Category Archives: current events

American hero, to millions…

From the great Heather Cox Richardson

And then, this evening, Quil Lawrence and Tom Bowman of NPR explained the story behind the surprising photos of Trump on Monday giving a thumbs-up over a grave in Arlington National Cemetery. The reporters wrote that “[t]wo members of Donald Trump’s campaign staff had a verbal and physical altercation Monday with an official” at the cemetery, where “[f]ederal law prohibits political campaign or election-related activities.” When a cemetery official tried to prevent Trump campaign staff from entering the section where the grave was located, “campaign staff verbally abused and pushed the official aside.” A Trump campaign spokesperson said the official who tried to prevent the staff from holding a political event in the cemetery was “clearly suffering from a mental health episode.” 

The elephant in the room these days is that most Republicans, along with many pundits, are pretending that Trump is a normal presidential candidate. They are ignoring his mental lapses, calls for authoritarianism, grifting, lack of grasp on any sort of policy, and criminality, even as he has hollowed out the once grand Republican Party and threatens American democracy itself.

It’s hard to look away from the reality that the Republican senators could have stopped this catastrophe at many points in Trump’s term, at the very least by voting to convict Trump at his first impeachment trial. At the time, Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) said, “Out of one hundred senators, you have zero who believe you that there was no quid pro quo. None. There’s not a single one.” Republican senators nonetheless stood behind Trump. “This is not about this president. It’s not about anything he’s been accused of doing,” then–majority leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) told his colleagues. “It has always been about November 3, 2020. It’s about flipping the Senate.”

When the Framers wrote the Constitution, they did not foresee senators abandoning the principles of the country in order to support a president they thought would enhance their own careers. Assuming that lawmakers would jealously guard their own power, the Framers gave to the members of the House of Representatives the power to impeach a president. To the members of the Senate they gave the sole power to try impeachments. They assumed that lawmakers, who had just fought a war to break free of a monarch, would understand that their own interests would always require stopping the rise of an authoritarian leader. 

But the Framers did not foresee the rise of political partisanship. 

In the modern era, extreme partisanship has led to voter suppression to keep Republicans in power, the weaponization of the filibuster to stop Democratic legislation, and gerrymandering to enable Republicans to take far more legislative seats than they have earned. The demands of this extreme partisanship also mean that members of one of the nation’s major political parties have lined up behind a man whom, were he running this sort of a campaign even ten years ago, they would have dismissed with derision. 

Finally, devastatingly, the partisanship that made senators keep Trump in office enabled him to name to the Supreme Court three justices. Those three justices were key to making up the majority that overturned the nation’s fundamental principle that all people must be equal before the law. In July 2024 they ruled that unlike anyone else, a president is above it.  

In May 2016, South Carolina Republican senator Lindsey Graham famously observed: “If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed…….and we will deserve it.”

source

Free Speech, Nazi style

Free speech is crucial to informed debate in a democracy. Without the right to freely exchange ideas, to speak and write freely without government prosecution, we’re pretty much done as a democracy.

Totally free speech is a double edged sword, of course, since Nazis and Klansmen are as free as anyone else to speak publicly as they see fit. Our First Amendment prevents the government from making any law infringing our right to say or write pretty much anything we want (unless we are actively causing violence). It reads:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

They do this in a manner that is much clearer and more unmistakable than, say, in the Second Amendment which reads:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Aside from the use of the passive voice, and the context of a well regulated militia (conveniently omitted by most gun lovers), the gun amendment is much more squishy and subject to interpretation as to regulation than the freedom of religion, speech, the press and our right to peacefully assemble amendment.

Tech giant Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who famously told his executives that “you go to the mat” if the government tries to regulate Facebook in any way, spoke out recently (in a letter to pugnacious dickhead Jim Jordan, no less) against pressure he claims to have received from the Biden administration to monitor and flag pernicious lies that spread virally on Facebook.  Zuckerberg’s position is the same as virtually any working billionaire’s — you do whatever is necessary to prevent any government action that can lessen your profits, even by a penny.

Note the elegance of that Fox headline: Zuckerberg “admits” Biden is persecuting him and trying to force him to censor Americans.

