense.
They're a tag team. Grit and Tory, it's the same story. No western country to my knowledge is getting better for the majority of it's people. China has brought literally hundreds of millions out of poverty in a couple of generations and has by far the largest "real" economy in the world and the improvements keep coming. Russia since President Putin, ~20 year's has ended the hell imposed on their people by western shock doctrine capitalism and it was continuing to improve before the war. IMHO we are in a seismic change from western hegemonic extractive rentier capitalism led by the chief hegemon usa to a multi polar much more equal, less exploitive societies. Needless to say, the hegemonic exploiters ain't Goin down without a fight and this is only the beginning.
Really?
Well said, Sasha. There seems to be something insidious going on here, as Matt suggests. It's like it's being done intentionally to ramp up Trump. If it wasn't already in use, we'd be thinking that 'Trumped-up' was invented to describe this situation. I think the oligarchs are playing both sides of the chessboard and they intend to keep us ricocheting off the bumpers (sorry for the mixed metaphor). He is the Great Set-Up to the Great Reset. We're gearing up for round two.
"In chasing Trump, they've destroyed themselves. There is very little left of them. "
They had to chase Trump because he was opposed to every major power player inside the MIC and the beltway.
The dems were given the chance to inherit the support of the MIC, the neocons, the intel agencies, about a 3rd of GOP congresspersons, the elite billionaires, silicon valley, globalists and many more. All they had to do was turn their back on labor and the religious right ( a shift already well underway under Obama and within the Clinton campaign) and skate to a permanent strangle hold on power. The one unifying theme that drew all ths together and galvanized their colorful base was the resistance or never trump.
They became the MOAR WOAR party, the darling of the intel community they had never trusted, in league with big bizness and cozy with all the biggest banksters. It was a once in a lifetime political bonanza. They just performed like amatuers and clowns and dropped the ball on lots and lots of mainstream issues while pandering to the excesses of the socially far left wing of their base, to the detriment of all else.
They were given all the power, the US was finally a one party state and the dems blew it.
Personally I think by design. Nobody who is anybody really wants to destroy the illusion of democracy the two party state provides. And the powerful who stood opposed to Trump like to see him and his base humiliated/deemed domestic terror threats etc so that nobody EVER thinks about hijacking either of the parties to run as an oppostion candidate again.
I feel there needs to be a distinction made between your average Joe Democrat (okay maybe Seth or Peter or James) and the DNC. Democrats wanted Bernie Sanders so the DNC took him down. They do all kinds of studies on how to manipulate their base. In terms of the vaccine, I talk about some in my episode Manufacturing Contempt.
And what's generally used to twist their thinking is their white guilt and their compassion--and I'm not saying they have more of the latter than the Republicans. Republicans are being manipulated too and it's an open question of whether Trump is part of it, with or without his knowledge. You're absolutely right about the Dems getting in bed with everyone they'd formerly been against--big intel, big pharma, big banks, high tech censorship, the FBI & CIA. How could they have made that about-face without Trump? The lockdowns & vaccines & Fauci-worship never would have worked without this double-play.
I agree with you about what happened but if we want to change it, I think it's important to analyze how and why.
i hear you about needing a distinction. I am sure that remnants of the anti war left still vote democrat. If you want to discuss solutions and change I am all ears.
Oh now you're really speaking my language! My research is on economic small-scale sovereignty. I don't think that any form of government works for 100's of millions to a billion people. And I look at politics as the determination of policies, not the 'personalitics' that lets us be lazy and not think through WHAT we want rather than WHO we want.
No serious economic change can be described in a soundbite but I'll link one of my episodes that lays the foundation called Build a New Model. And I'll link my book, How to Dismantle an Empire.
https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/build-a-new-model
https://www.amazon.com/How-Dismantle-Empire-2020-Vision/dp/1733347607/
kleen nailed it with this short history lesson.
Have you ever actually read anything by Steve Bannon? Listened to any of his speeches or comments? In what alternate universe is he actually good on anything?
Further, all Trump did when Republicans controlled the government was pass a massive upper class tax cut and arrest Mexican children. What makes you think he'll do anything else if gets back in office?
And didn't start any wars. And presided over successful peace talks in the Middle East. And oversaw an economy leaps and bounds ahead of what we're in right now.
Biden is printing money and handing it to upper class, politically connected groups. And he will continue to do so by his own admission.
Cue the needle dragged across the vinyl.... "...successful peace talks in the MIddle East"...(?)
I'm just checking, but did the thread segue into Trumpland just now?
Did you somehow miss the Abraham Accords?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Accords
Biden literally said he strongly supported it today.
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/3558921-biden-says-he-strongly-supports-trumps-abraham-accords/
Yeah, I totally missed it. I was doing my hair.
And give $ to Bezos! Really gonna use the awful 4letter word Hate that “they” are messing with the Moon! Leave Luna alone!
The Moon is a harsh mistress.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Moon_Is_a_Harsh_Mistress
Good Book. The computer died though.
"And oversaw an economy leaps and bounds ahead of what we're in right now."
Not really.
Biden's economy (to the degree a US president really can have much of an effect on the economy versus secular economic trends) is about as good, if not a touch better, than Trump's was at the end of his term.
We have a combination of high inflation (the multi-decade highs began in the last few months of Trump's term) and very low unemployment. The monthly job gains have been slightly better since Biden's inauguration than they were late in the Trump regime.
However, just like Trump's 'miracle economy' was actually just a continuation of the trends already present in the late Obama years, (when unemployment was already low and the job market was already heating up) Biden's economy is just a continuation of the trend we saw in the late Trump years.
That's because the US economy's performance is mostly determined by factors outside of the president's control. They can tweak around the edges using policy levers, but they don't have the kind of power that allows for the kind of radical actions that would actually change trends being driven by the underlying global economic fundamentals. The latter is both the advantage and disadvantage of dictatorships, monarchies, and other systems with powerful, centralized, top-down control structures.
Yes. And, having spent a fair amount of time in China, with an extremely powerful centralized top-down control structure...China is pretty fucked up right now. So, economies work in ways that news media cannot describe or keep up with.
Hey if you want to try to convince everybody that the economy is great, keep talking -- that way real people in the real world see how nuts you are.
Yeah, this response is pretty typical--"I'm not going to provide any specifics, cite any numbers, or generally address what you're saying but 'everybody knows' the economy is [horrible/awesome/whatever] and you're a dumb-dumb if you don't agree"
It's always telling in these generic evaluations that the respondent is usually asserting that the economy went from 'amazing' to 'awful' the moment a politician they don't like got elected, or from 'terrible' to 'awesome' in the opposite case.
Somehow it always turns out the numbers don't support this politically-driven narrative. For example:
October 2019 (pre-pandemic): 128k jobs gained, 167k 3-month average - https://www.bls.gov/news.release/archives/empsit_11012019.pdf
June 2022: 372k jobs gained, 383k 3-month average - https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf
CPI (consumer inflation) in October 2020: 6.2%, (already the largest increase since 1990) https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2021/consumer-prices-increase-6-2-percent-for-the-year-ended-october-2021.htm#:~:text=Consumer%20prices%20increase%206.2%20percent%20for%20the%20year%20ended%20October%202021,-November%2019%2C%202021&text=The%20Consumer%20Price%20Index%20for,the%20period%20ending%20November%201990.
...the latter clearly showing that the inflationary surge was well underway before Biden took office.
So, things actually didn't change dramatically after Biden got elected. We're just seeing the continuation of pre-existing trends. But politics makes people stupid.
This is exactly what I'm talking about. You're tying yourself in knots trying to disprove the reality of people living in the real world. Like Biden bragging about how many jobs he created while no mentioning that it was illegal to go to work through 2020.
Keep talking, you've almost convinced everybody!!!
Get the fuck outta here.
You are lacking your usual wit today.
SimCom...I don't believe you're as naive as this comment makes you sound.
Details? What did SimCom say here that was incorrect?
Do you believe Presidents control monetary policy? That the pandemic has nothing to do with the current state of the economy?
People give presidents far too much credit and blame for things.
Agreed. But granting that Presidents do not control monetary policy, do you deny that Biden's cash from copters and his shutting down of oil in this country have been major contributors to the stagflation? Do you deny the historic accomplishment of the Abraham accords, which even Biden praises while he undercuts them by cozying up to Iran?
Thank God for Joe Manchin or it would be even worse.
All tax cuts are upper class because they are practically the only people paying taxes.
The top 1% pay 27% of taxes more or less. Sounds unfair when they control 99% of the wealth the left says (I have heard those exact words). Except the don't, they control about 30% of the wealth.
The bottom 50% meanwhile are net takers from the tax coffers.
I am actually in alignment with Matt about a lot of his economic leftist positions (though not others), but rabble rousing about "tax cuts for the rich" is just silly. The rich are the ones who pay the taxes! Most tax cuts will disproportionately benefit them unless very narrowly focused.
It's the bottom 60% who get more back than they paid:
60% of Households Now Receive More money in tax credits than they paid in taxes
https://taxfoundation.org/60-percent-households-now-receive-more-transfer-income-they-pay-taxes
The IRS has become the new Welfare office.
Jack. Ass.
This is your only ability. DIRTY MOUTH!
So everyone who isn't rich is a 'taker.' Got it.
The rich benefit from the government far more than the rest of us; therefore, they should pay more than the rest of us.
Which allegedly 'leftist' economic policies do you support?
Sorry the facts upset you. yes the rich should pay far more than the rest of us, and as my comment pointed out if you can read, they do.
With fully over a quarter of the bill covered by the top 1%.
I would crack down quite a bit on Wall Street. No more bank bailouts, maybe some sort of transaction tax.
I am actually pro some form of wealth tax, though that would be tricky to implement. probably easiest to implement as a death/inheritance tax, but there are other ways. Combine that with closing huge portions of the tax loopholes and instruments (trusts and such) that the wealthy use to hide their income and wealth from taxation.
Generally lower rates, more consistently/simply enforced. For both corporations, and individuals.
I am not a big fan of the advertising industry, and think it mostly creates want and suffering that doesn't need to be there, so I would probably create a whole apparatus around heavily regulating that.
Outlaw a bunch of risky/predatory lending products.
More protectionism/regulation on imports so companies aren't just exporting jobs/pollution/suffering to other jurisdictions.
Things like that.
A death/inheritance tax would probably either cause massive civil unrest or a civil war. I am not kidding. There are a lot of ranchers, farmers, and other poor people who have little money but highly valuable land that has been in their family for generations. You will not be able to convince them that this will really be targeted at the super wealthy and not a sneaky way for the government to take their land and sell it to corporations (honestly, they are probably right). So, my suggestion is to come up with something else, because believe me when I say, many of them will literally kill to protect their land.
I think eliminating the “step up” loophole for inherited equities would be accepted. How can you really complain that Mom’s 200% stock appreciation gain should be erased when she dies? Let the heirs pay the 15% capital gains tax as they keep the other 85% when they sell.
You are right that land is probably the biggest single obstacle to a wealth tax. For exactly the reasons you discuss. Lots of otherwise quite rich people who keep all that wealth tied up in land and don't have the liquid resources to pay taxes on it.
Agricultural residence exemption. If the land is a) farmed, and b) the inheritor actually lives there, then they get an exception to the inheritance tax.
Concur but the people who disagree with you are actually stupider than they sound and they do not read anything that does not conform to their ideas. Yes the Republicans like to cut taxes. It’s the only thing they actually want to do. And the effects are marginal at best. But while the obvious fact is that high earners are the only one who pay taxes the elephant in the room is they do not represent the truly rich. People who are rich got their money through equity not income. They don’t pay income taxes because their income is nominal. I think Buffet's salary is $150k a year. I don’t like Sen warren but at least she’s right that if you want to tax the rich, you have to tax wealth not income. And what a cluster that would be
Have you looked at the Big Biden/Hillary Donors? The Rich Elites.
2016: Trump won with half as much money as Clinton raised.
https://www.politico.com/story/2016/12/trump-clinton-campaign-fundraising-totals-232400
It is the LEFT that has come to represent the RICH.
100%. Anyone who says otherwise is just being willfully ignorant.
LOL, have you bothered to look at Trump's donors? Or the ones funding GOP candidates? A cursory glance would instruct you that the right's just as in bed with the rich elites:
https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/033116/top-10-corporate-contributors-trump-campaign.asp
The DNC is on the take from tech and finance oligarchs; the GOP (and, yes, Trump) is on the take from weapon manufacturers and oil/gas/[insert natural resource] oligarchs. And BOTH parties take huge contributions from military contractors.
