Considering the other immoral, fraudulent, evil lengths Barr, Pence & Guilianni did for Trump in furtherance of their own interests, I find it hard to believe they still had “democracy antibodies”.I think it’s more likely Barr & Pence are two old white men who had & have racist, theocracy, patriarchal agendas. General Milley made it clear, military would not be used against its citizens. The implied flip side of Milley’s declaration is that the military WOULD use force to prevent sedition. Barr & Pence didn’t want to get killed or arrested. They’d advanced these agendas as far as they could go & only stopped short of open sedition because of fear. McConnell tried to draw line at January 6, because Trump was no longer useful for his anti democracy agenda. Unfortunately for McConnell, Trump’s base has become a monster he can’t control. Guiliana is an old mean, narcissistic, alcoholic, who was able to seemingly represent the right kind of masculinity at a pivotal time for country. He seemed & perhaps was competent when he was mayor. He was rapidly losing his cognitive abilities & desperately trying to recoup money he’d squandered & to stay relevant during the Trump years. I assume he had a moment of rare cognitive awareness that he might get killed if he pursued military solution.
I get looking for anything that looks like people respecting norms or not doing the absolute batshit crazy thing. It's because we are all completely exhausted by not only the batshit crazy, but by every time that Lucy yanks the football again. All the times we see a glimmer of a return to normalcy and then YANK. But we give them cookies for it every time, don't we? But I won't fall for this again. No, Rudy isn't someone that respected any norms. He was out there inciting a damn mob on January 6th. So I don't feel the need to give him a cookie or to respect that there might have been a line where he felt was maybe a bit too far for him to go - and let's be clear that's because he knew that if they did that, then neither he or Trump would have any cover. It's much easier to simply incite a mob instead or get other dupes to do things where Trump and Rudy are (more) insulated. He's a grifter, just like Trump.
At this point, it’s undebatable Obama-era officials recognized the pitchblend stench of Flynn’s flaming, toxic crazy, and deeming it dangerous to the public good, did what any rational deep state would do and removed Flynn to what it had every reason to think was a safe distance.
Too bad that same deep state didn’t foresee the ramifications of that epic American disaster, Formerly, being elected as clearly as it might’ve.
So many viciously disappointed authoritarian assholes, so few available, yet still constitutional, containment options—I’d like to believe those folks did all they legally could, and flat couldn’t imagine the shit that’s since come to pass.
Gotta give a hard “no”to the outrage about race-based treatment decisions. The author of the Atlantic article states that it’s not really race that makes the difference, it’s things that correlate to race, like socio-economic status, geography, etc. But research that controls for those factors still shows that there are racial differences in health outcomes. Rage against “wokeness” all you want, but this isn’t an example of that; it’s evidence-based medicine. Which is why it’s not getting attention: it’s a non-issue. I speak as a physician who spent the last two years working with COVID patients, and with a Master’s in medical ethics.
It’s generally acknowledged that among health disorders that predispose a person to more severe COVID there are many that are correlated with race, ie. socioeconomic factors such as lack of access to affordable health care. You note that there is research that controls for race alone vs. these predisposing disorders. I might be persuaded if you provided references/links to one or more of these research reports. In the absence of evidence of a distinct and exclusively racial predisposition to COVID, it seems that claiming race as a factor unnecessarily inflames racial animosity and gives white folks who seek to claim ‘reverse racism’ something to squawk about. Wouldn’t a system that assigns points for the disorders that actually predispose one to more severe COVID cover more people of color in proportion with their additional predisposition to these disorders due to racially correlated socioeconomic disadvantage? Such a system would preferentially serve those so disadvantaged without unnecessarily stirring up racial animosities.
The points systems DO consider other factors, including age and other predisposing conditions. They consider them proportionally to their effects. It would be unethical to ignore that race is an independent variable.
