August 14, 2022
Afternoon Update:
Zach Schonfeld of the Hill: "Former President Trump on Sunday called on the FBI to return documents reportedly seized at Mar-a-Lago that are protected by attorney-client and executive privileges. 'Oh great!' Trump wrote on Truth Social. 'It has just been learned that the FBI, in its now famous raid of Mar-a-Lago, took boxes of privileged "attorney-client" material, and also 'executive" privileged material, which they knowingly should not have taken,' Trump continued. 'By copy of this TRUTH, I respectfully request that these documents be immediately returned to the location from which they were taken,' he added. 'Thank you!'... Fox News on Saturday evening reported that the FBI seized five boxes that included information covered by attorney-client privilege...." MB: "Knowingly should not have taken"?? ~~~
~~~ Marie: Anyone who has read reports of the FBI's searches of (then attorneys) Rudy Giuliani's & Michael Cohen's homes & offices is aware that the FBI often seizes information that is or may be attorney-client-privileged. The FBI doesn't just pack up the docs & send them back because the client tweets -- without any specificity whatsoever -- that he wants them back. Rather, the court appoints a special master to comb through the seized material & decide what-all is privileged and what is not. (I guess lawyers for both sides can then wrangle in court with the special master's decisions.) I suppose Trump is just pretending he doesn't understand this, but if he really believes a public tweet will cause the return of some documents, he's dumber than even I thought. In the meantime, if I can figure out how to tweet Merrick Garland (I can't), I'm going to ask him to send me all those once-tippy-top-secret documents that Trump has declassified. I'll expect them by return mail (which, okay, will take a long time because Louis DeJoy).
Maureen Dowd of the New York Times: "... it is one of the most bizarre loop de loops in Donald Trump's dark, crazy reign over Republicans that he turned a party that was pro-law and order and anti-Evil Empire into a party that trashes the F.B.I. and embraces Vladimir Putin. It is the greatest con of the century's greatest con man: hijacking his own party.... The utterly spoiled Fifth Avenue brat accustomed to living in gilt palaces and cheating his way to success portrays himself as the world's biggest victim.... Even after so many years of this poisonous folly, I remain amazed that the Republicans viciously smeared by Trump on his way up, like Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz and Lindsey Graham, now back up his smears." ~~~
~~~ Marie: I'm with MoDo. To me, the most surprising part of Trump's triumph was to discover that of all of these Republicans who presented themselves as powerful leaders -- leaders worthy of becoming "leader of the free world" even, like Marco, Ted & Lindsey -- is that they are nothing, nothing but cowards, fearful of someone who is now but an aged, washed-up, petulant Mafia boss. With a few notable exceptions -- like Liz Cheney & Adam Kinzinger, both of whom will soon be looking for other jobs -- the party that associated itself with robust militaristic world leadership & with "traditional" values in which the head-of-household should be a manly man -- is made up entirely of chickenshits cowering under the dirty skirts of a whiny bully.
Johnson Lai & Ken Moritsugu of the AP: "A delegation of American lawmakers arrived in Taiwan on Sunday, just 12 days after a visit by U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi that prompted China to launch days of threatening military drills around the self-governing island that Beijing says must come under its control. The five-member delegation, led by Democratic Sen. Ed Markey of Massachusetts, will meet President Tsai Ing-wen and other officials, as well as members of the private sector, to discuss shared interests including reducing tensions in the Taiwan Strait and investments in semiconductors."
Frank Thorp & Julianne McShane of NBC News: "A man died after he crashed his car into a barricade in D.C. early Sunday morning, according to a U.S. Capitol Police spokesperson. Authorities identified the suspect as Richard Aaron York, 29, adding that a Delaware driver's license was found and he is also believed to have lived in Pennsylvania recently. The man drove his car into a vehicle barricade at East Capitol Street and Second Street around 4 a.m., the spokesperson said in a press release. When he got out of the car, it became engulfed in flames. He then began shooting into the air.... And as Capitol police were approaching, he shot himself, according to the spokesperson."
