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Quote:
Originally Posted by Master
Would Trump release this guy if he became president?Quote:
Originally Posted by Kirkland LaingFrom incels to in cells. Sentenced towards the lower end of the possible sentence length by a Trump-appointed judge. It should have been a lot longer.Quote:
Originally Posted by Master
Absolutely. I put nothing by this individual. Nothing.
On his first day back. He'll pardon every single person who got a conviction.Quote:
Originally Posted by MasterWould Trump release this guy if he became president?Quote:
Originally Posted by Kirkland LaingFrom incels to in cells. Sentenced towards the lower end of the possible sentence length by a Trump-appointed judge. It should have been a lot longer.Quote:
Originally Posted by Master
https://www.mediaite.com/politics/ro...ns-if-elected/
Not just Trump either. Pardoning people who tried to overthrow the government is a popular position with Republican voters ffs.
https://www.mediaite.com/politics/ke...th-defendants/Quote:
Originally Posted by MasterWould Trump release this guy if he became president?Quote:
Originally Posted by Kirkland LaingFrom incels to in cells. Sentenced towards the lower end of the possible sentence length by a Trump-appointed judge. It should have been a lot longer.Quote:
Originally Posted by Master
Being a law and order guy is a minority position now in the party of law and order. This kind of attitude will probably get him primaried by a Trumper and kicked out of office. Meanwhile fact free bullshit is in with the base. Theydon't even care if it's true or not most of them. They just want their daily dose of anger heroin and there are endless people who will give it to them. So tyranny and denial od due process it is.
Former Trump aide Peter Navarro has been convicted of contempt of Congress for refusing to co-operate with an inquiry into alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election result.
Prosecutors said Navarro acted "above the law" by ignoring a subpoena from a congressional investigation.
He faces up to a year in prison for each of the two contempt counts.
Another key Trump ally, former strategist Steve Bannon, was convicted last year of contempt of Congress.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-66744592
Quote:
Originally Posted by NoSavingByTheBell
https://i.imgflip.com/7yfzy6.jpg
Never gets old
https://youtu.be/fMvO9lqhoCU?si=ShsMQO-jBB_H7Dmz
Talk about living in the past.
Statin' facts and living in the past.... Apples n oranges but nice try lmfao
I take it apples are Hillary and oranges are ....:)Quote:
Originally Posted by NoSavingByTheBell
I used to like it back when people wrote more.
Trump’s Economic Plan: Raise Taxes on the Middle Class, Cut Them on the Rich
Republican populism remains extremely fake.
The discourse of the Trump era has been dominated by a conceit that the two major parties have swapped economic identities. The Democrats have supposedly abandoned their historical role as spokespeople for the working class to represent the neoliberal global elite, while the Republicans have been transmuted into scruffy populists. On the left, a mood of self-flagellating agony has prevailed, even as the party has won several elections in a row. On the right, the Republicans’ populist credibility has intensified their long-standing paranoia, “proving” that everything from the culture wars to Donald Trump’s endless crime spree is in fact a plot by the powerful to control them.
Yet, funnily enough, the two parties remain stubbornly attached to their traditional distributive goals. The Democrats still want to tax the rich and spend on the non-rich. Republicans still want very badly to do the opposite.
The Washington Post reports that Donald Trump’s campaign brain trust is working on a new economic plan to anchor his campaign. The leading idea is to pass another huge tax cut for the wealthy (a cut in corporate tax rates), paired with a tax increase on the middle class (a 10 percent tariff).
Trump’s brain trust believes current economic conditions indicate the U.S. economy is being harmed by excessively progressive taxes. To be sure, they have consistently believed this for more than 30 years through every conceivable combination of economic circumstances: high inflation, low inflation, recession, boom, war and peace,
Supply-side economics is a religion masquerading as an economic theory, and Trump’s brain trust, as it were, is a collection of the high priests of the supply-side cult: Arthur Laffer (who first began promoting supply-side economics nearly 50 years ago), Stephen Moore, Lawrence Kudlow, and Newt Gingrich.
The same crew wormed its way into Trump’s inner circle in 2016, probably because most legitimate Republican economists were too grossed out by Trump. Despite intermittently promising to make rich people pay higher taxes, Trump’s first-term accomplishment centered on passing a tax cut that disproportionately benefited the rich:
https://pyxis.nymag.com/v1/imgs/db8/...ontal.w700.jpg
The putative goal of cutting taxes for business owners was to incentivize them to plow more money into domestic investment. That did not happen. However, the Trump tax cuts also didn’t have any obvious or immediate costs. At the time, interest rates were very low and the labor market had not yet fully recovered from the 2008 recession. A deficit-financed tax cut, combined with a general spending spree, injected more demand into the economy and helped produce full employment and rising incomes until the pandemic struck.