Per the CDC: “ COVID-19 data shows that Black/African American, Hispanic/Latino, American Indian and Alaska Native persons in the United States experience higher rates of COVID-19-related hospitalization and death compared with non-Hispanic White populations.[18] These disparities persist even when accounting for other demographic and socioeconomic factors.” https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/community/health-equity/race-ethnicity.html
This is about the third reference on a Google search of Covid-19 outcomes by race. Similar findings on many other health conditions. A lot of pretty skeptical people make guidelines and rating systems. Perhaps we could consider the possibility that they know what they’re doing.
Totally anecdotal response but my daughter and her family got Covid. He's part Asian and they had twins. One of the twins is a darker colored skin than the other. The darker skinned members of the family both got hit harder with Covid. I know it's not an empirical study...but it was odd that it happened to them like that. They all are very healthy people and no major environmental differences between them.
Charlie is trying real hard to give credit to these con men/women. Even a broken clock is right twice a day. Most of them stopped at their "line" only because they would have got caught/stopped. If there was a way to do what TFG wanted without getting caught, they would have absolutely gone ahead. There is no absolute bottom here. They will only test the next bottom layer, normalize it and then go even deeper. Their "lines" were self-preservation and nothing more. TFG knows this fact the best. Hence his "pardon" dangling. Watch them now blow past those "lines" with impudence.
Along with fixing the Electoral College Act, Congress should also prioritize taking away/restricting a President's power to grant pardons willy-nilly.
Big problem with fixing pardons: Article II, Section 2, Clause 1 of the U.S. Constitution provides: The President ... shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offenses against the United States, except in Cases of impeachment. Doesn't apply to civil cases. Also doesn't apply to future events, as some have asked why didn't he pardon before anyone was sentenced.
Hi Charlie, Re: Covid derangement. I don’t know if you saw the NYTIMES article today about how Covid deaths in US are much higher than in other countries. There was nothing in the article about the active efforts of so many in GOP & media to undermine vaccine efficacy & deny severity of covid. There was passing mention, at the end of the article, about how so many Americans distrust media, science, institutions, but no mention of how RW media stokes that distrust. That a mainstream newspaper like NYT ignores impact of Fox, radio & GOP feels purposeful at this point. Fox and talk-radio have been around for a generation & have largely caused our parallel information universes, extreme partisan politics & GOP obstruction. Can you spend more time on this topic? It feels like democracy depends on it. Thank you.
100% agree. I was GOP for over 30 years and the only reason I can deduce for being able to pull out of it was when I stopped watching RW media when Obama got elected. I didn't vote for him but was appalled at their response to him...before he had made a single decision in office. It was at that point that I decided the kool-aid wasn't good for me. This gave me 8 years of non-brainwashing...which only made my jaw drop even more when I went back on Fox when Trump was elected and saw what was going on. It was brainwashing city...and they all had the same (wrong) talking points. Case-in-point: The Clinton's head an international assassin group that secretly kills people all over the world. Now...whether all of them believe these type of asinine things is a different matter, but what I think is most important...is that they don't push back and tacitly accept it. So...Trump gets elected....and they don't like what he says, does or tweets...but they accept it. They have created an environment where there's nothing worse than Dems....including Trump.
You are wrong, I think, on there being a 'line.' This assumes that there is some sort of moral or ethical choice that they would not make, in order to avoid going down a road. This, I think, is wrong. Because in my view, that doesn't make sense. If you believe the election is stolen, then why wouldn't you do everything in your power to prevent that?
The answer reveals itself later. Giuliani did not find a line he wouldn't cross. He was, and is, a true believer that he could find the evidence to prove the election was stolen. If we start from that point of view, then using the military would have jeopardized the 'win' condition of keeping Trump in office, because even IF he was right, he knew that using the military would cause too much of a backlash. As a true believer, he believed he could find the evidence and create the outcome in such a way as to create legitimacy for the result he wanted. This isn't not crossing a line so much as him trying to game out the best way to win.