Hawaii. New York Times liveblog: "Lt. Gov. Josh Green of Hawaii won the Democratic primary for governor, according to The Associated Press, putting himself in a strong position to secure the top office in a reliably blue state. Mr. Green defeated six other Democrats, including Representative Kai Kahele and Vicky Cayetano, a former first lady of Hawaii. He will face the Republican nominee, Duke Aiona, in November; the winner then will succeed Gov. David Ige, a Democrat who cannot run for re-election because of term limits." The page includes other primary results. Sen. Bruce Schatz won the Democratic for Senate with 94% of the vote.
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Glenn Thrush & Maggie Haberman of the New York Times: "At least one lawyer for ... Donald J. Trump signed a written statement in June asserting that all material marked as classified and held in boxes in a storage area at Mr. Trump's Mar-a-Lago residence and club had been returned to the government, four people with knowledge of the document said. The written declaration was made after a visit on June 3 to Mar-a-Lago by Jay I. Bratt, the top counterintelligence official in the Justice Department's national security division.... Over recent months, investigators were in contact with roughly a half-dozen of Mr. Trump's current aides who had knowledge of how the documents were handled, two people briefed on the approaches said. At least one witness provided the investigators with information that led them to want to further press Mr. Trump for material....
“Shortly before [Attorney General Merrick] Garland made [a public statement on Thursday], a person close to Mr. Trump reached out to a Justice Department official to pass along a message from the former president to the attorney general. Mr. Trump wanted Mr. Garland to know he had been checking in with people around the country and found them to be enraged by the search. 'The country is on fire,' Mr. Trump said, according to a person familiar with the exchange. 'What can I do to reduce the heat?'... As a judge unsealed the warrant and the inventory of items that the F.B.I. took, Mr. Trump alternately claimed he did nothing wrong and also made the baseless statement that officials may have planted evidence on him." CNN has a story here. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ~~~
~~~ Marie: Based on reviews of the property receipt, several news outlets, including this one, have noted that "FBI agents removed 11 sets of classified documents and 27 boxes from [Donald Trump's] Florida residence." I've briefly looked at the receipt, and I can't do the math, but I'll assume for argument's sake that number 27 is correct. In addition to those 27 boxes, Trump returned 15 boxes in January 2022, and according to the NYT story linked above, FBI agents took additional material from Mar-a-Lago in June 2022. So that's at least 43 boxes of stuff --and probably more -- Trump stole from us. Whatever the size of the boxes, and whatever their contents, you can't take that much stuff "accidentally." ~~~
~~~ Various news outlets have reported that at least some of the stuff was kept in a basement storage room. My house in Florida was on a large waterway; Trump's is between two bodies of water -- the Atlantic Ocean & Lake Worth. My house was built at the same time Mar-a-Lago was, and my house & Trump's are among the few in Florida that have basements. During rainy season, which runs for months, I had a sump pump that ran almost 24/7. During these months, the basement was never dry. It's possible the basement at Mar-a-Lago has since been made water-tight, but given its location, that's difficult to do. So I'm wondering about the condition of those retrieved docs, papers that have been in a likely-damp basement for at least a year-a-and-a-half.
Josh Dawsey, et al., of the Washington Post: "Trump and his close allies [in New York] quickly became transfixed by the events unfolding in Palm Beach.... Some monitored the agents via CCTV security cameras as they searched Trump's office and personal quarters and a first-floor storage facility, another of his lawyers, Christina Bobb, told Fox News.... So distressing was the search that the usually loquacious Trump team stayed mum for much of the day -- until 6:51 p.m., when Trump himself confirmed the raid in a bombastic statement that declared it unjustified and politically motivated. 'They even broke into my safe!' he announced.... Immediately after the search, Trump seemed to believe the FBI had played into his hands.... By Friday, however, the unsealed court records showed agents had seized 11 sets of classified documents, among other things. Republicans' howls of protest became somewhat more muted, and people around Trump said his buoyant mood at times turned dark.... As the week progressed, Trump grew angrier, at times screaming profanities to advisers about the FBI.... [Trump] kept up a steady stream of angry online statements,mixing outright denials with near-admissions that he had indeed been holding sensitive material about nuclear weapons." ~~~
~~~ Marie: This is a fairly helpful review of how Trump's theft of material belonging to the U.S. ultimately ended up as a criminal matter. Predicating the climactic search was Trump's belief that the materials were his personal property, so "Trump was hesitant to return the documents, dragging his feet for months." ~~~
~~~ Matt Bai, in a Washington Post op-ed, explains why that is: "... the underlying concept of the presidency somehow always eluded [Donald Trump]. Everyone who preceded Trump accepted the idea that the office is held in a sacred and temporary trust. The White House and everything that comes with it -- the salutes and the planes, the couches and carpets, the weird things people gift you in foreign countries -- belong to the country and its history, not to you. You're just hired to manage the place for a while.... Trump imagined he had been sent to Washington not to restore the institutions of government, but to replace them.... When the presidency is an acquisition rather than an opportunity to serve, then everything that comes with it is rightfully yours to do with as you please."
