Welcome Back to Pottersville: May 2024

Friday, May 31, 2024

(Very) Good Times at Pottersville

Tuesday, May 28, 2024

Taxi Driver 2

A Study in Contrast

This is how a REAL president & Commander in Chief observes #MemorialDay, by honoring our fallen heroes. Not by putting out nasty, angry posts paying it the barest lip service before launching into a furious tirade against the very few who want to take him to task for his crimes.

Monday, May 27, 2024

Remember, Remember the Fifth of November

Sometimes I'd wonder, and still do to this day, if, when we lived in the old West Germany between 1962-1965, we'd brushed past or caught sight without knowing it the German soldier who'd killed in 1944 my great uncle Leon Crawford in WWII. The chances would've been infinitesimally small. But, stranger things have happened.

As I grew up in the 60s and 70s, the only way I even knew Great Uncle Leon, my paternal grandfather's twin brother, even existed was through an old sepia photo placed and forgotten in the den at grandpa's house in Central Islip. In the glassed-in frame was a young, handsome man in his 20s, one who, unsurprisingly, looked like a younger version of my grandfather. Taped to the sepia photograph is a lock of jet black hair and a short poem on yellowed, brittle paper, written by his mother, my great grandmother Anastasia, after whom one of my aunts was named, clipped from the newspaper in which it was published.

Every time we went to Central Islip, I'd go in the den and I'd pick up that dusty, neglected picture frame, look into the face of the man I'd never know then gently place it back where I'd found it and resume pursuing the life he helped ensure I could live. No one ever spoke of him, except once when my grandfather mentioned him or on the rare occasion my dad would mention him. I'm sure that old forgotten picture is still in the den at the old house in Central Islip, sitting in dusty, dignified disuse.

All I know was he died just before the war in Europe ended. All he had to do was survive another six months. By then, Hitler would've been dead, Nazi Germany smashed and the Allied forces would've begun rebuilding Western Europe. He would've come home and started a family. But it was not to be. It's even possible that he was killed by a German soldier who didn't know what he was firing at, perhaps a German private who was just as young and scared as he, someone who also desperately wished to survive the war.

My father told me he was a cook but in a combat theater, everyone is a soldier. Now, there's probably no one still alive who remembers my great uncle Leon. After all, he was born 107 years ago. Once, just before a Memorial Day years ago, after an exhaustive internet search, I found Great Uncle Leon's picture, a tiny little thing smaller than a thumbnail but, the internet being the mysteriously capricious place it is, even that little morsel got sucked into the memory hole.

And it always struck me as odd that hardly anyone ever spoke of Leon even when I was a kid and there were still plenty of people who remembered him, starting with his identical twin. The same thing happened with my great grandmother Anastasia, whose name I didn't even know until a genealogist dug that up a few months ago as well as a great many other things about my family going back to the Revolutionary War (including a distant relative named Josiah, who was a Lt. Colonel and lived, fought and died in Pennsylvania).

Despite that failing of my family to almost immediately forget or neglect those who had even recently passed, it doesn't mean that failing has to continue succeeding. That's what the living are for. I can't provide you with a photograph, sadly, but I can damned sure tell you that Great Uncle Leon existed. He was an Army private, a cook, from Kings County, Brooklyn, and he died on the Fifth of November, the day the Gunpowder Plot was discovered beneath Parliament in 1605.

I generally don't make Memorial Day posts except to bash one president or another and I almost never mention my family, This is, after all, a political blog. But this year for some reason, I redoubled my efforts to find Great Uncle Leon in the shadows of the internet. Because I wanted you all to know he existed and that he made the supreme sacrifice so we baby boomers and the rest of us could continue living our lives in freedom.

Sunday, May 26, 2024

Good Times at Pottersville

Thursday, May 23, 2024

The Devil's Advocates

After all these years, I think we can safely come to the conclusion that Donald Trump's greatest super power is in turning once respected attorneys into bed-shitting assclowns who shouldn't be allowed anywhere near a courtroom or even a law degree.

It's as if half of them got their law degrees in a Rotary Club raffle or out of a Piggly Wiggly vending machine. The haul in Fulton County, Georgia alone was legion. There was Kenneth Chesebro, Rudy Giuliani, Jenna Ellis and Sidney Powell. All four were arrested and formally indicted on suspicion of trying to overturn the election results in Georgia.

Then there's John Eastman, formerly an esteemed law professor, who'd been disbarred in the state of California. Giuliani, again, has already had his law license suspended in New York and Washington, DC. Lin Wood voluntarily surrendered his own law license. And, for a while, Sidney Powell wasn't too far behind until she was bailed out by right wing judges in Texas.

Those chess pieces have been toppled and are rolling around on the board. Among the walking wounded are Chris Kise, former Florida Solicitor General, Alina Habba and Todd Blanche. Two of those last three had reputations as fine attorneys in their own right until they chose to become literally the Devil's advocate and become marionettes for Donald Trump, the world's most incompetent puppet master. To their credit, Evan Corcoran and Joe Tacopina got out while the getting was good. And that doesn't include all the law firms that have quit working for Trump just in the past year.

To be fair to them, they're working for someone who's simply the world's worst client. Imagine your house is on fire and as the firemen are carrying you out, you keep setting fires on your way out the door. That's what it's like if you're a lawyer and have Donald Trump as a client. To quote Gilbert and Sullivan, their lot is not a happy one.

