August 31, 2022
Afternoon Update:
Kyle Cheney of Politico: "Just six days before the Justice Department subpoenaed to recover highly sensitive documents housed at Mar-a-Lago, one of ... Donald Trump's attorneys scoured the estate searching for records in response to a separate legal matter. The attorney, Alina Habba, told a New York State court that on May 5, she conducted a search of Trump's private residence and office at Mar-a-Lago that was so 'diligent' it included 'all desks, drawers, nightstands, dressers, closets, etc.' She was looking for records in response to a subpoena issued by New York Attorney General Letitia James.... The same filing also includes an affidavit from Trump himself, indicating that he 'authorized Alina Habba to search my private residence and personal office located at The Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Florida for any and all documents responsive to the Subpoena.' Habba indicated she conducted similar searches at Trump s residences and office at his Bedminster estate. The filing submitted to the New York AG s office raises key questions in relation to ... whether Habba ended up handling any of the documents that DOJ later discovered at Trump's club; and, if so, whether she has the clearance to have done so..... After [the] subpoena [in the presidential papers case] was issued, Trump indicated that he responded by ordering staff to conduct a thorough search of the property for documents marked as classified."
Here's the White House's transcription, as delivered, of President Biden's speech in Pennyslvania yesterday.
Noah Weiland & Sharon LaFraniere of the New York Times: "The Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday authorized the first redesign of coronavirus vaccines since they were rolled out in late 2020, setting up millions of Americans to receive new booster doses targeting Omicron subvariants as soon as next week. The agency cleared two options aimed at the BA.5 variant of Omicron that is now dominant: one made by Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech for use in people as young as 12, and the other by Moderna, for those 18 and older."
When Fox's Steve Doocy is the Voice of Reason. Colby Hall of Mediaite: "Steve Doocy asked the question that most reasonable people have following a midnight DOJ filing that revealed stunning details surrounding the search and seizure at Mar-a-Lago.... 'Keep in mind, according to the filing, the agents found three classified documents in Donald Trump's [desk],' Doocy noted with a level of shock. 'What were they doing in the desk?!' [Referring to the photo of classified documents that accompanied the DOJ's filing, Doocy said,] 'And when you look at these particular things right here, at least five yellow folders marked top secret and another secret SCI -- that stands for sensitive compartmentalized information -- these are the biggest secrets in the world!.'"
Florida. Matt Dixon of the Tampa Bay Times: "Rep. Charlie Crist is resigning from Congress to focus on his bid for Florida governor, a move that was expected after his huge primary victory over Democratic Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried. The seat will remain vacant until the November election."
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Zolan Kanno-Youngs of the New York Times: "President Biden gave a forceful defense of the F.B.I. during a speech in Pennsylvania on Tuesday and called out allies of ... Donald J. Trump for failing to condemn those who attacked law enforcement during the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol. During a visit to a key swing state, Mr. Biden took what have been political vulnerabilities for the White House -- policing and rising crime -- and cast them as strengths ahead of the congressional elections in November. 'It's sickening to see the new attacks on the F.B.I.,' Mr. Biden said, referring to some congressional Republicans who have called to 'defund' or even 'destroy' the F.B.I. over its search of Mr. Trump's Mar-a-Lago home on Aug. 8.... 'Let me say this to my MAGA Republican friends in Congress: Don't tell me you support law enforcement if you won't condemn what happened on the 6th,' Mr. Biden said, referring to the Jan. 6 attack. 'For God's sake, whose side are you on?'" ~~~
** Glenn Thrush, et al., of the New York Times: "The Justice Department sought a search warrant for ... Donald J. Trump's residence in Florida after obtaining evidence that highly classified documents were likely moved around and concealed and that Mr. Trump's representatives had falsely claimed all sensitive material had been returned, according to a court filing by the department on Tuesday. The filing, which came in response to Mr. Trump's request for an independent review of materials seized from his home, Mar-a-Lago, paints the clearest picture yet of the department's exhaustive effort to retrieve the documents before taking the extraordinary step of searching a former president's private property on Aug. 8.
