
Happy International Happiness Day
And the award goes to…
Benghazi Impeachment news
Heather Cox Richardson reports:
As Justin Rohrlich of The Daily Beast put it, “Comer…stepped on rake after rake during the hearing, consistently undermining his own conference’s case.” Finally, after Democrats had pointed out the many missteps of the committee’s Republicans, Bobulinski told Jared Moskowitz (D-FL) that “the American people are well aware of the Bidens’ corruption.” “Perfect!” Moskowitz replied. He told Bobulinski to ask Comer why he hadn’t asked for an impeachment vote. Moskowitz even offered to help the Republicans out by making a motion to impeach President Biden, urging Comer to second it. Comer declined.
Moskowitz said he wanted “to show the American people that they’re never going to impeach Joe Biden. It’s never going to happen because they don’t have the evidence. Okay, this is a show. It’s all fake. They just want to do these hearings. It’s not leading to impeachment. They’re lying to their base on Newsmax and Fox leading these people to believe that they’re going to eventually impeach the president. It’s not going to happen. At all. Ever. Period.”
Heather
Trump calls on Manafort

Convicted money launderer, witness intimidator, tax and bank fraudster and all around good guy Paul Manafort, pardoned by his benefactor Trump six weeks after Honest Don Trump lost the election in 2020, gave sensitive polling data to a Kremlin agent allowing a foreign power to help swing the four states that gave Trump his 78,000 vote Electoral College win in 2016. This is according to the Senate Select Committee Report (chaired by Marco Rubio, R- FL), which should be released in its unredacted form now that Trump is in talks to bring Manafort into his presidential campaign again.
What could go wrong with desperate, deranged, cash-starved Trumpie hiring this longtime Russian oligarch-connected lover of obscene luxury and enabler of corruption to raise and launder foreign oligarch money for his 2024 legal defense and campaign run?
It’s not as though Manafort’s former partner and fellow rat fucker, Roger Stone, is in any way involved in MAGA’s 2024 campaign or ever had anything to do with any right-wing riot to achieve a political end with violence or the loud threat of violence, neither the 2000 Brooks Brothers Riot [1] nor the MAGA/White Christian Patriotic Riot of January 6, 2021 [2] . Stone, Manafort’s long time partner in political crime, also pardoned by Honest Don, made sure to dismiss his Proud Boy body guard contingent and get out of town the night of January 5th. USA! USA!!

[1] The Brooks Brothers riot was a demonstration led by Republican staffers at a meeting of election canvassers in Miami-Dade County, Florida, on November 22, 2000, during a recount of votes made during the 2000 United States presidential election, with the goal of shutting down the recount. After demonstrations and acts of violence, local officials shut down the recount early. Details
[2] On January 6, 2021, the United States Capitol Building in Washington, D.C., was attacked by a mob[33][34][35] of supporters of then-U.S. president Donald Trump, two months after his defeat in the 2020 presidential election. They sought to keep Trump in power by occupying the Capitol and preventing a joint session of Congress counting the Electoral College votes to formalize the victory of President-elect Joe Biden. The attack was ultimately unsuccessful in preventing the certification of the election results. According to the House select committee investigating the incident, the attack was the culmination of a seven-part plan by Trump to overturn the election.[36][37]. details
Silence is evil’s handiest tool
What could be more fearful when you are in trouble and call out for help than the lack of sound that mimics the silence of the grave itself? Silence by way of response is a great technique for expressing things that you may find difficult to say — merely say nothing. You can always defend the innocence of silence.
However in specific silence you have the permission for every monstrous injustice ever done in the name of demented righteousness. Slavery, Nazism, misogyny, every instance of abuse, lynching, enabled by the silence of those who could have spoken up but didn’t. Silence also erases all hope of talking things through, clearing up bad feelings, making peace.
Silence, while sending a message very powerfully, takes no courage, no effort, nada. You just keep your lips sealed and let the silence of death have the perfectly defensible last word.
When you hear it offered as the last word, understand the moral cowardice at work and trouble yourself no longer with the imposer of silence.
Implacable hostility in an atrocious cause



This is John C. Calhoun of South Carolina, one of America’s foremost advocates of slavery. Decades before the Civil War, he argued (anonymously) that South Carolina had the constitutional right to nullify any federal law that affected its rights regarding its profits from slave labor (no tax, no tariff). Andrew Jackson, a great psychotic in his own right, and also a heavy drinker, flew into a murderous rage when Calhoun anonymously published his nullification argument, precipitating the Nullification Crisis (1832-33).
One of the great regrets of Jackson’s presidency, Old Hickory said at the end, is that he didn’t follow up on his threat to go down to South Carolina and hang fucking Calhoun with his own hands. Not that Jackson, who killed several men in duels and carried a bullet around in his chest after a near fatal duel for him, also hadn’t become wealthy trading slaves or had anything against the Peculiar Institution, but on general principle.
Calhoun was also the guy who, while in the Senate, developed and perfected our beloved filibuster, which, of course is mentioned nowhere in the Constitution though it has always been slavery’s, bigotry’s and anti-democracy’s biggest friend in government.
Right piece of shit, John C. Calhoun, as far as I can tell . But quite an “I am an eternally hostile, implacable motherfucker who will fucking destroy you” glare on the politician’s face, isn’t it?