Biden responded that he was asking all social media giants to behave as responsible citizens by flagging harmful lies that kill people. Facebook was among tech giants that allowed, among other things, countless viral videos touting the alleged harmfulness of the Covid vaccine that Trump fast-tracked with Operation Warp Speed. Biden pointed out that the deadly Covid pandemic is now only killing the unvaccinated. How much money would it cost Zuckerberg to post warnings on deadly lies embraced by millions because they show up over and over in a social media feed?

Who gives a fuck?

Free speech isn’t free, of course. It has to be fought for, against a formidable enemy — the brutal, incendiary, viral lie — as powerful as free speech itself.

When the government attempts to curb lies, powerful liars are outraged. They cite their right to say whatever they please, as guaranteed by the First Amendment. Unfettered free speech, particularly when it goes viral, is supremely useful for climbing to power. Once in power, Nazi free speech is famously whatever the fucking Fuhrer, and his handlers, say it is.

In late April [2022], the Department of Homeland Security announced the creation of the Disinformation Governance Board, whose mission would be recommending best practices to counter disinformation related to homeland security. The head of this board, Nina Jankowicz [1], was cyberbullied until she resigned. Operations of the board were promptly “suspended”. As far as I’m aware, the cyberbullies prevailed.

Biden subsequently opened an office, the White House Task Force to Address Online Harassment and Abuse, to combat the pernicious threat of vicious “social media” and specifically to police cyberbullies who make gender-based attacks. Not much has been reported about the task force since it was launched with some fanfare in June of 2022.

Now Zuckerberg is bitching again about his right to be the number one richest man in history, which, weighed against the health of our Nazi besieged democracy, is the only thing that counts to a billionaire who, by definition, can never have enough.

I’ll leave you with an example of free speech from the New York Times. See if you can spot the difference in these two paragraphs, the lead paragraph in a recent article about “MAGA jurisprudence” (an oxymoron if there ever was one).

As for freedom of the press, so necessary to protect democracy that the founders chose to protect the press in the First Amendment, they have a right to publish any opinion they choose, even in news articles. I’ve tweaked one sentence in this New York Times first paragraph to make it more accurate. See if you can spot the sentence I fixed:

The Supreme Court term that ended this summer delivered a number of big wins for traditional conservative causes. The court made it easier to challenge federal regulations. It made it harder to prosecute former presidents who commit crimes while in office. And it delivered another decision that expanded the rights of gun enthusiasts.

The original:

The Supreme Court term that ended this summer delivered a number of big wins for traditional conservative causes. The court made it easier to challenge federal regulations. It made it harder to prosecute former presidents. And it delivered another decision that expanded the rights of gun enthusiasts. 

Let’s leave aside that the editorial frame of “traditional conservative causes” is a poor description of these truly radical, reactionary decisions.

“It made it harder to prosecute former presidents” is a true statement, as far as it goes. A more accurate statement, one that better informs and underscores the revolutionary nature of the Supreme Court’s radical rightwing decision in Trump v. United States is: “It made it harder to prosecute former presidents who commit crimes in office.”

Freedom of fucking speech, sisters and brothers, mind that shit carefully.

[1] She gives examples of free speech she was treated to while heading the Disinformation Governing Board:

And then beyond that, there were calls to create deepfake pornography of me and then the violent threats, which were numerous. And I was reporting at least one a day to the department for the three weeks that this campaign was going on before I resigned – things like, go hang yourself, you leftist, C-word. You’re the new Goebbels; will you meet the same end? Of course, Goebbels killed himself. One person said, this is a hill to die on; get ready – we will not tolerate this. And this, to me, seems to have come directly from a tweet that Representative Lauren Boebert sent out saying that this was Stalinist or Mao level, and this was a hill to die on, so directly echoing her language and the threat. People saying, you will regret this. Kill yourself, you subhuman sack of S-word. You and your F-ing family should be sent to Russia to be killed. Hey – I don’t know how to describe this word, a pejorative for a woman – quit And then beyond that, there were calls to create deepfake pornography of me and then the violent threats, which were numerous. And I was reporting at least one a day to the department for the three weeks that this campaign was going on before I resigned – things like, go hang yourself, you leftist, C-word. You’re the new Goebbels; will you meet the same end? Of course, Goebbels killed himself. One person said, this is a hill to die on; get ready – we will not tolerate this. And this, to me, seems to have come directly from a tweet that Representative Lauren Boebert sent out saying that this was Stalinist or Mao level, and this was a hill to die on, so directly echoing her language and the threat. People saying, you will regret this. Kill yourself, you subhuman sack of S-word. You and your F-ing family should be sent to Russia to be killed. Hey – I don’t know how to describe this word, a pejorative for a woman – quit your job before we destroy your life. Everything you’ve ever cared about will be taken from you. And you’re nothing but a freaking liar. And you’re going to pay for it with a heavy price, you stupid B-word, before we destroy your life. Everything you’ve ever cared about will be taken from you. And you’re nothing but a freaking liar. And you’re going to pay for it with a heavy price, you stupid B-word. That’s just a few of them. (source)

The Beer Hall Putsch, redux

In 1923 Hitler and a mob of angry, violent, armed supporters in Munich attempted to seize control of Germany in a riot known as the Beer Hall Putsch [1].  The attempted revolution failed, fifteen Nazis were killed along with four policeman and a bystander.   The failed coup made Hitler an international star, thanks to endless speeches he was allowed to make during his trial, the right wing press in Germany and a sympathetic judge who sentenced him to five years for treason and ultimately had him serve nine months.  During that gestation period Hitler lived as a guest of the state, dictated his infamous autobiography to two co-conspirators and changed tactics.  Now he would sway public opinion by pioneering and perfecting Nazi propaganda, relentless, organized, incendiary lies to inspire fear and hatred, come to power legally, and become the Adolf Hitler of destiny.

Ten years of hard work later the Nazi motherfucker and his party won just over 37% of the vote, made a coalition with old school German reactionaries who believed they could  control Hitler, and the rest, as they say, is history.  Germans wouldn’t have to vote again during the twelve long years of the Thousand Year Reich.  Shortly after being named chancellor Hitler watched the Reichstag, the German parliament, go up in flames.  Invoking the Enabling Act of the Weimar constitution he seized emergency powers.  He had opponents beaten, imprisoned, tortured and killed.  He had German society reorganized so that only Nazis held positions of power and respect.  Six years later he invaded Poland, beginning the world war he accused the Jews of arranging.

My point is that Nazis tirelessly play the long game. It is the same with super-wealthy American reactionaries who would be very happy with a compliant dictator to enforce their privileges in perpetuity.

What do you need to make sure your power will be absolute and eternal in a democracy controlled by “majoritarian tyranny”? Select a super-majority of the nine judges who decide the limits of democratic power and individual rights.

How do you gain control of the Supreme Court? Create a well-funded right wing judicial fraternity, as part of a network of influential public relations outfits, recruit bright young reactionaries in law school, get them good jobs, promote them, have them appointed to the federal courts whenever possible. These right wing judges will in turn hire younger fraternity brothers and be promoted themselves. Eventually, through parliamentary chicanery, six of these ideologically pure members of the glorious society will be in place on the nation’s highest court to make rulings that support their patrons and render government oversight and freedom for most people vestiges of a failed experiment.

Perfect Donald and his followers are of great use to this reactionary movement. He has the Hitlerian charisma, to his followers, to dominate corporate media and garner tens of millions of votes. More important, he has no real ideas about anything except aggrandizing himself. Write him a detailed plan that makes him dictator and he’s good. He wants to be dictator, even if only on day one and he is a corrupt “transactional” man willing to compromise on any belief for a price and in order to “win”.

A popular TV savvy Nazi motherfucker with corporate media fawning over his every demented pronouncement, Donald really is a great figurehead for Charles Koch and friends, no matter how much many of them might detest him personally. If you’re a fascist by nature you work with the Hitler history gives you, I suppose. It is also wonderful (to the Kochtopus) that the New York Times and other respected news brands hold two standards, one for America’s favorite semi-coherent Nazi fuck, another much higher one for anyone who opposes him. Here’s the Grey Lady today, number one headline going into the Democratic convention:

Way down the page we read:

God bless these United Shayssssh.

