Horrifically enough, Biden can’t legally order FBI vetting of Trump’s mad cabinet picks.
Donald Trump, as transgressive a psychopath as we’ve ever had running this country, is doing what he does best, the thing he shares with angry South African superfreak Elon Musk and their proudly stinking ilk, saying a loud, saucy “fuck you!” to the law and the norms it rode in on. His minions love him for his transgressiveness.
The law in question is The Electoral Count Reform and Presidential Transition Improvement Act of 2022. This law was designed to fix flaws in the previous laws to make sure a lawless, insane fucker like Trump couldn’t run roughshod over the law to, say, try to get his minions, and an enraged lynch mob, to overturn the lawful results of an election., while refusing to put his estimated $700 trillion dollar brand into a blind trust to avoid conflicts of interest while president.
This law provides that the incoming president must sign papers submitting to the provisions of this orderly transition law, allowing his administration to smoothly flow from the one before it. Trump being Trump is doing what he did when Mueller found his final answer to written questions “inadequate” or however the ultra-polite Mueller put it. Trump left his answer to the final, incriminating question completely blank. Nada. Ain’t signing it. Fuck you, pedophile commie cuck losers!
Biden can’t legally order FBI vetting of any of the incoming corrupt incompetents Trump has nominated until, and unless, Trump signs the paper ensuring an orderly, legal transition of power without obvious conflicts of interest.
This would be a perfect test of the absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts the Federalist Six put into place recently to protect their criminal benefactor. It is clearly an important part of Biden’s official presidential duty to ensure a peaceful, legal transfer of power. If he has to break a law that his successor refuses to obey, in order to enforce the law and protect the republic, why the hell not? What are they going to do, prosecute him?
As for why Trumpie is not obeying the law? As Trump said when asked, after a secret, private meeting with Putin in Helsinki, if Putin interfered in the 2016 election “I don’t know why he would.” Trump ain’t signing Jack Shit, Jack Smith! Also, there is no legal way to enforce the law against him, given that the law smashing turd is firmly in charge of the enforcement of all laws and norms, given his huge, 49.9% electoral mandate and the abject sycophancy of his spineless henchpersons and handmaidens.
[Trump nominee for Secretary of Defense, Pete] Hegseth does not need to know early American history, though, since he disavows the American republic. He is a Christian Reconstructionist who believes that God’s law should prevail. The Constitution has to be understood, Hegseth claims, as subordinate to a broader unwritten Covenant with God, the meaning of which is of course known to him personally. He thus opposes the constitutional structure of the United States as it figures in the actual text.
Hegseth denies the rectitude of the First Amendment, which separates church and state: “without God, America is not America.” He says explicitly that “the diminished role of Christ’s Kingdom in America’s founding” is to blame for the malaise that followed. Switching his metaphysics for a moment, he claims that the separation of church and state opened “the gates of Mordor.” Constitutional patriotism is not a good thing, since it can “untether us from the timeless truth, from the Bible.” Of course, as is always the case, God’s law turns out to mean what Hegseth and his friends say that it means.
The enemy within, broadly defined as “the Left,” is presented as already having a plan to annihilate everyone else. This is, of course, what fascists always say: it is legitimate to destroy the other side, because however invisibly and conspiratorially and secretly, it is planning to kill you first. Thus for Hegseth, the Left has the goal of “erasing America’s soul, culture, and institutions. We are the ones standing in their way—and have been targeted for annihilation.” Hegseth does not dwell, for some reason, on the actual countries that actually want the American system to break.
Only the “enemy within” captures his imagination. Hegseth enjoins his readers to “remember the plan the Left has for you—utter annihilation.” And again: “In more ways than you can imagine, leftists have surrounded traditional American patriots on all sides, ready to close in for the kill: killing our founders, killing our flag, and killing capitalism. The only option for survival in a near ambush is to charge; to close with, and destroy, the enemy.”
Trump’s nominee for the position of secretary of defense seems to believe that we need a cleansing civil war. He instructs us that “we are not only fighting a battle against foreign enemies.” “Sometimes,” he writes, “the fight must begin with a struggle against domestic enemies. Those who would violate the Covenant that binds us as a community of faith and that grants us blessing.”
Tattoo on Pete Hegseth’s strong right arm. A man of unquestioning faith, only God knows how much Hegseth knows about His eternal, awesome, incomprehensible, all-merciful, terrifying will. Deus vult, baby.