In essence, you can view the two parties as part of a factional struggle between different groups of rich elites. To the extent that either party and their political figureheads (Trump among them) help the 'little people', it is to shore up their advantage in this struggle. Basically, they must ensure the people are A.) divided along cultural issues that drive them to allegiance with their faction, and B.) given just enough to live on and not complain, so that said people do not turn on them.
It works okay if the society they are attempting to divide retains a middle class; it stops working when the 'buffer' the middle class provides disappears. The US is not there yet, but we could be on our way if we don't manage our inevitable imperial decline properly.
Biden Beats Trump In Another Demographic—Billionaires
https://www.forbes.com/sites/michelatindera/2021/02/15/biden-beats-trump-in-another-demographic-billionaires/?sh=7422d71d5ba2`
Rank-and-file union members snub Biden for Trump
Big union bosses backed Biden.
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/09/22/donald-trump-union-support-snub-joe-biden-418329
Progressives must reckon with the fact that 74 million people — almost a third of whom came from households making under $50,000—voted for him.
While most voters rank the economy as one of their most important issues, 84% of Trump voters rated the economy as “very important” in 2020, compared to Biden supporters’ 66% cause They have no concept of money.
It was Democrats who CREATED the Cultural divide. DEMOCRATS ARE LOSING THE CULTURE WARS
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2021/12/democrats-lose-culture-war/620887/
That's why Blacks and Hispanics are leaving the Communists and going with Trump.
You should get out more. Your talking points are killing you!
Are the Koch brothers paupers?
Dick. Head.
You have showed US your inability to communicate because you are a DUMB, IGNORANT Gemocrat.
He gave us three, count them, three!!, fine new Justices of the Supreme Court that actually believe in the constitution as written We are finally seeing that justice is returning to our highest court and for that I will be eternally grateful.
no. he made the dems and gopes lose their shit. and they still havent got it back. well worth it. more Trump please. until it all burns down.
What happens to those of us caught in the flames when you 'burn it all down?" What o you plan to build afterward, and why do you think what follows won't be worse?
put the bad guys on the run for the rest of their lives, get rid of the national bank, restore sound money and renew the constitution to enumerate more of our natural rights......theres a lot to do. if you get burned up, it means you were profiting from a corrupt system. if you cant survive, maybe you shouldn't.
1. How do you propose to regulate banking without the Federal Reserve? 2. How do you define ‘sound money?’ 3. What natural rights need enumerating?
and fyi, the federal reserve is the largest, privately owned banking cartel in the world. thay dont regulat banking. they arebthe prime source of inflation in the world, and the worlds most prolific counterfeiters.
1. eliminate fractional reserve banking. bankers caught doing it go to prison. 2. sound money cant be created from nothing, i.e counterfeited bu govt or a private banking cartel.
3. rights of property, contract, and freedom of association.
property. so the govt can't steal your proprerty through taxation or inflation.
Andrew Jackson to Martin Van Buren: "The Bank is trying to kill me, but I will kill it."
https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/57837/quotable-andrew-jackson-12-old-hickorys-best-lines
...sorry for the digression. I think Van Buren is a deeply underrated President, but it was his fate to suffer as the Robin to Jackson's Batman.
The mere suggestion of burning it all down reflects they're absent any clue on what to do afterwards. Don't ask such questions, it only gets stupider.
Thank you. I have no patience anymore for Keyboard Kastros proclaiming the Revolution from their iPhones. Get to work organizing an Amazon warehouse or some other useful activity or get out of the way.
Right.
George Miller answered all of these questions with his MAD MAX quadrilogy. We drive around the desert looking for gas. When people don't want to give us their gas, we kill them and take it. When we're out of gas we're out of gas.
Boy that reduction in SALT deductions sure was a boon to the rich folks, has to be as I’ve heard both Chuck S. and Aunt Nan arguing for some level of repeal
You are way off base with this comment. Many changes happened under Trump. Changes that benefit the working class. For example, every First World country has parental leave, giving parents an income during the child's first year so one parent can stay home. Trump passed 3-months for government workers. Not everyone but a start. Just search and you'll find 30-40 more (e.g., drug pricing, renegotiated trade agreements, and increasing the basic personal exemption along with decreasing tax rates for those earning under 50K).
“Massive upper class tax cut”? Karen, it’s clear you haven’t analyzed reams of available data on this that clearly shows otherwise. You also clearly have no idea what’s going on at the border. In addition, Americans overwhelmingly want and have every right to manage who can immigrate to our country and under what circumstances. I’m not even a Trump fan, but you need to broaden your sources of information. You’re living in an echo chamber of falsehoods. Come out for some fresh air.
OK, time to get back to the "massive upper class tax cut" remark. In the 2017 Act, tax brackets declined for 5 of 7 brackets, declining about 3% for the top 3 brackets and 11.5% for the 4 lower tax brackets. From 2017-2019 incomes grew 14.7% for the top bracket and 15.3% for the lowest bracket. Employment in those 2 years after the new law added 4.3m jobs, approximately. From passage to this year, Federal tax receipts grew 22.3%. Since the rich pay most of the taxes (the top 1% pay 39% of all federal income tax, the bottom 50% pay about 4%), that doesn't sound like a tax cut. What did those nasty corporations do with all their loot? CAPEX grew 33.5% over that period and average hourly earnings rose 16.3%.
Moving on to more subtle things, the mortgage interest tax deduction was lowered to $750k. Does that penalize the poor? No, but it does the rich. So does the SALT cap - that's had a dramatic impact on the well to do, though New York has crafted a workaround which California is copying, so the rich found a loophole around that one. Doubling the standard deduction benefits lower earners, though the loss of the personal exemption will impact families with many kids. It doesn't impact the rich, who itemize. Raising the AMT threshold (they should have raised it more) helps the middle class but does nothing for the rich, who are still subject to it. Doubling the child tax care credit especially helps poor families, thought it shouldn't have been extended to higher earners - a needless giveaway.
There are some other things you might not know. Child tax credits don't count as income when you're calculating income. Neither do most transfer payments like SNAP, welfare, EBT, etc. Those all have immediate real value, but they're not counted as income. If you factor those in, the Gini Coefficient kind of collapses. In the top quintile, there is an average of 2 earners - in the bottom quintile, there is an average of .4 earners per household, i.e. 60% don't work at all. The ratio of income from highest to lowest quintile drops from 17.4x to 3.5x when you compare income per earner rather than per household. In the top quintile, 77% are married households, vs. 17% in the bottom fifth. Education levels are also much lower in the bottom quintile (want to talk about public school education?) and they skew younger as well and are earlier in their careers. These fifths are not static either: 70% of Americans will be in the top quintile at some point in their lives. I've been in all 5, and you may have as well. So those are some real world facts about the "massive upper class tax cut".
I live in Texas and speak decent Spanish. I talk weekly with people who actually live on the border. Your side is LYING. There is no ‘border crisis.’ There are migrants fleeing cartels funded by American right-wingers and drug users, but no ‘invasion.’ I have read the data on the tax cuts: they only benefit the wealthy especially if one accounts for the elimination of services that benefit all of us that result from them.
Then why are they voting Republican? - because you enlightened them about their ‘delusions’?!
¡Es gracioso que tu nombre sea "Karen"!
LOL, RMc! Mis pensamientos exactamente...
me ocurrio lo mismo, pero en fin...
Let us not forget that the Democrats completely supported the CARES act.
This Red v Blue argument is becoming unbelievably stupid and yet we spin and spin and spin trying to convince one another that the parties really are different. I would think after the complete betrayal of the Democratic Party to support a "woman's right to choose" that this STUPID debate over the "lesser of two evils" would have evaporated by now.
I don't have an answer and that appalls me more than I can say. I just know that we're all being scammed and until we recognize the fraud we will continue to be scammed.
Yep.
How did the Dems betray women? The Republicans want 10-year-olds* to deliver babies while the Dems discuss tactics yet you don’t see aby differences between the two parties??
*It is not necessary to modify ‘pregnant 10-year-old’ with the phrase ‘rape victim’ because rape is the only way anyone under age 17 gets pregnant. No one still in high school should have sex or anything vaguely like sex. They’re too young to understand, and have always been too young. The existence of ANY marriages between or births to teenagers is a harsh indictment of any society where such things occur.
"How did the Dems betray women?"
How is it you don't already know?
Sure the Democrats are the "lesser of two evils", that has been obvious for decades. But what have they done to legislate legal abortion? Nothing. All they do is fund-raise off of the issue. When it comes time to appoint a new supreme court justice, they let the Republicans have their way. Pelosi redirected Democratic campaign funds to pro-life candidates over the progressive candidates.
That some women don't see this fraud is heart breaking.
Trump eliminated lots of regulations that freed up the economy- Biden subsequently negated these actions but look where we are now - floating into a recession in the face of steamy inflation brought on by Democrat spending…
Anything Trump did was just around the edges or was for the benefit of his class. Just exactly what Biden is doing. The "little people" gain nothing or almost nothing as different segments are played-off against one another.
Unless you can convince me that Trump would have avoided the Ukraine war, there is no way you can convince me that we still wouldn't be going into recession. It isn't Democratic Spending alone that causes recessions. The US was well on its way into recession long before Trump left office.
We could stop interfering with the countries they come from so that they wouldn't try to migrate to the USA in the first place.
The story of Sam Zemurray, the founder of United Fruit, is quite illustrative of the problem: https://thesavvynative.com/2019/11/25/sam-zemurray-banana-man-of-new-orleans/
Aaron Good in one of his interviews with Ben Norton, brought up Zemurray to bolster his thesis that America is, and has always been, run by criminals.
Often, discussions here get bogged down into a useless debate over which crook is less crooked, and that is solely because of one's naiveté or because certain actions might benefit his "cause" (very limited cause) in some very marginal way.
Crime in Honduras is supported by the USA.
When politicians’, both Democrats and Republicans, only motivation is to make themselves and their wealthy donors wealthier, why should they “offer something better”? It’s become pretty clear (to me, at least) that that’s all they care about. What other explanation could there be? Neither party actually does anything meaningful for the people they supposedly represent. Just look at the 37 billion dollar increase in the defense budget that was passed… yesterday? Was it yesterday or two days ago? That’s 37 billion more dollars on top of the 803 billion dollars that defense contractors were already getting. And that’s fucking insane. We can’t get healthcare done, but we can sure as fuck give a shitload more money to the defense industry, which donates tons of money to the people “running” this country.
The January 6 hearings, like the Benghazi hearings and countless other hearings before, are just political theatre, with no real goal other than to make sure some dipshit Congressperson or Senator gets their sound bite played on tv later that night. Meanwhile, the world is burning, everybody’s broke, health insurance premiums (if you even have health insurance) are skyhigh, prescription drugs are unaffordable, grocery store shelves are still empty etc etc etc etc etc.
I don’t give a FUCK about the January 6 hearings. And I’m not sure why anybody should or would. I don’t know who these hearings are supposed to appeal to, but it definitely isn’t me. I’m worried about the things that affect my life. I wish the people “in charge” were, too…
"I don’t know who these hearings are supposed to appeal to"
This is an easy one. Rich white Democrats with TDS.
Eh, I dunno about that. I mean, one need look no further than the comments section of this very article to see that there are plenty of right-wingers/Trump supporters who are interested in the thing, even if they aren’t watching the actual hearings.
I mean, personally, I thought the Capitol riot was fucking awesome. When I heard it was happening, I actually went inside and watched it on tv for about a half-hour, which isn’t something I would ordinarily do. Obviously, the motivation for the riot was completely misguided (nobody stole any election, dumbasses), but honestly, we should all be rioting at the Capitol every fucking day. I don’t think we could be faulted for showing up and demanding that our elected representatives actually do something more than tax breaks for the wealthy and budget increases for the industries who donate to their campaigns. And if they won’t do that, we’re gonna tear y’all’s shit up.
The fact that these January 6 hearings are getting breathless wall-to-wall coverage and the fact that so MANY people are paying attention to that bullshit and getting all amped up and leaving comments… Meanwhile, the defense budget is almost a trillion dollars a year… I mean, I don’t give a fuck who beat whom with what on January 6, but I definitely do give a fuck about a trillion-dollar-a-year defense budget. I’ll for sure go riot over that.
"we should all be rioting at the Capitol every fucking day"
This.