The economic situation Trump would inherit in 2025 would be very different. Higher deficits and interest rates mean that borrowing money to fund a regressive tax cut would have an immediate economic cost. That’s why his advisers are planning to pair the next Trump tax cut for the rich with a 10 percent tariff, the revenue from which would, presumably, offset the cost.
The political trouble with this plan is that it exposes rather than hides the trade-offs inherent in giving rich people a huge tax cut. (Consumers would pay higher prices for a lot of goods right away.) The long-standing Republican formula, one employed by Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, and Trump, is to pair huge tax cuts for the rich with small tax cuts for everybody else. Democrats complain the rich are getting a disproportionate share, Republicans lie about it and then make a lot of noise about some other, more easily digestible wedge issue (the war on terror, gay marriage, the caravan, etc.).
The supply-siders are not concerned about this cost because they really, really care about the issue. To them, cutting taxes for the rich is the main purpose of politics. They’re not doing it to get elected; they’re trying to get elected to do this, and they are willing to bear whatever cost comes along with pursuing their central objective. The sheer depth of their commitment is, in a way, admirable, if you overlook both the total objective failure of their economic model and their promiscuous dishonesty about it.
But where that leaves the rest of the party is another matter. The supply-side wing’s strangehold on the Republican policymaking apparatus is a historical marvel, one I studied in my first book two decades ago. The party’s voters don’t share this priority at all. Increasingly, Republican-aligned intellectuals also reject it. Trump has allowed the conservative intelligentsia to develop a deep fantasy in which they represent a barefoot movement of the soil. Many of them truly seem to believe their own pseudo-populist rhetoric; they are motivated by team loyalty more than any specific policy, to which they generally pay little attention.
But Trump is a crook, not an enemy of the rich. And the next Trump term, should there be one, will be even more oligarchic than the last.
The IRS is launching an effort to pursue 1,600 millionaires who owe hundreds of millions of dollars in past due taxes.The agency's leader says a boost in federal funds and help from AI tools offer new means of targeting wealthy people who "cut corners."
https://twitter.com/AP/status/1700233877569118718
1,600 millionaires.75 of the largest partnerships in the U.S.500 partnerships with over $10 million in assets. Hundreds of possible FBAR non-filers with average account balances of over $1.4 million.All targets in the IRS’ new compliance initiatives.
https://twitter.com/taxgirl/status/1700141680811266392
WATCH: “Truth” banner falls on top of Vivek Ramaswamy. Perfect symbolism for his campaign of lies.
https://twitter.com/KaivanShroff/sta...19097899979098
Trump 2024 and he should also get 2028 because the 2020 elections were rigged and stolen and there was no insurrection and there was no Russia collusion
Hell why not go all the way to give Trump presidency for life and USA just become a dictatorship.Quote:
Originally Posted by NoSavingByTheBell
Donald Trump has asked the judge overseeing his federal election meddling case to step aside due to previous statements she made in court.
He said in a legal filing some past comments create a perception of bias against the former president.
The request for a recusal was filed to Judge Tanya Chutkan on Monday.
She is overseeing the case being brought by special counsel Jack Smith, who accuses Mr Trump of a conspiracy to overturn his 2020 election loss.
Mr Trump has pleaded not guilty to the charges.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-66782143
According to a clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, recent comments Donald Trump made in an interview with Glenn Beck are not only alarms but also evidence that the former president has all the signs of being a "psychopath."
Speaking with the conservative host, the four-time indicted Trump said he may have no choice if he is re-elected but to lock his opponents away.
Specifically, Trump was asked, "Do you regret not locking [Hillary Clinton] up? And if you’re president again, will you lock people up?” to which he replied, "The answer is you have no choice, because they’re doing it to us.”
In an interview with Salon's Chauncey DeVega, Dr. Lance Dodes, the supervising analyst emeritus at the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute, questioned Trump's ability to think straight.
"Trump's latest threats to place opponents in jail, including President Biden, fit with the limitless nature of psychopaths," he stated. "Lacking a conscience or morality to limit his sadism, and believing in his worth above all others, leads Trump to think he has the right to destroy anyone who does not submit to him."
Dodes then added, "Trump is an extreme outlier in human psychology."
Possibly just as worse are his supporters, Dondes claims, by first stating, "They lack knowledge of the history and techniques of populist tyrants and the inevitable loss of freedom and democracy from them. That is the sad history of people democratically electing such despots; they don't realize the level of malignant psychology behind the populist face."
He added, "They may not individually be as psychologically ill as Trump, but they lack the moral fortitude to risk their personal political fortunes by opposing him. Said another way, they would also support a less psychopathic leader if that were in their personal interest."
"After Hitler, there were still Nazis in Germany. And after Stalin, there were many longing for his return in Russia. We can expect that there will be Trump supporters even if he is finally imprisoned for his crimes, " he warned.