Trump transition spokesperson Alex Pfeiffer told Will Steakin of ABC News that discussions of Gaetz’s payments [apparently for sex with two seventeen year-olds] “are meant to undermine the mandate from the people to reform the Justice Department.” (Heather Cox Richardson)
Gaetz would have been the perfect MAGA Attorney General to carry out Trumpie’s mandate to reform the DOJ, considering it’s currently impossible to reanimate the corpse of Roy Cohn, the only better pick for that role. Here’s Trumpie’s latest bestie, South African twat Elon Musk, making a genius case for Matt Gaetz:
If you’re a super-wealthy, born-entitled, angry, attention-craving dork with an oversized taste for trolling and dominating others, you want a smart AG with a spine of steel and an ax to grind. Of course you need a super-loyal bully with an ax to grind, got to have that revenge motive working. What good is power if you don’t get to swing a sharpened ax to make sure your will is forever obeyed?
Meanwhile, the MAGA spokes-shills are tirelessly spinning the myth of MAGA’s enormous, throbbing mandate.
A spokesperson for the Trump transition said of [Trump Secretary of Education pick Linda] McMahon’s misrepresented credentials [lying about having a BA in education while running for a school board position]: “These types of politically motivated attacks are the new normal for nominees ready to enact President Trump’s mandate for common sense that an overwhelming majority of Americans supported two weeks ago.” (Heather)
That overwhelming majority of Americans now stands at an impressive 49.9% of those who voted (in an election with a turn out about 10,000,000 voters lower than 2020). Within the margin of error, true, and we don’t know how many mail-in ballots were undelivered from Democratic-leaning districts in swing states by the smirking Trump megadonor postmaster (and the odds are that we may never learn that number– try finding any clue on-line), but an OVERWHELMING majority, nonetheless.
Compare that mandate to the one Dick “I Am Not A Crook” Nixon, patron saint of these modern day MAGA zealots, got in 1972 (after the infamous Watergate break-in, before Nixon’s inglorious resignation to avoid indictment two years later):
Leaving aside the question of why I get these from the goddamned Richard Nixon Foundation…
So far we are not even talking about walking Putin talking point, friend of the Syrian dictator and good looking woman who allows the loathsome Orange Polyp to literally paw her in front of a large audience, Tulsi Gabbard, Trumpie’s pick for Putin-approved Director of National Intelligence [1]. Gabbard, a former Democrat, was a dark horse 2020 Democratic contender for the presidential nomination (like her whacky fellow traveler Bobby Kennedy Jr. in 2024) before waking up one day suddenly loving of the taste of the GOP strongman’s “ring”. They all have to kiss it, come on. Lindsey Graham will tell you exactly what it tastes like and why it is so hard to stop “kissing”. Take one look at the smile on MAGA Mike Johnson’s cherubic face, it speaks louder than all of the Christ-fearing extremist’s words ever could.
Hate crimes have surged nearly 20 percent during the administration of President Donald Trump, according to a new FBI report on hate crime statistics. The report also shows that hate-motivated murders, largely committed by white supremacists, spiked to their highest number in 28 years.
Nothing wrong with violent expressions good old fashioned hatred, of course, if the people your followers hate are hateful, sick, blood poisoning, dangerous enemy-within vermin. Nothing to worry about, unless you’re a hateful loser. That’s why the massive congregations of wealthy Christian theocrats, the Klan and American Nazis helped give MAGA it’s overwhelming mandate.
[1] But Trump’s pick for director of national intelligence makes McMahon look like a prize. As military scholar Tom Nichols points out in The Atlantic, former representative TulsI Gabbard is “stunningly unqualified” to oversee all of America’s intelligence services, including the Central Intelligence Agency. Nichols notes that her constant parroting of Russian talking points and her cozying up to Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad make her “a walking Christmas tree of warning lights” for our national security.
Former Republican governor of South Carolina Nikki Haley suggested that Gabbard is “a Russian, Iranian, Syrian, Chinese sympathizer” who has no place at the head of American intelligence. A Russian state media presenter refers to Gabbard as “our girlfriend” and as a Russian agent.(Heather)
The New York Times reports the details of the incidentthat caused Fox News host and defender of Navy SEAL war criminal Edward Gallagher [1], Pete Hegseth, Trump’s nominee to head the Department of Defense, to pay an undisclosed amount of money to a woman in exchange for a non-disclosure agreement.
Trump himself couldn’t have done it better. Perfect agreement!