One thing I think needs to be said: guys like Giuliani are crazy, but they're not insane. Their actions follow logic, if you can understand what they believe. It might be nice to think that he was having some kind of moral hesitation, but that's a lie. It's clear that he knew that his goal would be imperiled if Trump used the military, even if he was right.
Put it another way, once you cross the Rubicon, there's no justifying yourself after the fact. Everyone knows what you are. Rudy is crazy, not insane. He knows this. His boosters know this. The only one that doesn't care about this is Trump. It's what separates guys like Giuliani from guys like Flynn. Giuliani is a true believer and believes he can reveal the truth and everyone will accept his truth. Flynn doesn't care if it's true or not, he cares about having power, and he'll justify that however he wants to. Powell is roughly the same.
In some ways, Giuliani's choice was the worst choice for democracy. Had Trump actually given the order, it would have made clear what he was and what he wanted to do. Instead, he's been saved by a media complex that has obfuscated about the whole thing. By not crossing the Rubicon, by not giving the order, he's been able to make it seem like he never did and had no intention of doing so.
In many ways, Giuliani managed to create a situation where Trump survived to possibly be president again.
Nice post...and distinction between between a line being drawn vs. declining a losing strategy.
Further...it's also like the "guardrails of our democracy" (i.e. people pushing back on Trump) have enabled Trump to be Trump without the devastating consequences his actions or intentions truly deserved.
I’m forever puzzling over why we had an unvetted personal attorney of the president, helping run government at the highest level. Why do we bother with confirmation hearings, when there was an obvious cabal of un-confirmed devious plotters (Sydney Powell, Michael Flynn, Rudi Guilliani, etc) advising the president? Is this unprecedented? I really don’t know. I would suggest that we need to take a closer look at how things in the White House got so loosey goosey. We need some actual laws. “Laws”, not norms.
This is what happens when you run the government on the "Honor system" and you finally get an Executive who has no honor and whose sense of ethics is limited to his own personal profit and considerations.
We need to stop letting these people police themselves and stop pretending that the people will police them through action at the ballot box--because it is not happening.
And, frankly, if you could not qualify for a top level security clearance before you got elected, you basically should not be eligible for elected office... especially President.
I listened to Preet Bhararh's podcast earlier today. He and Joyce Vance discussed an interesting point.
What would seem obviously against the law to we civilians (i.e. the exploits of the previous administrations "Team Crime," if there is no law concerning the exploits of the Secessionist-In-Chief's Worst and Dumbest, there are no applicable crimes.
BTW - Joyce seems to think that the idiots who sent in the phony ballots would likely be charged with fraud.
Usually when I read a comments section, I think Dark Thoughts about humanity and I have misgivings about universal suffrage. When I read comments at The Bulwark, I feel like there is hope for us yet.
Lest we forget, and before we hastily hang wreathes of honor 'round the necks of the supposed "hero's" who stopped #45 from seizing specific voting machines. Wasn't it Spineless Cuccinelli who was on CNN and FOX regularly defending all of 45's bizarre moves pre- and post-election, before Cucci himself actually weaseled himself a position in the Admin.? You don't suppose that when the USA's favorite Mayor called and asked Cucci to have his "guys run out and grab those voting machines." that the REAL "guys" at DHS may have given Ole Spineless Cuccinelli a hard stare back and said NO. That would certainly have led Ole Cuccinelli to respond in kind to the USA's favorite Mayor, and least favorite POTUS. The REAL guys may have even suggested that the mayor pass the word along to the other misfits that he was then scheming with in the Oval Office. That part of the story will probably appear in some later book, or perhaps the movie, once it, or they, are made.
It's more a callback/riff on his proposal as Virginia's AG that would have required any woman who was going to have an abortion first had to have a "trans-vaginal ultrasound" performed. Which was either a 70s era prog rock tribute band or an incredibly unnecessary medical procedure to make access to abortion that much more difficult.
The Right has complained about Leftist snowflakes for years, but it turns out that they are the biggest snowflakes out there. This is somehow neither surprising nor shocking.