No. Wr should be doing the hard, boring, girl-cootie work of organzing, voting, keeping schools functioning, all the stuff that spoiled brat boys of whatever age refuse to bothwr with in favor of riots and vandalism. All riots get you is DEAD. Do something that makes a real difference. It won’t look anything like your idiot Mad Max fantasies.
I’ve been doing that. For 30 fucking years. My mom did that for 60+ years. My mom was one of the most hardcore activist/organizers I’ve ever known. Where’d that get her? Where has my own “organizing, voting” gotten me? Where has it gotten you? Nothing’s changed. In fact, it’s gotten worse, so…
"No."
Yes.
You're great though.
https://imgflip.com/memegenerator/74639060/Lord-Humongous-Just-Walk-Away
The hearings are an Democrat effort to bore the country to death.🤣
You are correct. That's why most discussion is pointless. What seems like a policy failure to outsiders is a success if the people making the policy profit from it.
I mean, seriously, what is it that they’re going to accomplish with that extra 37 billion that they couldn’t accomplish with the 803 billion they were already getting? If 803 BILLION fucking dollars isn’t enough, maybe it’s time for a reckoning.
a thing
Lest it be otherwise interpreted, I posesses great love for all of my other brothers in the great Brotherhood of Incoherent Internet Comments.
Sisterses may apply. But they better be incoherent.
It's a show trial alright, Sasha, a real-deal Soviet-style show trial. And if the can do it to Trump, they can do it to anyone.
It’s not a “real-deal Soviet-style show trial.” Like, at all. Because those Soviet trials always ended up with somebody paying a price (usually with their lives or, barring that, the gulag). These January 6 hearings are like every other congressional hearing before it: full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
I was just thinking yesterday about how they dragged Zuckerberg and various other Big Tech executives into Congress for hearings a while back. I’d actually forgotten about it. But that was their chance to break up the big tech monopolies. And they didn’t do shit. Like, why did they even bother? What was the point? When was the last time ANY of these hearings, ever, ended up with any kind of decisive action? Never. It’s all just political theatre that serves no purpose whatsoever.
People saying things like,”If they can do this to Trump, they can do it to anybody,” just makes me laugh. What’re “they” doing, really? Besides grandstanding, I mean? That’s kinda the whole point of the article on which we’re commenting right now, actually, isn’t it? I mean, they either “have” something on Trump or they don’t; so far, it seems like they don’t, so why the fuck are they even bothering with any of this? The obvious answer is to score political points. With whom, I have no idea, but the whole thing is a fucking joke. It’s always a fucking joke. Quit wasting our time and go do your fucking job.
True point, the Stalinist show trials usually had a harsher outcome than the J6 farce likely will have. It is a show trial in the court of public opinion, to wage war on the political opponents of the Democrat party and to keep on board those possible backsliding Democrats who need to be distracted lest they notice $6/gal gas (it is in CA) and 8% inflation. Except for a few true believers (some of whom are on this site), I don't think it is going to work.
But it is wrong to see it entirely unconnected to the apparatus of state. Sure, they don't "have" anything on Trump, but the harassment continues, in various ways, and increasingly shamelessly, in spite of the lack of evidence. So yeah, if that can happen to an ex-president, it can happen to anyone. Not good.
But what’s really happening? I honestly haven’t been paying too much attention, but I am aware of the fact that former members of the Trump administration have been subpoenaed and they’ve just blown them off. And faced no consequences, either. Or am I wrong about that? Like I said, I haven’t been paying any attention to it, simply because I know nothing will come of it. But is it really “harassment” if you get subpoenaed and blow it off and you face no consequences? That, to me, perfectly illustrates that nobody involved in this thing is serious about any of it.
The thing that blows my mind is, like, surely the politicians who decided,”Okay, we need to have hearings about January 6,” were aware of all of the “evidence” before deciding on something as serious (and I use the word “serious” VERY loosely haha) as a Congressional hearing. Which means they knew they didn’t really have anything on him. So, again, why the fuck are they doing this? That’s a rhetorical question, I know the answer.
The “$6 gallon of gas” thing is whatever. I live in LA, it’s crazy, but I don’t think that really has anything to do with Biden in the White House (and I own a Tesla haha); I’m sure it’d be $6 a gallon no matter who was president. And the inflation thing really has nothing to do with Biden, either; that’s just a natural result of lowering the inflation rates for what seems like decades now. At some point, there has to be a correction.
But yeah, I dunno. I’m pretty sick of everything, though haha. And if anybody at all “pays a price” as a result of these ridiculous January 6 hearings, you know it’s gonna be some low-level nobody. They don’t have any intention of prosecuting anybody, even IF somebody did something illegal. It’s the same as the the congressional response to the housing crisis in 2008/9. Nobody went to prison, despite there being overwhelming evidence of criminal misconduct. If they didn’t prosecute anybody then, they surely aren’t going to prosecute anybody now. And so I ask again: what is the fucking point?
That’s also a rhetorical question haha. This is no different than the Benghazi hearings or any of the other asinine, waste-of-time Congressional hearings that we’ve suffered through in our lifetimes.
Thanks for your reply. A couple of points: first, yes, if armed members of the FBI comes to your house at dawn and lead you off in shackles, and then force you to incur hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees in defending yourself against bogus charges (as seems to happen regularly) then yeah, that's harassment with consequences. They don't have to send you to jail to punish you. Check with General Flynn about this.
Second point: gas would be nowhere near this high if Trump, not Biden, were president, Biden promised to end fossil fuel use numerous times during the campaign, including in the debates. It's basic to the "climate change" agenda. So you're fooling yourself if you think these high prices are not mostly the result of Biden's policies. Supply disruptions associated with the war in Ukraine added to the cost, but then again, commentators across the political spectrum have acknowledged (grudgingly in some cases) that if Trump were still president, their would have been no war in Ukraine.
But I certainly take your main point: that congressional hearings are an asinine waste of time and money. On that we agree.
Biden - or any other president - might not have the ability to directly alter gas prices, but he certainly sets the tone for industry. His repeated promise to put fossil fuel companies out of business has certainly led oil companies to avoid crucial investment in refining capability, which is one of the primary drivers of gas and diesel prices at the moment. The business literally runs on futures, and Biden and his party have made it clear to the oil companies that he will actively see to it their future is very bleak indeed. This is the essence of green - driving the price of fossil fuels up in order to decrease demand for them. Or as Judge Judy would put it, don't piss on my leg and tell me that it's raining.
I've always said America would make every mistake the rest of the world has ever made (wars, inflations, depressions, pogroms, waste, coups, etc) but that we would do it in a uniquely American way.
Add show trials to the list.
I kind of wish the real Russian old heads were still around to give us tips to live through thru Nü-Stalinism.
This is a very good novel (a thinly disguised bildungsroman) by a former Soviet intelligence agent: https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/780991.Unforgiving_Years
Watch out for Mercader and his ice axe.
The sad thing is that the justice dept and congress can use taxpayer dollars to persue this forever - the people they destroy have to find a way to pay their own legal bills - it seems unfair that they can persue this persecution forever without any regard for how that money could be better spent for the people - and also without any regard for the financial ruin of people being targeted
"For six long years the Democrats had a chance to do the one thing they needed to do to stop Trump: offer something better."
You are right i0n the x-ring with this. That's it. All of it.
"I weep for the state of mainstream journalism - they'll never have to guts to write anything like this."
Cry me a river. Their vendetta against the Bad Orange Man revealed to more people what anyone who has studied the history of American journalism is aware of: the corporate press has always been a gaggle of liars-for-hire, and always has been, with a few renegade outliers with literary aspirations (and talent) that just illustrate the generality.
Taibbi's comment on the character of rank-and-file Democrats applies in spades to the straight press corps, which is now merely the PR wing of the Democratic Party.
I think the mistake your making is thinking the press is now "now merely the PR wing of the Democratic Party".
I'm old enough to remember them eating out of GWB's hand, happily serving as stenographers to absolutely transparent propaganda.
Look at them now, calling to Liz Cheney to run as a Democrat.
Trump was not part of the club, which is why they hate him. The press now, as always, grovels before power. Iran-Contra, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan - they shipped for all of it.
Yes. They do suck up to power. Only now it seems like the press (generally speaking) is playing some sort of end-game since it went belly-up over Trump, as if they're going all-in for the current leftist cant. I see nothing but sympathy for everyone on the left and for the forces of globalization, but not for Dementia Joe, who they are circling now that he's been steadily bleeding out into the water, now that his absolute unfitness for office becomes apparent to everyone.
Again, we seem to have different ideas on what "the left" is.
If they don't want to raise taxes on the wealthy, I don't consider them to be on the left.
If they cheerlead for the for-profit military industrial complex without exception, they are not on the left.
If they think Congress should be able to insider trade with impunity, they are not on the left.
I was taught in high school that the "The Left" or pure socialism means that the means of production should be owned collectively; "The Right" means the means of production are privately owned.
When was the last time you saw a newspaper be critical of giving publicly owned land/resources to a private interest?
Did they write about it as much as they try and gin up support to invade Ukraine?
I guess I should say that I don't GAF about cultural issues, which generally seem to cause a lot of people to vote against their own economic interests to combat things they will never have a meaningful impact on their lives. Economics is all that matters.
"I literally laid on the couch for a year drinking a bottle of wine"
You must have seriously nursed that bottle. I would have emptied it in an hour or so.
I love how all of us alcoholics are homing in on that single line like an AIM-9 Sidewinder.
Low hanging fruit (grapes in this case).
"I literally laid on the couch for a year drinking a bottle of wine."
That was either a gigantic bottle or you were taking very tiny sips.
Ha! It was an awkward sentence. I didn't drink one bottle per night but it felt like I did. I drank a lot of wine. :)
One may not like the hearings, but I don't understand the 'government cancel culture' and 'no due process' claim; it IS a PUBLIC hearing, with witnesses, with the OPPORTUNITY for trump or anyone else to come and testify or provide evidence or to refute evidence. It is televised, and as far as I know, NO ONE has been denied an opportunity to come and appear before the entire US. Being able to say whatever you want on national TV is the opposite of cancel culture/no due process.
I've heard the opposite -- that people have offered to testify but have been denied. They have been selective about the testimony they've decided to show. Not only that, they have pressured many of those testifying to deliver the testimony they wanted. We all have reason to be skeptical. Cancel culture is about convicting people in the court of public opinion. That means a lack of due process, which guarantees the presumption of innocence and a fair defense. That is not what this is designed to do. It was designed to convict Trump and all of his supporters in the court of public opinion. Anyone canceled has a right to state their case - but it doesn't matter because powerful forces have decided to punish them regardless. They are simply disappeared out of the mainstream. No, it isn't being put in a gulag but it is wrong regardless IMO.
I am not aware of people having been denied the ability to testify. As for pressure on witnesses to speak other than the facts; I would think those with verifiable refutations would be all over the news. I have not seen that. I would agree the hearings appear one sided, but then again by definition they will appear biased. If the purpose of the hearings are to delve into trumps activities, then it IS designed to gather evidence (of wrongdoing usually). That does not mean it's 'cancel culture'. I don't agree there is no due process. It's a hearing, under the same rules of hearings in the past. Different than a trial. I can't agree where you get the idea it's designed to convict trumps 'supporters' in the 'court of public opinion'. I would distinguish between trump supporters and those attacking the Capital (so yes, it is designed to go after 'them'). As for the hearing being designed to go after trump...well yes it is...because why have a hearing unless there is a reasonable belief that some illegal act has been committed. Again, it's not a trial with trial rules. At any rate...I AGREE with you that it's always good to be skeptical! I am...but I'm not of the opinion that this hearing...this PARTICULAR hearing is a sham, or a witch hunt, or illegitimate, or a charade. I have not seen anything to support these claims accept that responders believe it to be so...and that's an opinion, like mine.
When they put Pelosi and Ray Epps on the witness stand, let me know. Until then, stop with the false claim that this process is legitimate.
And allow an opposing committee member ask them questions...
brilliant analysis; only thing missing is to put Vince Foster on the witness stand. by your reasoning the hearing would be 'legitimate' if Pelosi and Epps were witnesses....please brush up on what constitutes a congressional hearing...you can find info at govinfo.gov
No, it's already illegitimate because there is no representation of the other side of the story and there is another side of the story. They are only asking questions and offering testimony that bolsters their prosecution case against Trump. Not to mention, a 100% complicit media casting Trump and his supporters already as not just guilty "insurrectionists" but racists on top of that. How dangerous this is for so-called Democracy. Look at Twitter or any major news outlet - they are not even aware that there is another way to tell this story. It's horrifying.
you made pacificus happy to boot!
