These comments by our Very Stable Genius echo ones famously made by fellow son of a billionaire and self-made moron, Jared Kushner, during the Genius’s first term. “You can’t do it on a federal.”
At an Easter lunch reception yesterday, Trump echoed this argument [Goldwater’s states’ rights and federal government is only for military protection position] precisely. “I said to [Office of Management and Budget director] Russell [Vought], ‘Don’t send any money for daycare because the United States can’t take care of daycare,’” he said. “That has to be up to a state. We can’t take care of daycare. We’re a big country. We have fifty states, we have all these other people. We’re fighting wars. We can’t take care of daycare. You gotta let a state take care of daycare, and they should pay for it, too. They should pay. They’ll have to raise their taxes, but they should pay for it. And we could lower our taxes a little bit to them to make up, but we, it’s not possible for us to take care of daycare. Medicaid, Medicare, all these individual things, they can do it on a state basis. You can’t do it on a federal. We have to take care of one thing, military protection.”source
Here’s part of Jared’s snitty real-time response to a national lack of Covid protective gear for healthcare workers, while he served, with no qualifications whatsoever, as the Covid Czar.
At Thursday’s briefing on how the government is responding, Trump’s senior adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner scolded states for not building up their own stockpiles, saying that the “the notion of the federal stockpile was it’s supposed to be our stockpile, it’s not supposed to be states’ stockpiles that they then use.” source
The world these born-entitled folks live in, a world where they perceive their own excrement as emitting an enticing fragrance, is pervaded by the belief that it’s ours, not theirs. They have no right to what is rightfully ours, everything! Everything belongs to us, the vicious, lying propaganda of freeloaders, takers and communist parasites notwithstanding. The psychopathic greed of this Epstein class, and its wanton destructiveness (not to mention its fundamental incoherence) makes me wanna holler.
In Murdoch’s world you’re either a capitalist who doesn’t mind fascism if it lets you make more money or you’re a violent advocate of communist revolution. Black and white thinking is the sole intellectual mode of fascists (and hardline communists too, by the way). If you protest a criminally insane president’s destructive actions — communist or dupe of communists! If you publicly oppose fascism — ANTIFA TERRORIST! The First Amendment, with its protection of political dissent, makes this country ripe for communist agitation and overthrow with its license for every commie in the world to denounce the president and his agenda. Grrrr, grrrr… fucking commies…
Without (or with) irony, Murdoch refers to spineless contortionist Little Marco Rubio as “Florida man”. Usually the term refers to someone who got a body part removed (or worse) as the result of a drunken provocation of an alligator. In this case we have the two Republican “front-runners” legging it toward the finish line for who will succeed Mr. Trump in 2028, after Trump’s maker calls him for his eternal reward. Got to love the charisma exuded in that photo of soul dead, shape shifting opportunist J.D. Vance.
Donald Trump has never been totally exonerated in his long life of being endlessly, unfairly persecuted, no more than he has ever been held accountable for any of his various crimes and misdeeds. He has defeated justice many times, by delay, bribe (e.g. Pam Bondi in Florida, $25,000 to her campaign if she’d drop case against his fake university) obstruction, vexatious litigation, using government resources to prosecute vendettas, making threats against judges, jurors, witnesses, calls to violence, getting others to cover up his many crimes.
The second most corrupt Attorney General of modern times, Bill Fucking Barr, lied when declaring that the Mueller report “totally exonerated” Trump when Mueller wrote, in his report:
Based on the facts and the applicable legal standards, however, we are unable to reach that judgment [that Trump did not act with corrupt intent and did not commit felonies]. The evidence we obtained about the President’s actions and intent presents difficult issues that prevent us from conclusively determining that no criminal conduct occurred. Accordingly, while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him. . .
. . . The conclusion that Congress may apply the obstruction laws to the President’s corrupt exercise of the powers of the office accords with our constitutional system of checks and balances and the principle that no person is above the law.
I know we live in a post-fact age, but consider this:
Any president who leaves office, illegally taking with him with boxes of classified and top secret papers, although presumed innocent until convicted, is a criminal suspect until investigated and exonerated of wrongdoing. Especially if, like Trump, he claims he can declassify them with his mind, that he doesn’t have them, that he returned them all already, that he’s willing to show the government that he doesn’t have them, then gets one of his lawyers to lie that no more classified documents are in his possession, and so on, rope-a-doping the authorities for a year and a half. When a federal judge signs a search warrant, specifically describing the evidence of crime being sought and the exact places where they are likely hidden, that’s not an “illegal raid”. There is nothing more legal, under our law, than the execution of a search warrant adhering strictly to the requirements of the Fourth Amendment.
The punchline; they find some of the classified documents the president illegally took when he was dragged kicking and screaming out of the White House. They find boxes of the documents he claimed he didn’t have, in a bathroom, in a ballroom, in his sock drawer, the ones he lied about having (or selling to Putin, Mohammed bin Bonesaw, et al).