What, me worry?

[1] Wikipedia:

The Beer Hall Putsch, also known as the Munich Putsch,[1][note 1] was a failed coup d’état by Nazi Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP) leader Adolf Hitler, Generalquartiermeister Erich Ludendorff and other Kampfbund leaders in Munich, Bavaria, on 8–9 November 1923, during the Weimar Republic. Approximately two thousand Nazis marched on the Feldherrnhalle, in the city centre, but were confronted by a police cordon, which resulted in the deaths of 15 Nazis, four police officers, and one bystander.[2][3]

Hitler escaped immediate arrest and was spirited off to safety in the countryside. After two days, he was arrested and charged with treason.[4]

The putsch brought Hitler to the attention of the German nation for the first time and generated front-page headlines in newspapers around the world. His arrest was followed by a 24-day trial, which was widely publicised and gave him a platform to express his nationalist sentiments. Hitler was found guilty of treason and sentenced to five years in Landsberg Prison,[note 2] where he dictated Mein Kampf to fellow prisoners Emil Maurice and Rudolf Hess. On 20 December 1924, having served only nine months, Hitler was released.[5][6] Once released, Hitler redirected his focus towards obtaining power through legal means rather than by revolution or force, and accordingly changed his tactics, further developing Nazi propaganda.[7]

Predatory empathy

I am listening to the fascinating The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump, a 2017 collection of essays written by about a dozen experts in various fields that came out after psychiatrist and former Yale Professor Bandy X. Lee convened a conference to discuss the professional duty to warn the public about a threat as dire as Donald. Below is yesterday’s YouTube video posted by Dr. Lee, in which she gives all the background and touts an upcoming September conference in Washington, DC to highlight perfect Donald’s psychopathology and the danger it poses to America and the world.

Lee was fired by Yale for not standing down when the university, the American Psychiatric Association  and the New York Times all told her to shut the fuck up about her professional opinion that she had a duty to warn the public about a danger as enormous as that presented by Donald’s malignant, impulsive, vengeful personality disorder.  They were attempting to silence her pursuant to the nonbinding Goldwater Rule (a rule of the American Association of Psychiatrists) that prevents psychiatric experts from stating conclusions about public officials that any other citizen of the nation is free to make.

The book is a masterclass in the personality type that can never be wrong, must destroy all critics, stubbornly embraces often ridiculous lies to support counterfactual views of the world, coerces others to obey them, on pain of terrible revenge. It is frequently noted that this type lacks empathy, which is certainly true, but one of the author’s notes the supremely fine tuned empathy of the predator toward the prey. He gives the example of a tiger, who must know, in order to succeed in its hunt, the minute changes in the feelings of the animal it intends to make dinner of.

“Goddamn!” I thought as I washed the dishes and listened to this chapter, “I’ve known many people who always acted like they admired and loved me, and seemed so attuned to my feelings and needs, only to turn into aggressive, famished beasts when the time came, in their black and white, nuance-free world, to kill or be killed.”

Here’s Bandy Lee:

Loyalty and malignant normality

Robert J. Lifton, ninety-eight year-old psychiatrist and author of “The Nazi Doctors,” among other works, coined the phrase malignant normality to describe the normalizing of otherwise intolerable behavior.

It became a requirement for believers in Nazi “ideology” to accept that certain populations needed to be exterminated. Any Nazi voicing an objection to this new “normal” would be expelled from the party (and probably much worse). If it is what society normally does, like ripping infants from the hands of desperate parents and sending them a thousand miles away with no hope of a future reunion, then it is, by definition, normal. Normality may also be, as Lifton observed, malignant.

Gabor Mate elaborates on this observation at length in The Myth of Normal. He notes how easily we mistake “normal” for natural, healthy or desirable. If our society is ruled by the destructive myths of powerful psychopaths, there is nothing natural, healthy or desirable about the normality they impose.