Shouldn't we expect more out of the Presidency? Shouldn't there be higher expectations of the responsibility of this office?
As a Navy Officer...the leadership paradigm we were taught was always that the CO was responsible for everything on their ship. It appears to me that our POTUS, especially with Trump, can get away with just about anything...BECAUSE they are POTUS. Shouldn't it be the other way around?
One of my metrics of the backwards way the system is...is that Trump would have NEVER received Top Secret security clearance with his debts, bankruptcies and foreign ties. BUT...because he won the election....he jumped completely over the vetting process and became THE ISSUER of security clearances. Crazy!
1. Thank you for your service..."Haze Grey and Underway!"
2. King Rat learned from his racist father and whore-monger grandfather (kicked out of Germany for being a draft dodger) that rules, laws, and therefore democratic principles are schmucks. He is Gordan Gekko incarnate.
3. Isn't it amazing that anyone who wants to run for president doesn't have to be vetted??? I don't want to blame the supposedly brilliant Founding Fathers, they wouldn't have conceived that the likes of King Rat would be allowed into the game.
But then Aaron Burr was part of the era when when Constitution was being drafted.
Vetting candidates used to be the function of the political party. Since changing to the primary system, we perhaps havent always gotten the best. I think the parties should only allow truly qualified candidates to run in primaries to keep the Trump types out. Anyone can run as an independent candidate in the general election.
Agreed. I get the idea was to expand democracy with the primaries. But letting anyone run under the party umbrella without determining if they're fit for office is a bad idea.
Trump is one of those people who is always responsible for successes but never responsible for failure--failure is always someone else's fault. People who fail and are losers who should be kicked to the curb.
He is also the type of leader who would always be first in line for things (in case there wasn't enough to go around he needs to make sure he gets his) rather than being the tail end charlie making sure his people got what they needed.
Willing to send others into danger while making sure he is safe somewhere far away
He is kind of the anti-leader. The example of leadership you would put on a poster with the caption Don't Be That Guy.
Aren't Pence, Giuliani, and Barr all lawyers? Is there no legal or ethical mandate for lawyers to report to someone (maybe the FBI?) when they know illegal acts are being planned? Shouldn't they all be disbarred?
Barr's letter did not tell the public what we needed to know. Instead it was a fawning paean to Donald Trump. Pence did the right thing in the end, but again, did not speak out--and still hasn't spoken out --about the seditious conspiracy he knew was occurring. As for Giuliani--I don't believe that he drew a line. Why would he only do so after calling DHS? This smells to me like Rudy himself was the source of this "information," in some kind of belated attempt to polish his reputation, despite it now sitting at the bottom of the septic tank.
Spot on. How about all the people willing to "tell all" in a book to earn money instead of defend their country? If you wanted to poke a sharp stick at the downsides of pure Capitalism...well...there you go.
Exactly. I can forgive them not going public, and telling the FBI may not have done anything since FBI is part of executive branch, but the fact that NONE of them warned Mitch McConnell at the very least what was going on makes them responsible for Jan 6.
Never mind telling McConnell. How about screaming it from the rooftops to the Times, the Post, all media, instead of writing a book months later. I still hold people like Tillerson, McMasters and all the others who were once accomplished supposedly ethical men and women responsible for a lot of the lies, etc. for not telling the world what Trump was really like. What the hell is their problem????
Considering the other immoral, fraudulent, evil lengths Barr, Pence & Guilianni did for Trump in furtherance of their own interests, I find it hard to believe they still had “democracy antibodies”.I think it’s more likely Barr & Pence are two old white men who had & have racist, theocracy, patriarchal agendas. General Milley made it clear, military would not be used against its citizens. The implied flip side of Milley’s declaration is that the military WOULD use force to prevent sedition. Barr & Pence didn’t want to get killed or arrested. They’d advanced these agendas as far as they could go & only stopped short of open sedition because of fear. McConnell tried to draw line at January 6, because Trump was no longer useful for his anti democracy agenda. Unfortunately for McConnell, Trump’s base has become a monster he can’t control. Guiliana is an old mean, narcissistic, alcoholic, who was able to seemingly represent the right kind of masculinity at a pivotal time for country. He seemed & perhaps was competent when he was mayor. He was rapidly losing his cognitive abilities & desperately trying to recoup money he’d squandered & to stay relevant during the Trump years. I assume he had a moment of rare cognitive awareness that he might get killed if he pursued military solution.