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world...df5a81a0&ei=32
Quote:
Originally Posted by MasterHell why not go all the way to give Trump presidency for life and USA just become a dictatorship.Quote:
Originally Posted by NoSavingByTheBell
2028 was just a joke. Lighten up
Alarmism and Chicken Little kind of stuff about the sky falling it's very easy to posture and claim and it gets people onto a kind of herd mentality bandwagon.... You know something they can all agree about even if it's delusional.....But this paranoia about Trump being another Hitler or Stalin borders on delusional that you see in the mind-controlled by the mainstream media general population or a kind of derangement syndrome and has no basis in reality unless you want to try to connect dots just for the sake of connecting them which the general public are definitely entitled to do. To claim to be afraid and fearful of someone and that they represent a kind of terrifying threat must be really infectious because everybody seems to have fallen for it. It must be out of sheer boredom or wanting to be a part of "doing the right thing" in their minds and it must really be infectious and doesn't say very much for the general population who truly believes that Donald Trump is like another Hitler or Stalin. The media has been hammering this since 2015 and everybody completely went for it and I can't believe it's 2024 and people are literally still this blind. When he wins the election people are going to claim that he rigged it like Hillary Clinton claimed he rigged it in 2016 and this was not considered to be a contentious statement when she said it.
You're all going to claim that Hunter Biden is the reason why Trump got reelected or that Trump rigged the election or that Vladimir Putin helped Trump win in 2024 and you will never think of those as conspiracy theories
Only conspiracy theories to Democrats are the ones that Republicans talk about but when they say that Vladimir Putin helped Trump get elected or that there was Russian collusion then in their mind those are not conspiracy theories
I mean the brainwashing is total and complete and their rabid reactions like dogs frothing at the mouth when talking about Donald Trump being evil is a sure sign of the brainwashing being complete and total
The whole sentence was a joke.Quote:
Originally Posted by NoSavingByTheBellQuote:
Originally Posted by MasterHell why not go all the way to give Trump presidency for life and USA just become a dictatorship.Quote:
Originally Posted by NoSavingByTheBell
2028 was just a joke. Lighten up
In 2009, a study published in PLOS ONE challenged our understanding of belief systems.
Researchers placed participants into the confines of an fMRI scanner and presented them with a mixture of factual and abstract statements. The results were illuminating. Disbelief, it turns out, is cognitively demanding. It requires more mental effort than simply accepting a statement as true. From an evolutionary perspective, this preference for easy belief makes sense; a perpetually skeptical individual questioning every piece of information would struggle to adapt in a fast-paced world.
What does all this have to do with Trump supporters? Well, it’s far less cognitively demanding for them to believe anything their leader tells them. Any challenge to what Trump tells them is true takes mental work. This means there is a psychological incentive for Trump loyalists to maintain their loyalty.
Consider the unique predicament faced by individuals who staunchly support Trump and want him to again become president. From the moment Trump began his political career and his social engineering career, his supporters have been exposed to narratives — Trump doesn't lie, Democrats are communists, the media is an enemy of the people — that emphasize loyalty and trust in their political idol. These narratives often steer away from critical examination and instead encourage blind faith. When coupled with the brain's inherent tendency to accept rather than question, it creates an ideal environment for unwavering allegiance. No matter that Trump, time and again, has been revealed to be a serial liar, habitually misrepresenting matters of great consequence, from elections to economics to public health.
For example, in the Psychology Today article "Why Evangelicals are Wired to Believe Trump’s Falsehoods," I explain that the children of Christian fundamentalists typically begin to suppress critical thinking at an early age. This is required if one is to accept Biblical stories as literal truth, rather than metaphors for how to live life practically and with purpose. Attributing natural occurrences to mystical causes discourages youth from seeking evidence to back their beliefs.
Consequently, the brain structures that support critical thinking and logical reasoning don't fully mature. This paves the way for heightened vulnerability to deceit and manipulative narratives, especially from cunning political figures. Such increased suggestibility arises from a mix of the brain's propensity to accept unverified claims and intense indoctrination. Given the brain's neuroplastic nature, which allows it to shape according to experiences, some religious followers are more predisposed to accept improbable assertions.
In other words, our brains are remarkably adaptable and continuously evolving landscapes. For ardent Trump supporters, residing in an environment that prioritizes faith over empirical evidence can reshape the neural circuits within their brains.
Imagine these neural pathways as trails in a forest. The more one traverses the path of unquestioning belief, the clearer and more entrenched it becomes. The path of skepticism, however, grows over with doubts and becomes difficult to navigate. This cognitive reshaping primes individuals to accept, and even defend, far-fetched statements and suggestions presented by manipulative politicians.
This cognitive bias occurs when individuals with low ability at a task overestimate their capability. Translated to the context of understanding complex legal matters, some Trumpists might believe they have a superior grasp of the former president’s predicament and dismiss expert opinions, thinking they're immune to being misled.