Take Michael Cohen's cross examination, for instance. Over the course of three days, they feinted, lunged and parried and didn't land a significant touché on Trump's former lawyer and fixer. They seemed to have caught him in a minor inconsistency regarding a 14 year-old's prank phone call that was over a decade ago. The only other way they had laid a glove on him was when they got him to admit that he'd stolen $30,000 from the Trump Organization.

You can't expect the jurors to care about that considering Trump's haul from his time in New York and Washington, in which his tax evasion would've made Al Capone blush.

But the main takeaway from the cross examination, in which the defense had a great opportunity to destroy Cohen's credibility as a witness for the prosecution, was that they didn't hammer away at that admission. They chose, instead, to go after Cohen because he couldn't remember all the facts about a phone call from a crank caller that happened well over a decade ago.

Michael Cohen's about as flawed a witness as a DA's office could find. He went to prison for three years, albeit for doing Trump's bidding, committed tax fraud and eventually got disbarred. He came close to violating the gag order by refusing to shut up about the case. And it's obvious that Cohen's Come to Jesus Moment is mostly if not completely predicated on revenge on Trump for not giving him a job in the administration. Cohen is the very definition of sour grapes.

Granted, Cohen still knows where the bodies are figuratively buried and, whatever his motives for coming clean and positioning himself as the reformed heel, it doesn't mean he doesn't know what he's talking about. However, a first year law student wouldn't have let Cohen off the hook after he volunteered that he overbilled the Trump Org $30,000.

There's no explaining that.

Until he was slapped with Justice Merchan's gag order, there was no stopping Trump from attacking Cohen and every witness who'd testified against him in the hush money trial. Instead, he launched a pathetic army of surrogates to do his dirty work for him, even going as far as to write and edit their talking points for them in open view of reporters.

And then there was Robert Costello, whose own appearance on the witness stand was even more inexplicable. Costello was obviously there at Trump's insistence because he knew he'd act as a bomb thrower and not the credible witness he desperately needed. Costello's behavior on the stand was so outrageous that Justice Merchan had to clear the courtroom so he could yell at Costello.

So, his attorneys' inability or unwillingness to kick Cohen when he was down defies explanation.

But Trump's life since he began his political career in 2015 has turned into a meat grinder for the lives of the people who've been convicted, thrown in prison, and been sanctioned and disbarred for carrying his rancid water. He has this superhuman ability to attract once-respected attorneys and when they're extruded out the other end, they've been turned into ambulance chasers.

Just based on these observations, it's easy to see how Trump's subversion of his attorneys' efforts and insistence on controlling everything will absolutely result in any number of guilty verdicts in this and his other three criminal cases. That is, if the right wingers who've hijacked those other three cases allow them to go to trial before Election Day, which is looking less and less likely.

Sunday, May 19, 2024

Pottersville Digest

Meanwhile, in the "Do as I say not as I do" files...

Hasn't it become screamingly obvious by now that Trump is completely incapable of delivering one speech without making a hatful of fuckups? Not one. Several. Why aren't his handlers doing more to keep this gibbering idiot off the campaign trail?

Enough barking. Let's see some biting.

He may be a conservative but I love George Conway. He tells it like it really is.

Let me guess: George Santos is now a reporter for TMZ?

Conway's right, as he usually is about Trump. But the MSM won't listen, they won't self correct (Ironically, even Trump does). That's because the high and mighty in the media are bloated with a sense of arrogance that defies belief and even a baseline of journalistic ethics. They're more interested in shaping narratives than in simply reporting the news. And this is the inevitable result of 100% of our mainstream media being owned by just five corporations.

Oops, Rudy doesn't live here, any more. And, speaking of whom...

Next thing you know, he'll be telling us he had the officials held at gunpoint with belts of bullets crossed over his chest.

Meme intermission.

The doctor is right. The more Trump feels like he's attacked, the angrier he gets. It's like a switch is flipped and all he can focus on is his rage. He's like an orange Hulk, minus the tragic, savage nobility.

Sure, Cannon, much more disappointing than you refusing to set a trial date.

Ask the workers in Lordstown, OH for a fact check.

Talk about a Republican letting his freak flag fly.

Sure, it's perfectly normal for a winning presidential candidate to call for the execution of his only rival.

If Biden had praised Hannibal Lecter, the MSM would've made a meal out of it. And finally...

One more time, for clarity's sake: We are the stupidest fucking nation on the planet. (Tip o' the tinfoil to Constant Reader, CC)

Friday, May 17, 2024

Pottersville Digest

(Yeah, still. She's permanently in my doghouse.)

Another right wing idiot who leapt and screamed before she looked.

Girl fight!

Meanwhile in NC, Republicans pretend to legislate for the common good. (Tip o' the tinfoil hat to Constant Reader, CC)

This ventriloquism act by all these right wing dummies clearly violates the gag order. Trump is forbidden from making statements attacking certain people either personally or through surrogates. We have the evidence he was providing the talking points. So why is he still running loose in Bedminster?

A little early to be tricking or treating as Trump, isn't it?

Oh, those rock-ribbed, conservative Republican family values!

Classic dick move by a sociopath. Here's the thing- He's passing counterfeit money and circulating it on the street. That's why these people are tagging the Secret Service because they're part of the Treasury Department. (Update: He's, of course, deleted the video.)

Shorter Clarence Thomas: "Who are you gonna believe? Me or those lying photographs?" (Another tip o' the tinfoil hat to Constant Reader, CC)