I get looking for anything that looks like people respecting norms or not doing the absolute batshit crazy thing. It's because we are all completely exhausted by not only the batshit crazy, but by every time that Lucy yanks the football again. All the times we see a glimmer of a return to normalcy and then YANK. But we give them cookies for it every time, don't we? But I won't fall for this again. No, Rudy isn't someone that respected any norms. He was out there inciting a damn mob on January 6th. So I don't feel the need to give him a cookie or to respect that there might have been a line where he felt was maybe a bit too far for him to go - and let's be clear that's because he knew that if they did that, then neither he or Trump would have any cover. It's much easier to simply incite a mob instead or get other dupes to do things where Trump and Rudy are (more) insulated. He's a grifter, just like Trump.
Jesus on a pony! https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/unmasking-rudy-giuliani-fox-masked-000424807.html?fr=sycsrp_catchall
What in the Sam Hill is wrong with Michael Flynn?!? Of all people, he should know better. He’s either barking mad or suffering from a TBI.
At this point, it’s undebatable Obama-era officials recognized the pitchblend stench of Flynn’s flaming, toxic crazy, and deeming it dangerous to the public good, did what any rational deep state would do and removed Flynn to what it had every reason to think was a safe distance.
Too bad that same deep state didn’t foresee the ramifications of that epic American disaster, Formerly, being elected as clearly as it might’ve.
So many viciously disappointed authoritarian assholes, so few available, yet still constitutional, containment options—I’d like to believe those folks did all they legally could, and flat couldn’t imagine the shit that’s since come to pass.
Gotta give a hard “no”to the outrage about race-based treatment decisions. The author of the Atlantic article states that it’s not really race that makes the difference, it’s things that correlate to race, like socio-economic status, geography, etc. But research that controls for those factors still shows that there are racial differences in health outcomes. Rage against “wokeness” all you want, but this isn’t an example of that; it’s evidence-based medicine. Which is why it’s not getting attention: it’s a non-issue. I speak as a physician who spent the last two years working with COVID patients, and with a Master’s in medical ethics.
It’s generally acknowledged that among health disorders that predispose a person to more severe COVID there are many that are correlated with race, ie. socioeconomic factors such as lack of access to affordable health care. You note that there is research that controls for race alone vs. these predisposing disorders. I might be persuaded if you provided references/links to one or more of these research reports. In the absence of evidence of a distinct and exclusively racial predisposition to COVID, it seems that claiming race as a factor unnecessarily inflames racial animosity and gives white folks who seek to claim ‘reverse racism’ something to squawk about. Wouldn’t a system that assigns points for the disorders that actually predispose one to more severe COVID cover more people of color in proportion with their additional predisposition to these disorders due to racially correlated socioeconomic disadvantage? Such a system would preferentially serve those so disadvantaged without unnecessarily stirring up racial animosities.
The points systems DO consider other factors, including age and other predisposing conditions. They consider them proportionally to their effects. It would be unethical to ignore that race is an independent variable.
Per the CDC: “ COVID-19 data shows that Black/African American, Hispanic/Latino, American Indian and Alaska Native persons in the United States experience higher rates of COVID-19-related hospitalization and death compared with non-Hispanic White populations.[18] These disparities persist even when accounting for other demographic and socioeconomic factors.” https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/community/health-equity/race-ethnicity.html
This is about the third reference on a Google search of Covid-19 outcomes by race. Similar findings on many other health conditions. A lot of pretty skeptical people make guidelines and rating systems. Perhaps we could consider the possibility that they know what they’re doing.