Good job, Sasha, of putting this "commenter" and his bogus points in their place.
And by the way: if we ever do get Pelosi on the stand, maybe we can ask her about her hubby's stock trades...speaking of corruption...
I'll say it again: I'm far less concerned with 500 aging rednecks rampaging through the halls of Congress than I am about the thousands of paid lobbyists that rampage through those halls, mostly unreported, on a daily basis. That, ladies and gentlemen, is the real threat to our "democracy." Don't let Liz Cheney, etc., tell you otherwise.
I agree : about EVERY legislators use of insider trading knowledge, Pelosi included.
I believe I can be concerned about both these evils (lobbyists and redneck rioters)...and some of them weren't so 'aged'!
You gotta be kidding...this is not a "hearing," it is a televised kangaroo court ostensibly to "get to the bottom" of what happened on J6, but in reality designed to get Trump. Hey, you were the one who suggested that it was a full and fair proceeding...if so, why isn't Pelosi on the stand?
And, just in case you don't know, Vince Foster is dead, and Pelosi and Epps are alive. But funny you would bring up his name.
wait...Pelosi and Epps are alive?!!
It is a show trial. The kangaroo court itself is responsible for choosing witnesses to testify about a riot they want us to believe was a deliberately planned "insurrection," and no testimony has proven anything but the extent and depth of irrational hatred for the Bad Orange Man.
I'm at least heartened to hear you call it a riot...whether planned or not!
Bless you
No cross examination? No Republican appointees? (Pelosi rejected the names given her by the Republicans and instead picked the two most anti-Trump Republicans.) The whole thing is a charade.
yes, Pelosi did reject most of the names (I would have loved to have the Jim Jordan on) ...as for charade that's an opinion...just like mine. As for 'Cross examination'...brush up on what a hearing is.
CEO of the Dog Food Company: "After an expensive and extravagant advertising program why have our sales not increased one whit?"
Salesman of Dog Food Company: "The dogs just don't like that shit."
Thanks for my first hearty laff of the day.
That must have been some bottle of wine...
Trump's appeal comes from his ability to punch the left square in the mouth and get away with it. The preening, obnoxious, and judgmental Borg consisting of the Professional Left, media and politicians are a pretty off-putting bunch. Especially when they consider you un-American or illogical for disliking them.
Just because Trump is not cut out to be a world leader doesn't mean it isn't delicious if he makes fun of Brian Stelter or Elizabeth Warren.
DeSantis has this figured out.
Cut out to be a world leader????? You have got to be kidding. Take a look around and then look through history. Which of the sainted ones are you referring to? The leader is the one who has people follow him and sometimes he rises from the ashes and history makes judgements than no one could foresee. Trump was a success because he fought his enemies for 4 long yrs and also turned the country around and had it moving in the right direction much like Reagan did in the 80's.
He was the motherfucker off The Apprentice.
He's not cut out to lead his own asshole around.
Yeah well, the bar was rather low. Just look at the last twenty years. He somehow managed to beat out a destructive neocon whose granddaddy was involved in a literal fascist coup attempt (good old Prescott) and a cult of personality neoliberal who got elected by decrying all of the horrible things from his predecessor and then went and expanded them while doing everything he could to shred the Constitution. The last American president I truly respected was Eisenhower. As much as I want a president of principles, liberty, character, and intelligence, candidates tend to be in rather short supply.
In 2016 I thought that Trump was the only Republican that Hillary could beat, but it turned out that Hillary was the only Democrat that Trump could beat.
The Clintons KNEW that Trump was the most "beatable" candidate, that's why they selected him (like something out of the "Producers").
That’s the entire problem, too. The democrats refuse to say that that is what was true. They are still mad that the one person they saw as the weakest candidate beat the one person they wanted to force innocent voters to elect. Now. All they want is vengeance on voters. It’s not even about Trump. It’s about people that voted for Trump.
Hilary Clinton. What a hill to die on.
Hardly, I remember the clowns in the primaries that year. Sanders could have beat anyone else on the Republican ticket and I think Rubio could have taken Hillary without too much trouble (the thought of Rubio in the White House makes my skin crawl). The rest of them were always going to go down in flames. Look up some old articles from primary season. They are worth a laugh these days.
Don't get me started on Prescott Bush. One of these days I will retrieve Geronimo's skull from its unholy interment at the Yale campus and properly return it to his ancestors in the Chiricahuas.
Promises, promises, Grisha! Be sure to get video when you do!
:(
Here's a rock video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJK6yfx9AK4
You know one day I will learn to stop asking questions I really don't want to know the answer to but today is not that day. What did crazy old Prescott do this time?
Man. I am sorry to reply to your inquiry, but I invited it.
Here's a typical history: https://indiancountrytoday.com/archive/the-order-of-skull-and-bones-and-geronimo
Nobody who was not in the Skull & Bones Secret Society at Yale (alumni: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Skull_and_Bones_members) knows exactly what they do with what is left of Geronimo. What do children of the Eastern elite, inheriting -- not earning -- their power, do with the remains of a proud Western Native man who defied their authority? Cute things? Fun things?
I will note that Theodore Roosevelt invited Geronimo to ride at his inaugural parade. American history has its Geronimos, its Bull Mooses, and its Prescott Bushes.
I was just really depressed in 2004 when I did not have the option of voting for a guy for President who wasn't in Skull & Bones.
I like Ike too, but the legacy and blowback of the Dulles Brothers ( State Dept and CIA ) foreign policy ( coups etc. ) are a nasty stain on this country.
Remember at the time, the legacy of Lenin, Stalin, and the NKVD was fresh in everyone's minds. The Soviet Union was a lot more ruthless than they would be in the later parts of the Cold War. Don't forget about their coups and aftermaths in places like Lithuania just a few years earlier.
Two wrongs don’t make a right. We overthrew with false flags Mossagegh in Iran strictly because he wanted to nationalize Iranian oil. Their own resources. The British, what would become BP, and we didn’t like that, so we installed the Shah which led to the 1979 Revolution and the installation of a theocracy. Iran was a secular, educated, almost “Western” democracy before we fucked that up. The Middle East never really recovered and we’re still experiencing the blowback today. Then there’s Guatemala, and the rest of the Americas, etc…
That short supply is their problem, not yours. It’s no reason to compromise our principles on the altar of “lesser evil”.
Funny how much he was “loved” by the “establishment” back then.
Rule #1: the donor class shall never be allowed to enter the ruling class. Ever again.
Phisto, allow me to quote Dear Leader Obama: you're better than this!
Actually, he’s not.
Don’t care either way.
It’s nice being me.
That’s what all the narcissists say.
I am. Hence the joke.
Your non-specific gripe is hard to prove.
Is it just an all around, “I hate the guy and everything he does “? That makes reasoning and thoughtful consideration to impossible. Therefore easy to ignore.
Are you a retard, or do you just play one on television?
Just kidding…
No, I happen to think former reality TV stars are horrible choices President. Full stop.
No Professional Politician is qualified.
The Reagan that ended his term
with an Alzheimer’s diagnosis?
Yes it’s true. Now we have a POTUS with senile dementia (at the least) gearing up with killing people ( to the last Ukrainian), poking the Bear& messing with Taiwan. Makes no difference if it’s a donkey or elephant in the white mans house.
It is perhaps the misty soft-focus haze of memory, but to Reagan's credit he seemed to be able to *fake* not having senile dementia better than Biden does.
Reagan had better handlers
This is true. Nancy helped. Just batshit crazy that demented men are in positions of power
Would demented women be preferable?
NO
Nancy and her astrologers.
Exactly.
"Just because Trump is not cut out to be a world leader"
It's funny you would say that, given the progress Trump made in advancing Middle East peace, getting Communist China to back up, getting the NATO Euro-deadbeats to pay (some) of their obligations, opening a dialogue with Kim Jung Un, renegotiating NAFTA, etc. Not to mention warning Frau Merkel to get off Russian energy. fruitlessly as it happened, but at least he tried. Turns out, it's creepy Joe who is not "cut out to be a world leader."
Count me as someone who, at the outset of the Trump administration, expected little of Trump as a world leader, and was pleasantly surprised in this regard by the end of his term.
I know that the demonization of Trump is hard to resist, but we have to remain fair minded. But agreed, I am hoping Trump will pass the baton to DeSantis, who looks like the real deal to me.
The Borg is the Establishment, the MICIMATT, as Ray McGovern calls it. The rest of us go through austerity hell (which is ramping up, once again) to support these clowns who don't manufacture or innovate anything of value (which the US was good at 30 years ago).
When Hillary (and the Establishment) lost, her refusal to accept her loss (blaming it on Trump, the Russians, Jill Stein and Tulsi Gabbard, Wikileaks and Bernie Sanders, among many others) and the State Media's relentless "Bombshell! Bombshell! The walls are closing in!" showed just how unfair and broken our political system is. Trump is an insane clown, but the DC circus car is full of them. What will happen next in this surreal comedy? Will we see the GOP taking Congress and investigating Joe and Hunter for the duration of Biden's term? It was clear from the First Trump impeachment that the Intelligence Agencies are running (and ruining) our country. Puppet Ukraine was set up, first with the Orange Revolution (2005) and then with the Maidan Coup (2014); as Nuland said, the US had invested $5 billion just to provoke Russia, and they were not about to allow Trump to get in the way of their "consensus policies" as Vindman put it (after all, Trump was only the POTUS, in charge of foreign policy.) Prosecution/ persecution of Trump allowed a lot of bad precedents to be set. I suspect we will be seeing much more of this wasteful Kabuki theatre if and when the GOP takes Congress. And retaliates.
DeSantis is Trump with a brain.
There are plenty of brains in DC and I have watched them fail us and this nation over and over. Sometimes it takes more than a brain and a nice personality. It takes guts and the ability to withstand the storm. Jimmy Carter was no dummy but he sure did make a mess of things. Truman was no genius but he knew where the buck stopped.
"Jimmy Carter was no dummy but he sure did make a mess of things."
Everybody likes to hate on Carter, but whoever got elected in '76 was fucked no matter what. If Reagan had gotten in 4 years earlier people would speak of him in the same scornful tone. That said, people seem to forget that Reagan's first term was pretty rocky -- the economy was pretty similar to what we're experiencing now.
He was a corporate solution to the Nixon/Ford problem, and it turned out Brezezinski and pols inside the administration were effective in multiple administrations and the ones in Carter administration that didn't go as far as some wanted in FP were replaced (see the October Surprise with Iran-Reagan)
Jimmy Carter wanted to pull all American troops off the 38th parallelDMZ, and when Brezhnev heard about this, he was like “That idiot is going to start a war!!! Tell him no!”
The story I heard about the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan is that Brezhnev was drunk and scrawled the basics of the plan on a cocktail napkin. Seems about right. The US invasion of Afghanistan, well...
. . . . the POTUS was watching football on TeeVee and choked on a pretzel . . . . .
Trump with work ethic is probably more accurate, nothing I have seen from DeSantis has demonstrated high intelligence (he's just less of a shitshow than Trump, but then again Trump is a hard personality out infotain).
Hate trumps all thoughts of logical understanding.
Yes to everything you said, and I hope you're right about DeSantis. I want more of it, more of punching these vile cretins in the mouth, these people who mock and ridicule ordinary people and workers. They deserve so much worse, but I'll take what I can get.
Let’s hope DeSantis does.
So what Leftist policies do you dislike so much?
And yes, I DO find bigots to be disgusting. You got a problem with that?
Pretty much the whole woke program. The idea that there isn't much economic opportunity in this country or that all its problems fall at the feet of rich people and corporations (certainly many do, but hardly all). The generally reflexive anti-Americanism, anti-science/evidence and anti-tradition bent to much of the approved left discourse.
Massive blind eye/shoulder shrug to the ruination of the concept of censorship/free speech/independent press.
And generally a raft of pretty shitty and ineffective economic policies. I tend to agree that corporate dominance of the economy and rising inequality are problems our society should address. But mostly think the leftist solutions are pure garbage that will make everyone poorer and not help anyone.
You need to reform capitalism/market economics from a position of respect, because it is frankly the best tool in our economic toolbox. Fuck even the USSR knew that, Stalin and Lenin knew that (look up the NEP). So you can't have a bunch of childish 20 something "yay post-capitalism" morons running around setting your economic policy.
More free college for all, more $150k Art history degrees, and when the economy cannot find productive work for them it is General Mill's and Amazon's fault!