The Dunning-Kruger effect becomes especially concerning in the context of polarizing issues, such as climate change. A research study from the University of New Hampshire in 2017, for example, revealed that a mere 25 percent of those identifying as Trump supporters acknowledged the role of human actions in climate change. This is in stark contrast to the 97 percent consensus among climate scientists on the issue.
This troublesome cognitive bias could be making it easier for Trump to deliver unchallenged falsehoods to his more uneducated followers. In some cases, not only are these individuals uninformed, they are unlikely to seek new information on their own. In their minds, they have nothing to learn because Trump and his acolytes have already told them what they need to know.
It is important to state that these phenomena are not exclusive to Trump supporters or any particular political group; this article serves as a broader reflection on the cognitive shortcuts that our brains favor.
If we aspire to build a society less susceptible to misinformation, we must embark on a paradigm shift. Our educational approach should pivot from passive acceptance of supposed “facts” to the exhilarating pursuit of questioning authority and healthy skepticism (as too much skepticism can also lead to irrational thinking). Recognizing that belief, in many ways, is the brain's default mode rather than a conscious choice, can serve as the first step in this cerebral revolution.
In conclusion, the unwavering belief in Trump, despite the felony charges against him, is not solely a political matter but, for some, a manifestation of our brain's intrinsic tendencies. Understanding this cognitive dynamic is pivotal in addressing the challenges posed by misinformation and fostering a more critical and discerning society.
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/other...70edd4d&ei=100
Quote:
Originally Posted by NoSavingByTheBell
https://th.bing.com/th/id/OIP.d77QsC...id=ImgDet&rs=1
Quote:
Originally Posted by NoSavingByTheBell
The main problem with this argument is that you have taken an extreme and not very common opinion and used that to pretend it represents a general position for most people who can and always have seen Trump for what he is. Most people do not think he is another Hitler or Stalin. Still, the fact remains as a far-right populist he has expressed fascist sentiments and been much more eager to praise dictatorial leaders like Putin and Kim Jong Un than support more democratic and moderate elected politicians. The herd mentality delusion that you speak of is there by the truckload in an army of supporters who ignore the facts of a treasonous melting Barbie doll-like celebrity fleecing them of their hard-earned cash as a grifting felon doing his best to avoid facing adult reponsibility for his actions.
It seems rather than defend any of Trumps illegal, unethical and crass actions it is the default position of yourself and the other Trumpoids to claim "Trump Derangement Syndrome" which again is another projection that springs from the same kind of irrational hate Trump and his minions espoused for Hilary Clinton. Dribbly Trump has made a career out of frothing at the mouth. Most of what he says is toxic bubbly airhead bullshit.
This is an extremely well written and well expressed post and I do agree with parts of it but in general I have a different opinion about the whole thing.Quote:
Originally Posted by BeanzQuote:
Originally Posted by NoSavingByTheBell
The main problem with this argument is that you have taken an extreme and not very common opinion and used that to pretend it represents a general position for most people who can and always have seen Trump for what he is. Most people do not think he is another Hitler or Stalin. Still, the fact remains as a far-right populist he has expressed fascist sentiments and been much more eager to praise dictatorial leaders like Putin and Kim Jong Un than support more democratic and moderate elected politicians. The herd mentality delusion that you speak of is there by the truckload in an army of supporters who ignore the facts of a treasonous melting Barbie doll-like celebrity fleecing them of their hard-earned cash as a grifting felon doing his best to avoid facing adult reponsibility for his actions.
It seems rather than defend any of Trumps illegal, unethical and crass actions it is the default position of yourself and the other Trumpoids to claim "Trump Derangement Syndrome" which again is another projection that springs from the same kind of irrational hate Trump and his minions espoused for Hilary Clinton. Dribbly Trump has made a career out of frothing at the mouth. Most of what he says is toxic bubbly airhead bullshit.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MasterThe whole sentence was a joke.Quote:
Originally Posted by NoSavingByTheBellQuote:
Originally Posted by MasterHell why not go all the way to give Trump presidency for life and USA just become a dictatorship.Quote:
Originally Posted by NoSavingByTheBell
2028 was just a joke. Lighten up
Thx for your view.
This Trump Derangement Syndrome claim by Trump fans gets tiring. It also continues to ignore the fact that Trump has put himself out there... for the whole world to see and hear... with our own eyes and ears... FOR YEARS. Yet the same yadda-yadda-yadda about Trump haters being "media-blinded sheep" continues to get pushed out there 24/7. So what the hell. Let's make Trumpers happy and say "ok, you're on to us... we only form opinions based on CNN." LMAO!!
We've gotten enough visuals and sound bites from Trump to put together a TV marathon of tragic comedy. I could begin listing them now. But frankly I'd just be rehashing what's been said over and over and over and over again, ad nauseum.
Trump was a trashy human being BEFORE he became President... and nothing has changed. If others don't mind having a trashy human being as President of their country... all the more power to them. Me? I've always had higher standards than that.
