Charlie, here's one for yah...I'm a pretty plumpy, lumpy X football jock, carpetbagger candidate for senate in Georgia, convinced that Mother Xi, not Mother Nature, controls the atmosphere; accused of an addiction to Russian Roulette and a fondness for Russian dictators and I can't speak the King's - not even the Court Jester's - English - and I'm still poised to sit in the world's Greatest Deliberative Body. Who would have thunk it !!!!
Charlie, here's one for yah...I'm a pretty plumpy, lumpy X football jock, carpetbagger candidate for senate in Georgia, convinced that Mother Xi, not Mother Nature, controls the atmosphere; accused of an addiction to Russian Roulette and a fondness for Russian dictators and I can't speak the King's - not even the Court Jester's - English - and I'm still poised to sit in the world's Greatest Deliberative Body. Who would have thunk it !!!!
“[T]he Special Master process will have forced the Plaintiff to fully and specifically disclose a defense to the merits of any subsequent indictment without such a requirement being evident in the District Court’s order.”
Translation:
"Trump will be forced to state the truth now, potentially allowing future findings to be evaluated against it, restricting his opportunity to fabricate a putative truth in response to future indictments. Furthermore, it will likely encourage him to engage in the aforementioned fabrication now, while I'm his lawyer, as opposed to some other schmuck who takes up his case later after I've collected my fee and publicly disavowed this chump to protect my reputation."
Also, Elise Stefanik going on Steve Bannon's podcast is nothing new. She did it last year too.
As for Herschel Walker, he might as well get out ahead of things and get people to lower the bar for him early on. That way, he's got a shot as long as he manages to speak in complete sentences and otherwise remain quiet without his eyes crossed and his tongue hanging out. It worked for Trump.
We also note today that the OJ has claimed that he would have gotten much better seating than Biden did at the funeral. As my spouse observed
"They were probably protecting Biden. If Trump had gone, he would have had front row seating with the views from every imaginable rooftop being excellent."
The people sitting directly opposite the immediate family in the abbey weren't the leaders of the most powerful states, but the queen & crown prince of Denmark . I didn't easily recognize the others in the front row, but behind them were the Spanish royals-- the present & preceding king & queen. So maybe there's a royal bias, but at least as important was probably length of association with Elizabeth II. Trump couldn't recognize that element-- but only "who's most powerful and feared."
No, I was just pointing out something I noticed about the seating priority that Trump is too mentally disordered to have understood.
First I recognized Denmark's crown prince and wondered why he had such high-priority seating, and then I noticed that he was accompanying Queen Margrethe, who would have been a very honored guest because she was a close-neighbor royal for so long. I think she and Elizabeth had a great rapport -- as do Princess Mary & Princess Catherine.
So there's a personal dimension that Trump wouldn't have seen, with his fixation on status.
Trump was not mentally disordered. He said it to cause a news reaction which kept him at the top of that news cycle. He does it almost every day. It has nothing to do with the seating or the funeral.
How does a comment about seating at the funeral have "nothing to do with the seating or the funeral"?
What wold be the point of "getting a media reaction" by making himself look petty, unhinged and clueless, if he isn't really a petty, unhinged narcissist who's obsessed with puffing himself up and dragging others down? Trump exhibits bizarre thought patterns on a regular basis. It's not just play-acting to stay at the top of the news cycle. There are ways to get attention without sounding deranged.
Trump clearly assumed that the seating arrangement demonstrated a lack of respect for Biden and a loss of respect for America under Biden's governance. It's just one more variation on a theme he repeats constantly, along with many other declarations of his own superiority. Those themes are such a constant in his pronouncements that It strains credulity to suggest he wasn't really expressing his view of the situation but only making up a tale to "cause a news reaction." He thinks in terms of status -- especially his own. So he assumed that the seating was all about a hierarchy of power in the world. And he made himself (once again) look stupid to all but his cult followers.
staying in a position where people talk about you is a basic tenet of the notion that "bad publicity is better than no publicity"
Trump is also saying that DeSantis stole his idea about how to treat refugees. He knows his crowd. While it may offend you and I don't blame you at all for being offended, his base loves it. Trumps loves his low information voters. He says so. Sticking it to Biden gives his base the giggles.