Our modern economics and political economy is in bad need of patching. But it just needs patching. So many on the left want to burn it down and replace it with stuff that clearly isn't going to work and is only appealing because it is easy answers and free money. until as we are seeing right now the inflation monster comes.
UBI? A joke, unless you are actually going to let the people who misuse it suffer and roll back the other programs.
Right on with all your comments up until UBI. It can't be "misused" it's your income. it's just using government money (yes much printed from thin air by Jerome) to directly benefit people as opposed to the current shit show of indirect benefits.
The problem with most government programs is if you work you lose them. If you pay people not to work they won't. UBI still incentivizes work.
"You need to reform capitalism/market economics from a position of respect, " YES!
Twos things about UBI.
1) If we give everyone a say $25k/year UBI, when someone spends that on booze and gambling, or fucking Amway are we still also going to have the other social safety net we are supposedly eliminating to provide the UBI? Because if we don't take away those other support structures it doesn't really get us anywhere. It is also ruinously expensive.
2) You are wildly underestimating how much it would disincentivize work. Anyone with experience raising even lightly spoiled teenagers into adulthood knows that providing even a child raised upper middle class, a lower middle class floor on their existence, or even a "poor" floor on their existence where they aren't in the street, incentivizes like 40% of them to never make anything of themselves.
Why get a job when I can smoke pot all day, play CoD and live in this ratty motel on my UBI? That type of behavior among people who would otherwise be productive members of society would skyrocket. And that is a very bad thing.
You take most people and kick them out into the world if they are say a college dropout, and make them work or be on the streets, and a huge portion of them will find a way to be at least a marginally productive member of society. Provide them a path where they they do not need to work to support themselves, and you are just entrenching a permanently non-working underclass. And let me tell you once someone hasn't held a job for 3-5 years, they don't get more employable they get less so. UBI is like begging to triple or quintuple the number of NEETs.
Wait, I was supposed to make something of myself?
You must be a millennial, Aron Blue! But I still love you.
At least enough that you don't need to rely on others to support you.
Yes, Liberal/Leftists don't understand human nature too well.
Beautifully said, Martin Blank. Thanks for taking the time.
It is because academics lead the left, and human nature is by definition unmodelable.
If you can't measure it and get a significant t-stat, it just gets lumped into the residual.
Good points - I think it's an important debate
I think you need to calibrate the number so that "basic" is absolute basic. 25K is too much. 12K a year seems more reasonable. The idea is to give you a "net not a hammock"
One issue with the left is every lower class or person down on their luck is a "victim" and it's not their fault. To your point the reality is there are pieces of shit in society who don't want to do jack and good people who need a hand. UBI will enable pieces of shit to do more (less?) jack shit. But it will also give a leg up to the good people (essentially leveling the playing field with the upper classes who give "UBI" to their offspring in the form of help from Mom and Dad). The mental health dividend for the good people to have groceries covered at least would be huge. I am willing to accept the pot smoking COD players as I think the program would be a net benefit to society. There will be 100% propensity to consume and drive economic activity at least from the the layabouts.
We also need our "leaders" to stop blaming the man for everyone's ills and reenforcing personal responsibility and duty. "Ask not..." This "not your fault" framing is destructive and tragic for the US.
You may well be right here Martin and I may be wrong - I do think it is worth a try... We bailed out millionaire bankers in the GFC as Matt so effectively wrote about. Time to give the little guy a place at the trough.
Oh I am 1000% against bailing out bankers. I would much rather have seen some UBI than that. But I am against both.
Yep. That's some of it. BUT!!
The national dialogue has been captured by D.C. pay-to-play revolving door thugs paid to ignore the across the board installation of a Marxist commissariat and the intended world installation of a CCP/WEF style totalitarian financial feudalism. J6 makes us squirm in our seats because we know that it, like countless other political airballs is a sideshow distraction. When totalitarian financiers say that by 2060 "..you will own nothing and be happy.." they mean it. And it's the same grifting monkey. Access to an easily manipulated subsistence level labor pool and unfettered access to the exploitation of natural resources without responsibility or consequence.
I dislike the leftists who think that somehow they are entitiled to the hard earned money that I have earned. i dislike the leftist politicies that say an eagle egg is an eagle but a human egg is not a human. I dislike the leftist politicies that want me to buy into the insanity that you can mutilate your body and pretend you are a woman and force me to go along with your clear insanity.
You apparently have no idea what the word bigot means but then I don't expect you to since you and your friends are constantly changing the vocabulary to meet your pathetic needs, which seem to be many. I was not born with a silver spoon I had to work to be able to buy it. I suggest you and your friends do the same. If you work for a living you come to appreciate what you have and don't stand around whining about what others have. Envy is the worst leftist policy. It is the foundation of your beliefs. You want everyone to be envious of what others have.
They think if they smash capitalism, they will get paid a living wage to write slam poetry.
Yeah, these folks really do think someone else owes them a living...but when you have no work ethic, zero zilch nada, maybe that is your fallback position.
This!
, magical monetary theory , defund the police , locking down the schools , support for the suppression of speech, use of political violence , double mastectomies on young girls to make them boys, exporting pollution by having other countries pump oil, opposing nuclear power . I could go on but why bother
Bothering is important. ENVY and hatred drives these people. It is important that there are voices speaking out against their perverted views. and they are perverted. Only an insane person would castrate their own sons and mutilate their own daughters. Mutilating children is beyond the pale and those of us who are sane must speak out against it. Volcanoes accepting human sacrifice have nothing on these mentally ill people who are being supported by a bunch of blind sheep.
I suspect a continual majority of voters is far less enchanted with Bernie’s version of socialism than Matt and his mentor Noam can be. There’s nothing about capitalism in the Constitution, but it’s the economic system that produces the results more Americans want. I think of it as a constant experiment among some 200 nations. At the moment I think socialism/communism/collectivism has about 20 fans worldwide. Must be a capitalist conspiracy.
Well said.
Maam, this is an Arby's
That remains to be seen.
Thucydides the Ancient Greek historian warned that it is dangerous in a democracy—having defeated an opponent politically—to follow that up by prosecuting him in the courts. Taking revenge like that creates intense polarization among the citizens, increases sympathy for the “victim” among his own partisans, creates mutual bitterness, and can spiral into outright violence. That is: political defeat is enough punishment of an opponent. Thucydides’ example is a detailed discussion of the outbreak of civil war on the island-state of Corcyra (modern Corfu): The Peloponnesian War, Book 3, chapters 69-85.
That is advice from 2,400 year ago. It’s old, but it comes from a practical politician in democratic Athens.
This is really interesting, may I share it?
Sure, Matt.
All best,
Art
Very on point: “The leaders in the cities, each provided with the fairest professions, on the one side with the cry of political equality of the people, on the other of a moderate aristocracy, sought prizes for themselves in those public interests which they pretended to cherish, and, recoiling from no means in their struggles for ascendancy, engaged in the direct excesses; in their acts of vengeance they went to even greater lengths, not stopping at what justice or the good of the state demanded, but making the party caprice of the moment their only standard, and invoking with equal readiness the condemnation of an unjust verdict or the authority of the strong arm to glut the animosities of the hour. Thus religion was in honor with neither party; but the use of fair phrases to arrive at guilty ends was in high reputation. Meanwhile the moderate part of the citizens perished between the two, either for not joining in the quarrel, or because envy would not suffer them to escape.“
“Thus religion was in honor with neither party; but the use of fair phrases to arrive at guilty ends was in high reputation.“
This conjured images of Liz Cheney and Adam Schiff in my mind. Thanks a lot, Thucydides.
Take a look at Book 3, chapter 82 on the shocking flexibility and changeability of the meaning of words and language during a period of political crisis.
There you go again. Quoting Dead White Men.
He's quoting a Dead Wise Man. Does Thucydides being white (that also depends on your definition of white; he was Greek) invalidate what he said? Also, what he said is utterly pertinent to the current situation. If you have an equally relevant and wise quote from a Non-White Person, please share it with us.
You still stumble through the wilderness, Matt. Climbing through the brambles instead of allowing yourself to see the trail.
You may never become a Trump lover, but you can eventually see what he really represented.
Thucydides would definitely be on Substack today.
As an aside, Socrates lived at the same time as Thucydides. I.F. Stone's "The Trial of Socrates" deals with some of these same events. Socrates (via Plato) emphasized that the biggest virtue was wisdom, and that the most wise should rule. Some of Socrates's best students (most wise) became rulers and were vicious and vile, particularly to their defeated political opponents.
Aristotle (and Stone), with the benefit of that recent history, emphasized character as a more important virtue. Stone was good with Socrates drinking the hemlock!
Change “character” to “temperament” and I’m on board with Aristotle.
You might also look at the increasing political persecutions in ancient Rome as it slowly spiraled out of control from Republic into despotism. Famous podcaster Mike Duncan's Storm Before the Storm is a good intro book.
Thanks for this, Art E, I'm gonna check it out.
Yes, their is very little that is new under the sun...but you would have to learn that history in school, instead of learning that their are 57 genders and that men can get pregnant.
What did Thucydides, or extrapolations from his positions, say about what if someone doesn't admit their political defeat? How is that "enough punishment"? Or something. I'm not even sure how to phrase the question. Dems persecution of Trump while in office was insane, but what about now, i.e., the hearings, etc. etc....(?).
I know the story is correct, I'm just not sure how it applies in this case. (My personal opinion is Thucydides gets over quoted in application to modern political issues, much as he was misapplied recently in reference to Chinese confrontations.)
If Trump is charged, and I don't think that he will be, then that's the end of the American experiment.
It will go up in smoke. Gun smoke.
The left is concentrated in the cities. All the non-left would have to do is impose a trucking embargo on I-95 from DC to Boston. Who drives the trucks in this country? Not a woke blogger for Bolde who lives in Park Slope.
They will be out of food and gasoline in about 72 hours.
Your dream, Brent? Not only would they die, but millions of their children would, too.
My point is that the left is only equipped to fight a social media war, not a real one.
LOL. Perhaps, but I think there was a bit more coming through in that post than you’re letting on.
In the end, I think both sides would be capable of degrading the living standards of their opponents to very low levels.
I don’t think it automatically means war , but it would be a dangerous rubicon crossed
There will be shooting and stupidity somewhere, not everywhere, but it'll happen. I'm still not buying the idea of Civil War, simply because most people don't want it. For starters, where's the front line? Or, is it pickup truck loads of loons driving through Dem voting areas just randomly shooting people? How does it work?
Imagine the scene outside some New York City courthouse, or up in Albany: a replay of Jan 6, with thousands and thousands of angry Trump partisans, many of them now armed, confronting riot police …That’s not a fantasy; that’s a prediction. See the sequence in Thucydides Book 3, chapter 70, on the political use of prosecutions in court by both sides at Corcyra and what then occurred in tbe city…
OK, sure. Why not? But that's not civil war. That's just a bunch of guys too fucking stupid to figure out what to do to make their lives better, faced off against a bunch of guys at least half of whom probably sympathize or outright want to join in. Then what? A bunch of morons standing around, threatening to shoot, then shooting and then....what? Secede from....what?
To achieve....what (?)
I'm certainly not predicting no shooting; we got shooting all the time already. But, war has to have an aim and an end goal, and the apparent aim of the aggrieved is....what?
Personally, I'm all in favor of Texas, West OR/Idaho Panhandle, etc. seceding. Let 'em go. I'm into experimentation; let's see what they do with all their freedom.
And... a personal plea... Let's leave Thucydides out of it. Everyone reading Thucydides and interpreting it to whatever they think it means for the current time is ridiculous. Even Thucydides experts are bemoaning his constant references nowadays.
Perhaps the left is engaging in civil war right at the moment and has been for some time. Who is their opponent? Some ill-defined, monolithic entity that they fear? Is it a concept they fear? A set of values?
I only know that the strong shall survive.
I don't think either side, Right or Left, has a clue about what to do or where to go, so those most confused and clueless want a cage match to settle it. Fine. I know a generation of folks in China that went through a revolution, and they have assured me, we do NOT want a revolution. It's an attractive sound bite for clueless folks.
And, who are the "strong" that are going to survive? Actually, never mind. I don't want to know. These conversations are idiotic.
True, while everybody is confused, some have a glimmer of understanding. But it's only a glimmer and no guarantee.
History will bat last. And the strong will certainly survive. As events unfold, it will take some humility to recognize who the strong are and emulate them.
