No Country For Old Men

     High ratings and viewer engagement do not necessarily translate to a worthy spectacle. Yes, CNN may have scored a ratings coup by somehow getting Donald Trump to agree to a debate for the first time in nearly four years. But the high visibility of the debate, which boasted of 50,000,000 viewers, also exposed CNN's failings.

     Spectacle should never be mistaken for necessity. Note the lead image above.

     That was the moment two locomotives were deliberately smashed into each other on September 15, 1896 in the briefly incorporated town of Crush, Texas. This idiotic stunt put on by the Katy Railroad was designed to publicize the Katy. It attracted tens of thousands of people from all over Texas and beyond and what no one seemed to have factored in was the possibility that one or both of the boilers could rupture and explode.

     Which was exactly what happened.

     Debris flew at the speed of bullets and landed hundreds of yards away. At least two people were killed. The photographer who took the lead image, Jervis Deane, lost an eye moments after snapping the picture. The executives who ran the Katy were all too well aware of the atavistic human tendency to passively watch disaster, albeit from a safe remove. This is why we hear to this day of idiots having picnics literally on Civil War battlefields as the bullets and mortars were flying around them.

     CNN was all too well aware of that, too. What they were blithely unaware of was the old journalism adage of not becoming the news. And, up to a point, they had by not only refusing to fact-check Trump but to even double down and defend that decision. CNN's position was that fact-checking was not their job despite employing Canadian fact checker Daniel Dale, who's based his entire career of late to fact-checking Trump and his constant fire hose of lies. 

     CNN also seems to have forgotten that their responsibility as a so-called news network is to give the people the facts and to not let serial liars go unchallenged for an hour and a half. Their refusal to even attempt to keep Trump on the straight and narrow almost made a mockery of the very definition of the word moderator. The whole idea of a presidential debate is to give the American voters a chance to hear each candidate's policy positions and achievements, not a pack of unchallenged lies.

     What we saw instead of an actual debate was the spectacle of Donald Trump walking all over the back of a strangely diminished Joe Biden. It led to the editorial boards of Raw Story and the New York Times for Biden to immediately drop out of the race if not resign the presidency. In fact, in a strange reversal, just yesterday, the day after the debate, Trump reverted back to his rambling incoherent ways at a rally in Chesapeake, VA while we got the strong Joe Biden of old at his rally in Raliegh, NC.

     But rallies and speeches aren't debates any more than debates are actual presidential administrations.

     Do we deserve better? In Biden's case, perhaps. In Trump's case? Absolutely.

     But the 2024 presidential campaign will be marked by the one, unavoidable object lesson in what happens when two very old men try to cling to power for too long and the poor choices given to the US electorate when those choices are made for us by two monolithic political parties.

     The Times' and Raw Story's editorial boards proved to be feckless and willing to 86 the president literally hours after the debate. They never seemed to factor in the fact that no replacement candidate would be able to use Biden's campaign funds, putting Democratic donors on their back foot, or what had happened the last time the Democratic Party replaced a major candidate at the last minute (The Eagleton debacle in '72).

     The editorial boards never even advanced their ideas for who on the Democratic side could plausibly beat Trump just 130 days before election day. The short answer is essentially nobody unless someone  can wave a magic wand and make Obama eligible to run for a third term.

     The bottom line is you don't ditch a man who'd capably run the country for three and a half years because he had one bad debate. Speaking of President Obama again, can anyone remember the first debate he had with Mitt Romney in 2012? Did the Democratic Party lose its collective shit and demand that Obama drop out of the race? Of course not. And the major difference was that 12 years ago, Obama wasn't old. Biden is.

     And this election cycle has betrayed the fecklessness of both parties, albeit in in diametrically opposite ways.

     The Republican Party has completely surrendered itself to Trump, a twice-impeached convicted criminal without the slightest sense of loyalty except to tinpot dictators and other criminals like him. They sang Happy Birthday to him and two weeks before that even dressed exactly like him outside the courthouse where he'd be convicted on 34 criminal counts.

     And, in stark contrast to the GOP's unwavering, cultish devotion to Trump, the Democratic Party looks like a bunch of wet-legged cunts for figuratively putting Joe Biden on an ice floe and pushing him out to sea and the so-called "liberal media" doesn't look any better.