Trashy can surely be a legitimate descriptor for Trump. But when I think of the absolutely SATANIC George W Bush for example who killed indirectly 2 MILLION Iraqis by some estimates under the evil and false accusations that Saddam Hussein had ties to Al Qaeda and weapons of mass destruction...... Well that is absolutely beyond the pale and much more satanic than anything Trump ever did. So I have no problems at all with admitting that Trump has at times been trashy. Sophomoric and trashy and immature and etc ... Not excusing it but when you put it in perspective compared to what other presidents have done, like George w bush, or his father Bush Senior, I think there's no comparison. And George Bush definitely LED his team using fear and intimidation and his father was the head of the CIA for 16 years and he definitely used fear and intimidation in his administration and something tells me most presidents do that and I am not excusing it.
And there are certainly hundreds of millions of people who have formed their own opinions against Trump and did not need the assistance of the CNN or MSNBC brainwashing.
But if it comes down to Biden and Trump, then Trump is the lesser of the two evils and we all have to respect each other's opinions. If somebody says Biden is the lesser of the two evils than I respect that opinion.
Nothing to see here, just a top former Trump White House adviser, who happens to be married to Trump’s daughter, monetizing for personal gain the specific high-level, and allegedly inappropriate, government relationships he built up in office.Nothing to see here.(But Hunter!)
https://twitter.com/mehdirhasan/stat...39886686634205
Elon Musk Told Bari Weiss That Twitter Would Cater to China for Tesla’s Sake, Uyghur Genocide Has ‘Two Sides’
https://www.mediaite.com/news/elon-m...has-two-sides/
There are two sides to genocide and millions of people in concentration camps.
Some excerpts from a new Mitt Romney kiss and tell book:
Some nights he vented; other nights he dished. He’s more puckish than his public persona suggests, attuned to the absurdist humor of political life and quick to share stories that others might consider indiscreet. I got the feeling he liked the company—our conversations sometimes stretched for hours.
“A very large portion of my party,” he told me one day, “really doesn’t believe in the Constitution.” He’d realized this only recently, he said. We were a few months removed from an attempted coup instigated by Republican leaders, and he was wrestling with some difficult questions. Was the authoritarian element of the GOP a product of President Trump, or had it always been there, just waiting to be activated by a sufficiently shameless demagogue? And what role had the members of the mainstream establishment—*people like him, the reasonable Republicans—played in allowing the rot on the right to fester?
Shortly after moving into his Senate office, Romney had hung a large rectangular map on the wall. First printed in 1931 by Rand McNally, the “histomap” attempted to chart the rise and fall of the world’s most powerful civilizations through 4,000 years of human history. When Romney first acquired the map, he saw it as a curiosity. After January 6, he became obsessed with it. He showed the map to visitors, brought it up in conversations and speeches. More than once, he found himself staring at it alone in his office at night. The Egyptian empire had reigned for some 900 years before it was overtaken by the Assyrians. Then the Persians, the Romans, the Mongolians, the Turks—each civilization had its turn, and eventu*ally collapsed in on itself. Maybe the falls were inevitable. But what struck Romney most about the map was how thoroughly it was dominated by tyrants of some kind—pharaohs, emperors, kaisers, kings. “A man gets some people around him and begins to oppress and dominate others,” he said the first time he showed me the map. “It’s a testosterone-related phenomenon, perhaps. I don’t know. But in the history of the world, that’s what happens.” America’s experiment in self-rule “is fighting against human nature.”
“This is a very fragile thing,” he told me. “Authoritarianism is like a gargoyle lurking over the cathedral, ready to pounce.”
For the first time in his life, he wasn’t sure if the cathedral would hold.
In one early meeting, a colleague who’d been elected a few years earlier leveled with him: “There are about 20 senators here who do all the work, and there are about 80 who go along for the ride.” Romney saw himself as a workhorse, and was eager for others to see him that way too. “I wanted to make it clear: I want to do things,” he told me.
He quickly became frustrated, though, by how much of the Senate was built around posturing and theatrics. Legislators gave speeches to empty chambers and spent hours debating bills they all knew would never pass. They summoned experts to appear at committee hearings only to make them sit in silence while they blathered some more.
As the weeks passed, Romney became fascinated by the strange social ecosystem that governed the Senate. He spent his mornings in the Senate gym studying his colleagues like he was an anthropologist, jotting down his observations in his journal. Richard Burr walked on the treadmill in his suit pants and loafers; Sherrod Brown and Dick Durbin pedaled so slowly on their exercise bikes that Romney couldn’t help but peek at their resistance settings: “Durbin was set to 1 and Brown to 8. :) :). My setting is 15—not that I’m bragging,” he recorded.
