USA! USA!!! Leading the world in the freedom to believe whatever you wantand act accordingly, even during a global health emergency. By pure coincidence the USA is also number one worldwide in Covid deaths, which is exceptional by any measure.
As publicly affable Republicanicon Ronald Reagan preached, everything free people do is strictly a matter of personal choice. The false notion of social responsibility is a pernicious myth, spread by communists. Remember, boys and girls, there is no social contract, particularly when it comes to poor people, especially colored ones (though you poor whites ones also have the inalienable right to fuck off and die, in sacred American freedom).
All my years as a lawyer still do not allow me to understand how a person’s willfully delusional belief can insulate him from having the clear intent that his actions continually demonstrated. First, a bit of context from today’s Washington Post.
Jennifer Rubin, in an op-ed in today’s Washington Post, chose Merrick Garland as the “distinguished pol of the week” for his long-belated speech about following the facts and the law and prosecuting everyone involved in the insurrection that culminated in the riot at the Capitol on January 6th. Rubin, a lawyer by training and, in my opinion, an astute political analyst, was encouraged by Garland’s newly announced determination to follow the facts and the law and hold everyone accountable for the insurrectionist riot (we can now officially call it that, after DOJ charged a bunch of militia leaders with seditious conspiracy), whether they stormed the Capitol on January 6 or not. Her op ed was written to encourage us to be encouraged too. If you believe Garland’s resolve, and trust his ability to get investigations and prosecutions done, and irreversible convictions, before the short window of two party democracy closes, you should be encouraged.
A top headline on the front page of the same Washington Post reads: Justice Dept’s January 6 conspiracy probe doesn’t seem to directly pursue Trump.The article details the lack of DOJ investigation into Trump, his inner circle at the very end, including anyone who was in the Willard Hotel Command Center on January 6. Pleader of the Fifth Amendment John Eastman, author of the legal memo on how Pence could brazen it out on January 6th, using a crackpot 12th Amendment legal theory, to keep the Biden election result in doubt and throw the election to the Republican (for purposes of an electoral tie only) House, was never contacted by DOJ. Neither was disgraced former NYC police commissioner and convicted felon Bernard Kerik (imprisoned in the same new jail complex that until his conviction bore his name — pardoned by Trumpie) who told the Post he had “no DOJ contact”. Neither was Rudy, Sloppy Steve, American Eichmann Jeffery Clark, Mark Meadows. Mike “Good guy” Flynn or anyone else involved in the Trump dead-enders’ hydra-headed plan to overturn a US presidential election based on repeated allegations of massive voter fraud by Black urban voters.
We read that the DOJ has not contacted Brad Raffensberger, whose recorded call with Trump. released publicly more than a year ago, has the desperate former president ticking off every offense and sub-offense in the Georgia criminal law about attempting to corruptly influence an election outcome. Between the lines we find ourselves reading “what the fucking fuck?”
Perhaps most concerning is this fucking trope, which recurs in the article and, as I wrote up top, I have no idea how to understand, even after three years in law school and practicing law for a decade.
How is this different than Alan Dershowitz’s demented argument at one of Trumpie’s impeachments that if the president sincerely believed he was acting in the best interests of the nation, even if he was incorrect in his belief, as when he asked the new Ukrainian president to announce a fake fraud investigation to smear his political opponent (on the grounds that it was best for his country that he alone be left in place to fix it) that he could not have committed a misdemeanor, let alone a high crime?It is a close variation on the classic Nuremberg defense: if the Fuhrer commanded me to do it, and his word is law, and I was bound by an oath to obey, how was I to know he was an insane, mass murdering maniac ordering me to commit massive war crimes, let alone crimes against humanity, when I merely did what I to this day believe was my lawful duty?
Intent can be established by showing a pattern of behavior that demonstrates it. Trump intended to stay in office, no matter what. His intent was clear and every act he undertook, before and after the 2020 election, was in furtherance of what he intended to do. He continued to do these things after being shown he was mistaken in his belief that the election had been stolen by bipartisan fraud. He fired and replaced any official who served at his pleasure who told him the truth about the election he still refuses to concede he lost.
He was told, unequivocally, by his loyal gunsel Bill Barr, by Barr’s successor who refused to participate in a plan to enlist the DOJ in the fraudulent claim of voter fraud, by Pat Cippolone, his White House Counsel, by HSA cyber specialist Chris Krebs [1], by Raffensberger, by many others loyal to him, that there had been no evidence of massive, or even appreciable, voter fraud found. This was confirmed by numerous recounts and “audits” in every swing state Trump lost. It was reaffirmed when every lawsuit brought to challenge the election results was thrown out of court for failure to make a legal case.