     And the American people deserve better than spectacle for its own sake.

Dear Raw Story editorial staff:

      Maybe if you clowns didn't poach most of your "news" and viewpoints from anonymous cranks on Twitter (Not "X, formerly Twitter". Twitter), you could be taken more seriously. As it is, your "stories" are generally poorly-written and even more poorly-researched, which makes me less disposed to take your risible knock-off of The Nation seriously. And you're ready to jettison the president, our standard bearer, and to figuratively send him shivering and naked on an ice floe.
      That is simply not going to happen. President Biden is not dropping out, which would invite not only a crisis within the Democratic Party but perhaps even a Constitutional crisis without precedent in US history. There could be a dozen or more reasons for Biden's less than stellar performance tonight. It could be a cold as they say. Or lack of sleep, And you have not factored in a single one in your shitty op-ed. Plus you make me laugh when you try to pretend your scurrilous screed demanding he drop out would be seriously entertained on Capitol Hill.
      You also failed to address the fact that any replacement candidate would not legally be able to make use of the campaign funds given to Biden, which would put donors in an untenble position. And the last time America had a contested, or brokered, convention, it was a disaster.

      There are several reasons why a so-called editorial board could break precedence and to reverse years of restraint.
      This is not one of them.
      In short, go fuck yourselves for giving up on our president so expediently and easily.
      JP

Good Times at Pottersville

Pottersville Digest

Bringeth the children unto me, for I haveth big hands.

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     So sad, too bad.

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     Make America Great Again through human cock fights.

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     As usual, Republicans have all the best ideas regarding Black voter outreach. (Tip o' the tinfoil hat to Constant Reader, CC)

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     “As many of us know, Rep Friske is always exercising his 2nd Amendment right.”

     And that includes chasing a stripper and shooting at her?!

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     Even Trump's own people can't stand him. And keep in mind, corporate executives are some of the most evil sociopaths on the planet.

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     Then President Biden can ask him what his current wife's name is. That should be fun.

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     The Trump campaign: "Don't listen to Donald Trump."

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     And the moral of the story, kids, is that not only does crime pay but also pays off in stock options and dividends. (A 2nd tip o' the tinfoil hat to Constant Reader, CC)

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     Just remember, folks, idiots like this also have the right to vote

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     "He's probably taking Adderall suppositories. He just shoves them right up his ass!"

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     And the village idiots cheered.

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     "Sir, with all due respect, you are a fucking blithering idiot."

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     Number 1, Biden didn't get 80,000,000 votes. He got 81,000,000. Number 2, Trump actually got 74,000,000 votes, meaning he's actually low-balling his numbers for a change.

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     "But I love you, Mr. President." You do realize that he raped a 13 year-old child in Jeffrey Epstein's townhouse, right?

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     "Back in December 2023, the largest item for the legal defense fund was reportedly covering the bills of a huge party at Trump's Mar-a-Lago country club."
     Think that'll make a difference to the rubes who keep flinging their Social Security checks at him?

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     Sure, because the world is always in desperate need of Jabba the Hutt porn.

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     Another right wing sociopath. And this guy's too far afield for even the other sociopaths in the Indiana Republican Party. And finally...

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     And even after trying to murder a three year-old Muslim girl, she was bonded out... twice. Then again, it is Texas.

Grumpy Old Men 3

(By American Zen's Mike Flannigan, on loan from Ari)

I think most political scientists would agree that the only presidential debates that had an effect on an election was the first televised presidential debates between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon in 1960. That election was one of the closest in US history. Kennedy handily won by 84 electoral votes in the College but Nixon took 26 states to Kennedy's 22 and lost the popular vote by fewer than 113,000. The four debates between Nixon and Kennedy were crucial for both candidates and no doubt voters had what they saw on TV in mind when they went to the polls that November.

     And I believe most if not all those same political scientists would agree that, since 1960, presidential debates had waned in influence to the point that now everyone knows they don't move the needle for one candidate or the other one bit, especially in this age of political polarization. About the only value American voters get out of a presidential debate is hearing each candidates' policy positions. That is, if they stick to policy positions and not veer into personal insults.