He joked to friends that the Senate was best understood as a “club for old men.” There were free meals, on-site barbers, and doctors within a hundred feet at all times. But there was an edge to the observation: The average age in the Senate was 63 years old. Several members, Romney included, were in their 70s or even 80s. And he sensed that many of his colleagues attached an enormous psychic currency to their position—that they would do almost anything to keep it. “Most of us have gone out and tried playing golf for a week, and it was like, ‘Okay, I’m gonna kill myself,’ ” he told me. Job preservation, in this context, became almost existential. Retirement was death. The men and women of the Senate might not need their government salary to survive, but they needed the stimulation, the sense of relevance, the power. One of his new colleagues told him that the first consideration when voting on any bill should be “Will this help me win reelection?” (The second and third considerations, the colleague continued, should be what effect it would have on his constituents and on his state.)
Perhaps Romney’s most surprising discovery upon entering the Senate was that his disgust with Trump was not unique among his Republican colleagues. “Almost without exception,” he told me, “they shared my view of the president.” In public, of course, they played their parts as Trump loyalists, often contorting themselves rhetorically to defend the president’s most indefensible behavior. But in private, they ridiculed his ignorance, rolled their eyes at his antics, and made incisive observations about his warped, toddler*like psyche. Romney recalled one senior Republican senator frankly admitting, “He has none of the qualities you would want in a president, and all of the qualities you wouldn’t.”
This dissonance soon wore on Romney’s patience. Every time he publicly criticized Trump, it seemed, some Republican senator would smarmily sidle up to him in private and express solidarity. “I sure wish I could do what you do,” they’d say, or “Gosh, I wish I had the constituency you have,” and then they’d look at him expectantly, as if waiting for Romney to convey profound gratitude. This happened so often that he started keeping a tally; at one point, he told his staff that he’d had more than a dozen similar exchanges. He developed a go-to response for such occasions: “There are worse things than losing an election. Take it from somebody who knows.”
One afternoon in March 2019, Trump paid a visit to the Senate Republicans’ weekly caucus lunch. He was in a buoyant mood—two days earlier, the Justice Department had announced that the much-anticipated report from Special Counsel Robert Mueller failed to establish collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia during the 2016 election. As Romney later wrote in his journal, the president was met with a standing ovation fit for a conquering hero, and then launched into some rambling remarks. He talked about the so-called Russia hoax and relitigated the recent midterm elections and swung wildly from one tangent to another. He declared, somewhat implausibly, that the GOP would soon become “the party of health care.” The senators were respectful and attentive.
As soon as Trump left, Romney recalled, the Republican caucus burst into laughter.
Few of his colleagues surprised him more than Mitch McConnell. Before arriving in Washington, Romney had known the Senate majority leader mainly by reputation. With his low, cold mumble and inscrutable perma-frown, McConnell was viewed as a win-at-all-costs tactician who ruled his caucus with an iron fist. Observing him in action, though, Romney realized that McConnell rarely resorted to threats or coercion—he was primarily a deft manager of egos who excelled at telling each of his colleagues what they wanted to hear. This often left Romney guessing as to which version of McConnell was authentic—the one who did Trump’s bidding in public, or the one who excoriated him in their private conversations.
https://cdn.theatlantic.com/thumbor/...e/original.pngRomney’s Senate office (Yael Malka for The Atlantic)
“It wasn’t for you so much as for him,” McConnell replied. “He’s an idiot. He doesn’t think when he says things. How stupid do you have to be to not realize that you shouldn’t attack your jurors?
“You’re lucky,” McConnell continued. “You can say the things that we all think. You’re in a position to say things about him that we all agree with but can’t say.” (A spokesperson said that McConnell does not recall this conversation and that he was “fully aligned” with Trump during the impeachment trial.)
What bothered Romney most about Hawley and his cohort was the oily disingenuousness. “They know better!” he told me. “Josh Hawley is one of the smartest people in the Senate, if not the smartest, and Ted Cruz could give him a run for his money.” They were too smart, Romney believed, to actually think that Trump had won the 2020 election. Hawley and Cruz “were making a calculation,” Romney told me, “that put politics above the interests of liberal democracy and the Constitution.”
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine...onnell/675306/
You can read it with the noscript addon.
Sometimes I really wonder is people still defending the walking grifter gravy stain are brilliant trolls or highly intoxicated. Know what else authoritarians do, they relentlessly shout about all elections being rigged. Literally on a daily basis. And they don't stop there, they just call the entire democratic free voting process corrupt rigged and failed. Throw in threats to deploy the US military to multiple States to put down protests, deploying federal aircraft to monitor and federal officers to violently disperse protests and voices of dissent as they hide behind religious text they proceed to hold upside down and have never even opened. They continually interfere in State run local and national elections and literally call the free press an enemy of the people and a threat to the country. They subvert established branches of government to cut financial arms deals with foreign powers. They stand on the White House lawn asking China to investigate their opponent. And they go years on end using their highest office and every single public taxpayer funded campaign event as a stage to call for the arrest and prosecution of political opponents, former cabinet officials, their family members, their dog and the housekeeper for good measure. Oh and they boast about love letters, defend the actions, praise the efforts and policies of and admire likeminded dictators fawning like a love struck pre teen whose balls have yet to drop. Trump is not and does not need to be a Hitler at all, he's bad enough all by himself.