Thucydides was certainly misused in Graham Allison’s work “The Thucydides Trap”, on China and the U.S. Thucydides is not a determinist. Allison has been taken to task on this by real Thucydides experts, which Allison is not.
Right, exactly. Cai Xia also demolished it from the Chinese end. Thanks, I needed that.
The framers knew this and it informed their decisions not have a direct democracy but rather a representative Republican form of government. Basically every time an elected someone was unsuccessful in war or anything else, there would be some kind of trial, then banishment or death. However the pendulum swung, someone would suffer. See Socrates Apology (which isn’t an apology in our sense of the word). Socrates was a soldier, and a philosopher and teacher of the youth but he ran afoul of some faction in power at some point and was forced to drink the Hemlock. It’s all madness when the mob is allowed to demand the power of the state be used against their political opposition for just being the political opposition.
Voted dem my whole life until 2016, think Trump’s a scumbag and would vote for him over anyone associated with the blue party.
All their focus is on jailing their political enemies and none on actually running the country. It’s utterly bizarre.
I’m with you brother. Being a dem wasn’t just how I voted, it was tied up in my identity, as well as my relationship with my family and friends. I don’t even know what to say about the party anymore. I’m not even sure what happened to it and when. They have gone nuts. Trump was an ass, but he wasn’t satan. He just wasn’t good at being president. When I look back at his presidency I just see a wasted opportunity. Trump was a democrat for most of his life. There will never be an opportunity lost like that again. People like trump are so easy to manipulate into doing what you want because of his serious personality flaws. He wants to be loved and he’s easily flattered.
There will never be a Republican president again who would have eagerly done something to cut his own throat. Take DACA. Trump wanted to do something for the Dreamer kids. We all did, no? But Trump said something stupid and Dick Durbin ran to the first camera he saw and had to tell the whole world because the short term gain was more important than the long term victory and the Dems seemed to want the issue and not to solve it. Had they filed his stupid remarks away to be used at a later date (like the next election) and just complimented him on his tie, wife, kids, brilliance, or whatever else worked to soften him up, they would have solved the issue, or at least got something. Had Trump did something on DACA he would have cut his own legs out because his bases big thing is immigration. But if all the big media sung his praise he wouldn’t have cared but they weren’t gonna do that because they had chosen their strategy which was maximum outrage over everything all the time. So we got nothing, the Dreamers got nothing, but the partisanship was made even worse and everyone retreated to their bunkers where reality and pragmatism go to die. rinse, repeat and cry for four years. The democrats wagered that anger would be better than success, or the two were synonymous, and maybe that was a good bet but the whole country suffered for it and here we are. McCarthyite show trials on one side and dedication to the Great Trumpster on the other. It makes me sick.
I think the Russia stuff probably did it in for me. It was just so toxic, and it obviously was an effort that involved the press itself. It went on for so long and started to become so ridiculous I just kinda gave up. The press seemed to give up on pretending they were objective and dived headfirst into activism. Congress has become a cesspool of rich pricks and glory hounds that spend all their time raising money for themselves, spending ungodly amounts of our kids, kids, kids future tax revenue and, sadly, investigating each other with greater alarmity. They have delegated power to everyone else, which makes me wonder, why even engage in the election process? Locally it makes sense but our congresscritters don’t actually want to do the hard work of governing and the bureaucracies seem to be run by younger and younger leftist nut jobs who no sense of shame at all. And they could care less about me unless of course I was transgender, non-white, gay, somehow disabled or a female (preferably a combination of all of the above). I’m not any of those things so in the new religion I’m the sinner and I must repent, which I’m never gonna do. I’m just gonna vote Republican and hope for the best. I used to despise very moralistic Christian’s but gosh darn, they seem like the normal people these days. It’s like the nut jobs in the democrat party think they are pulling me more to the left by promoting all sorts of weird stuff, but the reality is (and this was totally predictable) they are pushing me to the right. And I’m uncomfortable here.
End cathartic rant.
Surely there is a better Republican than tfg. We have to get past this guy, and I think Liz Cheney is trying to help.
I’d rather eat a bag of nails than vote for Liz Cheney. Please get real. She has no chance.
It's true: modern American politics is largely an exercise in comparative scumbaggery.
Trump is like catnip for the Left.
There's nothing they love so much as an opportunity to revel in righteous indignation, and the media knows they can turn people against anything and make them spaz out simply by appending the Bad Orange Man w/Mean Tweets to it.
But it's never *new* people spazzing out, it's always only the *same* people who were never ever ever going to vote Republican in the first place.
People need to altogether junk the left vs. right paradigm. Most people know it’s fake. They just don’t really have a sense of vision or alternative. And you know what they say, “where there is no vision, the people perish.”
If I were a political advisor, which I’m not, I would make the following recommendations:
1) Trump should run and offer Tulsi Gabbard the spot for Vice President
2) Return the Republican Party to the party of Lincoln
3) #2 would mean harkening back to Lincoln’s classic program for building America, which goes a little something like this:
“My politics are short and sweet, like the old woman's dance. I am in favor of a national bank. I am in favor of the internal improvement system, and a high protective tariff. These are my sentiments and political principles. If elected, I shall be thankful; if not it will be all the same.”
The only thing that matters now is changing the rules of the game.
I would vote for any ticket with Tulsi Gabbard on it.
Well, she endorsed Biden out of Democratic Party loyalty, so this could be dangerous...
Same.
I'd rather have a DeSantis/Gabbard ticket, come to that. Not that I think it's plausible.
I think the last couple weeks make it a shoo in for DeSantis if he'd just go for it. Anyone continuing to stick with Trump after the hearings...ok, they're in their own bubble. If they're not convinced at this point... Anyone with a brain knows it, that's why they'd shift to DeSantis in a second if he'd just go for it.
Agreed.
I'm sure he will.
At least they’re young. SO time for all of the above 70 year olds to retire. And for sure the 80 year olds. No I’m not ageist
For sure. The old goats need to go. I'm ageist; I'm an old guy that knows how screwed up my generation is.
I’m an old (75) gal and while I don’t think our generation is any worse than others, at some point it must be acknowledged that with rare exceptions, cognition fades as we get past 70, if not sooner.
Agreed. Although, anyone dissing the Boomers isn't wrong.
That ticket would be unbeatable.
David Gosselin, truth be told, the populist turn in the GOP that Trump represents is returning the Republicans to the party of Lincoln. It was a workers/working class party until the corporations took it over in the 1870s and kept control of it until 2016. The GOP opposition to slavery was based, in part, because Lincoln and others in the party knew that a slave labor economy made it almost impossible for a poor white man to rise economically.
That's why the GOP establishment hated Trump so much. He screwed up 150 years of the party elite playing it base for suckers every four years. The evil program continues in the form of the "Lincoln Project," that cynically invokes Abe in the name of returning the party to the control of the globalist elite.
Well said, good sir.
"People need to altogether junk the left vs. right paradigm. Most people know it’s fake. "
Only the modern FUBAR version is.
Left and Right have each existed through thick and thin, for over two centuries now, because the represent *fundamental* needs in a government "of, for, and by the people":
--Right prioritizes the individual-based needs for freedom
--Left prioritizes the social-based needs for fairness
The priorities of the majority will shift back and forth, but neither will ever go away, because both are eternally necessary. The tragedy is that both Left and Right have now long been taught by their self-interested "leaders" that their unprioritized needs are not only unnecessary, but wrong/toxic.
The left/right dichotomy is how the plutocrats keep us fighting each other instead of them.
Absolutely -- but I believe the reason is that we don't really understand why L/R exist in the first place, eternally, each waxing and waning over time.
So I've been working to simplify it to their essence and evangelize that, instead of having us all go numb and totally give up on it. That, I think, would make us even more confused and unable to organize opposition to the existing mind-f*ckery system.
Bingo!
"Trump should run and offer Tulsi Gabbard the spot for Vice President"
It's a lovely dream. The current shitshow over former President Trump would pale in comparison to what would happen if he died in office (he's old!) and we got President Gabbard.
I've cycled through so many analogies, metaphors and historical parallels in trying to make sense of the apocalpytic never-ending nervous breakdown that Trump engendered in his political opponents.
I still think Ahab v Dick works pretty well, or the Left v Nixon or the Northern blueblood reaction to Andrew Jackson, but right now this is starting to look more like Mia Farrow after Woody ran off with Soon-Yi (I guess in this analogy, the Left is Mia, Donald is Woody, and Soon-Yi is the American govt.)
This has become a full-time scorched-earth Fatal Attraction level assault aimed at the total personal and professional destruction of one man. No cost is too high, no accusation too minor, all prior principles are irrelevant, there will be no mercy, no truce, as long as the heart still beats and burns with hatred it will devote every last cent and every last ounce of energy to getting revenge.
The Democrats woke up on November 8, 2016, absolutely certain that the country and the world were in their pocket, that the first female president would follow the first black president, that the Arc of History™ was bending their way, that their neoliberal/United Colors of Benetton utopia was about to be locked in for at least another generation or two—and when all that was stolen away by the literal incarnation of all they hate, a crass lewd greedy carnival barker, it was a shock so painful, a repudation so violent, it created some sort of psychotic break that they will never recover from.
What happens when an entire political party/movement has a complete mental breakdown? We're living thru it now...Maybe their fever will break a few years after he's dead, but definitely no sooner.
"the Northern blueblood reaction to Andrew Jackson"
Love this. An historically literate person, a rarity.
thanks! i try!
What a fantastic comment and analogy.
hey thanks!
So brilliant and articulate-comment of year!
hey thanks!
Remember, Trump was every politicians friend when donated to their political campaigns and causes. They were confused and mocking as to why the only public office Trump ever ran for was President, but they didn't hate him then, either. They only started hating him after he won "their" political game, them more so when he fulfilled on the campaign promises he made - something they seldom considered themselves after being elected time and again.
Every time I get ready to quit substack and cancel my subscription to the writers I support, someone writes an article reminding me why I need to not do that yet. The article Matt wrote is rarely seen in our media; something objectively honest calling balls and strikes. Trump out of office has done more to destroy the democrats than he did in office. As long as they continue to support tech billionaires and transgender story time and ignore working class Americans trying to survive the economy and raise their kids , they will continue to lose. Bernie doesn’t give a shit about us, Elizabeth warren is a buffoon and AOC a co-opted disappointment. I dislike Trump and at the same time trust him more than any of the democrat flavor of the moment to do the right thing for working class Americans, Democrat elite and media( but I repeat myself) opinion be damned. Trump 2024. That man not worried about a reelection and not giving a crap about impeachment would be a marvel to watch.
Yeah Bernie, what a fraud/poser...can't believe I liked him for as long as I did.
But he is making me warm to socialism. Turns out, under socialism, everybody gets three houses and a private jet.
“All animals are equal but some are more equal than others.”
When Trump was originally elected, he had significant majorities in both houses of Congress. What did he do with those majorities that constituted 'the right thing for working class Americans?' What leads you to believe he would do anything else if he got back into office?
I disagree with the basic premise. Trump had Romney and his confederates in the Senate and Paul Ryan in the House. If you think anything that includes them is a majority, I disagree. It was RINO‘s with the usual byproduct they produce. The fact that Trump was able to shame them to NOT cooperate with democrats was a win by itself. Tax policy( remember the evil tech billionaires even repatriated some company profits) , and oil policy are two quick examples. The immigration policy is another. Those were done with no significant RINO support until shamed. Trump did other things such as moving the embassy to Jerusalem and recognizing it as the capitol of Israel which multiple US REPUBLICAN Presidents lied about doing while campaigning and never did. Trump, for all his over emotional bluster, did everything he could to try to do his major promises. Remember in the end he tried to get out of Afghanistan and REPUBLICAN and DEMOCRATS stopped him together. That was another in a long list of examples of the US government’s corruption.
Biden abided by Trump’s Afghanistan withdrawal date but gets no credit for it. Moving the embassy to Jerusalem was a terrible decision done entirely to please the Israel Apartheid settlers and should be revoked as soon as possible. (Israel is a complete shit of an ‘ally’ and the sooner we ditch them the better.) Finally, why is failing to work with Democrats in itself praiseworthy? We’re half the country. If O have to listen to Trump, he should have to listen to me.
Obama had the same. Obama claimed (as did Biden in the March 15, 2020 CNN primary debate with Bernie) that the very first thing he would do as President would be to codify Roe vs Wade into federal law. Once elected, he said it was not a high priority (or even a low priority). He gave us Romneycare and pretended it was not a big sellout to the insurance companies. Obama at least had been a Senator, clueless Trump had no experience at all in government.