     And that brings us to Donald Trump and his debate in four days with President Joe Biden. Starting with his series of debates with Secretary Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump had degraded what used to be something with some gravitas to a WWE spectacle. For some reason, the old rules of decorum didn't apply to Trump. During his debates with Clinton, for instance, he was allowed to wander around the stage and basically breathe down her neck while she spoke. When she brought up him not paying his taxes, he interrupted her and said that made him "smart."

     Things didn't get any better four years later when he debated Biden. Again, he kept boorishly interrupting. An exasperated Chris Wallace almost immediately lost control of the debate when Trump simply wouldn't shut up while Biden was speaking, leading him to say, "Will you shut up, man?" And all they had to do was to impose some common sense rules that they're finally going with now.

     And the reason for this is because the Debate Commission is not controlling this debate but CNN. The moderators will be Jake Tapper and Dana Bash (naturally, Trump has recently attacked both of them) and there will be rules in place to prevent the debate from becoming a free for all. Before, Trump forced his Democratic challenger to crawl into his own muck and mire. This will be different.

     The rules are thus:

     No studio audience.

     No pre-written notes.

     No props save for a pad, a pen and a bottle of water.

     Each man will get two minutes to answer questions, after which their microphone will be cut off.

     Each will have 60 seconds to rebut and another minute to answer rebuttals.

     They'll have to stand behind their respective podiums.

     There will be no opening statements. Trump gets the closing statement, which was determined by a coin toss.

    In most of these instances, Trump loses because that will effectively nullify his entire debate "strategy". Indeed, one is amazed Trump even consented to this debate and its rules considering his invariable aversion to debating during the primary season. And, in tried-and-true Republican fashion, he's already lowering expectations and, as with the election, is calling the debate rigged. And that's because, for the first time, Trump's going to be forced to sit at the grownup table and to act the part.

     So, what's that going to leave us with?

     Two frightfully old men who are going to waggle their fingers at the other and call each other old.

     Some people are predicting that at some point, Trump will rip off his microphone and storm off the stage but his pride won't let him do that. It's one thing to refuse to show up and make excuses but it's another thing to act like a toddler having a temper tantrum on live national television.

     So Trump will have no choice but to walk into the lion's den in Atlanta, ironically the same state in which he's under criminal indictment for trying to corrupt state officials to overturn the 2020 election, with Joe Biden being the aging lion.

     Now, there's no point in soft-pedaling the obvious, that Biden is old. He's 81 and will be 82 right after Election Day, meaning if he finishes a second term, he'll be 86. True, he's long past his prime, the Joe Biden that the late, great Hunter S. Thompson once called, "a rabid weasel on speed." He makes gaffes (who doesn't?), he stutters (We've known that for years) and he speaks more slowly (a natural effect of aging).

     But one doesn't need to be a syndicated media critic to know the MSM are falling down on the job and, as always, is trying to portray this as a neck and neck horse race between two candidates with approximate cognitive powers. Nothing could be further from the truth.

     Trump is now literally at the point where he can no longer make a public appearance or give an interview without making one verbal miscue after another. Meanwhile, the president is capably managing the largest economy on earth, the most most powerful military on the planet and one of the largest governments. The economy is in great shape, unemployment numbers are at their lowest since the 70s and Biden, an old foreign policy wonk from way back, is restoring our international prestige that took a hammering after four years of Trump.

     Meanwhile, the MSM are saying, "...but his age!"

    But the fact is, the president has been holed up in Camp David with his closest and most capable advisors doing debate prep, as you would expect of any professional politician running for office. Trump?

     He's busy smearing his greasy thumbprints all over his iphone while he scrawls one nasty post after another on his failing Truth Social.

     So, what can we expect on the 27th?

   It's a fool's errand to get into predictions. But with Donald Trump's now well-documented psychopathology, we can make some well-educated guesses. Since he's not used to having microphones cut off on him, he'll be reduced to making sour faces behind his podium and maybe even shout across the stage like a barfly at last call (Don't forget his audible muttering during witness testimony at the Manhattan criminal trial).

     He'll make a vain attempt to get around the rules and bend them to his liking, which also will not work. Trump is nothing if not a control freak and all Biden will have to do is stand there with a smile on his face. But again, even though this is the most highly anticipated debate in recent memory, look for Trump to find a way to back out at the last minute because he's a coward to the very bottom of his soul. And he can't stand the idea of being muzzled or to have his avowed enemy Joe Biden best him in a debate on national TV.

