Monthly Archives: March 2022

His only regret

Was how ungratefully the Führer treated him at the end, really unfair, after all he’d done for the man. Otherwise, no regrets, no mistakes!

selling a book!

Not a toady, a gunsel, in the classical film noir sense of a loyal sidekick/future prison wife. Final interpretation of the Mueller Report was 100% in the wheelhouse of his unappealable discretion as the nation’s top law enforcement agent, case closed. Trump had a Führer-worthy shit fit when told the election fraud claim was bullshit, slammed his hand on the desk, screamed. He basically fired Barr, who gave him one last rim job for the history books, that loving resignation letter, submitted right before the insurrection.

I just saved you 30 bucks.

Rewrite of NY Times subheadline

Today’s NY Times. under its headline on yesterday’s filing by the January 6th Conmittee to compel litigious Trumpist John Eastman’s compliance with its subpoena:

In a court filing, the panel said there was enough evidence to suggest that the former president might have engaged in a criminal conspiracy as he fought to remain in office.

To “suggest” there “might have been” a crime? Very daintily put, Grey Lady. Seems from the rest of the article that the January 6th Committee laid out a detailed, evidence rich argument for criminal conspiracy and obstruction of an official proceeding. Attoney-client privilege does not protect discussions of criminal plans, or conspiracies to defraud. How about this rewrite?

In a court filing, the panel cited evidence to establish that the former president’s communications with his private lawyer must be turned over under the “crime/fraud exception” to attorney-client privilege, laying out the elements of a criminal conspiracy to fraudulently keep the defeated candidate in office.

I have to admit, the rest of the article was not as weak kneed as the subheadline. Here’s a good paragraph:

The filing laid out a sweeping if by now well-established account of the plot to overturn the election, which included false claims of election fraud, plans to put forward pro-Trump “alternate” electors, pressure various federal agencies to find irregularities and ultimately push Vice President Mike Pence and Congress to exploit the Electoral Count Act to keep a losing president in power.

My only correction is lose the “if” in describing the well-known facts, as “if” might suggest (hah) that the evidence being well-known somehow weakens it, à la Barr’s corrupt dismissal of Mueller’s mountain of well-known evidence. Leaving in the unnecessary qualifier betrays an eagerness to show your ass, for some reason (see previous post).

The Washington Post ran this paragraph in its story:

“The Select Committee also has a good-faith basis for concluding that the President and members of his Campaign engaged in a criminal conspiracy to defraud the United States,” according to the filing.

Dig it, Merrick.

Sarah Lazarus, score!

I couldn’t stop laughing at the sheer brilliance of this description of the Grey Lady’s famous reflex to bend over backwards (in this case frontwards) to appear objective, even when it makes them look ridiculous.

Turning back to the U.S. economy, Biden touted his historic job gains (prompting the New York Times fact-checking department to bare its ass, for some reason)

https://crooked.us19.list-manage.com/track/click?u=8855a23519ab892dfe2cd34f6&id=d4d54231db&e=067cc37a07

Get ready for the next principled filibuster, cucks

In a nation that, according to many good Christians, has never practiced racism, of any kind, making a federal law against racist or ethnic murder by lynching, is completely unnecessary. This was the position of the Dixiecrats, southerners who hated Lincoln so much that they would never vote Republican, for a century, now taken up by the Grand Old Party, which turned the South solidly red, after LBJ’s betrayal of White Supremacy. Nary a racist among these wealthy conservative white men.

Makes me want to fucking holler that they are still debating this in 2022, and that the party of Trump will as likely as not filibuster it to cut off debate, like their Klan forebears did, whenever it came to the Senate in the past, for a vote to make an anti-lynching bill the law of the land.

What next from these radicals and scalawags in the House, a federal law legalizing Critical Race Theory? So-called Voting Rights?

Lack of government transparency is demoralizing

Glenn Kirschner hits the nail on the head with this report about NY County DA Alvin Bragg’s refusal to release the resignation letters of his two top Trump prosecutors.

“A lack of governmental transparency is corrosive to public confidence in our institutions … we really need some signs of life from our law enforcement and our prosectorial agencies because the inaction coupled with a lack of transparency is demoralizing and disrespectful of We The People … we the voters.”

The Hideous Power of Denial

We all practice selective denial, it’s part of the human condition.  One philosopher observed that the greatest miracle we humans perform is living every day as though we are not going to die.   My denial often takes the form of procrastination, it is much easier to put off a difficult thing than to tackle it directly.   

There are many forms of denial, including the most dramatic: in your fucking face denial.  This is the denial some insist on when confronted with anything painful or something we fear would make us look insane, or make us ashamed.  This is the kind denial we defend until death, bracing ourselves against all proofs that are advanced against it.

The denial of bullies, who make a public show of hiding their terror, is an infamous kind of denial.   “I’m not afraid of you, asshole, I’ll fucking kill you and dance on your fucking face.   Tommy, take care of this piece of shit.”   

Denial, clearly, is a powerful force in politics, as we see Putin’s forces marching to kill as many as necessary in the name of deNazifying and demilitarizing a neighboring country Putin has long sought to annex.   We see it in sickening excess in the party the Koch network built over decades transforming the conservative, big business friendly GOP into the openly authoritarian John Birch Society/Trump party.     

Trumpism is the American triumph of denialism.  Racism?  Never fucking happened, N-word.  Yeah, I fired a top advisor for lying, a man who repented and pleaded guilty to perjury, then I had DOJ move to have the charges dropped, pardoned him and had him in the bunker at the end as a top advisor urging me to impose martial law after I was illegally declared the loser in my reelection bid.  So?  My campaign worked closely with a foreign power who favored my first and second bids to be president, why wouldn’t I gloat that all the elements of criminal conspiracy with that power could not be proved, as I legally pardoned those who lied to hide the most incriminating evidence?  A bunch of sick liars claim I extorted a promise from a foreign leader militarily threatened by my foreign supporter, and that I violated U.S. law in the process, but I insist the call was not only OK, it was “perfect”– I was entitled to gloat after complete and total acquittal by my party.  Covid was a hoax designed by never-Trumpers to rig an election against the greatest American leader of all-time, no precautions needed, I assured a terrified nation that the so-called pandemic would miraculously end soon, which it did.   Supposedly lost a rigged election by eight million clearly fraudulent votes, an election I not only won (no proof needed, denial is powerful shit), but won in a landslide.       “We fight, and if you don’t fight like hell you’re not going to have a country left” was not urging anyone to march down Pennsylvania Avenue (“I love Pennsylvania Avenue”) to fight like hell, it was meant as a metaphor about freedom.     

My mother was prone to flying into fits of anger at times.  She’d go from perfectly calm to ready to smash your face in the space of a few seconds when she felt provoked.   I got good at avoiding and defusing these flashes of anger toward the end of her life, but I always recognized this readiness to become enraged in my dear mother.   I knew better than to bring it up directly, she’d sooner box my ears than admit she ever got angry.   I saw this in others I’ve known over the years, ready to become enraged, stubbornly set in their righteous anger, and most of those folks would vigorously deny they had been angry at all, reminding me that I was the enraged asshole who keeps bringing up anger, not them. 

The beauty of denial is that you can just deny it.   “So you deny that you denied the charges against you, in spite of the videotape of you denying it?”   “Yes, I vehemently deny it.”  Case closed.   As Trump pointed out after Muhammed bin Salman had Jamal Kashoggi strangled and dismembered, the billionaire medieval prince had strongly denied any involvement, what more needs to be said?