Totally anecdotal response but my daughter and her family got Covid. He's part Asian and they had twins. One of the twins is a darker colored skin than the other. The darker skinned members of the family both got hit harder with Covid. I know it's not an empirical study...but it was odd that it happened to them like that. They all are very healthy people and no major environmental differences between them.
Disappointing.
Charlie is trying real hard to give credit to these con men/women. Even a broken clock is right twice a day. Most of them stopped at their "line" only because they would have got caught/stopped. If there was a way to do what TFG wanted without getting caught, they would have absolutely gone ahead. There is no absolute bottom here. They will only test the next bottom layer, normalize it and then go even deeper. Their "lines" were self-preservation and nothing more. TFG knows this fact the best. Hence his "pardon" dangling. Watch them now blow past those "lines" with impudence.
Along with fixing the Electoral College Act, Congress should also prioritize taking away/restricting a President's power to grant pardons willy-nilly.
Big problem with fixing pardons: Article II, Section 2, Clause 1 of the U.S. Constitution provides: The President ... shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offenses against the United States, except in Cases of impeachment. Doesn't apply to civil cases. Also doesn't apply to future events, as some have asked why didn't he pardon before anyone was sentenced.
Hi Charlie, Re: Covid derangement. I don’t know if you saw the NYTIMES article today about how Covid deaths in US are much higher than in other countries. There was nothing in the article about the active efforts of so many in GOP & media to undermine vaccine efficacy & deny severity of covid. There was passing mention, at the end of the article, about how so many Americans distrust media, science, institutions, but no mention of how RW media stokes that distrust. That a mainstream newspaper like NYT ignores impact of Fox, radio & GOP feels purposeful at this point. Fox and talk-radio have been around for a generation & have largely caused our parallel information universes, extreme partisan politics & GOP obstruction. Can you spend more time on this topic? It feels like democracy depends on it. Thank you.
100% agree. I was GOP for over 30 years and the only reason I can deduce for being able to pull out of it was when I stopped watching RW media when Obama got elected. I didn't vote for him but was appalled at their response to him...before he had made a single decision in office. It was at that point that I decided the kool-aid wasn't good for me. This gave me 8 years of non-brainwashing...which only made my jaw drop even more when I went back on Fox when Trump was elected and saw what was going on. It was brainwashing city...and they all had the same (wrong) talking points. Case-in-point: The Clinton's head an international assassin group that secretly kills people all over the world. Now...whether all of them believe these type of asinine things is a different matter, but what I think is most important...is that they don't push back and tacitly accept it. So...Trump gets elected....and they don't like what he says, does or tweets...but they accept it. They have created an environment where there's nothing worse than Dems....including Trump.
"Ha ha ha OMG! The grand debut of Four Seasons Total Landscaping was AMAZING! Thank you to everyone who showed up!" https://twitter.com/thecoopertom/status/1325710953305026560?s=20&t=Ba29k5frCHQwpRnC4Goj_A
..."the melting mayor of Four Seasons Landscaping" is genius. Thank you, Charlie. I needed that laugh.
You are wrong, I think, on there being a 'line.' This assumes that there is some sort of moral or ethical choice that they would not make, in order to avoid going down a road. This, I think, is wrong. Because in my view, that doesn't make sense. If you believe the election is stolen, then why wouldn't you do everything in your power to prevent that?
The answer reveals itself later. Giuliani did not find a line he wouldn't cross. He was, and is, a true believer that he could find the evidence to prove the election was stolen. If we start from that point of view, then using the military would have jeopardized the 'win' condition of keeping Trump in office, because even IF he was right, he knew that using the military would cause too much of a backlash. As a true believer, he believed he could find the evidence and create the outcome in such a way as to create legitimacy for the result he wanted. This isn't not crossing a line so much as him trying to game out the best way to win.