Pottersville Digest

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     The next flag I want to see the Alitos fly is the white surrender flag right before he's hounded off the High Court.

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     "Back in December 2023, the largest item for the legal defense fund was reportedly covering the bills of a huge party at Trump's Mar-a-Lago country club."

     Think that'll make a difference to the rubes who keep flinging their Social Security checks at him?

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     Shorter Clarence Thomas: "Gun owners should be allowed unrestricted access to firearms because spousal abuse wasn't a crime in the 18th century.

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     Morals, she said. MORALS.

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     If Switzerland can do this, why can't we?

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     Oh, look what the Neo Nazis just did.

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     Great moments in signage.

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     This is why Republicans should never be allowed to attempt humor.

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     The arrogance of this bitch! She won the Trump lottery by being given this case and was not giving up that Willie Wonka golden ticket for anything.

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     DeWine might as well have said, "I'm open for business. Now's the time to bribe me."

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     The country's burning down around their ears and this is their top priority?

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     Oh, but it's OK if Orban goes to Bedminster and starts inveighing about American politics, right?

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     You want to know why there were almost nothing but white assholes in the church? Because the Black parishioners didn't want to be there. And they didn't want to be there because they knew Trump would be there.

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     There is no God.

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     Trust me, whatever this city is doing, it's not enough. 1% of this city may be homeless but it always looks as if it's 50%.

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     Another racist, right wing snowflake bites the dust. P.S. In order to do a soul search, one must first have a soul. (Tip o' the tinfoil hat to Constant Reader, CC.) And finally...

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     This is what inevitably happens when you elect Republican scum.

Please Help Tamra

 

     I just got some heart-breaking news. My copyeditor and dear friend, Tamra Crow, just lost her boyfriend today. He collapsed on the job, EMS did CPR on him and they Life Flighted him to an area hospital. I just got word that he passed away today.

     I don't know if I can convey how much Tamra depended on James for virtually everything. He was virtually her only source of income and transportation. She never learned to drive. Years ago, he rescued her from a very violent and abusive relationship in California and he put her on a bus to Texas and he'd been caring for her until today. May of last year, he even helped her rescue a baby pig that they named Squeakers. James was obviously a very kind man and I cannot imagine what my poor friend is going through.

 

     They lived near his extended family but, since they were never married, I don't know if the family will continue caring for her. Over the last couple of years, they've been living in a travel trailer that's always under the threat of repossession by his ex-wife. And even with James working two jobs, it was a struggle to feed their pig, which is why I had to chip in countless hundreds of dollars over the last year to keep her fed.

     I will editorialize here and remind everyone that Texas' governor, some crippled Nazi named Greg Abbott, almost a year ago to the day signed into law a sadistic bill that allows employers in Texas to deny water breaks to their employees. I don't know what killed James. Even Tamra doesn't know. Since they weren't married, they may hide behind patient confidentiality laws to stonewall her.

     But you don't need me to tell you how brutal the Texas sun is and in his day job James worked outside, ironically, digging graves. I can perfectly imagine the poor guy keeling over because of the heat and dehydration. Thanks, Abbott and the TX legislature. As someone who's living under a never-ending heat wave here in Phoenix, I know firsthand how dangerous 110-120 degree temps can be.

     Her Paypal email is Tcroweditsing@yahoo.com. Right now, she and that sweet pig need all the help in the world and I'm not very confident the family will come through for them. For the love of God, please help them if you can spare even a few bucks. And even if you can't, then please put this out if you have blogs or social media accounts.

Happy Birthday at Pottersville

RIP GOP 1854-2024

 

   Today is Donald Trump's 78th birthday. That is the only way and this is the only time I will ever commemorate that. And I only mention that coincidental hijacking of Flag Day to make a point: That Donald Trump has single-handedly destroyed the Republican Party and had officially subsumed it just hours before his birthday. And the GOP let him.

    For good measure, he's also hollowed out the RNC by stuffing it with two-legged piranhas like his daughter in law Lara Trump and Michael Whatley. And the RNC let him.

     You don't need me to tell you that Donald Trump has transformed a once proud major political party  into a shameful and shameless cult. To look at the nauseatingly obsequious behavior of so-called GOP lawmakers during Trump's triumphant return to the scene of the crime, you'd swear they were taking all their cues from Pyongyang or 1930s Nazi Germany.

