Category Archives: Law and Justice

We have faced down American Nazis before

Documentarian Ken Burns interviews Rachel Maddow about the last time millions of Americans were drawn into an angry authoritarian movement by an appeal to their lowest, most violent, Nazi, impulses.  The last time it was actual German Nazis who propagandized to and inspired America’s most right-wing haters. This time it’s something different, but also similar.

This is a great interview, and I’m looking forward to reading her book, Prequel.  Her excellent podcast on these same events is like a great film noir with a strong element of horror and deja vu.  A story so cinematic and consequential that Steven Spielberg immediately purchased the rights to tell the story on the screen. And speaking of stories, here’s a reminder from Ken Burns about the power of an emotionally compelling story.

Resolved, Trump’s “ring” is delicious!

If you have any doubt about what the Republican party represents going into to the 2024 election, and who controls their every vote, there is a one page document that will remove that doubt. You can read the last GOP party platform in less than a minute, simply skip the few Whereas clauses which set out the “reasons” they are not adopting a platform setting out their principles and policy goals in the Age of Trump, and cut to the chase:

RESOLVED, That the Republican Party has and will continue to enthusiastically support the
President’s America-first agenda;
RESOLVED, That the 2020 Republican National Convention will adjourn without adopting a
new platform until the 2024 Republican National Convention;
RESOLVED, That the 2020 Republican National Convention calls on the media to engage in
accurate and unbiased reporting, especially as it relates to the strong support of the RNC for
President Trump and his Administration; and
RESOLVED, That any motion to amend the 2016 Platform or to adopt a new platform, including
any motion to suspend the procedures that will allow doing so, will be ruled out of order.

read the entire one page Trump platform here

Maureen Dowd on Trump/Putin myrmidons

The Renfields to Trump’s Dracula are also busy playing sycophants to dictators. At an Axios conference in Miami, Jared Kushner — who was festooned with $2 billion in Saudi investments after he left the White House — called Mohammed bin Salman a “visionary leader.” Asked about the crown prince’s complicity in Jamal Khashoggi’s murder, Kushner replied with exasperation, “Are we really still doing this?”

Before Navalny’s death, Tucker Carlson — who scorned Ukraine’s desperate fight for its independence — cavorted in the Kremlin. His interview with Putin was so indulgent that even Putin complained of a “lack of sharp questions.”

In an interview with an Egyptian journalist, Carlson defended his decision not to ask Putin about freedom of speech or assassinations of his opponents.

“Every leader kills people,” Carlson said blithely, adding, “Leadership requires killing people, sorry.”

Will the craven Republicans ever stand up against autocracy — at home or abroad?

Navalny’s death at the hands of the murderous Putin has given momentum to the push for military assistance for Ukraine.

It’s the American thing to do.

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Black prosecutors on trial in Georgia

I made the mistake yesterday of watching a bit of the questioning of Fulton county DA Fani Willis by the lawyer for a scumbag co-defendant of Donald Trump‘s, a practitioner of Roger Stone’s rat-fucking dark arts, channeling Roy Cohn by putting his prosecutor on the hot seat, having her sworn to tell the truth under the penalties of perjury and asking her intimate details about her personal life. Fani Willis did fine, but the spectacle turned my stomach. Another sickening glimpse into the narcissistic worldview of MAGA-world.

“Fani Willis put me on trial? I put HER on trial, judge! She’s guilty, not me! She’s a corrupt and sex-crazed criminal animal, and a total racist, and I am INNOCENT! That vicious liar needs to be put under oath and forced to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, not that she would know the truth if it bit her in the ass, about this witch hunt!”

If we look back at American history, there’s nothing more common in a place like Georgia than Black people who make legitimate complaints against white people being taken out behind the courthouse to be whipped and worse. In a postbellum courtroom no self-respecting white man with the means to prevent it will allow himself to be put on trial by an accursed Black person under any circumstances. Especially in a case where the defendant has no factual defense to criminal charges backed by overwhelming evidence and the damning sworn testimony of witnesses who are all former members of his inner circle.

This is especially the case when a powerful white man, with unlimited money to spend on his legal defense and a 24/7 public relations offensive, is accused of crimes by a Black woman.

So if a black woman is prosecuting a powerful white man, she must be called a racist, her right to bring the case must be challenged by any means necessary, a whiff of corrupt motive sniffed out, no matter how faint the trail, no matter if there is no trial to sniff. So much the better if this involves making her prove, under oath, that she’s not a sexed-up, thieving, manipulative, lying bitch who can’t control her overpoweringly disqualifying sexual nature. As long as the focus is on her, I get to smirk like a klansman dipping Red Man chaw as the jury fixes to let me off for recent lynchings and delay things until I can get the power back to exact humiliating retribution on Rosie O’Donnell, Taylor Swift, Hillary and their disgusting ilk.

I’m tempted to just say, again, fuck that fucking puto, Donald Trump, and the well-paid fucking whores he rode in on, but WordPress is having some fun with me by inserting random, unwanted highlighting it is not apparent how to defeat and… ah, you know.

But I must add that this conservative Republican judge down there, for holding an evidentiary hearing instead of having dismissed this shameless race baiting, delay tactic stunt for lack of any credible evidence of wrongdoing, or asserting any grounds for disqualifying the DA under Georgia law, is showing his ass more than a bit.

