Category Archives: Law and Justice

Demented and incoherent “argument”

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

The filibuster 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 these new 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 debt ceiling, for fuck’s sake.

Check out this amazing talking pile of shit (but not if you’re eating), the former progressive from Arizona and 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 Repulican senator to sign on for bipartisan debate, dollface, show us all how it’s done.

Stop the Steal ads stopped last January 5th

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.

Representative Eric Swallwell explains in less than a minute (almost a year ago)

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…

How Not to Be Depressed

Fuck if I know.

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.

Strong Medicine

Hard-hitting 44 second video From the Republican Accountability Project, a group of Republicans for democracy. Several will no doubt work for for the Liz Cheney for President campaign in 2024. Their message couldn’t be clearer for 2022. Or more welcome.

Strong Medicine for a deadly, highly contagious disease, American fascism.

This ad is apparently eleven months old, (it has less than 70,000 views on youTube). They are currently running it as an ad on FOX, during Hannity, Tucker Carlson and Fox and Friends. Good luck convincing the Trump death cult that these are not all fake clips manipulated by vicious commies, but, more power to the Republican Accountability Project. More timely now than when they created it right after the riot at the Capitol.

“You fucking did this!” is what Liz Cheney snarled at Jim Jordan, pushing him away as he tried to take her arm as they fled from MAGA rioters sacking the Capitol.

Why so few police at January 6th March to the Capitol?

The enormous crowd that surged toward the siege and overran of the Capitol police, while planned as a Hail Mary option for the “Green Bay Sweep”, hurried to the Capitol to riot without police interference. The whipped up crowd had been promised “will be wild!” and it sure enough had been, so far. The best was yet to come.

They stormed straight down to the Capitol without encountering lines of police, as marches everywhere always do, because the Stop the Steal organizers had not applied for or obtained a permit to march from the mass rally at the Ellipse down to the riot at the Capitol.

No planned march, hence minimal police presence along the unannounced parade route.

Any emotional mass march is always closely supervised by police, if authorities know about it, if the proper papers have been filed, if the law has been followed.

So the path of the quick march of incensed patriots, down to fight like hell and take the under-policed Capitol and give courage to fainthearted Republicans in Congress to “Stop the Steal”, was very different than anything you’d ever see on any parade route in DC, or in any other city or town, or in any rural or suburban area, for that matter.

The Trump riot was not an overwheming law enforcement failure. It was lawless by design. Had the law been followed and a permit sought for the march, enabling authorities to protect the public and prevent traffic nightmares, the riot would have been prevented. Defeating the whole purpose of inciting the violence and making the leader and MAGA nation look weak!

Yeah, so we didn’t apply for a stinkin’ permit, boo fucking hoo. Yeah, we planned to teach those f-ing traitors a lesson, so we kept our secret, illegal plan quiet…

Duh!

“What don’t you motherfuckers get about ‘by any means necessary’ or the ‘ballot or the bullet’? Next time the boys will go down there armed with their sacred Second Amendment… and we’ll see what those weak, corrupt, elite, lying, cowardly blood drinking pedophiles have to say then…”

USA! USA!!! etc.

Short bio of Lyin’ Ted Cruz, and legal update on Cruz’s role in MAGA’s Jan. 6 Alamo stand

First a well-done light-hearted highlight tour of the career of Tea Bagger Ted Cruz, the most universally hated person in the Senate (with apologies to also-ran Josh Hawley) from Trevor Noah’s Daily Show.

And a more serious discussion of Cruz’s Trump-related craveness, and his direct involvement in Peter Navarro and the war room’s “Green Bay Sweep” strategy to block the certification of Joe Biden’s victory due to “unprecedented allegations of fraud” believed by FOX nation.

Cruz executed the opening play in the “sweep” on January 6 as the start of a coordinated Hail Mary, with the clock about to run out, to once more try to flip votes in swing states. The idea was to get Republican state legislatures all on the same page, attempt to decertify Biden electors, creating no winner in the Electoral College and throwing the presidency to the House to extra-constitutionally keep cuddly Trumpie as president.

A final word on this snarling, squirming far-right billionaire-backed fuck nut next time I sit down to open his disgusting can of worms .