The pathology that drives a Hitler, a Donald “Not A Loser!” Trump, a Sloppy Steve Bannon, is well known and easy to see. They cannot trust another human and therefore require unchecked power and loyalty oaths they make others swear to on pain of death. Treason and betrayal must always be punished by painful public execution or others will feel licensed to defy orders and, ultimately, uncover the infallible dictator’s murder-inducing terror of humiliation.

The powerful psychopath’s need for absolute power, their claimed right to define “normality” for everybody else, and a reflex to loyalty on the part of millions of admiring enablers, is the single biggest reason why human history is written in the blood of the meek. Any dissenting voice is the enemy of a maniac who cannot tolerate being questioned, criticized, made to feel vulnerable in any way. Loyalty or the sword, plunged slowly and deliberately through each hand, foot, arm, leg, etc., until you are begging for death. Which will it be, bitch?

Postal Inspector General’s report

Why would Louis DeJoy refuse to postmark ballots on the day they are received?

I attended the supremely unenlightening August 8th quarterly meeting of the postal board of governors. You can read my summary of that opaque corporate charade here.

More than one governor referred listeners to the Postal Inspector General’s recent report on postal operations. They gave no details, except to tout the report. They gave no link to the report, but a quick search showed a July 30, 2024 report entitled Election Mail Readiness for 2024. From the postal IG:

In addition, we identified processes and policies that could pose a risk of delays in the processing and delivery of Election and Political Mail. Further, we identified issues related to some Delivering for America operational changes that pose a risk of individual ballots not being counted. [1]

The governors acted with unanimity at the meeting, most avoiding any mention of poor, and declining, on-time delivery rates. They focused on cost savings and increased revenue, almost exclusively. They referred to the IG’s report without providing any context or detail at all. The IG, in the report relating to the upcoming election, notes that DeJoy refused to comply with two of their ten recommendations for improvements to secure the integrity of the mail-in ballot portion of our upcoming election. What is DeJoy refusing to do?

The U.S. Postal Service Office of Inspector General (OIG) considers management’s comments responsive to recommendations 1, 2, 3, 4, 7, 8, 9, and 10, and corrective actions should resolve the issues in the report. We view management’s disagreement with recommendations 5 and 6 as unresolved and will work with management through the formal audit resolution process.

Recommendation 5: Develop and implement a process for delivery units to segregate Election Mail identified as Postal Automated Redirection System Mail prior to sending it back to a mail processing facility.

Recommendation 6: Update the postmarking policy so that all operations can postmark mail-in ballots.

We are deep in the corporate weeds here, but DeJoy is refusing to have a process for segregating election mail and for updating the policy so that all ballots can be promptly postmarked. Why would that be?

Could it have anything to do with the $2,500,000 DeJoy donated to Donald and the RNC in 2016? Could it have anything to do with every associate of Donald Trump being corrupt, criminal, spineless, cringing, or all of the above? Is there any reason to trust any associate of the transactional malignant narcissist to do the honest thing?

I feel like recently disgraced Cucker Tarlson, only asking questions, but are these not reasonable questions to ask on the eve of an election that Harris/Walz can win by 20,000,000 votes and not get elected because Donald got 10,000 more surgically placed votes in the Electoral College?

[1] What We Found

The Postal Service developed an Election Mail and Political Mail Guidebook that provides employees with many of the key resources that explain the longstanding, special-handling procedures required to facilitate the timely processing and delivery of Election Mail and Political Mail. For the period from December 1, 2023, to April 30, 2024, the Postal Service processed Political and Election Mail with on time processing scores ranging from 97.01 to 98.17 percent. However, as a result of our observations and inquiries, we found that Postal Service personnel did not always comply with policy and procedures regarding all clear certifications, Election and Political Mail logs, and audit checklists. In addition, we identified processes and policies that could pose a risk of delays in the processing and delivery of Election and Political Mail. Further, we identified issues related to some Delivering for America operational changes that pose a risk of individual ballots not being counted.