He absolutely said it on purpose. If one thing, he's really good at media publicity manipulation.
Abject bullies are entirely emotional, re TFG. Rarely are thoughts as deep as their shallow desire for immediate pain given and bruised ego revenged. This is the way of the narcissist. (I guarantee DeSantis is one as are many cheap pols and captains of industry.) This is the way of the fascist.
And that latter brand of evil is assuredly DeSantis. Isn't it strange how far too many Ivy educated [sic] are willing totalitarians?
Note: I am Ivy educated too and I can not abhor these privileged fascists, these self-aggrandized authoritarians strongly enough.
Who's face is on the coin Preacher? If the left has weaponized the university. The right has weaponized the church. My church has become a shadow of itself. All politics and no passion. We need to make up boogie men and false outrage to fill church pews. "you are neither hot nor cold, so I shall spit you out of my mouth". Jesus Christ.
There is an interesting sub-story on the busses from Texas. A pair of them appearing in New York were bearing the Logo and painting of the Marin Airporter, from Marin County California. These busses were sold by the Airporter a year ago to a company in Texas. It is of course a violation of trademark, and a gross misrepresentation, to continue using these busses without repainting them. The Airporter company is of course sending a cease and desist to the new owners. However, one suspects a deeper story here, one where a Texas governor who just loves to stick it to his opponents, might possibly have colluded with the purchasers to use those busses to specifically send a message to California. I hope the national news keeps an eye on this. It may be tip of an iceburg..
A cornered rat is a dangerous rat, and the obese rat with the orange hair and enough face paint to challenge Custer at Little Big Horn is cornered and he knows it! His legal team, all proud graduates of Joe’s College of Knowledge, compound his dilemma. Their choice of Special Master is delicious, for the DOJ! and attempting to withhold information from the Special Master by arguing it’s their secret defense after indictment convulses me in joy. Sidney Powell did unleash The Kraken in GA. and the giant squid has its tentacles attached to her and her Trump minions and is dragging her through the dark ocean depths of indictment. What is Trump to do? Embrace Q and call these violent nutballs to riot and mame and kill. Ah, and additional charges for Garland to bring. So what happens next. Who knows but these are rationale sequallae. Trumps internal plumbing blows a gasket - stroke or myocardial infarction. His obesity, age and the anxiety of his predicament are all factors. Trump’s calling his crazies to arms results in violence and injury - if not deaths. But the optimal outcome is Trump continues to command the news with his craziness so alienating the electorate that anyone in possession of even one functioning brain cell won’t vote for him.
Isn’t it just as likely barr attempted to rehabilitate himself coincidentally, right before berman knee-capped him and his iron fist rule of the justice department while pushing his new book?
seems all too common now, whether journalist, or public official to monetize truths above all else. apparently coming clean for the public good is not terribly commensurate with 2022 American “ideals”. capitalism is great and all but perhaps democracy is priceless.
If there is a second civil war it will be nothing like the first one.
The first civil war had fairly clearly delineated geographic bounds and basically occurred on a state v state level. There were separate economies, pretensions to actual nationhood. A realistic probability that a separate nation with clear national boundaries and national structures could be created.
Currently the separation isn't really state v state, nation v nation. In many senses there is little distinction or separation on the fundamental levels of economy and social structure.
States appear red or blue on the basis of the population distribution between what we can loosely term urban and rural. If the rural population is larger the state is red, if smaller, it is blue--if they are even we call it purple. Some areas at the rural/urban boundary flip flop.
This doesn't make for neat battle lines or self-supporting economies that can sustain large scale conflict.
There will be a lot of terrorism and assassination, street violence. This will occur while a large number of the population is simply trying to get on with their lives (and those lives keep getting worse because of the mess).
Northern Ireland or Iraq or Afghanistan are closer to what you will see.
Steep decline ion the availability of things and massive inflation. Severely curtailed travel... a potential collapse of the economy on a scale not seen since the great depression--probably actually worse than that.
This is assuming the insurrectionists (at this point I am assuming the Right are the insurrectionists because, well---look around) can:
1) Get their act together ITFP;
2) Actually get more than the real whackjobs to engage in violence; and
3) Remain active for more than a few weeks.