"Among the new disclosures in the 36-page filing were that the search yielded three classified documents in desks located inside Mr. Trump's office, with more than 100 documents in 13 boxes or containers with classification markings in the residence, including some at the most restrictive levels. That was twice the number of classified documents the former president s lawyers turned over voluntarily while swearing an oath that they had returned all the material demanded by the government.... Tuesday's filing made clear that prosecutors are now unmistakably focused on the possibility that Mr. Trump and those around him took potentially criminal steps to obstruct their investigation....
"[Trump attorney Christina] Bobb's statement[, dated June 3, 2022,] was attached to the department's filing on Tuesday. In it, the lawyer wrote that 'based upon the information that has been provided to me,' there had been a 'diligent' search and all responsive documents to the subpoena were being returned. But law enforcement officials soon developed evidence that statement was untrue -- and said their investigation cast serious doubt on the sworn statement. The F.B.I. 'uncovered multiple sources of evidence indicating that the response to the May 11 grand jury subpoena was incomplete and that classified documents remained at the premises, notwithstanding the sworn certification made to the government on June 3,' the Justice Department filing said....
"On Tuesday, the Justice Department argued that a special master was 'unnecessary and would significantly harm important governmental interests, including national security interests.' It also argued that the judge lacked jurisdiction over the matter and that Mr. Trump 'lacks standing to seek judicial relief or oversight as to presidential records because those records do not belong to him.'" ~~~
~~~ Devlin Barrett of the Washington Post: "The filing ... charges that some of the boxes held in a storage room 'were not returned prior to counsel's review' of the material -- suggesting that while the government was demanding all classified material be secured in that storage room, someone was continuing to move or hide papers. When agents conducted their court-ordered search on Aug. 8, they found material so sensitive that 'even the FBI counterintelligence personnel and DOJ attorneys conducting the review required additional clearances before they were permitted to review certain documents,' the filing says.... In response to a subpoena, the former president's lawyer turned over 38 classified documents, in addition to 184 others that were discovered in boxes sent to the National Archives earlier in the year, the filing says. Yet when FBI agents searched the Trump property in August, they found more than 100 additional classified papers, which, prosecutors wrote, 'calls into serious question the representations made in the June 3 certification and casts doubt on the extent of cooperation in this matter.'...
"The prosecutors paint Trump's lawyer, Evan Corcoran, and custodian of records, Christina Bobb as so uncooperative as to lead agents to suspect the Trump team might be obstructing the investigation. The filing, for instance, says that when FBI agents and Jay Bratt, the chief of the counterintelligence and export control section at the Justice Department, met with Trump's two representatives in early June, 'the former President's counsel explicitly prohibited government personnel from opening or looking inside any of the boxes that remained in the storage room, giving no opportunity for the government to confirm that no documents with classification markings remained.' Yet earlier this month, Bobb told The Washington Post that the lawyers showed the federal officials the boxes, and Bratt and others spent some time looking through the material." Includes facsimile of filing. ~~~
~~~ Politico's report, by Josh Gerstein & Kyle Cheney, is here: "Trump's claims that the items should be returned to him have no merit, [the government contended]. 'Any Presidential records seized pursuant to the search warrant belong to the United States, not to the former President,' [DOJ counterintelligence chief Jay] Bratt argued.... In particular, Bratt urged [Judge] Cannon to reject Trump's claim that any of the documents seized were subject to a claim of executive privilege by him -- and therefore unrecoverable by the current administration. 'The former President cites no case -- and the government is aware of none -- in which executive privilege has been successfully invoked to prohibit the sharing of documents within the Executive Branch,' Bratt wrote.... Intelligence officials are currently reviewing the recovered files to assess risks to national security, and any disruption to that could jeopardize the review, DOJ contends.... Trump is due to respond to the government's filing by Wednesday evening, and Cannon has called for a hearing on the matter Thursday afternoon in West Palm Beach....