One thing I think needs to be said: guys like Giuliani are crazy, but they're not insane. Their actions follow logic, if you can understand what they believe. It might be nice to think that he was having some kind of moral hesitation, but that's a lie. It's clear that he knew that his goal would be imperiled if Trump used the military, even if he was right.
Put it another way, once you cross the Rubicon, there's no justifying yourself after the fact. Everyone knows what you are. Rudy is crazy, not insane. He knows this. His boosters know this. The only one that doesn't care about this is Trump. It's what separates guys like Giuliani from guys like Flynn. Giuliani is a true believer and believes he can reveal the truth and everyone will accept his truth. Flynn doesn't care if it's true or not, he cares about having power, and he'll justify that however he wants to. Powell is roughly the same.
In some ways, Giuliani's choice was the worst choice for democracy. Had Trump actually given the order, it would have made clear what he was and what he wanted to do. Instead, he's been saved by a media complex that has obfuscated about the whole thing. By not crossing the Rubicon, by not giving the order, he's been able to make it seem like he never did and had no intention of doing so.
In many ways, Giuliani managed to create a situation where Trump survived to possibly be president again.
Nice post...and distinction between between a line being drawn vs. declining a losing strategy.
Further...it's also like the "guardrails of our democracy" (i.e. people pushing back on Trump) have enabled Trump to be Trump without the devastating consequences his actions or intentions truly deserved.
I’m forever puzzling over why we had an unvetted personal attorney of the president, helping run government at the highest level. Why do we bother with confirmation hearings, when there was an obvious cabal of un-confirmed devious plotters (Sydney Powell, Michael Flynn, Rudi Guilliani, etc) advising the president? Is this unprecedented? I really don’t know. I would suggest that we need to take a closer look at how things in the White House got so loosey goosey. We need some actual laws. “Laws”, not norms.
there have been numerous 'kitchen cabinets' as far as I know, notably Nixon's - I'm thinking of Bebe Rebozo
Need to address the whole "acting" thing again too. Trump turned that into his way of getting his people in charge.
This is what happens when you run the government on the "Honor system" and you finally get an Executive who has no honor and whose sense of ethics is limited to his own personal profit and considerations.
We need to stop letting these people police themselves and stop pretending that the people will police them through action at the ballot box--because it is not happening.
And, frankly, if you could not qualify for a top level security clearance before you got elected, you basically should not be eligible for elected office... especially President.
I listened to Preet Bhararh's podcast earlier today. He and Joyce Vance discussed an interesting point.
What would seem obviously against the law to we civilians (i.e. the exploits of the previous administrations "Team Crime," if there is no law concerning the exploits of the Secessionist-In-Chief's Worst and Dumbest, there are no applicable crimes.
BTW - Joyce seems to think that the idiots who sent in the phony ballots would likely be charged with fraud.
they signed their names!
Usually when I read a comments section, I think Dark Thoughts about humanity and I have misgivings about universal suffrage. When I read comments at The Bulwark, I feel like there is hope for us yet.
Ditto, it's a "safe space" for rational dialogue. Unfortunately, it's still a very small bubble.
hear! hear!
Lest we forget, and before we hastily hang wreathes of honor 'round the necks of the supposed "hero's" who stopped #45 from seizing specific voting machines. Wasn't it Spineless Cuccinelli who was on CNN and FOX regularly defending all of 45's bizarre moves pre- and post-election, before Cucci himself actually weaseled himself a position in the Admin.? You don't suppose that when the USA's favorite Mayor called and asked Cucci to have his "guys run out and grab those voting machines." that the REAL "guys" at DHS may have given Ole Spineless Cuccinelli a hard stare back and said NO. That would certainly have led Ole Cuccinelli to respond in kind to the USA's favorite Mayor, and least favorite POTUS. The REAL guys may have even suggested that the mayor pass the word along to the other misfits that he was then scheming with in the Oval Office. That part of the story will probably appear in some later book, or perhaps the movie, once it, or they, are made.
Just as an FYI, the preferred diminutive nickname of Cuccinelli is "The Cooch".