Are we to believe that if Trump argues that he genuinely believed these people all lied to him, that the recounts and audits were all wrong, that the courts acted out of mere spite and irrational hatred of him, and that his lie was actually the truth, that he lacked the intent, and the premeditation, to commit the crimes he seems to have committed (hard to explain events otherwise, unless you get all of your information only from FOX, OANN, Newmax or Breitbart)?Seems to me the claim might be useful as part of an insanity defense, but how does it show a hard to overcome lack of intent on Trumpie’s part?
Hard to keep the top of my skull from blowing off my head, sometimes. We are living in times so interesting they make the old Chinese curse “may you live in interesting times” really pop.
[1]
Trump fired Krebs, Trump’s Director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency in the United States Department of Homeland Security, immediately after Krebs publicly stated that the 2020 election had been the most secure election on record.Evidence of the Orange Polyp’s Intent? Nah…
I’m with Mary Trump, brilliant niece of a cunning opportunist of average intelligence, I don’t join the bipartisan attack on President Biden. He wasn’t my first choice, or even my fifth choice, but he is the president 81,000,000 of us voted for, the president we have to work with as we try to figure out how to preserve democracy in the face of 52 immovable votes against it in a best of 100 scenario. In some ways Biden has exceeded my expectations (which were admittedly low), but in other ways I’ve been confirmed in my reservations when the DNC orchestrated his sudden candidacy, over the man who had won most of the primaries up to that point.
I would rather have taken my chances with a less morally flexible president, one with a clear vision of justice and a real fighting spirit, who’d announced and stood by his ideals year after year, always had the most direct, honest and reasonable reaction to the latest provocations by Trumpists, had a real vision of what this country could be, a hopeful vision in line with probably 60% of America. Instead, when it was deemed such a candidate couldn’t win (Biden famously said of his comfortable margin of victory over his predecessor: don’t forget, I ran against Trump) we got the compromise candidate. I don’t reduce him to this one craven act, but I never forget that Biden could not bring himself to actually apologize to Anita Hill for subjecting her to the humiliation she faced, at the hands of a bipartisan committee of white men, when truthfully testifying about what should have disqualified Clarence Thomas for the Supreme Court. “I wish I could have done more,” Biden, the former chairman of the Judiciary Committee, told Hill, to clinch the decades-belated, politically motivated non-apology he tendered.
That said, Biden and his administration are our last, best hope for fact-based democracy, seemingly ready for the fight, at least in spirit, and infinitely preferable to the open, incoherent authoritarianism of a major party whose members must now swear loyalty to a transparent, anti-democratic lie about a rigged, stolen election to protect the ego of a delicate, vengeful madman.
Fascist takeovers are often preceded by a quieter legal takeover, as moderate, compromise-oriented politicians leaning slightly left thoughtfully ponder the way the water in the pot is getting hotter and hotter, almost boiling. The 1971 Powell memorandum commissioned by the US Chamber of Commerce advised corporations and their wealthy supporters to get serious about installing activist corporatist judges to lifetime appointments to the federal bench — or perish under the weight of “minority” voters and their parasitic entitlement. Two months after producing the Powell memorandum, its author, a corporate lobbyist, was on his way to a lifelong appointment to the Supreme Court. The right-wing has been deadly serious, and extremely successful in consolidating and ensuring perpetual minority power. The video below takes a look at the organized right-wing judicial capture that has a dagger at the throat of majority rule, while huge mobs of our countrymen believe, for some reason, that violence against a cabal of lying, poisonous pedophile cannibals is not only justified, but probably necessary at this point.
The Supreme Court that Federalist Society and religious Christian cult member Amy Coney Barrett insisted are not partisan hacks (she did this at the McConnell Center in Kentucky, the Grim Reaper himself doing his choked smile on the podium next to her) is a 6-3 majority of partisan hacks. Skilled hacks, in most cases, with the best legal minds they can hire researching and writing their opinions, rulings that consistently advance their carefully vetted extremist ideology.
The danger of a moderate, institutionalist, compromise-oriented presidential administration as the last bulwark against a well-organized, billionaire-funded, determined anti-democratic movement bent on destroying all democratic institutions, is that it will try to remain moderate and compromise-oriented, even when confronted with uncompromising partisans willing to use lies, bribery and violence to get its way. It will attempt compromise until it is too late.