He got away with clear violations of the Espionage Act and obstruction of justice because he had a corrupt judge, appointed after he lost the election he claims was stolen from him, throw the case out, on the shabbiest of legal theories (tip of the cap to Clarence Thomas) after dragging her feet for over a year ruling on routine motions.
Consider Trump’s long campaign to reverse the results of the 2020 election, an election he was told, and knew, he lost (‘how did I lose to that piece of shit?’ he asked one of his lackies after losing the election). 60 baseless law suits, pressure on various state officials, a lying $50,000,000 ad campaign (payments for ‘Stop the Steal’ ads stopped on January 6, don’t you know?), slates of fake electors, threats to state officials, an illegal plan to get the DOJ to contest results in states he lost, a plot with his “friends” in Congress (“The Greenbay Sweep”) to throw the final certification into the House so he’d be declared the winner, increasing madness unto epic fury leading up to the passionate Day of Love on January 6, 2021, when he whipped up a crowd he knew to be armed to go to the Capital for a bloody riot the RNC later rebranded as “legitimate political discourse”. We all saw that legitimate political discourse unfold on TV, along with the president who sent the mob to disrupt the joint session of Congress and watched the assault on TV for over three hours, and how it led to 140 Capitol and D.C. policemen hospitalized with grievous injuries sustained during the legitimate political discourse. That he beat being prosecuted for his multi-tentacled treason and shitting on his oath to defend the Constitution, by delay, obstruction, threats, violence, etc. does not mean he was exonerated for jack shit.
Now Trump’s fully weaponized, selectively prosecuting DOJ, led by his criminal and impeachment attorneys, has fired everyone involved with either prosecution against their boss. At a far-right event the other day, Nazi consigliere Todd Blanche proudly announced this purge was complete. Fair is fair. Come to kill me, I kill you, how you like that, asshole?
Here’s one of the “righteously” fired DOJ attorneys, J.P. Cooney, with a short summary of how guilty Trump was of both of these disqualifying criminal conspiracies. Cooney is now running for Congress in Virginia.
These Nazi dickheads, convened by Charles Koch and his rarefied ilk at the radical right Heritage Foundation, published a detailed 920 page blueprint for explicitly transforming the US to a fascist oligarchy — the infamous, largely implemented Project 2025. The liberty loving billionaire mantra is privatize and corporatize, for maximum profit for the few (fuck the many) and also, remove all regulations and immunize corporate wrongdoers (protect the super wealthy at all costs!).
Here’s the Project 2025 plan for the TSA (see link above at 191). Compare this to their long running plan for the destruction of the US Post Office, and every other agency dedicated to providing public services or aid to those in need.
TRANSPORTATION SECURITY ADMINISTRATION (TSA)
The TSA model is costly and unwisely makes TSA both the regulator and the regulated organization responsible for screening operations. As part of an effort to shrink federal bureaucracies and bring private-sector know-how to government programs, TSA is ripe for reform. The U.S. should look to the Canadian and European private models of providing aviation screening manpower to lower TSA costs while maintaining security. Until it is privatized, TSA should be treated as a national security provider, and its workforce should be deunionized immediately.
TSA could privatize the screening function by expanding the current Screening Partnership Program (SPP) to all airports. TSA would turn screening operations over to airports that would choose security contractors that meet TSA regulations and would oversee and test airports for compliance. Alternatively, it could adopt a Canadian-style system, turning over screening operations to a new government corporation that contracts screening service to private contractors… Blah blah fucking blah…
If he can do this, without Congress, (and we don’t know if he can or not, since the source is Fox News), why didn’t this painted orange turd do it a month and a half ago? Rhetorical question…
“I do believe I’ll be having the honor of taking Cuba,” Trump said. “That’s a big honor. Taking Cuba in some form. Whether I free it, take it. I think I can do anything I want with it, you want to know the truth.”
A criminally insane madman, raised by a psychopath father who demanded his boys be “killers” (note: Frederick Christ Trump, the president’s father, was conceived in Bavaria before his father was deported from Germany for evading military service — Fred Trump, born here, was an anchor baby) is in charge of the world’s most powerful military. He runs it like dad’s second choice for heir used to run the family business, as an absolute ruler, even if a figurehead while the old man was still running things.
If his bones tell him to do it, he won’t hesitate to commit the military might of the US to whatever his bones tell him must be done. He will act — boldly, impulsively, unaccountably — even if the Constitution places democratic limits on his actions. If 100, or 1,000, or 100,000, or any number at all, American and foreign, have to die, so be it. The cause is not important. War is war, and as Mr. Trump has already stated, it “often” involves killing. Congress has the power to stop this madness by withholding funds for further war, but Republicans have been too afraid of their mad, vengeful leader to oppose him. The other day two Republicans in Congress attempted to stand up straight, a remarkable thing to see.