The salacious details don’t matter (read the NY Times account anyway), the agreement is ironclad and absolutely nothing wrong happened, per the agreement and the undisclosed sum of money paid to settle the matter and keep it private forever (see NY Times account).
In other news, Matt Gaetz, also totally innocent and viciously persecuted by angry, name-calling libtard cucks armed with disgusting leaked private details of Mr. Gaetz’s personal life, cleared the way for Aileen Cannon’s appointment as Attorney General of the United States of America.
[1] Gallagher was turned in by his fellow Navy SEALs after, among other things, witness accounts that he stabbed a wounded teenaged Iraqi prisoner to death, and posed with the corpse, holding the cadaver’s head by the hair (as one does). A military tribunal convicted Gallagher of posing for a photograph with a corpse and texting the photo to friends. Gallagher was outraged. So was Hegseth, who became his powerful advocate. Trump gave Gallagher a full pardon. A perfect pardon! As all presidential pardons now are, according to the Federalist Society Six. Here are some of the now irrelevant details about the accusations against Gallagher:
Gallagher was accused of multiple offenses during his final deployment to Iraq and during the Battle for Mosul. The most prominent accusation and the best-attested to was the murder of a prisoner of war, a war crime.[9] Khaled Jamal Abdullah, a captured 17-year-old fighter of the Islamic State, was being treated by a medic.[12] According to two SEAL witnesses, Gallagher said “he’s mine” over the radio, then walked up to Abdullah and allegedly proceeded to stab him with his hunting knife without explanation. Gallagher and his commanding officer, Lieutenant Jake Portier, then posed for photographs of them standing over the body with some other nearby SEALs. Gallagher then text messaged a friend in California a picture of himself holding the dead captive’s (ISIS) head by the hair with the explanation “Good story behind this, got him with my hunting knife.”[9][13]
Prosecutors alleged that Gallagher’s sniper work during his 2017 deployment became “reckless” and “bloodthirsty”.[5] He allegedly fired his rifle far more frequently than other snipers;[5] according to testimony, the other snipers in the platoon did not consider him a good sniper, and he took “random shots” into buildings.[1] Other snipers said they witnessed Gallagher taking at least two militarily pointless shots, shooting and killing an unarmed elderly man in a white robe as well as a young girl walking with other girls.[5] Gallagher allegedly boasted about the large number of people he had killed, claiming he averaged three kills a day over 80 days, including four women.[1] Gallagher also was reportedly known for indiscriminately spraying neighborhoods with rockets and machine gun fire with no known enemy force in the region.[9]
A charge of obstruction of justice was brought against Gallagher for alleged witness intimidation. According to the claim, Gallagher allegedly threatened to kill fellow SEALs if they reported his actions.[5] The Navy cited his text messages as attempting to undermine the investigation, with messages sent to “pass the word on those traitors”, meaning cooperating witnesses, and to get them blacklisted within the special warfare community.[9][1] This resulted in him being confined in the brig for a time with heavy restrictions on his ability to communicate, although this confinement was later lessened.[5]
Gallagher was also charged with nearly a dozen lesser offenses.[5] Some of these charges, such as flying a drone over a corpse, were dismissed during preliminary hearings.[14]
According to the original Navy prosecutor Chris Czaplak, “Chief Gallagher decided to act like the monster the terrorists accuse us of being. He handed ISIS propaganda manna from heaven. His actions are everything ISIS says we are.”[6][5] Gallagher’s lawyer, Phillip Stackhouse, alleged the accusations were without foundation and came from a small number of disgruntled SEALs who could not meet Gallagher’s leadership demands. The accusations against Gallagher were recorded to be fabricated by teammates that started a mutiny in the SEAL platoon.[5]
We are in for a hell of ride, boys and girls, a Führereid, if you will.
My German vocabulary is extremely limited. Virtually every phrase I know is an idiosyncratic, specialized term I learned while studying the history of the Nazis. I know words like vernichtungslager (annhiliation camp) sonderbehandlung [1](“special handling” stamped on the papers of Jews being expedited to the camps) and Lebensunwertes Leben [2] (“lives not worth living”, as deemed by the Nazis). Today I added a highly pertinent phrase, Führereid, the blood oath of personal loyalty to the infallible party leader, Herr Hitler.