(with apologies to the late, great Al Lewis)

Stop the Steal ads run through last January 5th

Nothing at all unusual here, but it seems that the ads promoting false claims of a stolen election that enriched Facebook in the months after Facebook removed the safeguards they’d installed through election day, (safeguards that damaged Facebook profits) stopped on January 5th. The day before the peaceful protest at the Capitol during which 140 police officers were injured, the ads, $50,000,000 worth, paid for by donations to Trump’s “legal defense fund,” suddenly stopped running. Get over it, nitpicking libtards, this is how real men dominate.

Representative Eric Swallwell explains in a minute

Tucker whips apologetic Ted Cruz on FOX

Shortly before the first anniversary of the Trump riot to stop the certification of Biden’s win, Ted Cruz, on the floor of the Senate, with cameras rolling, referred to the organized, planned, violent siege and sacking of the Capitol as a terrorist attack.

A strong argument could be made that participating in a long physical battle with cops and leading a phalanx of criminal tresspassers into the closed to the public Capitol to stop the People’s business is, even without being part of a larger seditious conspiracy, an act of terrorism. Using violence to frighten and intimidate political opponents is the definition of terrorism.

Understandably, this term, applied to their own faithful, coming from one of their own, put MAGA nation into full rage mode. Tucker Carlson pulled no punches bullying Cruz to back down. Lyin’ Ted, as he does, immediately began reassuring FOX nation that only Blacks, Muslims, Antifa and other commie traitors can ever be rightfully called terrorists, an angry MAGA mob can only ever be patriots, since they are always righteous in their rage and fight on the side of the angels.

Fortunately for him, the supple Cruz was able to whine and grovel his way out of the fatal accusation of having spoken truthfully, as all great statesmen and moral leaders are sometimes called upon to do.

Big Surprise in the Supreme Court…

This Washington Post headline says it all:

Of course they seem skeptical, these right-wing ideologues chosen for their fidelity to a hard right-wing worldview. Science during a deadly plague can be alchemized into tyranny by six judges well-trained in how to focus on a single hair on the head of an angel dancing back and forth through the eye of a needle. They do this humbly, with God’s help, by the grace of Jesus Christ.

The doctrinaire Trump super-majority continues to provide unappealable right-wing firepower to the giant bloc of angry Christian nationalists who are their ground troops in the long culture war that has brought this majority to the pinnacle of constitutional power.

For them not to express “skepticsm” over reasonable health precautions during a deadly tsunami of Omicron infections would be like a Nazi jurist listening thoughtfully to a Jewish argument against mass murder.

Speaking of mass manslaughter (man’s laughter, LOL) the US still leads the world in Covid infections and deaths because US authoritarians find it advantageous to weaponize vaccines, masks and testing. Their position is, if it keeps us in power, BRING BACK POLIO!

MAKE POLIO GREAT AGAIN, LOSER CUCKS!

Op ed on why Trump must face justice

Hard to believe this was written by the husband of CNP member Kellyanne “Alternative Fact” Conway, one of the smartest and most brazen of Trump’s well-connected inner circle. George Conway, a Federalist Society member who was outspoken in the conservative resistance to his wife’s boss, is also a very smart lawyer who makes a case today in the Washington Post that’s impossible to refute. Using facts…

He quotes with approval Merrick Garland’s January 5th words to DOJ workers (and the rest of the world) :

Above all, he pledged that the Justice Department has “no higher priority” and would do “whatever it takes for justice to be done — consistent with the facts and the law.” Most important, he made clear that “the Justice Department remains committed to holding all January 6th perpetrators, at any level, accountable under law — whether they were present that day or were otherwise criminally responsible for the assault on our democracy.” (Emphasis mine.)

He also quotes fucking Mitch McConnell, lines Mitch delivered after again orchestrating Trump’s impeachment acquittal, the first time by preventing an actual trial in the Senate, the second on an absurd technicality:

“We have a criminal justice system in this country,” McConnell said. “President Trump is still liable for everything he did while he was in office,” McConnell added. “He didn’t get away with anything yet. Yet.”

Here’s a link, gifted by the supremely generous Jeff Bezos, https://wapo.st/3f10HpP