"Obama claimed (as did Biden in the March 15, 2020 CNN primary debate with Bernie) that the very first thing he would do as President would be to codify Roe vs Wade into federal law."
Democrats have absolutely lost *all* credibility on this, and for that reason -- playing political football with it for nearly FIFTY years. Hence, the ridiculous and irrational shrillness of their whining, over the hard work they now have to do that they should have started in 1973. Except now, they are in complete denial over what is necessary (actually changing the damn law(s)), instead wanting to "bomb" the Supreme Court.
So what’s the alternative? The Republicans want to ban the Pill. Complain if you wish but the Dems are the only option.
If you think that any legislature is going to ban birth control, then you are living in La La Land.
You do know that National Right to Life defines the Pill, the morning-after Pill, and IUD’s as abortifacients? They absolutely will ban all of those.
Trump was hated in both houses of Congress by both Parties for two reasons: he wasn't 'one of them' and he exposed their collective grift to the world and wasn't polite about it. As far as 'right for working class' goes, income tax rates went down, energy prices went down, employment for everyone, especially minorities went up. All good things for working class Americans despite the hatred for Trump in Washington DC and the plutocrats around the world.
Minority wages went up. He had things humming until COVID(interestingly a infectious virus created in a enemies lab funded by us and “mistakenly” released)
"Bernie doesn't give a shit about us" got my attention. If this were true, why did they torpedo his campaign twice? What are you referring to, specifically?
Probably referencing Bernie rolling over for Hillary and Biden while also getting fabulously wealthy?
Bernie said he didn't want to be the next Ralph Nader (you know, someone who stuck to his ideals and principles, and was punished by fellow Democrats). I'm sure Bernie is happy with "my good friend Joe's" policies. I always suspect that if Manchin or Sinema fall in line with the Democrats' agenda, another two or three will pop up to take their place in dissent.
You cannot blame everything on the Parliamentarian and Putin (or maybe you can?)
Glen Greenwald brings this up all the time. On the really important votes, there always seem to be a group of Democrats who won't line up and do what they're told. And they rotate around so none of them take too much heat for it.
It's a feature, not a bug.
It's the 3 Card Monty of the 2 Potty System.
Ralph Nader has a new publication--Capitol Hill Citizen.
No Shit…. great for him…..comeback!
I will admit that 2 or 3 million looks fabulously wealthy to me. But compared to a solid bunch in congress, it's kind of chump change.
Bernie was late to the grift, is all. They didn't need him until recently. Notice that AOC doesn't have any issues finding housing any longer.....
I'm not saying that he's not on the grift, but he did write a book that sold well. A million or 2 from that isn't inconcievable.
Somewhere i saw a piece that totalled up his income over the past couple of decades - salary, SS, etc. And it wasn't inconcievable that it totalled up to a million or two over the years.
I kind of feel bad for Bernie that he was something like 3 or 4 decades late to the grift. AOC was a lot quicker and sharper.
When you're a sad old man who has seen his dreams incrementally turn to dust, a nice retirement home doesn't seem so bad.
Yes. Bernie always rolls over. A big disappointment.
Bernie voted for the Ukraine spending package. I’ve told my progressive friends - you all are pro war. DNC did torpedo his campaign twice though. GOP did the same to Ron Paul.
And Tulsi - for the same reason.
That's solid. I don't follow closely, for health reasons.
I understand that.
Don't ever give up on Substack. It's become a national treasure.
The Democrats have lied so continuously, censored people and pushed such flagrant propaganda that anything Trump has really done on the laundry list just pales. 1/6 was a reaction to the whole squirrely build up to that election and all the shenanigans propagated by the left that were so obvious to the people there.
Was 1/6 going too far, yes. But gaslighting it as though it was unprovoked is just more dishonesty when the root causes were so clear to so many. I really don't care about 1/6 when weighed against the broader, insidious agenda that this radical left administration is pushing.
Where was the coverage on 5/29 when the Presidential chapel was set on fire? When 100 officers were actually injured by the actually violent mob that day? That double-think is now obvious to masses of people and they aren't going to stop the momentum for the cause that the Democrats have created with their ongoing deceptions.
On any equitable scale, 1/6 was FAR more peaceful than the summer of riots driven by HFA, the DNC and BLM. 1/6 was far more peaceful than the 5/29 assault on the Whitehouse. People are not dumb enough to ignore these distortions.
Good points. And the attempt by James Hodgkinson to assassinate 25 Republican members of Congress on June 14, 2017 was far worse than January 6. Yet there never has been a "June 14" committee. And the Republicans never attack Senator Sanders, for whom Hodgkinson had worked in the 2016 election.
Republicans sure did love their weekly Benghazi hearings though. Democrats are just using the Benghazi playbook for 1/6.
The difference is that a U.S. Ambassador and 3 other officials were assassinated in Benghazi because Secretary of State Clinton refused requests from the Ambassador for six months for proper protection for them. That was a genuine issue that had to be investigated.
The January 6 committee has not investigated the one thing that IS comparable: The murder of Ashley Babbitt by Capitol Police officer Michael Byrd. The committee WOULD be legitimate if that was the primary concern of its investigation, but it has not come up.
Benghazi didn't need the 33 hearings and 7 Congressional investigations (1 would have been plenty), but it got them for political grandstanding purposes. Rinse and repeat for the many, many collusion hearings and Jan 6 investigations.
Benghazi was a shocking stain on our national character. We left those men to die and sent no help. I’m STILL horrified and embarrassed.
That's pretty much word for word what lefties think of Jan 6 - "a shocking stain on our national character"
Trey Gowdy is the stinker re: the failed Benghazi investigation...his 50 shades of pecker head haircuts is the tell about his integrity, or lack of.
Eyesandmindopen - wish I could “like” your comment more than once
No one in American history (and perhaps all history) has been examined more closely - legally, politically, socially, personally - than Donald J Trump. That examination has been by sworn Trump enemies in both major political parties, the major media, social media - everyone, everywhere it seems.. It amazes me that one with the high intelligence and political savvy of Matt Taibbi would write, "For the moment I’d prefer to bypass entirely the question of which of all those offenses Trump was actually guilty (my guess would be some, including some of the serious ones, .....". Really, Matt! With that 6+- year anal examination, what have they truly found? NOTHING. Trump may well be the most honest, non-corrupt person ever to even aspire to the Oval Office. As our somewhat demented POTUS says, "C'mon man!"
If you’re just going by smoke, the potential corruption of Biden is off the charts compared to Trump. But no one in the media who claim “democracy dies in darkness” seem to care.
Yeah, speaking of which, have you seen the latest Hunter video where is coming down the slide into the pool and then stroking his wang as he gets out? The pervy apple did not fall far from the tree.
Except for that Trump University scam, and the Trump Steak scam, and the Trump Wine scam he was pretty clean, right?
Brings to mind the Laureate University scandal, Mena Arkansas drug money laundering, and all those $300K to $700K "speeches" (including $500K from Putin for Bill's speech at the Moscow bank in 2010 when Hillary was Secretary of State).
Trump sells his name. Hillary sold access to the Office of the Secretary of State of the US. Corruption is completely bipartisan with no accountability.
Well Kathy, from my view, it looks to me like the whole DC establishment from Pelosi on down, hell Biden himself, are just one great big group of hustlers.
Amazing the number of people that get elected who have average incomes but leave office millionaires. Never mind the technocrats I work with in DC. Jesus, the money they make from deals that they cut once they leave government is astounding. I have watched millions and millions of dollars be wasted on what can only be described as well disguised fraud. I have watched senior government officials cut some shady deals right before they leave government. Actually watched one CIO of a major department force a deal with Oracle for millions on software the rest of the organization did not think was needed and did not want only for him to retire and take a position with Oracle. Do not even get me started on the crap that goes on at CDC and NIH or FDA or FDIC or the SEC or anyplace that you have regulators that impact large businesses. HELL...even the Bureau of Land Management.
There are no saints in DC or in the federal government. I have worked with them for 22 yrs and I have seen way too much. Trump almost looks minor league in his grift.
With TOO much money and power centralized there will be corruption. The BEAST must be starved and dismembered. It(the govt) is a danger to the country
Bravo! Tell like it is
Yes, those were hideous crimes for which DJT paid the price. Now, refresh my memory: Was Mr. Trump "fined"? Prosecuted" Served time? All were great "nothing burgers", amplified by the 90%+ hostile press and "never-Trumpers" and others who apparently still suffer from Trump derangement syndrome. No one's perfect or even close but really, is that what prompts you to join the insane, insipid ignorant progressives still looking for ANYTHING bad about DJT? Really!!
He has to write that or the jig is up.
With 40K subscribers (including me) paying $50.00 annually, Matt Taibbi doesn't HAVE to write anything except what he wishes to write. It's just that even those with high-IQ's and tremendous writing skills like Matt who once were once squarely on the "progressive" side of things who see the political, social, cultural truth, still seem to lack the ability to say anything positive about Trump without adding a few "progressive" caveats.
Ivana Trump died today at age 73.
The Donald wrote a humble post in his social media account.
What a scary comment. Bobbing for apples in that koolaid. Dude has a well documented history of being shady and corrupt all before he made it to the White House.
6 years of legal, social and personal examination by people who hated him has turned up nothing remotely significant. If ANYTHING significant had been found, Trump would have been prosecuted. No Kool Aid here, just logic and observation which I recommend highly for those with TDS.
Whatever. Most politicians have tons of skeletons in their closets. Read some history books if you can still find them. Am laughing out loud how DT twisted so many peoples minds.Will say he didn’t start any new wars. AND didn’t STEAL $$ from Afghanistan; Byedone did that.
Which is truly catastrophic for Afghani children, women, men, elders …. In my seventh decade I doubt I’ll ever vote again. LOTE is beyond stupid. NO did not vote for byedone or DT.
This post is in response to Dusty; just to clarify
I honestly believe no one gives a shit about 1/6 outside of the kind of people who comment on WAPO articles and troll Matt on Twitter.
You're going to make Taylor Lorenz cry again.
I can't help thinking that AOC is the Taylor Lorenz of Congress.
Her ~~feels~~!
What a terrible human being.
Damn that was funny. Thank you!
The DNC is going to rue the day they spent so much time attacking Trump only to be running against DeSantis instead. Sure, some people will fall for the "HE'S TRUMP 2.0" hyperbole, but not nearly as many as will ALREADY reflexively vote against Trump.
Critical issue all the politics carefully avoid or ignore is voters attitudes shaped by jabs and mandates and growing community of vax injured already know and respect DeSantis that's a passionate national network built around medical freedom.. hope he does run.
Trump is looking nearly as tired and played as Biden. His shit is pretty old by now. I suspect Dems are probably barking up the wrong tree.
TL:DR: the wrong guy won and we are going to make sure it never is allowed to happen ever again.
And I am far from a Trump fan.
Worst part about the Democrats is how much better they make Trump, or someone like him, look.
At least the mustache and name "Adolf" isn't popular.
...they're not, right?
Maybe in Ukraine?
lol
Everybody is complaining about the Dems' shallow Prez bench. Maybe if I trim and dye my moustache and run as "Adolf Kashmarov" against DeSantis as the NazBol candidate I will have a shot.
I am keeping the mullet, though, as a signal to my people.
Agreed.
Donald Trump was the worst person ever elected President, I never voted for him, and it would be a disaster if he ever got a second term, but I also think the January 6th committee is no better than an orchestrated Kangaroo court. Too many people believe it is okay to throw reason out the window because Trump is such a bad and dangerous person. I don’t and won’t.
The January 6th hearing shouldn’t be called a hearing at all, it is a presentation of facts where the facts and their presentation are carefully edited to make the Democrats’ case. Snippets of taped testimony taken out of context, a complete lack of cross examination, and heavy use of hearsay make me think that the committee really only has a weak circumstantial case. They are relying on the media to blow things out of proportion and force the Justice department to prosecute Trump. This is politics and the media is cooperating with them when it should be skeptical of their motives. The truth is the committee hasn’t presented very much that hasn’t already been reported and not much of substance except for outlandish behavior by Trump. We already knew he was a boorish cretin.
I am old enough to have watched the Watergate hearings. The surprises during those hearings were genuine ones that no one on the committee saw coming because the witnesses were testifying to those things for the first time publicly. The January 6th committee is staged. They have gathered the evidence and are only presenting evidence that tells the story they want to tell.