We are living at a moment when an eighty-nine year-old psychopath, Charles Koch, is excited to see the culmination of his life’s work, his father’s Hitler-admiring dream come true in the administration of seventy-eight year old psychopath Donald “Jesus” Trump (Donald’s psychopath father was literally named Frederick Christ Trump). This is as serious a moment in history as any evil genius (such as Koch) could create in the lab. Wuhan’s got nothing on this gathering plague.
In order to be an elected (or appointed) Republican in good standing, one must do exactly what the leader demands. If that demand is to publicly stand behind a thoroughly debunked lie about a stolen election that got several of Trump’s attorneys disbarred, and others to take guilty pleas, if you know what is good for you, you will say, at the very least, that there are legitimate and serious questions about 2020 that were never answered (like, why are numerous Stop the Steal riot conspirators not serving long prison sentences?).
To be a Republican official in good standing you must state that it is perfectly fine for the leader to violate the Espionage Act by stealing (and most likely selling) secret documents, commit crimes while campaigning and then while in office (34 counts of which he’s been convicted for), have a fraudulent university and charity closed down, incite a deadly riot in a crazed attempt to stay in power, make vile, racist misogynistic threats (as a man convicted of committing a close variant of rape and then repeatedly defaming the victim), proudly echo Hitler in overheated rhetoric about vermin, blood poisoning and the “enemy within”.
Now, all that’s left for you, if your job is important to you, is to argue why it is necessary to shut down FBI vetting of wildly incompetent, badly compromised cabinet nominees, (as was already done with lifetime appointee Boof Kavanaugh), and the way is clear for Führerswortes haben gesetzeskraft (“the Führer’s word has the force of law”.)
For totalitarianism to take hold of a nation several things must happen. Language and meaning must be distorted beyond rationality, as in “alternative fact”, so that no reasonable discussion may ever take place. Fear must be so pervasive that citizens and officials obey pressure to conform in advance (Bezos, Mika and Scarboro, etc.) and are terrorized when they think of organizing to dissent. Political opponents become sick, evil enemies to be imprisoned, killed or otherwise silenced. Blackmail becomes the coin of the realm and only powerful insiders are excused for crimes, for all others, justice!
Resisting this oligarch-funded tsunami of blind obedience to their collective will is going to require great creativity, organization, doggedness and, unfortunately, a great deal of collective suffering. We have to be creative, united, resolute and ready to rumble. The first thing Biden has to do is order FBI vetting of this drawer full of creepy crawlers Trumpie has nominated as his cabinet. Then, as Steve Bannon (soon of the long prison sentence for defrauding MAGA nation) says “strap in.”
The Hitler Oath (German: Führereid or Führer Oath) — also referred in English as the Soldier’s Oath[1]—refers to the oaths of allegiance sworn by officers and soldiers of the Wehrmacht and civil servants of Nazi Germany between the years 1934 and 1945. The oath pledged personal loyalty to Adolf Hitler rather than loyalty to the Weimar Constitution of the country. Historians view the personal oath of the Nazi Germany as an important psychological element to obey orders for committing war crimes, atrocities, and genocide.[2] During the Nuremberg trials, many German officers unsuccessfully attempted to use the oath as a defense against charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity.[3]
Doctors were the ones primarily responsible for applying the plan in order to eliminate people labeled as incurably ill, children with hereditary defects, criminals, the mentally ill, the physically disabled, pedophiles, homosexuals, and adults or elderly people considered “unproductive.”
Aktion T4 was implemented through two channels: euthanasia, practiced on people who fit into those categories, and sterilization en masse, so that there would be no new children with what the doctors considered disabilities that would make people unhappy. And we are speaking here of German patients.
Doctors considered that each of those persons was a “life not worth living” (Lebensunwertes Leben), and presented them as such. It is calculated that between 200,000 and 275,000 people were systematically murdered out of “compassion,” while massive sterilization programs reached more than 400,000 people—always, in every case, against the patient’s will and without consent.
The New York Times editorial board features a hard-hitting interactive timeline, apparently published in July 2024, of everything the Orange Menace accomplished in just his first year as wannabe dictator from day one. The report goes through all four action packed years of fighting and lying like hell. A hard-hitting recitation of facts from the newspaper whose spokespeople over and over claim the Grey Lady refuses to get involved in “politics”… The first year by itself is very impressive. Click the image below for the show.
“Fun” fact: More Americans died in Trump’s beautiful lovefest/January 6th Capitol riot, at the hands of their fellow Americans, than died in Benghazi, at the hands of enraged Libyans, an event weaponized against then Secretary of State H. Clinton to the eternal fury of the American right.