Jacqueline Alemany of the Washington Post: "The House Democrats' top investigators on Saturday asked the director of National Intelligence to conduct a review and damage assessment of the boxes of highly classified information seized by the FBI this week from ... Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate. The letter was sent to National Intelligence Director Avril Haines by House Oversight Chairwoman Carolyn B. Maloney (D-N.Y.) and House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) and cites the search warrant cataloguing the classified documents of various levels of sensitivity found at Mar-a-Lago. 'Former President Trump's conduct has potentially put our national security at grave risk,' the two wrote, asking also for a classified briefing on the assessment as soon as possible. 'This issue demands a full review, in addition to the ongoing law enforcement inquiry.'" Politico's report is here.
Like all of the other Hoaxes and Scams that they've used to try and silence the voice of a vast majority of the American People, I have TRUTH on my side, and when you have TRUTH, you will ultimately be victorious! -- Donald Trump, in a statement, Saturday
You will notice that Trump's statement glorifying "truth" contains more than one lie. The biggest liar in American history is a strange person to promote "truth" as his path to "victory." -- Marie
Alan Feuer of the New York Times: "The armed attack this week on an F.B.I. office in Ohio by a supporter of ... Donald J. Trump ... was one of the most disturbing episodes of right-wing political violence in recent months. But it was hardly the only one. In the year and a half since a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol, threats of political violence and actual attacks have become a steady reality of American life.... Scholars who study political violence point to a common thread: the heightened use of bellicose, dehumanizing and apocalyptic language, particularly by prominent figures in right-wing politics and media. Several right-wing or Republican figures reacted to the search of Mar-a-Lago not only with demands to dismantle the F.B.I., but also with warnings that the action had triggered 'war.'... If political aggression is set in the context of a war..., ordinary people with no prior history of violence are more likely to accept it. Political violence can also be made more palatable by couching it as defensive action against a belligerent enemy. That is particularly true if an adversary is persistently described as irredeemably evil or less than human. 'The right, at this point, is doing all three of these things at once,' [Rachel] Kleinfeld [of the Carnegie Endowment] said." ~~~
~~~ Tiffany Hsu & Sheera Frenkel of the New York Times: "Predictions of imminent civil war and calls for violence surged early this week on social media platforms such as Truth Social, the network started by ... Donald J. Trump, after the F.B.I.'s court-approved search of his Florida home on Monday. The search ... set off an immediate outburst of aggressive and threatening language, akin to the public rhetoric that festered in the days leading up to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. Truth Social users posted that the United States was born 'through an insurrection followed by several years of bloody violence,' and that the country would 'become a communist state just as long as we don't pick up arms and fight back!!' There was talk that 'the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants,' a phrase from a letter by Thomas Jefferson, and that 'sometimes clearing out dangerous vermin requires a modicum of violence, unfortunately.'...