A succinct, sincere, well-written post employing striking and poignant expression and sincerity at an advanced syntactic and lexographical level. 👍Quote:
Originally Posted by Spicoli
Quote:
Originally Posted by NoSavingByTheBellA succinct, sincere, well-written post employing striking and poignant expression and sincerity at an advanced syntactic and lexographical level. 👍Quote:
Originally Posted by Spicoli
You forgot "accurate." Can't leave the word "accurate" off of your poetic description. Although "on point" would be a suitable substitute.
Well,well,well, whadda we have here? Who coulda seen it coming really???
Attachment 6196
Unless the kangaroo courts get a "felony conviction" on Donald of course.....
https://youtu.be/tqqiChPtGx0?si=zRdts7iVU8yfHLXZ
If you're an American president and you act/try to act in authoritarian ways and you pal around with authoritarians people are going to compare that president to authoritarians. You don't have to be as bad as Hitler or Stalin for you to be seen as having had something of a negative effect on your country, you can be a second tier dictator like Franco and still cause tremendous damage. They're still finding mass graves in Spain.Quote:
Originally Posted by Spicoli
The unnerving thing about Trump or some future GOP cult leader is the seemingly unlimited potential for carnage. There are millions of Americans walking around every day who believe that they're god's chosen people, that they're under attack from an elite who hate America and want to destroy it in various ways and that the entire apparatus of the state is controlled by these people in order to bring about all the terrible things the elite want to see happen. These people are avid consumers of the world's most sophisticated propaganda, stuff so good Goebbels and the Department of Agitation and Propaganda could only dream about producing, and they're fed a daily dose of hate and poison designed to keep them permanently enraged so they come back for another dose the next day. The propaganda production is now so sophisticated that whatever bubbles up from the fever swamps of facebook and the lower levels of the propaganda media structure, whatever is really working to drive clicks and engagement gets stovepiped right up to the top of the structure and is on Fox News and the top conservative media outlets within hours. What kind of mental state are these millions of people currently in? Let's look at one example:
https://twitter.com/realJonRiley/sta...56945942769723
Dort wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man auch am Ende Menschen.
Whoops there's another 1930s Germany authoritarian comparison. It seems to be easy to make these comparisons though eh.
And these millions of permanently enraged completely deluded people are by and large heavily armed. This is not normal. This is a situation unique to America. Lots of potential for things to go badly wrong.
In a situation like this, where it looks like circumstances are going to conspire to put their leader back in the White House again* you're going to need the institutions of democracy to hold firm. And just look at that Romney article. Lots of senators would have voted to impeach Trump after January 6th but were too scared to do it:
One Republican congressman confided to Romney that he wanted to vote for Trump’s second impeachment, but chose not to out of fear for his family’s safety. The congressman reasoned that Trump would be impeached by House Democrats with or without him—why put his wife and children at risk if it wouldn’t change the outcome? Later, during the Senate trial, Romney heard the same calculation while talking with a small group of Republican colleagues. When one senator, a member of leadership, said he was leaning toward voting to convict, the others urged him to reconsider. You can’t do that, Romney recalled someone saying. Think of your personal safety, said another. Think of your children. The senator eventually decided they were right.
As dismayed as Romney was by this line of thinking, he understood it. Most members of Congress don’t have security details. Their addresses are publicly available online. Romney himself had been shelling out $5,000 a day since the riot to cover private security for his family—an expense he knew most of his colleagues couldn’t afford.
By the time Democrats proposed a bipartisan commission to investigate the events of January 6, the GOP’s 180 was complete. Virtually every Republican in Congress came out in full-throated opposition to the idea. Romney, who’d been consulting with historians about how best to preserve the memory of the insurrection—he’d proposed leaving some of the damage to the Capitol unrepaired—was disappointed by his party’s posture, but he was no longer surprised. He had taken to quoting a favorite scene from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid when he talked about his party’s whitewashing of the insurrection—twisting his face into an exaggerated expression before declaring, “Morons. I’ve got morons on my team!” To Romney, the revisionism of January 6 was almost worse than the attack itself.