They will appoint a moderate, ideologically balanced commission to study the problem of an openly partisan 6-3 Supreme Court, to ensure everyone of fairness. Eventually, after being thwarted over and over (along with a large majority of struggling Americans) by united far right obstruction, and sinking in the polls that drive our horse race politics (policy is too boring! horse and dog races are exciting!), in spite of major achievements, they will give an angry, irrefutable speech six, or ten months too late to make any difference swaying public opinion which is best shapedby bold action.
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse lays out the judicial part of the scheme in the eleventh installment of his excellent series The Scheme.
No code of ethics for the Supreme Court, although Biden’s special commission to study how to re-balance the Federalist Society/Trump Supreme Court ventured that one was needed. Such a code could require recusal in cases where an incorruptible justice appears to have a conflict of interest! It would have made the 5-4 decision in Bush v. Gore impossible, for example! Why impose ordinary government ethical requirements and oversight on nine judicial superheroes who are unappealably above the political fray?
Anonymous donations, to the tune of $400,000,000, to pack the federal courts? Uhmmm. Orchestrated flotillas of amicus briefs, funded by dark money, almost 100% persuasive to right wing judges, eh … wait, unlimited dark money is protected speech under Citizens United, 5-4.
Fast tracks for partisan 5-4 (now 6-3) decisions supporting donor chosen cases helpful to their bottom lines? No problemo, boss. That’s why they invented the shadow docket! Nothing wrong with a partisan judicial motive in democracy, it is fair play, just like partisan advantage in redistricting, and legislating in your own advantage, when you have the power. It’s a war (against Christianity, don’t you know?).Concerns about the “dubious legitimacy of how some of the justices were appointed” –mere fighting words from America-hating cucks like Laurence Tribe (how does a moderate even put someone like that on the advisory commission?!).
We had a 6-3 political ruling yesterday, a fast-tracked ruling on a Republican challenge to Biden’s allegedly tyrannical abuse of OSHA to try to restrain the new deluge of super-infectious covid cases in the face of united Republican opposition to vaccines, masks and public safety. This ruling was treated as a fast-tracked emergency, while Trump’s losing appeal languishes, continuing to baselessly delay the release of papers from the National Archives (presumably an army of dark money funded lawyers is working to find a legal theory for the court two overrule the two lower courts and affirm Trump’s right to obstruct justice in perpetuity).
The ruling against OSHA’s vaccine or weekly testing requirement (with an exemption for religious science objectors, don’t you know) may have been idiotic, it boils down to “Covid has nothing to do with workplace safety, cucks!” but it is also the unappealable last constitutional word on the subject. The big shocker was that two of the Federalist Society Six actually agreed with the three America-hating communist justices that programs funded by Medicare and Medicaid may require vaccines, masks and testing of their public facing health care employees. A great day for our activist Supreme Court. A great day for America, particularly fascist America, where tyranny, like racism, is only possible when the stinking evil, hateful majority does it. As for the Supreme Court, the stench is hard to miss.
Human history, written in the blood of the vanquished, is an uninterrupted epic poem of what happened when decent people, with the best of intentions, were besieged by armies of enraged fanatics who would stop at nothing to overrun weaklings. It generally does not end well for decent people, with the best of intentions. We have a fight of historic magnitude on our hands today, my friends.
When Scalia and four other right-wing “originalist” justices ruled that the Second Amendment, which begins “[a] well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state” conferred a virtually illimitable individual right to keep and walk around with firearms, whether individuals were members of the well-regulated militias to protect against slave revolts that the amendment was designed for or not, the NRA and gun manufacturer lobbyists rejoiced. The Supreme Court had spoken, it would be virtually impossible to impose federal limitations on gun sales, gun ownership, gun carrying, gun use. No matter how regular American mass shootings became, no matter that 90% of the population, after the infamous slaughter of kindergarteners by a crazed heavily armed man who had first murdered his mother, favored nationwide restrictions on gun ownership, at the very least background checks, in our exceptional democracy.
States and localities, of course, can regulate guns, subject to court challenges by NRA lobbyists and gun manufacturers. Several states require no training or licensing, get as many guns as you want, carry them openly wherever you want, it’s your undeniable freedom under Scalia’s learned interpretation of the Second Amendment. The District of Columbia, not a state (though more populous than Vermont or Wyoming), has fairly strict restrictions on guns. As a result, the rioters who planned for bloodshed at the Capitol on January 6th mostly left their guns in cars, trucks, stockpiled across the river in Virginia (as the recent seditious conspiracy indictments inform us).