"While arguing against a special master, the filing does offer some suggestions for Cannon if she decides to do so anyway. Prosecutors say the special master should only review the seized records for potential attorney-client privileged information and not for other issues. In addition, the Justice Department says that if a special master 'must be permitted to review classified documents,' that person should have a top-level security clearance already to avoid delay." CNN's report is here.
~~~ A copy of the DOJ filing submitted late Tuesday is here, via CNN.
Maggie Haberman of the New York Times: "... Donald J. Trump has hired a high-profile lawyer to help him with the aftermath of the F.B.I. search of his club and home in Florida and the criminal investigation into his handling of sensitive government documents. The lawyer, Christopher M. Kise, is a former solicitor general for the State of Florida who has won four cases before the United States Supreme Court and worked as a transition adviser for Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, a Republican. Mr. Kise, who is now in private practice, formally joined the team in recent days, according to two of Mr. Trump's associates."
David Badash of the New Civil Rights Movement: "Donald Trump is having a meltdown on his Truth Social platform. The former president ... is lashing out at his opponents, rapidly reposting memes from his supporters celebrating him and attacking President Joe Biden and the Democrats, and promoting falsehoods about the 2020 election, the Jan. 6 insurrection, and vaccines. Trump's meltdown, which includes dozens of posts and reposts per hour, comes amid his baseless demand on Monday to either be named president again or have the nation hold a new election 'immediately.' 'Trump is spending his morning on Truth Social directly posting 4chan and Q messages.... He's doing explicitly what he used to try to shade or use coded language for,' Politico's Kyle Cheney observes...." An interesting read. MB: And I told you he was nuts. (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~
~~~ Paul Campos in LG&$: "One of the eternally puzzling things about Donald Trump is the fact that he is an increasingly unhinged demagogue who was president of the United States and could well be again is treated as basically normal, as if this is just one of those things that happens sometime, and therefore doesn't deserve any special attention or comment[.]... The fact that Donald Trump is a deranged narcissistic authoritarian with frankly delusional beliefs about everything..., and is at the same time the leader of one of our two national political parties, has become in some indescribably perverse way completely normalized." ~~~
~~~ Steve Benen of MSNBC recounts press reports that have related the numerous times one-time one-term President* Donald Trump has opined that he could be immediately returned to office. Like Paul Campos, Benen says" it seems only fair to ask Republican officeholders and candidates whether they agree with Trump's plea [to immediately reinstate him as president*]." Citing conservative opinionator Charles Cooke, Benen points out that even if Joe Biden did somehow steal the 2020 presidential election, there is no Constitutional mechanism to install the loser in the office like "the second-place horse in a race whose winner was disqualified." ~~~
~~~ Steve M. explains why "Trump is either a seditionary or a spoiled five-year-old. Or both, I guess."
Google Rejects Trump's Orwellian Social. Jack Stebbins of CNBC: "Truth Social, the would-be Twitter competitor created by Trump Media and Technology Group, remains unavailable on the Google Play store. Google said the app lacks effective systems for moderating user-generated content, which violates the store's terms of service. 'On Aug. 19, we notified Truth Social of several violations of standard policies in their current app submission and reiterated that having effective systems for moderating user-generated content is a condition of our terms of service for any app to go live on Google Play,' the tech company, which is owned by Alphabet, told CNBC in a statement Tuesday.... The restriction means that Android users, who make up 44% of smartphone users in the U.S., can't download the app." MB: Of course one of the users the app can't moderate is @RealDonaldTrump.