"Later in the week, a different narrative gained traction, propelled without evidence by other prominent Truth Social users: that calls for violence were posts planted by federal law enforcement officials or Democratic operatives to frame right-wing patriots as insurrectionists and extremists. The point, the conspiracy theory goes, is to give the Biden administration cover to strip Trump supporters of guns, or to set up a pretext for martial law." ~~~
~~~ GOP Terrorists. Steve M. republishes a portion of a (firewalled) Daily Beast story that reads, in part, "Just hours after a list began circulating among right-wing media of FBI agents who signed off on the search warrant for Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago property, a former Trump aide tried to sic MAGA fans on the family members of the purported agents. Garrett Ziegler ... took to Telegram to post the personal information of men he identified as agents. 'This is one of the two feds who signed the "Receipt for Property" form, which detailed -- at a very high level -- the fishing expedition that the FBI performed at Mar-a-Lago,' Ziegler said on both Truth Social and Telegram. The former Trump administration staffer that worked under White House trade adviser Peter Navarro further listed out the FBI agents' date of birth, work emails and linked to alleged family members' social media accounts." There's more. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ~~~
~~~ Steve M." "This is the new normal.... We're rapidly approaching the point where anything that offends Republicans will result in the doxxing of the responsible parties, with threats of violence as the inevitable consequence. Soon -- again because of Republican intransigence -- we'll conclude that we simply can't prevent this, and anyone who engages in conduct that upsets Republicans will need to invest in extra security and urge every peripheral person who might be affected to do the same. America will be divided into two nations: Republicans and those terrorized or potentially terrorized by Republicans." (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~
~~~ Did Kilmeade Ask Himself, "Is This What Walter Cronkite Would Do?" David Moye of the Huffington Post: "While filling in for host Tucker Carlson on Thursday, [Fox News' Brian Kilmeade displayed a fabricated image of Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart [-- who authorized the search of Mar-a-Lago --] having his feet massaged by convicted sex offender Ghislaine Maxwell and holding Oreo cookies and alcohol on a plane. 'Sean, can you relate to that?' Kilmeade asked Fox News personality Sean Hannity, who noted that the photo looked doctored. 'I think that's actually a picture of [financier and convicted sex offender] Jeffrey Epstein with somebody putting his [Reinhart's] head on there,' Hannity said. 'I'm guessing. I don't know.' 'Who knows?' Kilmeade said.... The fake photo seems to be a reference to Reinhart's past work defending several of Epstein's employees in court. On Friday, Kilmeade took to Twitter to clarify that the photo wasn't real. '... This depiction never took place & we wanted to make clear that we were showing a meme in jest.' So far, Kilmeade has not apologized on air to the viewers who saw the image and possibly believed it to be authentic.... Twitter users read Kilmeade the riot act for pushing misinformation, especially as Reinhart has received violent and antisemitic threats since approving the warrant...." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ~~~
~~~ Marie: Twitter commenters, including comedian Patton Oswalt & journalist Mehdi Hasan, saw or heard no indication in Kilmeade's on-air performance that he was "showing a meme in jest." It's a bad day for Fox "News" when the person who pushes back with at least a bit of journalistic fact-checking is Sean Hannity. Thanks to Akhilleus for the lead. See also his commentary below.
Fox10 Phoenix: "Signs reading 'Honor your oath' and 'Abolish FBI' were seen outside the FBI office in Phoenix on Aug. 13, just days after news broke that the agency searched ... Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago home in Florida. Several of those who were there were armed with guns." Includes photos. ~~~
~~~ Marie: I assume it's legal in Arizona to dress up in camo & stand around an FBI office carrying an assault weapon alongside protesters waving anti-FBI signs. But that sounds pretty damned threatening to me. If I worked at that FBI office, I don't think I'd waltz carelessly to my car in the parking lot at the end of my work day. AND if I ran that office, I'd put on my tactical gear & announce that any protesters who did not have weapons could protest to their heart's content, but everybody with weapons had to go on home or risk arrest & charges for threatening federal officials. We really cannot expect people to work for the U.S. government under these conditions. Coddling armed "protesters" is no way to run a government. If it is, I suggest the Supremes invite heavily-armed individuals into their grandiose marbled temple.
From Trusted Serviceman to Insane Trumpbot. Alex Horton, et al., of the Washington Post (Aug. 12): "The Navy veteran who tried to breach the FBI's Cincinnati field office Thursday once handled highly classified material years ago while posted on an attack submarine, but had been on the bureau's radar for months for possible extremist behavior, authorities said Friday."