    They sang Happy Birthday to him like so many Marilyn Monroes in Brooks Brothers suits. One lawmaker wants to name bodies of water after him without a hint of irony or self awareness that Trump rolled back virtually every environmental regulation put in place by the Obama administration.

     Marjorie Taylor-Greene was positively giddy that Trump looked at her and smiled. Mike Johnson, Trump's new Charlie McCarthy, was glowing that Trump patted him on the head and told him what a good little Speaker he was. Another McCarthy can tell you how that is.

     The venue for this mass fellating was the scene, along with the RNC and DNC HQ, where perfectly functioning pipe bombs were found on January 6th. That irony was lost on them, too. It was a clear case to the rest of us of the criminal returning to the scene of a crime except this time the criminal was treated like a Roman emperor back from a successful campaign abroad.

    And, yes, we can call Trump a criminal without resorting to preemptive hyperbole. He was convicted on 34 counts in Manhattan just weeks earlier and awaits sentencing on July 11th, just four days before the RNC's national convention July 15-18th in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

     And that's the ironic thing, that the RNC convention is taking place in the Badger State because that is precisely where the Republican Party was found 170 years ago on March 20, 1854. Actually, it didn't spring up out of nowhere. It was created through a merger of two abolitionist political parties: The Northern Whigs, the Free Soil Party and the Anti-Nebraska movement. All three organizations were opposed to slavery and the Kansas-Nebraska Act.

     To those of us who aren't historically illiterate, that made the newfound Republican Party that had elected one of their own president in 1860 the progressives of their day. That lasted for roughly 70 years until the Republicans slowly began finding their inner southern Dixiecrat and began turning into political heels.

     But, still, decades into that transformation, Republicans stood for things that many Americans supported- Smaller government, lower taxes, strong foreign policy and national defense, etc. They still got shit done. Through a progressive taxation system in which the tax rate for the 1% was 91%, Eisenhower built the interstate highway system, thereby changing America for the better. John F. Kennedy, perhaps the most liberal US president ever, regularly sought President Eisenhower's counsel during his brief administration. In our post WWII swagger, no country, not even the once-mighty Soviet Union, dared fuck with us.

     Then came Nixon, then Reagan, then the Bushes and, finally, Trump.

     We liberals and progressives were always cynical about the downslide of the GOP. But those of us with the healthiest doses of skepticism never imagined the fall of the GOP would come in such a pathetic, shameless, even borderline comical manner as we've seen this week.

     The entire Republican Party, it seems, is literally singing Happy Birthday today with full throats to a mobster and convicted criminal who had sicced a murderous mob on them, the Speaker and even the Vice President on January 6th. Some of them are so divorced from reality they even deny that Trump was convicted in Manhattan. When he called Milwaukee "a horrible city", Mike Johnson even flat-out denied having heard Trump say it despite sitting next to Trump.

     It's impossible to fathom why they are doing this to themselves. At this point, they look and sound like so many Ken dolls, anatomically neutered, Republican Ken dolls kept in their bright shiny boxes ready to be brought out and dandled by Fourth Reich Barbie, Lara Trump. 

    And the man who was convicted of raping a woman in a department store dressing room and cheating  New York State out of countless millions in unpaid taxes, who is under criminal indictment for trying to subvert election results in Georgia and for stealing hundreds if not thousands of highly-sensitive secrets, is being feted by a major political party as if he's the second coming of Kim Jong Un.

     How can they be so blind? we rightly ask ourselves. This man, for want of a better word, who today is now five years past his life expectancy and can barely utter a coherent sentence, a man who has all the loyalty of a flared cobra and whose policy positions are shallower than his neck vagina, is looked upon as the future of their party.

    It simply doesn't make sense. As my late fiancee Barbara used to facetiously ask me, "You expect this to make sense, now?" And I'd always answer, "Yes!"

     Surely, these august statesmen who hold immeasurable power can't be so naïve as to believe that this bloated homunculus, this wroth-filled man-child won't lead us all down the primrose path to rack and ruin. His inattention to the pandemic resulted in a bare minimum of 400,000 American deaths. He was impeached twice and is only allowed to run for president because of their own inattention to their duties.