Rachel Weiner & Jeremy Barr of the Washington Post: "Some of the biggest stars on Fox News are being compelled to answer questions about their coverage of the 2020 presidential election as a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit from an election technology company that claims its reputation was ruined by the network's airing of baseless fraud allegations picks up steam. Lawyers for Dominion Voting Systems last week questioned hosts Jeanine Pirro and Tucker Carlson, while Sean Hannity and former Fox Business Network host Lou Dobbs are scheduled for depositions Tuesday, according to court filings. They are among the on-air personalities that Dominion says defamed it either by falsely claiming the company conspired to rig the election against Donald Trump or by repeatedly hosting guests who made such claims."
Robert Reich in a Guardian op-ed: "I've been watching the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, for some time. Last Tuesday I tweeted: 'Just wondering if "DeSantis" is now officially a synonym for "fascist".' I was surprised at the outrage my little tweet provoked in rightwing media.... America's mainstream media is by now comfortable talking and writing about 'authoritarianism'. Maybe it should also begin using the term 'fascism', where appropriate.... Authoritarianism implies the absence of democracy, a dictatorship. Fascism also includes hatred of 'them' (people considered different by race or religion, or outside the mainstream, or who were born abroad), control over what people learn and what books they are allowed to read, control over what had been independent government units (school boards, medical boards, universities and so on), control over women and the most intimate and difficult decisions they'll ever make, and demands that the private sector support the regime." See also strong> RAS's comment in today's thread.
Ramon Vargas of the Guardian: "A United Nations expert warned that some US state governments are steadily undermining and eliminating lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and gender diverse people's civil rights, and he urged the Joe Biden White House to strengthen protective measures for them. Victor Madrigal-Borloz, the diplomatic organization's independent expert on protection against gender- and sexual orientation-based violence and discrimination, said he is deeply alarmed' that prior progress, such as the US supreme court's legalization of gay marriage in 2015, is under threat at both the state and federal levels in America."
Kenneth Chang of the New York Times: "For now, NASA will press ahead with preparations for a second launch attempt on Saturday of its new moon rocket, NASA officials said during a news conference on Tuesday[.] Mission managers have come up with a plan that they hope will work around an engine problem with the rocket encountered during the first launch attempt on Monday. The Space Launch System rocket is the modern equivalent of the Saturn V that took NASA astronauts to the moon during the Apollo program half a century ago, and it is the centerpiece of NASA's Artemis program, which aims to send astronauts back to the moon in the coming years."
Hurubie Meko of the New York Times: "For decades, the students at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in New York have walked beneath a panel of three bronze plaques mounted at the entrance of Bartlett Hall Science Center that includes an image of a hooded figure and the words 'Ku Klux Klan' written below it, according to findings in a report released by a congressional panel on Monday. The report from the panel, the Naming Commission, which was created by Congress last year and tasked with providing recommendations for the removal or renaming of Defense Department assets that commemorate the Confederacy.... But the commission said that recommending the removal of the plaque fell outside of its scope because the Ku Klux Klan, founded by former Confederate soldiers, emerged after the Civil War. The panel flagged the item for review in its report, and included a picture."
Roni Rabin of the New York Times: "The average life expectancy of Americans fell precipitously in 2020 and 2021, the sharpest two-year decline in nearly 100 years and a stark reminder of the toll exacted on the nation by the continuing coronavirus pandemic. In 2021, the average American could expect to live until the age of 76, federal health researchers reported on Wednesday. The figure represents a loss of almost three years since 2019, when Americans could expect to live, on average, nearly 79 years. The reduction has been particularly steep among Native Americans and Alaska Natives, the National Center for Health Statistics reported."
Noah Weiland of the New York Times: "The Biden administration announced a new plan on Tuesday to send extra doses of monkeypox vaccine to states for use at events or sites that can reach more people of color and others who have lacked access to shots. The program, called an 'equity intervention pilot,' will offer 10,000 vials of vaccine, or as many as 50,000 doses, that can be distributed by local officials to five different venues. Officials said the doses were meant for people who might struggle to find appointments or worry about the stigma of attending public vaccination events."