Hurubie Meko & Lauren D’Avolio of the New York Times:
The author Salman Rushdie was stabbed roughly 10 times as he prepared to speak at the Chautauqua Institution in western New York on Friday, prosecutors said during an arraignment for the man accused of carrying out the attack. Hadi Matar, a 24-year-old New Jersey man who was arrested at the scene, appeared on Saturday afternoon at the Chautauqua County Courthouse in Mayville, N.Y., for his arraignment on charges of second-degree attempted murder and assault with a weapon. In court, prosecutors said that the attack on the author was premeditated and targeted. Mr. Matar traveled by bus to the intellectual retreat in western New York and purchased a pass that allowed him to attend the talk Mr. Rushdie was to give on Friday morning, according to the prosecutors." ~~~
~~~ Marie: The Trump/Trumpets fatwas are purposely less specific than was the Ayatollah Khomeini's 1989 edict against Rushdie, but they are received as fatwas nonetheless, and sometimes Trumpbots carry them out. That is part of Trump's purpose, but it seems clear he wants more: a full-blown revolution that will sweep him into absolute power where the only rules are ones he sets for others. ~~~
~~~ Carolyn Thompson & Hillel Italie of the AP: "... author Salman Rushdie was taken off a ventilator and able to talk Saturday, a day after he was stabbed as he prepared to give a lecture in upstate New York. Rushdie remained hospitalized with serious injuries, but fellow author Aatish Taseer tweeted in the evening that he was 'off the ventilator and talking (and joking).' Rushdie's agent, Andrew Wylie, confirmed that information without offering further details."
Meredith Deliso, et al., of ABC News: "The gun used in the fatal shooting on the 'Rust' movie set could not have been fired without pulling the trigger, according to an FBI forensic report obtained Friday by ABC News. Actor Alec Baldwin shot cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on the set of the Western, which he was producing and starring in, last year. The actor believed he was handling a 'cold gun' -- one without live ammunition -- when it went off and a live bullet struck Hutchins, killing her. The film's director, Joel Souza, was also wounded in the shooting."
Beyond the Beltway
Alabama. Kim Chandler of the AP: "A federal jury awarded Republican Roy Moore $8.2 million in damages Friday after finding a Democratic-aligned super PAC defamed him in a TV ad recounting sexual misconduct accusations during his failed 2017 U.S. Senate bid in Alabama. Jurors found the Senate Majority PAC made false and defamatory statements against Moore in one ad that attempted to highlight the accusations against Moore. The verdict, returned by a jury after a brief trial in Anniston, Alabama, was a victory for Moore, who has lost other defamation lawsuits, including one against comedian Sacha Baron Cohen. 'We're very thankful to God for an opportunity to help restore my reputation which was severely damaged by the 2017 election,' Moore said in a telephone interview. Ben Stafford, an attorney representing Senate Majority PAC, said in an emailed statement that they believe the ruling would be overturned on appeal." ~~~
~~~ Marie: God is Great. With all of the problems on Earth (and elsewhere!), God has taken time out to protect Roy Moore's reputation.
Idaho. Isabella Paz of the New York Times: "Idaho's near-total ban on abortion can go into effect at the end of August while legal challenges to the restrictions are reviewed, the Idaho Supreme Court said in a ruling late Friday. As a result of the decision, the ban is scheduled to begin on Aug. 25."
Way Beyond
Ukraine, et al. The New York Times' live updates of developments Sunday in Russia's war on Ukraine are here. ~~~
~~~ The Washington Post's live updates for Sunday are here: "Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has called for those responsible for attacks near Europe's largest nuclear power plant to be 'tried by an international court,' and accused Russian forces of using the plant in southern Ukraine as a shield in a 'blackmail operation' against Kyiv and 'the entire free world.'... Ukrainian forces will target Russian soldiers who shoot at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant or shoot from the facility, Zelensky said in his nightly address Saturday.... Norway has become the latest country to join an international coalition helping train Ukraine's Armed Forces.... A total of 16 grain ships have now left Ukrainian ports, Zelensky said Saturday, under a U.N.-brokered deal to ease the global food crisis."