You don’t have to like Trump to realize it could be hyperbole, you just have to be reasonable.
It would be nice if reason were the only thing Democrats were throwing out the window. Unfortunately they also are jettisoning rule of law, constitutional safeguards, governmental separation of powers, and basic civility with it.
That's where (fortunately) most reasonable people draw the line.
I am not any kind of a fan of the two-party system, but at this point the Republican party is kind of an open canopic jar into which the desert winds settle and rustle, bringing their debris.
Set? Anubis? Let's have at it. Mind my Imsety; it's delicate.
Except for the first line, I agree with all this. Thank you.
Although Trump is certainly (on many occasions, though not all) boorish, outrageous, criminal, incompetent, etc., I happen to believe he was just what was needed -- a person narcissistic enough to not back down from the now-truly-existential threat to the future of government-by-the-people. That was, and is, his job, and, ironically, in toto, he's performing *that* quite well. And I believe it's hard to see this now, but if (actual) democracy survives and is not successfully supplanted by 1984/BNW, that's how historians 50 years hence will judge it.
And (too much of) the Establishment *just doesn't get it*. Remember that line from late-20th-century feminism?
"Except for the first line, I agree with all this."
Trump's got some pretty stiff competition for "Worst President EVAR." James Buchanan, anyone?
Historians seem to focus on functional competence when rating presidents.
But on the basis of Machiavellian, anti-democratic corruption -- arguably more relevant and thus important -- there are numerous contenders. Trump is certainly not at the top of this latter list. History may prove him to be near the bottom.
"on the basis of Machiavellian, anti-democratic corruption -- arguably more relevant and thus important -- there are numerous contenders"
Lincoln's somewhere around #1 here. I don't intend that as a dis. Man held shit together by hook and by crook.
"I am old enough to have watched the Watergate hearings"
Am I the only one stupid enough to wish we could have Nixon back? He looks remarkably good in retrospect.
He was a “lib” by the way. Who started EPA? Nixon.
Scarily enough, I don’t disagree. Dude was a statist economically(bad), but an innate political genius.
With you here. Tricky D. made as many bad moves as good ones (off the gold standard, #1), but the choice I posit here is Biden vs. Nixon -- Joe's good moves to bad moves ratio at this point is something like 1:10, if you're feeling charitable.
Whatever else one may think of his Robin, Heinz Kissinger, the dude knows how shit works in the international system.
Agree on the gold standard-bad move
He does indeed. (Until you look under the hood.)
"squatting on a toilet he had brought himself"
https://video-images.vice.com/_uncategorized/1515608202408-1960KennedyNixon.jpeg?resize=1600:*
"Donald Trump was the worst person ever elected President
Really, worse than Biden, the guy who is on the CCP payroll and who showers with his daughter, among other pervy things that he does? C'mon man!
You talking to me, Ben? C'mon man, you can do better than that. That sort of response just tells me you got nothing.
Please crawl back under your rock.
You have not read Caro’s four volume tour de force on LBJ? What a corrupt, disgusting, ignorant, venal man. Clearly worse then Trump. That being said he got the civil rights bills passed.
You exhibit a short historical perspective: Andrew Jackson arguably attempted genocide, James Buchannan's ineffective presidency made the Civil War inevitable, Andrew Johnson derailed Reconstruction, and Woodrow Wilson brought Jim Crow into the Federal government, jailed political opponents and set up a government propaganda bureau (the Committee on Public Information) that Goebbels said was his model. Trump? A lout (but so was Jackson by all accounts), half-cocked policy ideas, bizarrely often following on a spot-on analysis of a problem everyone else wanted to ignore, but the worst person ever elected President? Really?
I didn't vote for him either time either, but nor did I vote for the other corrupt wannabe Caesar that the Democrats put up to oppose him.
I agree with your description but I also agree with the committee’s objective to deny tfg another term. The idiots who attacked Congress can rot in jail.
They attacked congress? With what? If they rioted, they should be prosecuted, but the over the top accusations of treason are what got the Dems the ridicule of most of the country.
This isn't a defense of Trump. It's calling out the Democrat incompetence, greed and lowest common denominator thinking. They're going to lose this year and in 2024, but will never once blame themselves.
“They attacked Congress?” Yes they did - do you think they would break into the Capitol if Congress was not in session to certify the election. This was at best apurposeful violent riot and at worst an attempt to overthrow the government.
C'mon man, get off the kool-aid...if the "insurrectionists" were so bad, how come so many of he charges were misdemeanors of one sort or another? Do you really deserve to "rot in jail" for that?
Unless and until we get a full and fair investigation into the origins and nature of the "insurrection" (including all the video) we shouldn't be so quick to rush to judgment about this. But again, turn off the MSNBC, etc. It's confusing you.
They didn't break into the Capitol. They were waved in open doors by Capitol police. I watched it happen in real time via streaming. I have been to the Capitol. You couldn't break into it without explosives if they didn't want you to. There were also several instigators captured on video who were shortly after identified as far left and Democrat i.e. Antifa, FBI, and Journalists. None of them have been prosecuted.
It was an attempt to overthrow the government. Just not by the side you think it was.
The only thing that will prevent Trump from running again is if he is in jail. I am skeptical the Justice department can successfully prosecute him.
Even after the first few hearings, 85% of Republicans still supported him. Unless he is in jail the nomination is his for the asking.
I agree, the only useful purpose of the J6 committee is to peel off enough DJT votes to defeat him if he gets nominated. They will never find 12 jurors who wil unanimously convict him, regardless of his guilt.
Sorry, if Trump gets the nomination he wins over Biden or Harris. No one thinks the committee is peeling away DJT votes. It may actually be peeling away DEM votes. Americans don't like show trials. Sorry again, the future looks bleak, you're gonna need shades.
I think you are right. There is a building rage against the democrats right now. Which, I also think partially explains the political realignment taking place.
One reason that Trump won in the first place was his utter willingness to attack the politically correct. One would think the democrats would have backed off that if for no other reason than political survival. But NOPE...they tripled down on it with "woke", transgender ideology etc.
IF Trump runs and IF he wins the nomination and IF he wins a general election, it will be almost entirely due to the failures of the democrats to govern, their obsessions with cultural correctness and the extraordinary amount of time wasted on chasing Trump that could have been better used to achieve real goals.
IF Trump gets re-elected, it will be a result of an astounding failure of the democrats to appear remotely normal or useful and not due to overwhelming support for Trump personally.
The dems did this to themselves.
They need more Manchin's and fewer members of the Squad.
Michael Moore said that electing Trump was the biggest FU in history by the average voter to the DC establishment. Trump's re-election would be the 2nd. The angrier the democrats make the country, the more likely that it to happen.
January 6th was a riot. Not an insurrection. Covid was not the biggest threat most people faced on a daily basis. Neither is global warming. Nor Ukraine. Nor trans rights. Not even abortion rights for biological men. Believe it or not!
Most Americans rightly despise the elite expert class. They despise you guys because you are completely ineffective at solving any of the problems of working people.
The stupidity coming from experts with ivy league degrees has become more and more obvious as we masked outside, sprayed our groceries, wore rubber gloves, watched vaccines fail to stop spread, saw only children at near zero risk being forced to mask, and are now just one election away from another round of restrictions, closures, new vaccine mandates, and increased masking.
So, yeah, average people know the elites hate Trump. That’s why they support him. He’s a giant raised middle finger at you preachy narcissistic credentialed imbeciles.
One thing that I think the left has a blind spot to with regards to January 6:
Many on the right (or center-right or center) did not like what happened on Jan6. But many of these same people have been MUCH more disgusted by the what they perceive, I think rightly, as the holding of political prisoners with regards to Jan 6. They see people being held for months without Due Process and they become furious. All the Jan6 show trials do for those people is push them more into Trump’s corner. They feel the system is rigged against them. And they can point out examples of a system that is so corrupt at its core that they are seen as second class citizens. And it’s not just by Democrats, but by members of their own party. This is why Trump resonated with them. He spoke to a segment of society that felt as though the system was against them... and everyday it appears that the system tries harder and harder to prove his point.
Ain’t it funny how when it’s Russia, we get that jailing your political opponent is the first step to authoritarianism, but when it’s ourselves, it’s either “LOCK HER UP” or “Mueller, all I want for Christmas is you!”
Well, pretend that Julian Assange or Chelsea Manning were locked up in Russia for revealing government secrets; pretend that Jeffrey Epstein were to have died under similar circumstances in a Russian jail.
We would be dutifully informed, via wall-to-wall nonstop MSM coverage, about how this proves yet again the lawlessness and totalitarianism inherent in Russia, how evil the regime is, etc. etc.. No evidence needed, no investigation necessary, what are you on their side?
But when it's our team, our government? Our Ukrainian pets? Our Israeli "clients"? Or our Saudi frenemies?
Crickets..... hey everyone, Obama got a puppy! Everyone look at the cute puppy! Awwwww
Saint Obama is still revered. Threw millions out of their homes and made the banksters richer so that they could buy the homes for pennies on the dollar and rent them back and again kick the renters out so they could jack up the rent. It's going on now. Expanded the war in Afghanistan, deported more Hispanics than any president in history. Prosecuted more whistle blowers than all presidents before him combined. Destroyed Libya, which had the highest UN development index in Africa and Clinton gloated in public. Almost did the same in Syria using jihaddi mercenaries like Carter Brezinski did in Afghanistan. Presided the worst recovery in memory. Created Obama care high deductible Scam rather than medicare for all. "Turns out I'm really good at killing people"! Barak Obama in public stated that. If that isn't proof of a false narrative still being Believed despite all evidence to the contrary, I don't know what is.. Oh yeah, the Ukraine narrative is.
Can too much hope possibly be a bad thing?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1AbJzWLq6w&t=1s
Hope is NEVER a good plan, no matter how much you have.
Funny how Chelsea Manning has gotten dropped down the memory hole. Early on, there was much media talk of how her gender identity disorder was a signifier of mental illness and indirectly or directly responsible for her "traitorism." A decade later, gender identity disorder is cool, hip, and mainstream, but "traitorism" is worse than ever. So... does not compute with the narrative.
I don't pretend to understand "her" gender identity (cats don't really encounter this sort of confusion) but I try to call balls and strikes, regardless.
What he did took balls. Now she’s paying (or already paid) the price.
Self-awareness is not something American's are particularly good at. (Though I do think Hillary should be put somewhere under a jail, but I think that about a lot of politicians.)
It is very nasty of me, but I think that every politician who advocated "enhanced interrogation" should themselves be subject to "enhanced interrogation." Since it is, as they explained, fundamentally harmless and in the best interests of the citizens of the United States of America.
I like the way you think.
Our jails here in America are too barbaric for any morally serious person to advocate that another human being be incarcerated in them. Well, except the kind of jail that Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump would get sent to if we actually jailed our political opponents.
While I agree in principle and I agree that we need alternatives for many of the crimes we jail people for, I would not say as an absolute that *no* human being deserves to be jailed in our system.
And the January 6 people and Julian Assange, among others, would disagree that we don't actually jail people for political reasons.
Doubling the Incarceration Rate is Joe Biden's biggest accomplishment (I'm sure he's still proud, in private).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWo-GUhnR50
This is admittedly true, unfortunately.
Well, you know, it's well documented that Russians are subhuman barbarians; they might even be more Asian than European. When they do it it's bad.
Ukraine is way more Tatar than Russia proper. A Dept of Ag official asked my dad to self-identify as Mongolian b/c he was Ukrainian-in 1978!
Which is doubly rich, considering that the Ukrainian "Institute of National Remembrance" (an official Ukrainian government body) claims that Ukrainians are "pure blooded Slavs" while Russians are "intermixed".
"Why, that sounds like straight up Nazi 'race science'!" you say?
Pretty much, yup. Not to mention that how many times Ukraine has been invaded.
In Ukraine's defense, it's kinda like Poland -- doomed by geography. It can't *not* be invaded. You have to invade it on the way to invading other places you actually want to invade.
No argument there.
But people who are themselves likely as "mixed" as any ethnicity on the planet probably shouldn't get all "Blood And Soil", no matter how much their buddies Hitler and Himmler talked like that.
EDIT: some Wehrmacht general said something to the effect that "People who look like Himmler probably shouldn't talk about 'pure breeding' and 'racially superior bloodstock' and things like that."
Well, we all know the Wehrmacht/Abwehr and the SS really didn't get along. von Stauffenberg, Canaris, etc. etc.
A pity party for Russia.
Wake up, please.