     Or maybe they're not blind. Perhaps they're cynically using Trump as some moth-eaten, creaking Trojan horse to enact their own poisonous agenda just as they had between 2017-2021. And, being Republicans, they don't give a rat's ass what they do to the rest of the country and the world as a result. Some men just want to watch the world burn, after all.

    So when they hold their convention, they'll nominate a convicted criminal who had just been sentenced days before, one still under indictment in three other jurisdictions. Their standard bearer will be a felon who will be barred from entering at least 40 other countries, many of them our allies, including the UK. And in the very state where the GOP was founded 170 years ago.

     It won't be so much a convention as a wake.

Good Times at Pottersville

Pottersville Digest

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     Even if this is true, and I think those of us with two neurons to rub together know better than to take whatever he says with more than a grain of salt, then this will make his shysters and E. Jean Carroll happy.

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     I think Congressman Rose's six year-old son acted more maturely today than the J6 rioter asshole who sat behind Dr. Fauci pulling faces.

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     "Oh, wow, a rare new species! Let's kill it."

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     No, asshole. That's just you looking in the mirror.

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     Kohl's just dropped out of sponsoring the Nazi convention in Milwaukee. Good for them.

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     Who is this right wing asshole? "Shaky legal reasoning"? Well, the NY prosecutors established guilt beyond a reasonable doubt across nearly three dozen criminal counts and the jury agreed. And how come he doesn't seem so concerned about the "shaky legal reasoning" behind Hunter Biden's bullshit trial regarding firearms violations (especially as Hunter had surrendered the gun just two weeks after buying it)?

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     I see President Biden getting more than the 270 electoral votes he needs. In fact, I see him surpassing the 306 electoral college votes he got in 2020. Why? Because Trump is shedding more supporters every time he opens his mouth. Suburban white female voters are less likely to vote for him than they were in 2020 when they collectively turned their backs on him. Independents are turning away from him in droves including more centrist Republican voters. Young people will not vote for him in significant numbers. Same goes for Jewish voters, African American voters, Latino voters, demographics that historically skew Democratic. These plain facts are at stark odds with the usual lying polls that say this is a neck and neck race (they say that every four years in order to cynically and artificially maintain and drive viewer and reader engagement). He will lose the popular vote for the third time in a row because he will never appeal to any demographic beyond that rock-solid 30-35% of MAGAts.

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     Because, yeah, Trump was sprayed with fire hoses and had police dogs sicced on him in Manhattan.

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    But, yeah, let's talk about Hunter Biden. (Narrator: Hunter Biden surrendered his gun two weeks after buying it.)

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     I think it's time to call in Kristi Noem to put him out of his misery.

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     Slouching toward Bethlehem, New York.

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     Morons literally on parade. They like to scream "Back the Blue!" until they themselves break the law and get arrested.

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     These people sound like heroin addicts during a slight hiccup in the heroin supply chain.

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     It makes perfect sense that Time Magazine would dumb down questions for Trump in the faint hopes of getting cogent answers from Donnie Dumbo. But that's not fair to Biden.

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    The only proper names for this guy are Uncle Tom, Toby and Topsy.

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     Sam Alito: "Take my wife, please!" And finally...

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     Alvin Bragg is about to step in a viper's nest and, if he does, it will not end well.

Pottersville Digest

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     In the real world, we call this witness tampering.

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     Who wants to tell this blithering Russian idiot that it was the "zombie" that freed him, not Trump.

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     Yep, they're in the bunker phase.

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     I guess it's too much to expect Trump to know that the Supreme Court historically does not like getting involved in state court decisions. But then again, we've never had a nakedly fascist Supreme Court like this before.

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     Typical Trump timing. Jump on the Titanic after it hits the iceberg. Well played, sir, well played.

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     Iron eagles of a feather fly together. (Tip o' the tinfoil hat to Constant Reader, CC)

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     "Judge Carl Nichols, who oversaw the proceedings against Bannon and granted that appeals bond, happens to be a Trump appointee who clerked for Justice Clarence Thomas. He is the only judge on the District Court in the District of Columbia who ruled the government couldn’t use the obstruction statute against January 6 participants..."

     In case you were wondering.

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    I don't want his name stripped off a state park. I want it stripped off state ballots, like Washington state may have to do by law.