News Lede
New York Times: "In a pair of horrific scenes on Saturday night that compounded the tragedy of a recent fatal fire in eastern Pennsylvania, a man plowed his car into a fund-raising event for families affected by that fire, killing one and injuring 17, then drove off and fatally beat a woman before the police arrested him, the authorities said. The suspect, identified by the police as Adrian Oswaldo Sura Reyes, 24, was arraigned on two counts of homicide and denied bail. He is being held at the Columbia County Correctional Facility. Investigators identified the woman who was beaten to death as the suspect's mother, Rosa D. Reyes, The Press Enterprise of Bloomsburg, Pa., reported, citing court records. Investigators said that Mr. Reyes told them he hit his mother with his car and then struck the woman, who appeared to be unconscious, over the head with a hammer several times."
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American Taliban
The conjunction of a religiously inspired attack on Salman Rushdie ordered by fundamentalist clerics in Iran and the abortion ban triggered by the Christian nationalist /fundamentalist clerics on the Supreme Court should cause alarm bells all across the nation.
We are now living under the strict hand of our own Taliban which enforces its own form of Sharia Law. The Islamic Taliban regularly employs violence or threats of violence to get its way. The Christian Taliban that now rules the Republican Party and a frightening number of states, does the same. In addition to physical violence (murdering abortion providers, bombing clinics, etc.) the American Taliban uses threats of economic violence (investigations, arrests, prosecution, loss of medical licenses and jobs) to force medical institutions to below to their will.
Perversely, they celebrate this Taliban-like power grab as “religious freedom”. Yeah. Freedom for them and servitude for the infidels. And just as the Islamic Taliban calls for jihad against its enemies, the American Taliban puts out its own calls for violence against its enemies. They believe that waving the flag and saying “Don’t tread on me” inoculates them against charges of religious control, but a recent speech by Father Alito points up the desire for “complete control” by the American Taliban. The political side issues their fatwas and their religious side issues legalistic diktats.
It’s not much different than Kabul.
And by the way, anyone who thinks commentary like this (above) is hyperbolic or overly dramatic hysteria hasn’t been paying attention. We have “leaders” in congress calling for complete domination under Christian nationalist/white supremacy rules. These fucking people are serious. And they all have guns. Lots of them. They make fundraising videos in which they show off their gun collections, and it’s not so we can admire their mint condition 1865 Colt six shooter. This ain’t Antiques Roadshow, this is Do What We Fucking Say, or Else. We should take them at their word.
Fintan O'Toole takes on the same warning as Akhilleus only he starts out with this:
"In 1973, soon after the US Supreme Court established a right to abortion in Roe v. Wade, Charles E. Rice concluded that “the essential remedy to the abortion problem is a constitutional amendment.” Rice is an important figure in the intellectual history of the antiabortion movement that is now, with the recent overturning of Roe, enjoying its moment of triumph. He was a cofounder of the Conservative Party of New York State, formed by those who considered the Republican Party too liberal; one of his scholarly tracts is an attack on the Voting Rights Act of 1965. As a professor of constitutional law, he established Notre Dame University in Indiana as a redoubt of the conservative Catholic legal thinking whose influence most fully blossomed when Donald Trump appointed Rice’s colleague and associate Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court."
But back in 1973, O'Toole tells us, Rice despaired of the possibility that even a Republican-dominated Supreme Court would overturn Roe. He hoped instead for a constitutional amendment that would be “unequivocal” in outlawing both abortion and all forms of contraception that could be deemed to be “abortifacient”: “In order to prevent the licensing and legal distribution of abortifacients, the constitutional amendment on abortion must prohibit abortion at every stage beginning with the moment of conception.”
In the US, this was pure fantasy. The social and political conditions necessary for the passage of such a constitutional amendment did not exist. At the time, even evangelical Christians were reluctant to engage with the question of abortion, which they tended to see as a peculiarly (and suspiciously) Catholic obsession. But there was a place where Rice’s idea could be tried out: Ireland. In 1981 and 1982, when right-wing Irish Catholic activists were teasing out the wording of a proposed antiabortion amendment to the country’s constitution, Rice was the man whose advice and guidance they followed most closely. These campaigners sought and received Rice’s approval of the text that became, in 1983, the Eighth Amendment. For the Catholic conservatives who then seemed to be on the wrong side of US history, victory in Ireland was a harbinger of a possible American future. Now that they are, apparently, on the right side of American history, they might do well to remember that their Irish victory turned out to be pyrrhic.