Beyond the Beltway
Congressional Races. Republicans Try to Hide Their Real Views. Colby Itkowitz of the Washington Post: "At least nine Republican congressional candidates have scrubbed or amended references to Trump or abortion from their online profiles in recent months, distancing themselves from divisive subjects that some GOP strategists say are two of the biggest liabilities for the party ahead of the post-Labor Day sprint to Election Day.... The attempts by Republicans in competitive contests to pivot away from abortion and Trump have emboldened Democrats to mount an aggressive offense on those issues, which they see as key to their efforts to outperform once-dim expectations in congressional races."
Cristiano Lima of the Washington Post: "California state lawmakers passed a major children's online safety measure on Tuesday that would require digital platforms to vet whether new products may pose harm to kids and teens before rolling them out and to offer privacy guardrails to younger users by default. Children's safety advocates say the legislation, the California Age-Appropriate Design Code Act, would make the state a national leader in setting protections for kids and teens online. Its passage is part of a growing push nationwide to hold tech companies like Instagram, TikTok and Snapchat accountable for how their services may affect children's mental health and safety. Its passage is likely to heighten calls for Congress to introduce new guardrails for children's personal information and online activity."
Mississippi. Rick Rojas of the New York Times: "More than 150,000 people in Mississippi's capital were without access to safe drinking water on Tuesday, forcing officials to tackle what they described as the 'massively complicated task' of distributing bottled water and devising a plan to restore service without a firm sense of how long that would take. The water system in Jackson, the state's largest city, has been in crisis for years, hobbled by aging and inadequate infrastructure and, many in the city argue, a failure to devote sufficient resources to fix it. Residents have long contended with disruptions in service and frequent boil-water notices, including one that had already been in effect for more than a month because of cloudiness in water samples. But the situation worsened dramatically this week as officials said that the city's largest water treatment plant was failing, pushed to the brink by torrential rains. Homes and businesses were left with little to no water pressure, schools switched to virtual learning, and hospitals brought in portable restrooms as a vital element of a functioning city suddenly collapsed."
~~~ Bryan Pietsch of the Washington Post: "The governor of Mississippi urged residents of Jackson, the state's capital and largest city, not to drink the water there -- if they still had access to it -- warning that running water would soon be unavailable as the city's long-struggling treatment plant failed. Gov. Tate Reeves (R) said during an emergency briefing Monday night that the city would be without 'reliable running water at scale' for the near future.... Until the situation is resolved, residents in the city of 150,000 should not drink the water or use it to cook or brush their teeth unless they boil it first, officials said. Reeves said the situation was 'very different' from a boil-water notice, as the water itself would run out -- leaving residents unable to flush their toilets.... There would not even be enough water to fight fires, Reeves said, adding that the state this weekend started gathering alternative sources of water, including for firefighting. Separate sources of drinking water and non-potable water for flushing toilets would be distributed, he said." (Also linked yesterday.)
Virginia. Hannah Natanson of the Washington Post: "A Virginia judge on Tuesday dismissed a lawsuit brought by two Republicans that sought to limit how bookstores and public school libraries could distribute two books to minors, closing -- at least temporarily -- an unusual commercial strategy in the campaign to protect students from literature conservatives say is not age-appropriate. The two books at the heart of the suit are Maia Kobabe's 'Gender Queer,' a memoir about identifying as nonbinary, and Sarah J. Maas's 'A Court of Mist and Fury,' a fantasy novel that depicts a dark fairy romance. Both have drawn objections for their sexual material. The suit, filed in Virginia Beach Circuit Court by Del. Tim Anderson (R-Virginia Beach) and congressional candidate Tommy Altman, aimed to prevent the Virginia Beach school system and locations of the private bookseller Barnes & Noble from selling the books to children without first obtaining parental consent. In her order dismissing the lawsuit, Judge Pamela Baskervill concluded that part of Virginia's state law dealing with obscenity is unconstitutional."