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     Am I an asshole for wanting to buy a bag of cotton balls so I can sponge their tears then squeeze them into my Bushmills so I can drink their tears? Absolutely and I don't really give a shit. Schadenfreude exists for some good reasons. Like their tee shirt says, fuck your feelings.

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     One thing Litman never mentioned is something called allocution, which is the defendant's last chance to address the judge before sentencing. It gives the convicted defendant one final chance to throw themself on the mercy of the court and get a lighter sentence. Trump is completely incapable of humility or remorse because he's a megalomaniacal sociopath. If he decides to take allocution, it'll be a fucking disaster because he'll take that opportunity to spit in the judge's face.

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     Capping some leftys, huh? Real tough guy anonymous keyboard jihadists. I'm quaking in my sneakers.

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     This is almost inevitably what happens when you put right wingers on TV, especially if they're Hogan Diddly.

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     Why isn't this bloated, liver-spotted Nazi making license plates in prison?

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     Instead of trying to steal money from Republicans, maybe Trump can sell trading cards with small pieces of his orange jumpsuit.

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     Will someone please kick this douchebag's fat, pasty ass back to South Africa where he belongs? I mean, I know Trump has a weakness for white, right wing foreigners who insist on fiddle-fucking with our elections but this is getting ridiculous.

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     I think we can safely infer by now that right wing supreme court justices have horrible taste in wives.

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     Wow. He's always been a blithering idiot. Who knew? And finally...

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     I don't like Mike Johnson one bit but I have to admit, this was funny.

What Will Trump's Final Words Be?

      This article made me wonder what Trump's final words will be. Here are some of my guesses:

1) Why me? I'm the only person who's ever died.

2) I wish I'd spent more time with Putin.

3) I didn't know I had so many kids.

4) What do you mean Melania won't be here?

5) I'll appeal this to the Supreme Court.

6) I wonder how much I'll get in the first fundraising email after my death?

7) Obama did this to me.

8) Little Rocket Man is going to call me a dotard after I'm gone, won't he?

9) It's so unfair. God is a Democrat.

10) Ivanka, give me a quickie before I go.

Make Trump Earn His Martydom

 (By American Zen's Mike Flannigan, on loan from Ari)

No matter how many negative firsts Donald Trump achieves (the only twice-impeached president, the only one to be indicted on criminal counts and, now, the only one to ever be convicted on felony criminal counts), it seems there's that rock-solid 30-35% of American voters who will never draw that red line or that Trump cannot cross. Trump never has to worry about the Rubicon because, to him, it simply doesn't exist.

     Last Thursday at precisely five o'clock, the Manhattan jury delivered its verdicts after just 12 hours of deliberation across two days. Before the jury sequestration had begun, Justice Juan Merchan had read to the jury a hefty 50 pages of instructions, including an injunction not to solely rely on Michael Cohen's testimony to determine Trump's guilt in several of the counts. Just hours before the verdict was read, the jury asked Justice Merchan to read the instructions to them again. Not unprecedented but certainly eyebrow-raising.

     In the end, as we all now know, Trump was found guilty on all 34 counts. The man who wanted to put Hillary Clinton behind bars eight years ago for crimes she didn't commit is now facing the very real possibility of jail or prison time himself. While his other three criminal trials are languishing in Washington, Florida and Georgia thanks to right wing defenders, it's a supreme irony that Trump was found guilty on nearly three dozen criminal counts of falsifying business records and violating campaign finance laws. In fact, Trump's native New York City. one he arguably helped build, is still the only state that has found him guilty or liable in civil and criminal court not once, not twice but three times.

     It's nice to delude oneself into believing with these verdicts that the rule of law reigns supreme but the fact is, that simply isn't true. Just the day before the verdict in Manhattan, Chief Justice John Roberts outright refused to meet with Senate Democrats regarding the moral turpitude of several of his justices. His excuse was the "separation of powers" clause in the Constitution, which is just a risible attempt to say one branch hasn't any enforcement mechanism over another. (Like the Legislative over the Judicial)

     The SCOTUS, of course, has agreed to hear Donald Trump's ridiculous claim of absolute immunity for any crime he'd commit (while steadfastly refusing to acknowledge having committed any crimes), which would, in effect, shred Roberts' claim of separation of powers (Such as the Judicial having any sway or influence over the Executive). And, as stated, because of Aileen Cannon, the best and only competent legal counsel Trump has working for him, Trump's stolen documents trial doesn't even have a docket number much less a trial date.