Last night we watched "The Magdalene Sisters", a depiction of many of the laundries in Ireland where girls and women who had gotten pregnant outside of marriage or even those that has been raped were hauled off to these places where they had to perform slave labor under the eyes of nuns who are depicted in the film as cruel and mentally off balance. The last of these institutions did not close until 1996. This was the second time I viewed the film; this time it wasn't a foreign experience (it could never happen here), this time it all seemed possible here. So couple that with Ak's comments, it is frankly, terrifying.
Happy Sunday, ya'll.........
One would think that there would be a few (1 or 2 at least) republicans
who would say that we should just calm down and wait for the facts
to be announced. Did Jared sell documents? To whom? Did any of
the documents actually involve nuclear secrets?
What are they afraid of? All elected officials work for the public, the
people who elected them to represent them.
Is that so difficult to understand? Instead it seems to be just the
opposite. "We don't represent you, we represent ourselves and whatever will benefit us."
I must be really naive to think that there's a little good in everyone.
Forrest,
Waiting for facts is not what Republicans do these days. Trump (and Newt Gingrich long before him) have taught them that the best offense is a highly offensive and fact free offense. They’ve been taught that R voters want to see “Fighters!” Fighters against evil liberal lies like justice and voting rights, anything that could clog up the road to complete power. No time for facts, no time to wait and see. They hit first and ask questions lat…what? No! No asking questions later. Asking questions means you don’t know the answer. Trump always knows the answer: you are the best, Jesus wants you to be in charge, Democrats want to KILL YOU!!! And sell your kids for body parts. Aieee!
So hit first. Hit hard. Anyone questions you, hit them in the face. Then hit her husband. Hit her brothers and sisters. Knock her granny down and beat her with her own cane. Tell the kids they’re stupid and ugly and should all die soon.
Then run for office, rig the election with the help of an antagonistic foreign party, become president, make millions of dollars, and run off with top secret documents for show and for sale. When you’re caught, punch everyone in sight and scream “Scam! I’m being attacked! Kill them all!”
The Republican Way.
Facts? They don’t need no stinkin’ facts.
Gingrich must be so proud.
The MoDo column (linked above) as well as Marie’s comment, reveal a not so hidden truth about the Party of Traitors and the right in general. Their new found love of a commie murderer and dictator, their attacks on the rule of law, make clear that their party’s former anti-communist stance and embrace of law and order have become nothing but empty shibboleths, so too their unearned reputation as the party of economic prudence.
They worship power, and totalitarian control. That’s it. A bare chested, horse riding, gun toting picture of Putin causes swoons among the authoritarianism through violence crowd. Trump’s gaudy gewgaw plated mansions prompt them to equate money, however I’ll gotten, with strength and leadership, and any body, group, individual, or rule that imposes the tiniest impediment on this will to authoritarianism must be stamped out, ergo the doxing of FBI agents working in the line of duty.
Effectively, they are all cowards, fearful that their chosen ideology will be shown up as the hollow, corrupt, dogshit dogma it has always been. Therefore, anyone pointing out the unclothed nature of their emperors must be silenced, either figuratively, or literally.
This is also part of their need to grab control of school boards. Children cannot be allowed to read about real history, actual humanity, or to develop critical thinking skills. Books and ideas they fear are routinely attacked by groups with oxymoronic names like Mothers for Freedom.
So too the need to restrict voting. As the whites-firsters diminish in numbers, they realize that letting just anyone vote is anathema to their increasingly desperate need to hang on to power.
Real education? Bad! True democracy? Worse. Facts? The worst.
Cowards. But cowards with guns, ready to use them. A while back a woman showed up at a school board meeting in (I think) Virginia shouting that unless the board members did what they were told (stop teaching things she didn’t like), she and her friends would be back. With guns.
This is the Republican Party today. Scared, stupid, and violent.