Only a few of these people would be able to spend five thousand dollars a day on an ongoing basis to protect their families from their party's own voters so congress is basically going to be a rubber stamp for whatever Trump wants. When he took office the first time basically everybody he appointed to top jobs later after they'd left office said he'd proposed doing a bunch of crazy/criminal things and they'd stopped him. Trump eventually worked his way down from conventional cabinet members to tenth rate criminal garbage, lawyers who told him what he wanted to hear and so on. The guy who was director of national intelligence, probably the second most powerful job in the country, had zero intelligence background but had defended Trump on Fox News against charges that he was criminally interfering with the intelligence agencies. He has a list of people now who will do whatever crazy/criminal shit he wants to do second time around. Not only will they do it but they'll be egging him on to do it. They'll all have overtly broken laws within five minutes of taking office to the extent that they'll be locked up if anything resembling a rule of law government ever takes office again. So do you think they're going to allow that to happen? Once they step over that line and commit themselves that's it, there's no way back for them. This bit about once they go over the line these regimes are then committed to staying there and then do worse and worse things to stay in power, there are lots of examples of this. From history.
*Will come back to this tomorrow.
Talking about Trump and lists:
One of former President Donald Trump's long-time assistants told federal investigators that Trump repeatedly wrote to-do lists for her on documents from the White House that were marked classified, according to sources familiar with her statements.
As described to ABC News, the aide, Molly Michael, told investigators that -- more than once -- she received requests or taskings from Trump that were written on the back of notecards, and she later recognized those notecards as sensitive White House materials -- with visible classification markings -- used to brief Trump while he was still in office about phone calls with foreign leaders or other international-related matters.
The notecards with classification markings were at Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate when FBI agents searched the property on Aug. 8, 2022 -- but the materials were not taken by the FBI, according to sources familiar with what Michael told investigators.
MORE: Top Trump campaign aide identified as key individual in classified docs indictment: Sources
When Michael, who was not present for the search, returned to Mar-a-Lago the next day to clean up her office space, she found the documents underneath a drawer organizer and helped transfer them to the FBI that same day, sources told ABC News.
The sources said Michael also told federal investigators that last year she grew increasingly concerned with how Trump handled recurring requests from the National Archives for the return of all government documents being kept in boxes at Mar-a-Lago -- and she felt that Trump's claims about it at the time would be easy to disprove, according to the sources.
Sources said that after Trump heard the FBI wanted to interview Michael last year, Trump allegedly told her, "You don't know anything about the boxes."
It's unclear exactly what he meant by that.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/trump-wrot...y?id=103226113
It's unclear what he meant by that. :)
Let's see what former prosecutors think about the clearness:
https://www.mediaite.com/crime/cnn-l...on-of-justice/
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/polit...&ei=14#image=1
"Make no mistake, it's absolutely possible Trump wins the 2024 election"
Let me be clear. One thing is hoping Trump never holds political office again... and another is knowing that it's quite possible the American public votes this bozo into the Presidency in 2024.
I've always been clear that the American public can never be overestimated... and are fully capable of putting a known criminal in office again.
This doesn't change my long-held views on Trump.
Let me see how clear I can express this…
I don’t care that Biden is too old to be President. I don’t care how many gaffes and stumbles he’s filmed doing. I don’t care how many mistakes he makes when he speaks. No… he’s not the greatest President ever. No… he wouldn’t be my first choice for President in 2024. No… I don’t ignore or gloss over his mistakes and faults.
But…
I have higher standards than to accept a President who…
1. Got his rocks off by saying “You’re fired!” on a reality TV show.
2. Speaks so disrespectfully of women in general.
3. Swore to “drain the swamp”, then proceeded to surround himself with “yes-men” who are the “world’s greatest” when they parrot his views… and the “world’s scum” when they dare contradict him, or have individual thought.
4. Claims to know more about EVERYTHING than ANYONE… no matter what the topic.
5. Has an ego the size of Mt. Everest, and gets in petty fights with singers and actors.
6. Mocked a disabled person, then denied it. (As did his legions of blind followers).
7. Creates and rejoices in the deepest of divisions and hatred between groups of people.
8. Created fear and hatred against immigrants coming across the Mexico border.
9. Tear-gassed protesters so he could pose in front of a church while holding a Bible (upside down).
10. Calls countries “shithole countries.”
11. Lobbed rolls of paper towels at a crowd of Hurricane Maria victims in Puerto Rico.
12. Lost 2020 election, then proceeded to:
a. Claim the election was stolen.
b. Coerce election officials to “find more votes.”
c. Refused to go through transition process with Biden.
d. Incited the mob that broke into the U.S. Capitol.
Yes… I have higher standards than that.
It's really too bad that many people don't.
Donald Trump is so far ahead in the polls of every Republican and so far ahead in the polls of Joe Biden, with the latest which came out yesterday from ABC News showing Donald Trump 14 points ahead of Joe Biden.
According to the ABC poll, Donald Trump is at 56% and Joe Biden is at 42%. And among independent voters Donald Trump is at 51%, and Joe Biden is at 37%.
I'm still waiting for anybody out there to tell me who is going to even come close to Donald Trump.
If this is the case, the U.S. is going to DESERVE what it gets.
~ "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice..."