     Because of the Supreme Court's dithering on the immunity case (the court's session ends at the end of this month), the insurrection trial in Judge Tanya Chutkan's court is also on hold. A likely SCOTUS ruling (unsigned, of course) that Trump does have absolute immunity from committing any crimes, however serious, would effectively end Jack Smith's case in Manhattan. And who knows what the hell is going on in Fulton County, Georgia?

     So, don't be so quick to pronounce the rule of law as reigning supreme over the land.

    Ideally, the rule of law applies to all citizens, in every town, city and state, regardless of the defendant's standing. I say "ideally" because the truth is very different. A blind man or the most legally illiterate person could see that Trump was given latitude and deference that would've been unthinkable with any other criminal defendant. Every day, he'd lumber out to the hallway and whine to the press about how unfairly he was being treated, usually violating his gag order, even though at the end of each trial day he was allowed to take an armored limousine back to his life of luxury at Trump Tower or Bedminster across the Hudson. Or rounds of golf at Mar a Lago, courtesy of his private 757.

     And yet, to judge by pictures taken inside the court room, as the seven week-long hush money trial progressed, it seemed the court bailiffs began standing closer and closer behind Trump as if they were under orders to stop him from fleeing. The threat of jail is still a very real one. But the rule of law should reign supreme outside the borough of Manhattan, where, in short order, Trump is 0-3.

 

"I'd Love it."

 

Of course, the day after the conviction, Trump stood adjacent the golden escalator in Trump Tower on which he famously descended in June 2015 and delivered a "press conference" (Without taking questions) that lasted just over a half hour and lashed out at the judge once again despite the fact that Judge Merchan didn't indict him (the grand jury did) nor convicted him (the jury did). Merchan has complete control over the sentencing phase, however and Trump's last shot at getting any leniency will be on July 11th during allocution before sentencing.

    Allocution is a defendant's last chance to directly address the judge and to show contrition or remorse and, if this is successfully done, it'll usually result in a lighter sentence. Of course, it's up to the convicted defendant whether or not to avail themself of allocution.

     However, even those of us only casually knowledgeable of Trump's personality know that, to put it mildly, contrition and remorse are not in his skill set. In fact, it's likely that his DNA has a genome that prevents him from even effectively manufacturing either quality. It's likely, if he takes allocution, he'll use that as an opportunity to call Merchan a third rate, partisan hack and essentially shoot himself in the foot with a .50 caliber Barrett. During the Manhattan trial regarding falsifying business records, Judge Engoron threatened him with jail time and he threw up his hands and said, "I'd love it."

     And he would do this because he's obsessed with his own martyrdom. But Trump is a man who, until this past year, has evaded legal accountability as skillfully as he'd avoided paying taxes all these decades. He was treated with kid gloves and, even after violating Judge Merchan's gag order at least 10 times, it resulted in no more than $10,000 in fines. He's a thin-skinned, petulant little boy in a bloated old fat man's body who screeches at even mild criticism much less actual comeuppance.

     In short, Trump doesn't know what it feels like to be a true martyr nor would he want to. I guarantee you if Trump lived in the Middle Ages and was even just shown the crude, filthy instruments of torture used by the Spanish Inquisition, he'd immediately be reduced to a sloppy pile of urine, vomit and fecal matter.

    As with everything else in life, Trump expects everything to be handed to him including his martyrdom. To Trump, establishing martyrdom consists largely if not exclusively in getting rubes to throw money at his well-shined shoes (According to the campaign, he's hauled in $52.8 million in the first 24 hours after the verdict, which is nearly two million more than the Biden campaign took in during the entire month of May). But that's not martyrdom, not even cheap martyrdom. 

    No, Trump wants to be a martyr with a putter in his hand, living in his gaudy faux gold environments replete with overdone steaks with ketchup and oceans of Diet Coke. He wants the pity of the American people while pretending he's still the president and scuttling bipartisan legislation with a single post on Truth Social.

     If he takes allocution, and I dearly hope he does, his inner scorpion will come out and he'll literally dare the judge to put him in jail. And, for once, I say if that's what Trump wants, then that's what he should get.

     Let him earn his martyrdom.