Here’s an angry patriot, in Bayside, New York, standing under his Trump’s God, America, Freedom flag, with a t-shirt reminding Americans of those killed in Benghazi.
The corporate media, a machine to normalize the psychopathy of the powerful, it seems lately, is routinely nonchalant about things that should have the citizens in an uproar. At the time, during the Mueller investigation, there was almost nothing in the news about this game changing “fuck you” from a sitting president. I had to read Trump’s interrogatory answers myself to learn that he had flatly refused to answer Robert Mueller’s final, most incriminating, question.
A Republican Assistant Attorney General appointed Special Counsel Robert Mueller (witch hunter number one) after Trump fired FBI director James Comey for insufficient loyalty when he would not drop an investigation into crimes committed by former Trump national security advisor General Michael “Q-Anon” Flynn. As part of his investigation into the Trump campaign’s many ties with Putin, Mueller wanted to ask Trump questions in person. Trump publicly bragged that he would sit down with that witch hunting traitor fuck any time, that he had no fear and nothing to hide.
It turns out he had plenty to hide and feared a “perjury trap” and so his lawyers negotiated an alternative, he’d answer written questions under oath. His lawyers wrote evasive answers throughout (which he bragged about writing himself) and then, for the final question, a compound question involving Flynn and others at the heart of the 140 documented acts of collusion (not indictable criminal conspiracy, since much evidence had been destroyed and witnesses dummied up) with Putin, Trump wrote . . .
. . . Nothing. . .
The thought that we are twenty odd days out from an election in which these unaccountable criminals, grifters and violent extremists may well be able to pull off the crime they attempted in 2020, stealing a “rigged” election by chicanery, brazen lies and violence, sickens me to my heart. If this fascist coup comes about, on my way to prison, or worse, I will be cursing the fucking New York Times. How hard is it not to be a well-respected equivocating mouthpiece for Nazis?
We don’t have to wonder what Trump would do to enemies he truly hates, or needs others to hate, or can make a dollar on, or whatever (or Rosie O’Donnell). He has done it. This report of deadly government vengeance is from four years ago today.
As for fascist-adjacent, lawyerly perverter of the teachings of Jesus, Trump gunsel Bagpiper Bill Barr, suddenly a reluctantly Trump-supporting voice of reason who energetically helped a vengeful fascist until it would have put him in jeopardy as a criminal co-conspirator, fuck that fucking puto and the whores he rode in on.
This was my first comment to Bandy Lee, a few days earlier. At the end is a link that explains why I think Ryan Reynolds would be a good person for her to contact (assuming he shares our concern with the unthinkable possibility of a violent madman becoming “president” again, against the will of the majority of voters).
What you have to say is so important, so crucial, to protecting our society. I learn something new from every interview you do and every article you publish.
I wish you would have your media team put out 15 to 30 second shorts that could go viral. Take one great point at a time and just present it to the camera. No undecided voter could remain undecided after hearing what you and your colleagues have to say about the clear and present dangerousness of Trump and his myrmidons.
I’ve been thinking you bury the lede when you save this for paragraph two:
At no time has mental fitness in leadership been more important. Yet, at no time have we had a presidential campaign where mental fitness has been a more precarious issue.
Keep up the good work, and please, please, create some short clips that can become memes. This is, sadly, the age of information and public relations we live in. Although it couldn’t be further from our purposes, check out this short for an example of the power of well-wielded social media: https://youtube.com/shorts/cesrZd73sQY?si=26eefs5di6eb3e9X
At another point I suggested this very compelling story I’ve heard from her, which she told in about half a minute:
Your story about the American Psychiatric Association gagging public discussion of The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump might make an excellent illustrative short.
A powerful psychopath feeling under attack, in a position to reward a US government-funded organization with a record allocation and a new $10,000,000 headquarters in DC, who then rewards them for their favor, ably put into effect by no less than the venerated/hated NY Times, gagging all experts by publicly enforcing the association’s own voluntary rule as if it was federal law.
That story of the “inviolable” Goldwater Rule, and its always clear political intent, and how it was used to silence the experts to the advantage of the dangerous, powerful psychopath, is too good not to be shared by millions before the election.
The story of that Trump-facilitated nationwide gag order of professionals acting out of a duty to warn of imminent danger is the perfect illustration of how this malignant type gets away with this open corruption.
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