It will be a mess like no one in this country (barring vets who served in Iraq or Afghanistan) has ever seen or experienced. I shudder to think about how bad it could actually get...
and we will get some form of dictatorship or quasi-dictatorship out of the whole thing. in the end.
Charlie didn't give it much of a shout-out today in Morning Shots, but the Major Garret/David Becker piece in The Bulwark this morning should be mandatory reading for anyone here who cares about democracy preservation, because you're going to get a real good look at the tight rope we're going to be walking for the next 4 years at a minimum, and how it could potentially unwind. Stop wish-casting that your political opposition problems will just magically go away one day and start getting yourselves mentally prepared for shit like this:
They've already got the Turner Diaries and a million other blueprints just like them. It's more important for the pro-democracy side to wake the fuck up and start preparing for the high-cost/low-probability events than it is to give the anti-democracy side just one more blueprint for the stack.
You hijack democracy via anocratic government once you're back in power, *then* you do the nasty shit once you're in permanent control of the people in the government with guns because you replaced all their bosses with "actings" (Schedule F). Then, when the political opposition enacts the political violence to get rid of the anocratic government *or* responds to the violence of 3rd party street enforcers for the anocratic gov (Proud Boys, Patriot Prayer, etc.), you bring the full force of the government onto any armed/unarmed political opposition that supports the people fighting back against the anocratic gov and/or their 3rd party street enforcers. It's literally this simple, and it happens on a timeline of a few years. Anocrats in power keep the economy good and the taxes low and everyone basically stops giving a fuck that we're an anocracy at that point because fighting back would suck and things are going okay on the raising a family and having a job front, so why bother? Late stage capitalism would lubricate the transition to anocracy like KY jelly.
I pray that god gives ronny everything he's got coming...
DeSantis has shown himself to be a vicious little creep. Any chance that I would vote for him for president has disappeared.
Charlie, here's one for yah...I'm a pretty plumpy, lumpy X football jock, carpetbagger candidate for senate in Georgia, convinced that Mother Xi, not Mother Nature, controls the atmosphere; accused of an addiction to Russian Roulette and a fondness for Russian dictators and I can't speak the King's - not even the Court Jester's - English - and I'm still poised to sit in the world's Greatest Deliberative Body. Who would have thunk it !!!!
Charlie, here's one for yah...I'm a pretty plumpy, lumpy X football jock, carpetbagger candidate for senate in Georgia, convinced that Mother Xi, not Mother Nature, controls the atmosphere; accused of an addiction to Russian Roulette and a fondness for Russian dictators and I can't speak the King's - not even the Court Jester's - English - and I'm still poised to sit in the world's Greatest Deliberative Body. Who would have thunk it !!!!
Doesn’t Sheriff Salazar realize there’s an election coming up? He can’t be investigating stuff.
Trump's lawyers:
“[T]he Special Master process will have forced the Plaintiff to fully and specifically disclose a defense to the merits of any subsequent indictment without such a requirement being evident in the District Court’s order.”
Translation:
"Trump will be forced to state the truth now, potentially allowing future findings to be evaluated against it, restricting his opportunity to fabricate a putative truth in response to future indictments. Furthermore, it will likely encourage him to engage in the aforementioned fabrication now, while I'm his lawyer, as opposed to some other schmuck who takes up his case later after I've collected my fee and publicly disavowed this chump to protect my reputation."
Also, Elise Stefanik going on Steve Bannon's podcast is nothing new. She did it last year too.
As for Herschel Walker, he might as well get out ahead of things and get people to lower the bar for him early on. That way, he's got a shot as long as he manages to speak in complete sentences and otherwise remain quiet without his eyes crossed and his tongue hanging out. It worked for Trump.
We also note today that the OJ has claimed that he would have gotten much better seating than Biden did at the funeral. As my spouse observed
"They were probably protecting Biden. If Trump had gone, he would have had front row seating with the views from every imaginable rooftop being excellent."
The people sitting directly opposite the immediate family in the abbey weren't the leaders of the most powerful states, but the queen & crown prince of Denmark . I didn't easily recognize the others in the front row, but behind them were the Spanish royals-- the present & preceding king & queen. So maybe there's a royal bias, but at least as important was probably length of association with Elizabeth II. Trump couldn't recognize that element-- but only "who's most powerful and feared."
you missed my humor I suspect.