How do you like my collage?
Federalist Society Endgame
The Federalist Society, a rightwing judicial fraternity, was created and is funded by ultra wealthy, right wing privilege holders. It was established to use the law to better protect the privileges of our best citizens, which is to say, inheritors of vast wealth, and those who join their ranks through their own efforts. It is devoted, by strict doctrine, to giving their political benefactors political wins in every possible case. Their judges often do this, especially in cases otherwise lost, by going well past what they need to find in order to make their rulings.
Their style of activist judging always includes a political victory for their agenda, to dismantling the regulatory/administrative state, limiting “majoritarian tyranny” (will of the voters) and ensuring full rights of citizenship only for our best citizens, corporate and human, regardless of the facts, the law, a 98-0 vote in the Senate.
For example, the Supreme Court Federalist Society contingent went much further than necessary to overrule the Colorado courts where Trump was disqualified as an insurrectionist. Without touching the facts of his insurrectionist plan and shameful, criminal behavior they made a ruling that allows every elected federal official who aided Trump in his insurrectionist plan to overturn election results forever immune from disqualification under the constitutional clause designed for that purpose by the framers of the 14th Amendment. The Federalist Society Six effectively wrote one of the most important democracy enforcing clauses out of the 14th amendment. In the name of demented Originalism, or some other Federalist Society endorsed doctrine pulled out of their collective, doctrinaire ass and protected not only Trump but his wide circle of elected insurrectionist henchmen and henchwomen.
In Georgia, Federalist Society member and political appointee Judge McAfee ruled correctly that there was no actual conflict of interest between the DA prosecuting Donald Trump and his criminal co-conspirators, and anybody else involved in the case. He did this after a long delaying circus in which the DA was asked extensively about her sex life and her father was interrogated about it too. The Klan itself could not have staged a more amusing spectacle than the one McAfee allowed.
Then after ruling properly, so as not to be overturned on appeal, he went out of his way to besmirch Fani Willis by writing of her “unprofessional” demeanor on the stand , a “stench of mendacity” and recommending a host of ethical and disciplinary remedies for her uppity attitude. He made these disparaging, jury poisoning remarks in dismissing an unsuccessful attempt to smear the district attorney, who, it turns out, had no conflict of interest of any kind. The Federalist Society spin, smearing a political opponent he could not legally remove from the case, is perfectly permissible among these endgame motherfuckers. McAfee gave his team the smear the frivolous motion was intended to create, after providing team Trump with a healthy and distracting delay.
Take Federalist Society member and former DOJ official MAGA Robert Hur. The finding of his report was that Joe Biden did not have the requisite intent to commit the crimes that Donald Trump has clearly demonstrated, as proved by his many attempts to cover up the crime and his repeated obstruction of justice. Hur distinguished the behavior of the two presidents to make the contrast and show that Biden lacked Trump’s clear criminal intent. That was the take away, Biden has not committed the crimes Trump stands accused of and that was all Hur was appointed to decided.
But a report stating that Biden was innocent of the crime Trump is a criminal defendant for was in no way helpful to the MAGA, or as I think of it, the American Nazi, cause. Hur therefore made the focus of his report, and the Breaking News headline takeaway, Biden’s cognitive feebleness. Based on lies? Going well beyond the scope of your appointment? Call me pisher!
The Trump-appointed federal judge in Florida (who assumed office after Trump lost reelection, talk about letting the voters decide), Aileen “Loose” Cannon, who, giving her the benefit of the doubt, is probably too stupid and inexperienced to handle a high profile, politically charged espionage case against her benefactor regarding his illegal retention of top-secret government documents, at least has experienced, brilliant Federalist Society counsel available to her.
This allows her to endlessly delay a trial that Trump will 100% lose with little risk to herself or her already damaged professional reputation. By not making any final orders about anything, Cannon has been able to spin this straightforward case out with no end in sight. And arguably because she has made no final orders of any kind, she has not given DOJ grounds for an appeal. Things she has done, no matter how stupid (inviting amicus briefs from the likes of Stephen “Death to immigrants” Miller and Citizens United), how biased toward one party (and against the federal government) or how clearly designed to give a criminal defendant the delay he always demands, are protected under her discretion as the trial judge.
If you had any cause to wonder whether allowing the widespread appointment of members of a doctrinaire right wing extremist judicial fraternity could cause any problems for democracy, the rule of law or the fair administration of justice, look no further than the loyal judicial fraternity members referenced above.