Comer’s star “witness” in Biden impeachment indicted for giving false testimony to FBI

The New York Times continues:

The special counsel investigating Hunter Biden has charged a former F.B.I. informant with fabricating claims that President Biden and his son sought two $5 million bribes from a Ukrainian energy company, according to an indictment in a California federal court.

The former informant, Alexander Smirnov, 43, was accused of falsely telling the F.B.I. that Hunter Biden, then serving as a paid member on the board of Burisma, demanded the money to protect the company from an investigation by the country’s prosecutor general at the time.

The story Mr. Smirnov told investigators was part of a series of explosive and unsubstantiated claims by Republicans that the Bidens engaged in potentially criminal activity — allegations central to the party’s efforts to impeach the president.

The Special Counsel, another traitorous RINO appointed by the radical Merrick Garland to investigate a Biden, is a Donald Trump appointee, (like Robert Hur, who gratuitously, but effectively, slimed Joe Biden just the other day). Proof that even the infallible former/present/future party leader makes mistakes. Who among us has a crystal ball that can always accurately see the future?

One vote GOP majority impeaches Biden cabinet official

Today the House voted 214-213, on party lines, to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, vindicating their humiliating recent failure to impeach him. It is the first time in history that a sitting American cabinet member has been impeached. The tiny GOP House majority was in an admittedly tight spot on the issue of immigration, the party having demanded legislation on border control by tying it to Ukraine, Gaza, Israel and Taiwan aid, getting it from the Senate after months of negotiation, and refusing to bring it to the floor for a vote, on orders of their boss, an impulsive man with a very busy court schedule.

Prior to the vote the NY Times ran a related article, using uncharacteristically direct language to describe the political party that is a big tent for every kind of American hater and bigot (along with the millions of very fine people who are neither haters nor bigots). The very un-Times like headline and lede reads: On Capitol Hill, Republicans Use Bigoted Attacks Against Political Foes; House and Senate Republicans have denigrated fellow lawmakers, Biden administration officials and witnesses in racist ways, both in casual comments and in official settings. The article offered a sampling of bigoted spoutings by the GOP, all in the course of a week. Here’s the bit about Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas: 

Around the same time, House Republicans released their report on impeachment charges against Alejandro N. Mayorkas, the Cuban-born homeland security secretary who is the first Latino to lead his department. Using unusually loaded language for a committee report, the panel described its action as “deporting Secretary Mayorkas from his position.”

In private, the language was uglier. During a closed-door meeting of House Republicans, Representative Mark E. Green, Republican of Tennessee and the panel’s chairman, referred to Mr. Mayorkas as a “reptile with no balls” because of his refusal to resign from his post, according to Politico. A White House official condemned the statement, noting that Mr. Mayorkas is Jewish and that the comment echoed an antisemitic trope.

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A reptile with no balls. What are you going to do with a creature like that?

Two points of view on “existential migrant crisis”

Like the initial charge by then candidate Trump that Mexican rapists are flooding the southern border, the terrifying caravan of migrants before the 2020 election (a hoard that never arrived, or were ever in transit, or spoken of again after the election), and the migrant terror whipped up by the GOP that demanded no aid to Ukraine, Gaza, Israel or Taiwan unless strict border measures were signed into law (bipartisan measures hammered out over months and torpedoed by Trump and his cherub-faced lapdog Speaker at the last minute) the migrant threat is overblown, if not fabricated. Here are two short opposing points of view on the problem.

Commies, at the Department of Homeland Security, who answer only to Mayorkas, no less.  Actual commies.

Goddamn it, Grey Lady!

Can you spot the New York Timesisms here? 

The New York Times continues:

“The Biden campaign has built its strategy around telling voters that the November election is a choice between the president, whatever doubts the public has about his age, and an opponent in Mr. Trump, 77, whom they paint as a threat to democracy and personal freedoms.“

Fair is fair, it is the centerpiece of Biden campaign strategy to paint Trump as a threat to democracy and personal freedoms. It is a two billion dollar  campaign strategy to portray Trump, an ordinary political candidate for president with an unremarkable history, mounting a typical reelection campaign, as some kind of existential threat. Calling him a threat as part of an attack ad campaign, like they all do.

Fair is fair, the Trump appointee who Merrick Garland appointed special counsel to investigate Joe Biden’s handling of classified documents, made comments well beyond the scope of his brief — which was to determine if Biden had or had not committed a crime related to taking government documents. Hur (no relation to Ben) determined that Biden could not be prosecuted and then opined, gratuitously as this blahg you are reading now, that Biden is perhaps in too feeble a mental state to have even been able to form any kind of plan to commit the crimes. No jury would convict such a feeble, doddering, sad, amiable but pitiable old man who barely knew what was going on, added Hur in his final report.  You know how the DOJ always like to include a little gossipy stuff in their official reports, spill a  little tea, like cattily opining about people’s fitness for their elected position and the political reasons to doubt their abilities. 

NY Times, taking the ball and running with it, along with the rest of corporate media.

Or as Biden ad libbed the other day at that news conference where he was angry at special counsel Trump appointee Hur being out of line and working in the interests of a political opponent:

FOX reporter: Are you having problems with your memory?

Biden: I must be, I’m taking a question from you.

Isn’t that right, Grey Lady?