No, I was just pointing out something I noticed about the seating priority that Trump is too mentally disordered to have understood.
First I recognized Denmark's crown prince and wondered why he had such high-priority seating, and then I noticed that he was accompanying Queen Margrethe, who would have been a very honored guest because she was a close-neighbor royal for so long. I think she and Elizabeth had a great rapport -- as do Princess Mary & Princess Catherine.
So there's a personal dimension that Trump wouldn't have seen, with his fixation on status.
Trump was not mentally disordered. He said it to cause a news reaction which kept him at the top of that news cycle. He does it almost every day. It has nothing to do with the seating or the funeral.
How does a comment about seating at the funeral have "nothing to do with the seating or the funeral"?
What wold be the point of "getting a media reaction" by making himself look petty, unhinged and clueless, if he isn't really a petty, unhinged narcissist who's obsessed with puffing himself up and dragging others down? Trump exhibits bizarre thought patterns on a regular basis. It's not just play-acting to stay at the top of the news cycle. There are ways to get attention without sounding deranged.
Trump clearly assumed that the seating arrangement demonstrated a lack of respect for Biden and a loss of respect for America under Biden's governance. It's just one more variation on a theme he repeats constantly, along with many other declarations of his own superiority. Those themes are such a constant in his pronouncements that It strains credulity to suggest he wasn't really expressing his view of the situation but only making up a tale to "cause a news reaction." He thinks in terms of status -- especially his own. So he assumed that the seating was all about a hierarchy of power in the world. And he made himself (once again) look stupid to all but his cult followers.
His cult followers are his greatest asset.
staying in a position where people talk about you is a basic tenet of the notion that "bad publicity is better than no publicity"
Trump is also saying that DeSantis stole his idea about how to treat refugees. He knows his crowd. While it may offend you and I don't blame you at all for being offended, his base loves it. Trumps loves his low information voters. He says so. Sticking it to Biden gives his base the giggles.
He absolutely said it on purpose. If one thing, he's really good at media publicity manipulation.
Just one more data point in how out of touch they guy is. We're talking about a funeral and he wants to score points on where he would be seated.
Where is someone to stand up and say, "A real man doesn't try to get in a pissing contest about seating at a funeral"
One with an enlarged prostate?
"Did DeSantis Really Think This Through?"
Abject bullies are entirely emotional, re TFG. Rarely are thoughts as deep as their shallow desire for immediate pain given and bruised ego revenged. This is the way of the narcissist. (I guarantee DeSantis is one as are many cheap pols and captains of industry.) This is the way of the fascist.
And that latter brand of evil is assuredly DeSantis. Isn't it strange how far too many Ivy educated [sic] are willing totalitarians?
Note: I am Ivy educated too and I can not abhor these privileged fascists, these self-aggrandized authoritarians strongly enough.
Who's face is on the coin Preacher? If the left has weaponized the university. The right has weaponized the church. My church has become a shadow of itself. All politics and no passion. We need to make up boogie men and false outrage to fill church pews. "you are neither hot nor cold, so I shall spit you out of my mouth". Jesus Christ.
Civil unrest that is worse than the 1960's...yes. Civil war as in the 1860's? No, I argued a couple of weeks ago: https://democracythroughthelookingglass.substack.com/p/the-digital-age-and-civil-war
There is an interesting sub-story on the busses from Texas. A pair of them appearing in New York were bearing the Logo and painting of the Marin Airporter, from Marin County California. These busses were sold by the Airporter a year ago to a company in Texas. It is of course a violation of trademark, and a gross misrepresentation, to continue using these busses without repainting them. The Airporter company is of course sending a cease and desist to the new owners. However, one suspects a deeper story here, one where a Texas governor who just loves to stick it to his opponents, might possibly have colluded with the purchasers to use those busses to specifically send a message to California. I hope the national news keeps an eye on this. It may be tip of an iceburg..