Imagine if that angry army of tourists had been able to freely exercise their sacred Second Amendment right on January 6th. There would have been a shoot out. It would have been a mass casualty event, as planned by the most extreme members of that crowd, who, we now know from their own words, called for a blood bath. That policeman screaming in agony and fear as the MAGA rioters crushed him in a doorway? Shot in the face, “made that fucking noise stop, bro” and a thousandinstant thumbs ups.
It’s fair to say, and chilling to consider, that but for D.C.’s strict gun laws, we’d all be currently living in an American version of the Third Reich.
I can speak only for myself, an opinionated person writing here daily under the First Amendment, able to freely refer to the “transactional” leader of the GOP as the Orange Polyp and the obstructionist vanity senators blocking democracy as piles of shit, but after a bloodbath at the Capitol, and the extra-constitutional installation of a lawless, malignant polyp as permanent president, I’d probably already be in a concentration camp.
Hyperbole? Perhaps, but only because of my very small audience here on the internet. I wouldn’t be important enough to round up in the early rounds of violent revenge against those critical of a leader so perfect he is lovingly embraced by thousands of White Christian leaders across the Bible Belt and beyond. Leaders who understand that Jesus Christ Himself wanted the least of them to have guns, as many and as powerful as they like, to kill heretics, traitors and child molesters everywhere.
In her excellent Crooked Media daily newsletter (which you can get emailed to you for free) Sarah serves up an intelligent, witty summary of, and commentary on, the day’s news. Here is her unbeatable recap of yesterday’s news:
So, to recap: The filibuster and GOP gerrymandering prevent Democrats from getting legislation passed in Congress, and two lunkheads prevent them from changing the rules to fix that. Then, when a Democratic president tries to govern around a paralyzed Senate, a handful of conservative justices (appointed by Republican presidents who lost the popular vote and confirmed by Republican senators who ditched the filibuster to do so) invalidate the White House’s authority, saying that Congress needs to pass legislation. By the end of that loop, all voters get out of a Democratic trifecta is a presidential statement asking business leaders to please just do the right thing.
Lawrence O’Donnell with a brilliant analysis of the latest stand by the empty vessel of vain ambition from Arizona. O’Donnell was as angry as I was hearing Sinema’s insulting and incoherent little speech about the inviolability of the filibuster and the lamentble death of two voting rights laws she deeply believes in, but he knew, from being a Senate staffer, that somebodywrote those words for her to speak. Making the words even more despicable, somehow.
O’Donnell then played back her spirited, spontaneous remarks from when she was in the House, mocking Joe Leiberman (before he actually joined the GOP) as a Democrat in name only and describing how the rest of the Democrats just have to vote aroundanobnoxious, not-with- the-teamcreature like that.
Friends of democracy, I give you the vain, vile, contrariangentlewoman from Arizona, the Honorable Kyrsten “dagger to democracy’s throat” Sinema, and an excellent editorial by Lawrence O’Donnell.
Democracy here is under active and energetic siege by a party of determined fanatics, backed by unlimited dark money, dozens of inluential right-wing nonprofits, a 6-3 far right Supreme Court and organized right-wing violence. There are two bills pending that will go a long way toward ensuring fair elections going forward. Trump’s cult, the GOP, has cut off debate on these bills in the Senate, using the filibuster, a parliamentary tool developed by slaveholders to block Senate debate
Thefilibuster was later embraced by supporters of lynching, defenders of racial segregation and proponents of voter suppression. On the state level the GOP has been tireless in enacting partisan laws to limit the vote, gerrymander themselves into disproportionate representation and give the final say on who won elections to proven partisans. 34 of thesenew Trump-inspired “Election Integrity” laws are currently in effect in 19 states.
The two voting rights bills currently being filibustered in the Senate by Trumpistas would protect the right to vote, limit partisan power grabs, restrain dark money and ensure the continued nonpartisan integrity of the counting of ballots that is the foundation of every nonauthoritarian government.
The GOP argument against these bills even being debated in the Senate, such as there is an argument, is strikingly similar to fucking Kyrsten Sinema’s demented, incoherent argument here: the filibuster’s requirement for a supermajority to debate a proposed law guarantees debate by enabling a minority to resist partisan tyranny by blocking debate, “as I am so sick of explaining to you cucks, trolls and morons.”