Way Beyond
Ukraine, et al.
The New York Times' live updates of developments Wednesday in Russia's war on Ukraine are here. The Guardian's live updates are here. The Guardian's summary of developments is here. ~~~
~~~ The Washington Post's live briefings for Wednesday are here: "Inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) have arrived in Kyiv, and new attacks on Russian forces in the Kherson region are underway, according to Ukrainian officials."
Putin's War on Gorbachev. Anton Troianovski of the New York Times: "In Ukraine, Mr. Putin is fighting in the shadows of the empire whose end Mr. Gorbachev presided over, having started a war that has killed thousands in the name of restoring Moscow's dominance over what it claims to be Russian lands. But Mr. Putin's battle to reverse Mr. Gorbachev's legacy extends beyond territorial control to the personal and political freedoms that the last Soviet president ushered in -- and that the Kremlin is now fast unraveling." Informative read. ~~~
~~~ David Hoffman of the Washington Post: "Mikhail S. Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union, who embarked on a path of radical reform that brought about the end of the Cold War, reversed the direction of the nuclear arms race and relaxed Communist Party controls in hopes of rescuing the faltering Soviet state but instead propelled it toward collapse, has died in Moscow. He was 91. His death was announced by Russian news agencies, citing the government hospital where he was being treated, but no further details were immediately available." (Also linked yesterday.) The New York Times obituary is here.
Stanley Reed of the New York Times: "Gazprom, Russia's government-owned energy giant, shut off natural gas flows early Wednesday through Nord Stream 1, the critical pipeline that connects Russia to Germany, raising fresh worries about European energy supplies. Gazprom said the cutoff was temporary and was necessary for maintenance, although the German government and energy executives consider it to be politically motivated. After three days, Gazprom said, the pipeline will restart 'provided that no malfunctions are identified.' It said flows would resume at 20 percent of capacity, the same reduced level it has provided since late July."
Australia. Jennifer Hassan of the Washington Post: "Chris Dawson, an Australian man who became the subject of a popular crime podcast that investigated the 1982 disappearance of his wife, Lynette Dawson, has been found guilty of murdering her, 40 years after her disappearance. Justice Ian Harrison handed down the verdict at the Supreme Court of New South Wales on Tuesday, following a two-month trial that gripped Australia.... Dawson, 74, a former teacher and rugby player, has long maintained his innocence and pleaded not guilty to his wife's murder. He was arrested in 2018 -- the same year millions listened to the podcast 'The Teacher's Pet,' which examined the couple's relationship and the final weeks of 33-year-old Lynette's life."
Iraq. Jane Arraf of the New York Times: "The influential Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr tried on Tuesday to defuse an eruption of violence in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, calling on his followers to stand down after at least 24 people were killed in two days of clashes with security forces. The violence, after three years of relative stability in Baghdad, began on Monday shortly after Mr. Sadr declared on Twitter that he was quitting politics for good. His supporters went out to protest and stormed the heavily protected Green Zone in Baghdad, home to Iraqi government offices, the United Nations and diplomatic missions including the U.S. Embassy. After coming under fire from government security forces, who included members of Iran-backed militias, fighters loyal to Mr. Sadr armed with rifles and rocket-propelled grenades emerged to take on the security forces." (Also linked yesterday.)
Earth. Chris Mooney of the Washington Post: &"Human-driven climate change has set in motion massive ice losses in Greenland that couldn't be halted even if the world stopped emitting greenhouse gases today, according to a study published Monday. The findings in the journal Nature Climate Change project that it is now inevitable that 3.3 percent of the Greenland ice sheet will melt -- equal to 110 trillion tons of ice, the researchers said. That will trigger nearly a foot of global sea-level rise.... While the study did not specify a time frame for the melting and sea-level rise, the authors suggested much of it can play out between now and the year 2100."