A cornered rat is a dangerous rat, and the obese rat with the orange hair and enough face paint to challenge Custer at Little Big Horn is cornered and he knows it! His legal team, all proud graduates of Joe’s College of Knowledge, compound his dilemma. Their choice of Special Master is delicious, for the DOJ! and attempting to withhold information from the Special Master by arguing it’s their secret defense after indictment convulses me in joy. Sidney Powell did unleash The Kraken in GA. and the giant squid has its tentacles attached to her and her Trump minions and is dragging her through the dark ocean depths of indictment. What is Trump to do? Embrace Q and call these violent nutballs to riot and mame and kill. Ah, and additional charges for Garland to bring. So what happens next. Who knows but these are rationale sequallae. Trumps internal plumbing blows a gasket - stroke or myocardial infarction. His obesity, age and the anxiety of his predicament are all factors. Trump’s calling his crazies to arms results in violence and injury - if not deaths. But the optimal outcome is Trump continues to command the news with his craziness so alienating the electorate that anyone in possession of even one functioning brain cell won’t vote for him.
Isn’t it just as likely barr attempted to rehabilitate himself coincidentally, right before berman knee-capped him and his iron fist rule of the justice department while pushing his new book?
seems all too common now, whether journalist, or public official to monetize truths above all else. apparently coming clean for the public good is not terribly commensurate with 2022 American “ideals”. capitalism is great and all but perhaps democracy is priceless.
Trump's legal defense is like a 3 card monte street hustle.
WRT Civil War:
If there is a second civil war it will be nothing like the first one.
The first civil war had fairly clearly delineated geographic bounds and basically occurred on a state v state level. There were separate economies, pretensions to actual nationhood. A realistic probability that a separate nation with clear national boundaries and national structures could be created.
Currently the separation isn't really state v state, nation v nation. In many senses there is little distinction or separation on the fundamental levels of economy and social structure.
States appear red or blue on the basis of the population distribution between what we can loosely term urban and rural. If the rural population is larger the state is red, if smaller, it is blue--if they are even we call it purple. Some areas at the rural/urban boundary flip flop.
This doesn't make for neat battle lines or self-supporting economies that can sustain large scale conflict.
There will be a lot of terrorism and assassination, street violence. This will occur while a large number of the population is simply trying to get on with their lives (and those lives keep getting worse because of the mess).
Northern Ireland or Iraq or Afghanistan are closer to what you will see.
Steep decline ion the availability of things and massive inflation. Severely curtailed travel... a potential collapse of the economy on a scale not seen since the great depression--probably actually worse than that.
This is assuming the insurrectionists (at this point I am assuming the Right are the insurrectionists because, well---look around) can:
1) Get their act together ITFP;
2) Actually get more than the real whackjobs to engage in violence; and
3) Remain active for more than a few weeks.
It will be a mess like no one in this country (barring vets who served in Iraq or Afghanistan) has ever seen or experienced. I shudder to think about how bad it could actually get...
and we will get some form of dictatorship or quasi-dictatorship out of the whole thing. in the end.
Charlie didn't give it much of a shout-out today in Morning Shots, but the Major Garret/David Becker piece in The Bulwark this morning should be mandatory reading for anyone here who cares about democracy preservation, because you're going to get a real good look at the tight rope we're going to be walking for the next 4 years at a minimum, and how it could potentially unwind. Stop wish-casting that your political opposition problems will just magically go away one day and start getting yourselves mentally prepared for shit like this:
https://www.thebulwark.com/how-the-second-civil-war-could-start/
They've already got the Turner Diaries and a million other blueprints just like them. It's more important for the pro-democracy side to wake the fuck up and start preparing for the high-cost/low-probability events than it is to give the anti-democracy side just one more blueprint for the stack.
You hijack democracy via anocratic government once you're back in power, *then* you do the nasty shit once you're in permanent control of the people in the government with guns because you replaced all their bosses with "actings" (Schedule F). Then, when the political opposition enacts the political violence to get rid of the anocratic government *or* responds to the violence of 3rd party street enforcers for the anocratic gov (Proud Boys, Patriot Prayer, etc.), you bring the full force of the government onto any armed/unarmed political opposition that supports the people fighting back against the anocratic gov and/or their 3rd party street enforcers. It's literally this simple, and it happens on a timeline of a few years. Anocrats in power keep the economy good and the taxes low and everyone basically stops giving a fuck that we're an anocracy at that point because fighting back would suck and things are going okay on the raising a family and having a job front, so why bother? Late stage capitalism would lubricate the transition to anocracy like KY jelly.