Filibuster rules have been changed more than 150 times over the years, including right after Trump’s election in 2016 when McConnell changed the filibuster rule to allow a simple majority vote for the Supreme Court, to allow a controverial, highly partisan trio of carefully vetted far right political operatives to round out the 6-3 majority on the Trump/Koch/McConnell Supreme Court. Sinema and Manchin just voted for a filibuster carve out to let Democrats take the full blame for raising the debtceiling, for fuck’s sake.
Check out this amazing talking pile of shit (but not if you’re eating), the former progressive from Arizonaand see if you can make anything coherent out of her remarks, outside of obstruction of debate on crucial election laws she claims to support, one she even co-sponsored, in the higher name of a hallucination of “bipartisanship” in the Age of Trump/McConnell/Koch. How about you and Manchin get one symbolic Repulicansenatorto sign on for bipartisan debate, dollface, show us all how it’s done.
Nothing to see here, really, but the $50,000,000 ad buy (paid for by donors to Trump’s “Legal Defense Fund”) promoting the false claim of a stolen election, likely paid mostly to Facebook, stopped on January 5th, the day before the peaceful MAGA protest at the Capitol that injured 140 police officers. Immediately after the election Facebook removed the pre-election safeguards against amplified, dangerous misinformation and hate speech because of a drop in its profits caused by these voluntary safeguards. Like other patriotic American billionaires, who had a windfall of literally trillions of dollars during the pandemic and upheaval of Trumpism, the head of Facebook had his bottom line priorities straight during months of propaganda-stoked rage and chaos that led up to the riot at the Capitol.
This reversion to Facebook’s normal business model to maximize emotional engagement and clicks allowed an infuriating lie to spread, like yer proverbial wild fire, to millions on-line and fuel rage against an imagined devilish conspiracy, involving evil Democrats, traitorous RINOs and other nefarious actors, including George Soros, George Clooney, George Burns, George Carlin, dead leftist dictators, corrupt voting machine makers and Italian hackers, to deprive the ordained leader, chosen by Christ Himself, of the presidency, after mathematically impossible masses of cheating brown people and various enemies, many of them dead, fraudulently voted for the sleepy Chinese puppet.
But, seriously, what is my point in even pointing any of this out?If Attorney General Merrick Garland doesn’t seem to feel any great urgency to investigate and prosecute conspirators who left a massive trove of public evidence of their detailed crimes against democracy, who am I to opine? Perhaps another superman, a non-authoritarian one, will rescue us from this gathering, hydra-headed catastrophe…
If this many of his base had attended his inauguration, Trumpie wouldn’t have had to make Sean Spicer lie to reporters/everyone about the enormous size ofhis manly crowd:
Here’s the stirring two minute American carnage porn video the crowd was shown, narrated by Trump, scored with heroic rap music, since gangbangers like Kanye love the gold-plated Boss, right before the great man himself took the stage to exhort the crowd, resulting in thousands of energized patriots surging down to the Capitol to fight like hell to Stop the Steal, kick police ass and take names, give courage to, or kill, hesitant Republican elected officials likethe cowardly Vice President.
Bearing in mind that provable facts no longer matter to the Trump 39%, here’s fascism historian Jason Stanley on the echoes of Nazi propaganda on January 6th, right before the “violent terrorist attack” that Lyin’ Ted apologized for calling the peaceful protest to save democracy.Stanley’s powerful, informative essay putting the two minute call to arms in chilling historical context is called “Movie at the Ellipse a Study in Fascist Propaganda”. It sure enough was.
The only insight I have, and this took me years to really take in, is not to make depression more bitter by blaming yourself for feeling hopeless. This is the trap of depression — you feel depressed because you believe you don’t have what it takes, you lack the qualities that everyone else has, you are a loser, too weak to do what everyone else manages to do. That is the fucking depression talking, trust me. If you feel depressed, it is burden enough without adding unforgiveness toward yourself. It is also useful to remember that depression almost always passes, nuance, taste and color return.
As for good reasons for depression, there are currently many. At the top of the list is the accelerating pandemic, a wildly proliferating virus much cannier and more adaptable than the puny earthlings fighting over how to fight it, as the planet plummets toward ecosystem apocalypse. From the demented, “transactional” former president’s point of view, and millions in his cult, the more Americans who die of Covid-19 under Biden the better. It will prove that Biden is a loser, working with the Chinese Communist Party and Burisma Energy to kill as many white Christian Americans as possible and let George Soros replace them with brown fake Americans dumb enough to vote for elite pedophile cannibals.Luckily for Trump, he’s got a 6-3 Supreme Court majority poised to make it much harder for the Biden administration to fight this relentlessly morphing, deadly worldwide disease. US Covid death numbers are climbing every day, as a burned out health care force, on the front lines now for more than two years, in a war with no seeming end, starts to call in sick and quit. Talk about fucking depressing.