Recommendations and Management’s Comments

We made ten recommendations to address the issues identified in the report. Postal Service management agreed with eight recommendations and disagreed with two. Postal Service management’s comments and our evaluation are at the end of each finding and recommendation. The U.S. Postal Service Office of Inspector General (OIG) considers management’s comments responsive to recommendations 1, 2, 3, 4, 7, 8, 9, and 10, and corrective actions should resolve the issues in the report. We view management’s disagreement with recommendations 5 and 6 as unresolved and will work with management through the formal audit resolution process.

Corporate media loves a strong man with a good story

Forget that psychologically those who pose as strong men are always the weakest of men. As far as a compelling story for the public to click on, as pure drama, the persecuted underdog who prevails and becomes leader of the Free world is a good story.

Sidebar, and not unrelated. Years ago, during the worst stress of my horrifying years working in the courts, I felt my aggravation rising one night and was afraid I was having a heart attack. I walked 3/4 of a mile to the closest emergency room, which should probably have told me all I needed to know about whether I was having a heart attack or not.

After a long wait they checked me in, I was feeling much better by then, and I heard the doctor tell his colleague that I was a good story. I thought this was good news and when the doctor returned I told her I was going home.

She cautioned me against it, advised an overnight in the hospital and said that if I wanted to leave I had to sign a document saying I was leaving the hospital against medical advice. I said  “you just said I was a good story.”  She explained that when ER docs are talking about a suspected heart attack, a good story is a man your age, your basic shape, and exhibiting the agitated aggravation that you have been exhibiting since you came in. “It makes you a good story to have a heart attack, in other words.“

Fuck me blind, I thought, as I signed myself out against medical advice and later came back to check in. It left me pondering the flexibility of the phrase “a good story.” Horrifying, sickening stories are also good stories, to fans of those genres.

This entire piece by Lawrence O’Donnell is excellent, contrasting corporate media’s lap dog acquiescence to (and normalizing of) Trump’s outrageous incoherence while it snarls contemptuously at Biden’s press secretary in pursuit of a fanciful story that Biden is a senile vegetable with a team of lying neurologists on call.   He notes that the story about the lying neurologist and Biden’s senility were never reported on because it turns out there was absolutely no story there.  But the press snarled and yelled over each other as the press secretary patiently and truthfully fielded as many of their shouted questions as she could get to.

He points out that mass media is giving Trump the same primadonna treatment it gave him in 2016.  Airing a rambling, lie-filled “press conference” live from Mara-Lago where he answered not a single question, and was asked no follow-up to anything. O’Donnell  compared this fawning coverage to the complete news blackout on Kamala Harris, at the same moment addressing the UAW live, and in between he showed the press repeatedly challenging Biden, who answered each question, and screaming at Biden’s press secretary about unfounded allegations of the cover up of his unfounded  neurological decline. 

The din in the White House press room and the aggressiveness of the screamed out challenges in stark contrast to the glazed silence that meets everything that pours out of corporate meal ticket Donald Trump’s mouth.

O’Donnell, in spite of his brilliance, doesn’t seem to realize who he works for, I guess, but his point is very important and the clip well worth your time.

Why doesn’t Donald care about winning over more voters?

Nobody was federally prosecuted for Donald’s attempt to overturn the election results in 2020. The DOJ indicted The Donald for those efforts but his lackeys on the court have given him every benefit of every doubt he doesn’t deserve and delayed both federal trials until beyond the 2024 election. Nothing is more bracing to an unrepentant career criminal than endless delays in accountability and the chance to make all prosecutions, convictions against him, and any prison sentence, disappear with his reelection. One thing history teaches us, fascists will always do everything in their power to seize control, they are tireless criminals who exonerate themselves and punish their opponents when they take power.

The radical reactionaries in the War Room at the Willard Hotel on January 5th and 6th? Bannon, Giuliani, Kerik, Eastman, with back up from Roger Stone (who left DC on the 6th to avoid being connected with the riot his body guards had a central role in) and Mike “Q-Anon” Flynn — no criminal conspiracy indictment for any of them. They sat in a command center, during the riot, apparently coordinating the riot which, on cue, interrupted their planned “Green Bay Sweep” where Lyin’ Ted, Josh Fist/Flee Hawley and over a hundred members of the House would contest Biden’s electoral college victory and send the presidential election back to MAGA state legislatures for a final decision.