It's more a callback/riff on his proposal as Virginia's AG that would have required any woman who was going to have an abortion first had to have a "trans-vaginal ultrasound" performed. Which was either a 70s era prog rock tribute band or an incredibly unnecessary medical procedure to make access to abortion that much more difficult.
The Right has complained about Leftist snowflakes for years, but it turns out that they are the biggest snowflakes out there. This is somehow neither surprising nor shocking.
Every accusation is really a confession, part eleventeen billion
Shouldn't we expect more out of the Presidency? Shouldn't there be higher expectations of the responsibility of this office?
As a Navy Officer...the leadership paradigm we were taught was always that the CO was responsible for everything on their ship. It appears to me that our POTUS, especially with Trump, can get away with just about anything...BECAUSE they are POTUS. Shouldn't it be the other way around?
One of my metrics of the backwards way the system is...is that Trump would have NEVER received Top Secret security clearance with his debts, bankruptcies and foreign ties. BUT...because he won the election....he jumped completely over the vetting process and became THE ISSUER of security clearances. Crazy!
Jeff,
1. Thank you for your service..."Haze Grey and Underway!"
2. King Rat learned from his racist father and whore-monger grandfather (kicked out of Germany for being a draft dodger) that rules, laws, and therefore democratic principles are schmucks. He is Gordan Gekko incarnate.
3. Isn't it amazing that anyone who wants to run for president doesn't have to be vetted??? I don't want to blame the supposedly brilliant Founding Fathers, they wouldn't have conceived that the likes of King Rat would be allowed into the game.
But then Aaron Burr was part of the era when when Constitution was being drafted.
Vetting candidates used to be the function of the political party. Since changing to the primary system, we perhaps havent always gotten the best. I think the parties should only allow truly qualified candidates to run in primaries to keep the Trump types out. Anyone can run as an independent candidate in the general election.
Agreed. I get the idea was to expand democracy with the primaries. But letting anyone run under the party umbrella without determining if they're fit for office is a bad idea.
Amen!
Trump is one of those people who is always responsible for successes but never responsible for failure--failure is always someone else's fault. People who fail and are losers who should be kicked to the curb.
He is also the type of leader who would always be first in line for things (in case there wasn't enough to go around he needs to make sure he gets his) rather than being the tail end charlie making sure his people got what they needed.
Willing to send others into danger while making sure he is safe somewhere far away
He is kind of the anti-leader. The example of leadership you would put on a poster with the caption Don't Be That Guy.
Aren't Pence, Giuliani, and Barr all lawyers? Is there no legal or ethical mandate for lawyers to report to someone (maybe the FBI?) when they know illegal acts are being planned? Shouldn't they all be disbarred?
Barr's letter did not tell the public what we needed to know. Instead it was a fawning paean to Donald Trump. Pence did the right thing in the end, but again, did not speak out--and still hasn't spoken out --about the seditious conspiracy he knew was occurring. As for Giuliani--I don't believe that he drew a line. Why would he only do so after calling DHS? This smells to me like Rudy himself was the source of this "information," in some kind of belated attempt to polish his reputation, despite it now sitting at the bottom of the septic tank.
Spot on. How about all the people willing to "tell all" in a book to earn money instead of defend their country? If you wanted to poke a sharp stick at the downsides of pure Capitalism...well...there you go.
Exactly. I can forgive them not going public, and telling the FBI may not have done anything since FBI is part of executive branch, but the fact that NONE of them warned Mitch McConnell at the very least what was going on makes them responsible for Jan 6.
Never mind telling McConnell. How about screaming it from the rooftops to the Times, the Post, all media, instead of writing a book months later. I still hold people like Tillerson, McMasters and all the others who were once accomplished supposedly ethical men and women responsible for a lot of the lies, etc. for not telling the world what Trump was really like. What the hell is their problem????
I'm curious to know what you think Mitch would have done? Have we seen any evidence he would have taken an ethical stance?
Maybe not.