Yesterday, after a classified briefing, House Armed Services Committee chair Mike Rogers (R-AL), who backed the Iran strikes, told reporters that Congress members “want to know more about what’s going on, what the options are, and why they’re being considered,” adding, “And we’re just not getting enough answers on those questions.” Chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee Roger Wicker (R-MS) commented: “I can see why he might have said that.”
Wow.
While Trump continues with the cute answers to serious questions, when he’s not snapping reporters’ heads off or making violent threats, (he makes the best threats), along with being adorable with the cute remarks:
. . . Trump simply began the Iran war without consultation with Congress, and administration officials have refused to appear at hearings, instead briefing Congress behind closed doors. At an annual fundraising dinner for Republican members of Congress, Trump appeared to acknowledge he was violating the Constitution. He spoke of the “tremendous success” of what he called his “military operation” in Iran. He continued: “I won’t use the word war ’cause they say if you use the word war, that’s maybe not a good thing to do. They don’t like the word war because you are supposed to get approval. So I will use the word military operation.”source for both quotes
Indecency personified, with a nice assist from the jack-o-lantern-faced Secretary of Treasury and a cast of despicables. As always, Lawrence O’Donnell nails it. (Pasted wrong link, sorry, couldn’t find Bessent bit…)
Lying is one thing, and it’s a bad thing, most of the time. Without trust, there’s not much basis for dialogue or friendship. You can lie to spare someone’s feelings, but outside of that, it’s hard to think of a good lie. The truly corrosive thing in human relations is incoherence. If someone insists on an incoherent version of events, no communication is really possible with that person. The only healthy course of action is to understand you’re dealing with someone who is incoherent and disengage.
You can never persuade an incoherent person to listen to nuance or to compromise based on shared reality because their need to believe what they believe is impervious to reason. They are incoherent because they have no emotional choice but to believe what they believe, 100%. Doubt would crush them, because, in any dispute based on what is really going on, they have no ammunition, outside of a blind, angry insistence that they’re right. Being wrong in any detail of anything is an intolerable humiliation they will never submit to. In a war with such brutal stakes, incoherence is truly their only play.
I’ve had the misfortune to know many of these motherfuckers over the course of my long life. Some have been very good companions, everything is fine with them, as long as you’re conciliatory. You can laugh with them, enjoy a good meal, go on an adventure together, until any conflict arises. In the event of any kind of disagreement, unless you drop it immediately and pretend it never happened, you get a childish insistence that what happened never happened, they don’t remember, or understand, or that you’re a liar, or that they might have been lying when you quote them as saying they might have been lying, that they never called you a liar and certainly never said they might have been lying, etc. It can make your head spin when these creatures really get going.
I knew an old lady, 98 now (same age my mother would be if she was alive), since I was her son’s best friend in fourth grade, who often insisted on things that were incoherent. She had to believe, for example, that the nightmarish marriage her son fought in for almost thirty years was completely the fault of his insane ex-wife. It was one of those conflicts, you know, where only one person is to blame for all the ugliness and the other, the innocent party, simply made the mistake of engaging with someone who was a violently enraged lunatic. There was no reason, in the old lady’s version, for the furious wife’s rage, outside of her own troubles. Her husband had absolutely nothing to do with it, even if he was passive aggressive, habitually untruthful, a provocative weasel, etc.
In the end I did the only thing possible in the face of an insistence on an insane worldview. After hearing the same insane insistence that I must forgive even people incapable of regret, empathy or apology, I stopped taking her calls and wrote her a note which I put in the mail. Her response was a classic, a close variation on the one you will always get from someone who insists incoherence by way of the last word is simply fine and dandy and there will be no further discussion of the matter. I put the perfectly polished turd of her last word in a frame, nobody I know ever phrased it more to the point:
Incoherence, when it comes from the most powerful man in the world’s most powerful country, is truly fucking horrific.
This morning, Trump’s social media account once again blamed U.S. allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) for not joining his war, although NATO is a defensive alliance, designed to respond to an attack. The account posted: “Without the U.S.A., NATO IS A PAPER TIGER! They didn’t want to join the fight to stop a Nuclear Powered Iran. Now that fight is Militarily WON, with very little danger for them, they complain about the high oil prices they are forced to pay, but don’t want to help open the Strait of Hormuz, a simple military maneuver that is the single reason for the high oil prices. So easy for them to do, with so little risk. COWARDS, and we will REMEMBER! President DONALD J. TRUMP.”