In part MAGA bravado flows from the fact that their main criminal leaders all so far have gotten away with their crimes, at least on a federal level. Plus, they control mail delivery. Don’t forget that a pugnacious MAGA mega-donor is in charge of how many of the expected 50,000,000 mail-in ballots get counted, if they arrive in time to be counted at all. He has already slowed mail delivery nationwide to record lows. He has already targeted a few Democratic leaning cities for even lower on time mail delivery rates.

A requirement for membership in Donald’s MAGA Republican party is openly declaring that the 2020 election was rigged and stolen, presumably by a cabal of cannibalistic pedophiles. Any Republican who admits there is no proof of a stolen, or rigged election, has been ousted from the party. Espousing belief in the Big Lie is literally an article of faith, a requirement for membership in MAGA. Every Republican election official in every state is an adherent to the Stolen Election Truth. In the Nazi’s rise to power the galvanizing myth was The Stab in the Back, the victorious German army had been betrayed by weak, scheming Jews and communists, The November Criminals. If you count the votes, it is much easier to call the election into question. MAGA has many state officials, and state legislatures, in place and committed to a Trump victory, even if the populist Donald loses by 20,000,000 “popular” votes.

Then we have the most corrupt 6-3 Supreme Court majority that money and sheer will to win (at any cost) can buy. Put nothing past these six diehard Nazi motherfuckers, if the fate of a presidential election winds up in their hands again.

Beyond that, every violent Ku Klux Klan type freedom lover is down with killing anyone who needs killing. Many are itching for “payback,” waiting for the day they get to spill rivers of blood. It is unclear how many of these enraged fuckers are embedded in the military, the national guard, police forces around the country. It is a safe bet that in many swing states there are a good number of these “patriots”, the kind who believe in “frontier justice,” in law enforcement. They’ve grown up on violent westerns where powerful white men of iron will break others with their unhesitating use of deadly gunfire and unstoppable lynch mobs.

If not for that vestige of slavery, the Electoral College, benefactor of Republican presidential candidates who lose the popular vote, there would be no worry heading into an election where the candidate who favors democracy should beat the demented autocrat by fifteen million votes, at least. It is only that bit of American Exceptionalism, a mechanism by which a powerful minority can overturn a landslide democratic victory, that has me concerned.

Add in Louis DeJoy, a piece of shit in human form, a cartoon villain version of a despotic CEO, and his ability to target mail BY ZIP CODE, and that is what keeps me awake some nights. The fact that nobody, NOBODY, is reporting on why Biden’s three nominations for Postal governors are languishing month after month in a Senate Committee where Kyrsten “I’ll blow any CEO for $2,000,000” Sinema is the swing vote — is the stuff of my democratic nightmares. Seriously, does nobody else see the fatal threat in democracy’s inability to unseat a crooked, partisan political appointee who could hand the election to the candidate he’s given a million or more to?

Racism as an official act

The Civil Rights Acts of 1866, 1871, 1875, 1957, 1960, 1964,1968 , 1990 and 1991 [1] attempted to address, and end, racist practices by government officials done under “color of law”. If a local sheriff was performing his official duties in transporting prisoners, and those prisoners happened to be met on the road by a pickup truck full of angry vigilantes, and the prisoners wound up mutilated, murdered and buried in an earthen dam, well, there was a presumption under the law and local customs that the sheriff, acting within the scope of his official duties, was immune from prosecution. If local racist sheriffs didn’t have full immunity to perform their duties as they saw fit, who would respect them? Who in their right mind would take the job?

This presumption that any crime committed during the performance of official duties, “under cover of law” is no crime has long been the get out of jail free card for any criminally inclined person who manages to acquire a cloak of legal power. The Federalist Society Supreme Court extended this extra-legal presumption, and absolute immunity for criminal acts performed by the president within his core official duties, to convicted felon, adjudicated rapist and serial fraudster Donald Trump last month. The ruling echoes Alan Dershowitz’s demented argument at Donald’s second impeachment that if the president honestly believes he is not breaking the law, well, by God, he can’t be breaking the law. This is a restatement of Nixon’s audacious, legally incoherent “when the president does it, that means it is not illegal, by definition.”