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Reader Comments (9)
From Ruth Ben-Ghiat in the LA Times
"At critical junctures in their histories, political parties reassess their platforms, methods and the qualities and values they desire their politicians to embody. The Jan. 6 coup attempt that intended to keep President Trump in office illegally was such a moment for the GOP, which ever since has been remaking itself into an illiberal entity with dizzying speed.
In autocracies, ruling parties become personal tools of the leader, and loyalty to the head of state, rather than expertise, is the most prized political quality. Those loyalty demands surge when the leader faces legal challenges or threats to his power.
The Big Lie has traction because it lets any GOP politician become a mini-Trump, denying certified election results to get to power or to try to stay there illegally.
Autocrats have long encouraged the lawless and the corrupt to populate party and state institutions. Twentieth century Italian dictator Benito Mussolini’s Cabinet and his Fascist Party bureaucracy were full of former Blackshirts who had killed liberals and leftists. Forza Italia politician Marcello Dell’Utri, who was Berlusconi’s right-hand man, was convicted of Mafia association in 2004 but stayed a senator. In 2019, national legislators in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s India included 11 individuals who were involved in murder cases and an additional 10 who had been convicted of serious crimes."
This is why they get so mad and try to distract when anyone starts focusing on what the current Republican Party has become.
From yesterday's delusional George Will WAPO column on why smart guys like himself don’t think Gorbachev amounted to all that much.
" Secretary of State George P. Shultz in 1987 explained to Gorbachev the world’s transformation from the industrial to the information age, making the foundational Marxist distinction between capital and labor obsolete because “we have entered a world in which the truly important capital is human capital — what people know, how freely they exchange information and knowledge.”
Was particularly taken by that capital and labor nonsense.
As Elizabeth said yesterday: bollocks! .
In this morning’s news: https://abcnews.go.com/Business/labor-unions-reach-highest-level-approval-us-1965/story?
Sure a lot of people who don’t know Marxian economic analysis is obsolete. Guess they’re just not as smart as George.
How long, oh lord, how long until the rabid baby is arrested for stealing, hoarding and hiding an indeterminate number of boxes belonging not to him? How long must we listen to and read the ravings of a scumbag who never ever should have lied his way into the highest office in the land? How long must we bend over backwards to provide him with rights not afforded the rest of us? How long will stupid people be allowed to ruin the lives of the rest of us? How long?
Methinks the thief who was previously the thief-in-chief should be
required to take multiple lie detector tests. Have you sold any papers
that belong to the people of the USA? Do you have more papers at
your other residences? Does Melanie have some stuffed in her bra?
Etc, etc, etc.
Who here thinks the machines would explode with an overload of
lies?
But maybe his brain is wired so it thinks all his lies are actually truth.
I'm not a psychologist, so don't know how things like that work.
@Jeanne: Whatever the answer to that question is it will be too damn long.
Forest: Our esteemed editor in chief describes the workings of this monster perfectly–––"He's NUTS"––-that pretty much covers it–-don't need to psychoanalyze––-and as much as I enjoy the process, by this time I'm so sick of trying to get into his head, I'm putting him to bed and going with "nuts"–––saves time and energy. If he were to take a lie detector test the indicator thingy would never move–-it would just stay way down on the bottom indicating LIE or as you said, probably explode.
I'm concerned–––a different kind than Susan–––about Mississippi and their water problem and if part of the problem is due to the Republican governor not being up to snuff then by, jove, the Dems better run with it. The problem they face, however, portends more problems like this in certain states where certain governors pretend they are doing a nifty job. Let us count the ways.
@Jeanne: How about 'when pigs fly?' Or 'when hell freezes over.'
Or when the fat one declares 'I'm the greatest liar who ever lied.'
Or 'don't hold your breath.' And on and on.
Everybody... Yeah. (sigh)
Admit I don't much feel poor Sarah's pain.
Like the Pretender,.she was always a loser. Just didn't know it.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/31/alaska-palin-peltola-house/