This afternoon, Trump told reporters: “You know, we don’t use the strait…we don’t need it. Europe needs it, Korea, Japan, China, a lot of other people, so they’ll have to get involved a little bit on that one.” He also said: “I think we’ve won, we’ve knocked out their Navy, their Air Force. We’ve knocked out their anti-aircraft. We’ve knocked out everything. We’re roaming free. From a military standpoint, all they’re doing is clogging up the strait. But from a military standpoint, they’re finished.” . . .
. . . Aware that [Trump’s impulsive] war is historically unpopular, Republicans in Congress are refusing to exercise any oversight of the Pentagon and the White House. Megan Mineiro of the New York Times reported today that Republicans don’t want to expose disapproval of the war and so are simply cheering Trump on in public. Rather than holding public hearings that would allow the American people to hear the administration’s justification for the war and plans for its execution, as Democrats demand, Republicans are permitting the administration to inform Congress as it wishes, behind closed doors.
“You don’t want to show that kind of division to your enemy when you’re in the midst of a war,” Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) told Mineiro. “I don’t have a problem with the administration avoiding showing our enemy that they don’t have 100 percent support of the Congress.”
“They’re holding news conferences,” Senate majority leader John Thune (R-SD) told reporters last week, so there is no need for official hearings. source
See, as long as FOX NEWS CHANNEL is covering the ongoing story, there’s no reason for debate in Congress. Unite behind the Commander-in-Chief or make yourself liable to the punishment for treason. Debate only aids our enemy, whoever that might be, and the Commander-in-Chief is the only one who determines who is an enemy and who deserves death, so stop being disloyal and just support our troops. So-called intellectuals, and so-called pragmatists, always insist that men of action have to explain themselves. That is the fatal liberal error of history, according to devotees of the incoherence of the will.
If you are the kind of person who cheats at games, you assume everyone else is cheating, that’s why you have to. Apply this to any asshole behavior and you’ll find the same thing. We “wise apes” (homo sapiens) rarely do anything without feeling completely justified. How do you lie about people legally in the country being savages who eat good people’s dogs and cats? Your enemy would do the same thing, to gain an advantage, if they had the cojones, el huevos. If you rig elections, it’s only because your enemies are rigging elections, otherwise how else would they win?
Trumpism, like the ethos of our own religious white Christian slaveholders, is the perfect illustration of this principle. The slaveholders used overwhelming violence, well-armed militias and the threat of death to keep the slaves in line because if the slaves ever got free they would, according to their innocent masters, mercilessly massacre all the people who committed what they felt were atrocities against them. For that reason, the terrible vengeance an enslaved people would rightfully seek, the masters had to be extremely violent.
Old Mr. Day of Love himself told the crowd he was whipping up to peacefully storm the Capitol to gently convince reluctant members of Congress to declare him the winner of an election all evidence, and several of his closest advisers (including giant human turd Bill Barr who used the word “bullshit” to describe the baseless election fraud claim) said he’d decisively lost:
“When you catch somebody in a fraud, you are allowed to go by very different rules. So I hope Mike has the courage to do what he has to do, and I hope he doesn’t listen to the RINOs and the stupid people that he’s listening to.”
This little piece, repeated by MAGA spokespeople from time to time, reminded me of that timeless human principle, that wrongdoers always justify themselves by accusing everybody else of doing the same thing, in their position.
Let’s leave aside the fact that the Trump administration is continually pursuing baseless prosecutions, without any evidence of wrongdoing, with their weaponized, scofflaw Department of Justice, a department that also routinely defies court orders. And not to apply logic to an unfounded and false statement, but the FBI in the lead-up to the 2020 election was under the control of Trump enabler Bill Barr’s Department of Justice.
They had just suicided Jeffrey Epstein so he’d be nice and quiet about his long friendship with his longtime running buddy President Trump. There was, literally, nothing to see there — both guards were gone and the cameras were out when he suddenly died — a series of regrettable fuck ups, as Barr shrugged when the threat of Epstein was gone. Who exactly would have weaponized these “untrue and sensationalist” claims? Trump’s enemy former FBI director James Comey had been dismissed years earlier, he couldn’t have done it. Hugo Chavez, perhaps?
We are to believe that all the heavily redacted Epstein files that have been released are all totally kosher, in accordance to the Epstein Files Transparency Act, signed into law, veto-proof, by Mr. Trump. The names and nude photos of underaged Epsyein victims revealed to the public, oops, DOJ said they were under pressure to release files and mistakes happened (though no abusers’ names were mistakenly revealed). The three million pages Blanche and Bondi refuse to release? Well, the EFTA has no criminal enforcement provision, so fuck you. The president has nothing to hide (it’s not like he’s hiding his entire educational record or anything like that). How dare you question the most transparent administration in the history of the world?!
In fairness to the serially immoral, criminally insane Mr. Trump, he assumes anyone would do the same, act exactly as he knows he has to act, so he’s just doing it before somebody can do it to him. If you had evidence of your own crimes, wouldn’t you do everything possible to hide them? Come on, be honest.
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