Any chance of justice after a president who lost reelection by a large margin repeatedly lies about a stolen “landslide victory” then unsuccessfully twists the arms of election officials to change results, then tries to get the DOJ to announce fake fraud investigations while his henchmen in Congress do the rest, then executes the elaborate, extra-constitutional “Green Bay Sweep” to sweep aside certified, recounted election results, based on what Ted Cruz yelled were “unprecedented allegations of massive electoral fraud,” before he unleashes a whipped up crowd, and everything else the defeated never-say-die motherfucker does daily? The Attorney General announced finally that the DOJ is very seriously considering doing something to restore faith in American justice, as long as the DOJ can convince people that it has no political agenda, in a society where even basic safety precautions during an unprecedented modern pandemic are weaponized for partisan advantage (by only one party, boys and girls).
Even Mike Pence, a Trump loyalist who embarrassed actual obsequious miniature poodles with his stone-faced ass-licking of his master, realized the game was over prior to the “Green Bay Sweep” on January 6. He consulted far-right former federal judge/Republican operative J. Michael Luttig about John Eastman’s absurd interpretation of the Twelfth Amendment which supposedly gives the sitting Vice President the right to overturn the results of any election that does not keep him in office. Even Luttig, a man who defended as proper Bill Barr’s meddling to get insane Trump fanatic Michael Flynn’s guilty pleas for perjury thrown out, told Pence not to do it. So did former VP Dan Quayle, in no uncertain terms.
Here’s the kicker: after Pence broke the bad news to Trump, that he could not hold up the certification of Biden electors, based on a lie — no matter how big — and a crackpot legal theory, Trump was furious. To Pence’s reported horror and anger, on the evening of January 5th Trump released a press statement announcing that Pence was fully on board with the plan to force another fraud investigation before Biden could be certified as the duly elected president.
Think about just the Pence angle of this hundred ring shit show MAGA seditious conspiracy circus. A crass yet obsequious far-right Christian crusader who had taxpayers fund Gay Conversion Therapy in Indiana (fuck the teen suicides, Jesus said to cure ’em!), an unlikable, charisma-free smudge of Santorum put in office by the connivance and funding of Charles Koch and company (like equally disgusting, suddenly invisible Mike Pompeo, who started as the Kochs’ personal Congressman from Topeka), Pence deserves whatever fate karma might have in store for his type. Still, when he decided to do the right thing, to follow the law, Trump set him up as a traitor by publishing a lie that made him seem like a suddenly vacillating liar too weak to do what he’d promised. That’s why the mob wanted to hang him as a cowardly traitor, because he’d chickened out at the last second, because he didn’t save America from the illegitimate brown and yellow hoards. When Trump sent a motorcade to evacuate Pence from the besieged Capitol, Pence declined to get in, fearing, not unreasonably, that his boss had taken out a hit on him. What the fuck?
We learn that the Fulton County DA spoke to Trump’s lawyers last month, and Trump reacted in fury that was then hard to understand, since nobody knew about the meeting with Trump lawyers, outside of the DA, the lawyers and Trump. The only sticking point in prosecuting Trump for that well-known attempt to cajole, persuade, threaten and otherwise get Georgia officials to “find 11,780 Trump votes”, we are cautioned, is the question of Trump’s intent.
What if Trump actually believed he’d really been cheated? What if he sincerely didn’t believe Barr, Chris Krebs and everybody else he appointed, and who were soon out of his government shortly after telling Trump there’d been virtually no voter fraud in 2020? I went to law school and practiced law, and I still don’t understand this lack of intent business, unless it goes to an insanity defense for the former president.
So, yeah, there are countless reasons to feel as depressed as I did opening my eyes this morning. Unless your depression is so severe that you feel life is not worth living (in which case, exert yourself to seek help) my best suggestion is get out of bed, use the bathroom, brush your teeth, take a shower, get yourself walking. Much of soldiering through depressing times is just getting yourself walking, and connecting with others, however you can, no matter how how horrific the prospect of being in contact with others may seem. It is very easy to feel alone in this, and very important to stay connected, as best you can. My two copeks on how to endure any perfectly reasonable depression you are feeling right now in these exceptionally depressing times.
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