So, as often in humanity’s past, powerful racist motherfuckers get a pass for violations of laws, norms and common decency. Donald (he hates being called that, according to his niece Mary) attempted to bully a group of Black female journalists the other day. Every member of the Klan who watched his tired show of sneering dominance over the journalists high fived each other. Nobody who wasn’t a racist failed to see the desperate weakness, and smirking racism, behind Donald’s attempted bullying.

Yesterday the DOJ Inspector General released a report into Donald’s violent June 2020 dispersal of peaceful protesters in Lafayette Park, using DOJ personnel to “dominate” the street and show that the president, who’d been hiding in a bunker, and had built a wall around the White House (Mexico didn’t pay for that one either), was a tough guy.  Bill Barr, as big a racist piece of shit as any Ku Klux Klan sheriff anywhere, (he huffily opined that there is absolutely no institutional racism in the US and that Blacks better respect the cops if they expect police protection) ordered hundreds of federal prison guards and others to forcibly clear the streets so Donald could walk to a nearby church and hold up a Bible.   The miracle of that day is that the holy book of Christianity didn’t burst into flames in Donald’s hand.

Barr, of course, didn’t testify during the DOJ investigation into his actions. He wasn’t legally required to (as the DOJ cannot compel former officials to testify, for some reason) and he declined. There was nothing in it for him but shame, hard questions and blame. The DOJ Inspector General told the whole hideous story, four years late, fair enough, but still, an ugly story of abuse of government power. That criminal abuse, under Trump v. US, would be perfectly legal now.

Why were protesters in the park and street near the White House, shortly after the on camera murder of George Floyd by police officers in Minneapolis, a gruesome example of not uncommon racist brutality by police officers? Exercising their First Amendment right to peacefully assemble and petition the government for a redress of grievances. Donald was outraged, did the only thing he knows how to do when challenged, adamantly doubling down, like an angry drunk at the roulette table. The Blacks and others protesting were the racists, Donald claimed, Trump no racist, least racist white man ever! They, the antifa terrorists in the street were the racists and they needed to be given a taste of the full force of the state.

Under the new Supreme Court ruling in Trump v. United States (dig the fragrant irony of that fucking shit…) Donald could have ordered snipers to shoot peaceful protesters, and if he had done it with his Attorney General present it would be an unquestionable official act, even though also a despicable criminal act. No harm no foul, under the new ruling the president could not be indicted ever for ordering snipers to take out peaceful protesters. The snipers could be criminally prosecuted, but the president has an unchallengeable, absolute right to pardon anyone for any reason, criminal co-conspirators included, and even charge them $1,000,000 for it. What is power for, if not to use it to do whatever you want?

If there weren’t already a thousand reasons for anyone not in the Ku Klux Klan (or the many fine people in the American Nazi party, or the National Socialist Movement) not to vote for Donald, his racism alone should alert you to the kind of malignant, exploitative, unreflective, uncurious, vindictive, petty, indecent criminal fuck he is. Look no further than the five “colored” teenagers, wrongly convicted of raping a jogger in Central Park, whose execution Donald called for in a full page NY Times ad (one of whom is now on the New York City Council) and who he still insists were the actual rapists, in spite of their exoneration. He also denounced the settlement as a disgrace. [2]

Donald, on the other hand, if he wins the Electoral College by even a single vote and becomes president again, could rape whoever he wants, and if the woman is someone involved, however tangentially, in official presidential business, full immunity, baby!  He could rape her on the resolute desk, as long as his Attorney General, or a member of his cabinet, held her down. The best part of the Leonard Leo-conferred new presidential power to do criminal things if they involve his core official powers is that 100 such official duties rapes cannot be introduced in any other rape case against Donald, ever.  Suck on that, libtard cucks!

[1]

[2] (from Wikipedia)

The settlement was officially approved in September 2014.[102][110] Santana, Salaam, McCray, and Richardson each received around $7.1 million from the city for their years in prison, while Wise received $12.2 million because he had served six additional years. The city did not admit to any wrongdoing in the settlement.[111]