#TrumpCult – Sky Dancing (2024)

Posted: November 25, 2024 | Author: dakinikat | Filed under: Regime of Chaos | Tags: #TrumpCult, All you fascists bound to lose, Project 2025, Regime of Chaos, Trump quackery cabinet, With Liberty and Justice For All | 4 Comments

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

I’ve been trying to focus on how bad the Trump Regime’s economic policies will be for the economy since I am a Financial Economist. Today, we must face the horrific white christofascist appointments that will kill more women and endanger the lives of the GLBTQ+, as well as threaten the lives of young children, the elderly, and those with preexisting conditions. We will have a combination of VooDoo Economics, VooDo medicine, and VooDoo exorcism. People will die. People will be incarcerated. People will righteously fear for their lives. When the words “Liberty and Justice for all” were enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, they signed on to “all,” and “all” stood until this regime. The Supreme Court, Congress, the President, and the People firmly moved the path of American history to ensure that “all” meant “all.” Many of my family members nobly signed on to the Declaration and the wars, even though it meant they sacrificed their lives and liberty. They did so because they wanted to hand a legacy of freedom down to us. Shame on us if we let this band of psychopaths steal our past and our future.

The list of “undesirables” and those that must be controlled by specific kinds of white men is long and threatening. Just living, just doing your job, just attending school, just trying to start a family, just being you and not bothering anyone else will be illegal in this country if Donald and his cronies have their way.

The Independent reported today that “Trump reportedly plans to kick trans troops out of the military within days of inauguration.Trump’s actions could eject thousands of current trans service members.” This comes on the heels of the nominee for the Defense Department’s desire to remove women from all kinds of duties in the military. These actions will hurt military readiness and create stress within the ranks of the military.

Donald Trumpis expected to sign anexecutive orderthat would remove transgender service members from the military as soon as his first day in office.

Thepresident-electis reportedly preparing to issue an order following his inauguration on January 20 that would effectively ban trans people serving in the military — and then medically discharge the thousands of currently serving trans service members in the armed forces.

In his first term in office, Trump declared that the US would no longer “accept or allow” trans people in the military, citing “tremendous medical costs and disruption,” he tweeted in 2017. The ban took effect in 2019.

President Joe Bidenreversed that policy, which was the subject of several lawsuits. Now, Trump is expected to immediately rescind Biden’s order and go further by ejecting currently-serving trans troops,according toThe Times, citing sources familiar with the president-elect’s plans.

The executive action is among a stack of orders the president-elect is planning to issueas soon as he re-enters the White House, including sweeping actions on immigration, all of which are expected to draw significant legal battles.

Senator and military veteran Tammy Duckworth continues to push back on the notion that women can’t do the jobs they’ve passed all kinds of tests to perform. From CBS News’ Face the Nation, “Sen. Duckworth says Trump defense secretary pick is “flat-out wrong” about women in combat roles.”

“Our military could not go to war without the 220,000-plus women who serve in uniform,” Duckworth said. She added that having women in the military “does make us more effective, does make us more lethal.”

Lisa Needham of Public Notice writes, “Trump hoodwinked voters about his worst policy commitments. They signed up for Project 2025 whether they knew it or not.” It’s easy to hoodwink idiots. What amazes me is the number of people who seem to want us to be mean and petty.

Before digging into the steps Trump is taking to force the worst of Project 2025’s personnel and policies on the country, let’s tackle that whole mandate question first.

Besides the fact that the Trump campaign deliberately obscured some of its most consequential policy goals to win votes, there’s the fact that his victory is proving far less decisive than it initially appeared. As votes have continued to be counted, Trump’s popular vote margin is going to be less than two percent, smaller than Hillary Clinton’s popular vote win in 2016 and in fact thesmallest popular vote marginsince 2000. Declaring you have a mandate doesn’t make it so, but it is The Republican Waygoing back toGeorge W. Bush.

Back to Project 2025. Despite lying about it throughout the campaign, Trump wasted no time appointing several of the project’s authors to key positions in his new administration. Because they’ve been steeped in hypocrisy for so long, Republicans see nothing odd about Trump embracing Project 2025 after feigning a complete lack of familiarity and havingcalled it“ridiculous and abysmal.”

Project 2025 co-author Russ Vought, who led the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) during Trump’s first term, gotcaught on tapesaying the quiet part out loud during the campaign when he told undercover reporters to trust that Trump would implement a national abortion ban if he returned to power, despite his public statements to the contrary. But far from being rapped on the knuckles for linking Trump to a stance he ostensibly opposed, Vought hasbeen rewardedby getting his old OMB job back.

Besides being one of Trump’s abortion-whisperers, Vought is going tobe instrumentalin executing Trump’s plan to strip federal workers of job protections and replace them with hard-right partisans who see their only job as executing Trump’s wishes. Vought won’t stop there, though. He’s said we’re living in a “post-constitutional” time, which for Vought apparently means that Trump gets to turn the military on protestors and to cut spending whether Congress agrees or not.

If this sounds to you a lot like an imperial presidency, of deforming the whole of the federal government to make it solely a weapon to implement Trump’s desires, you’re not wrong.And Vought is by no means alone in being one of the Project 2025 denizens who Trump is ushering into high-level government positions.

Trump’s pick for the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), Brendan Carr,wrotethe Project 2025 chapter on the FCC. In it, Carr proposes that the FCC regulate big technology companies like Apple, Meta, and Google so that what Carr called the “censorship cartel” can be dismantled. Carr also backs Trump’s plan to penalize broadcast networks for “bias,” having alreadyraisedthe specter of killing a Paramount-Skydance merger over Trump’s nonsense conspiracy theory about 60 Minutes deceptively editing an interview with Kamala Harris.

You can expect Carr’s vision of free speech to look a lot like what X/Twitter looks like under Trump pal Elon Musk: protection of hate speech and suppression of viewpoints critical of Trump.

Trump’sSurgeon General and FDA chair appointmentsare as appalling as the rest. They also stand to endanger the lives of many Americans. The health of women, children, and the elderly is in danger. It gets worse. The over million lives lost to Trump’s mismanagement of COVID-19 will look like a joy ride if either of the next two incoming diseases turns into a pandemic. They may be because the people most equipped to deter them will be supervised by idiots. The CDC pick is a nightmare waiting to happen, too. This is from NPR. “What to know about Trump’s picks for CDC, FDA and surgeon general.” It’s reported by Will Stone.

In a series of high-profile announcements Friday evening, President-elect Trump made his picks for three top health positions in the new administration.

Johns Hopkins surgeon Marty Makary is his choice for Food and Drug Administration commissioner. He wants former Rep. Dave Weldon, a Republican from Florida, to serve as director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Dr. Janette Nesheiwat, a Fox News contributor, is in line to be the next surgeon general.

Trump made all three announcements on Truth Social and in press releases. Together the picks would help the incoming president shift the priorities of agencies that are linchpins in public health. But the choices also come with controversy.

Here are some snips on all three cabinet candidates.

A frequent guest on Fox News, Makary has authored several books on health care, is a member of the National Academy of Medicine and holds a master’s in public health from Harvard. He gained visibility for his writing and research on thehigh costof health care,medical errorsand the need for moretransparencyin medicine, among other topics.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, he also emerged as a vocal critic of various aspects of the public health response, particularly vaccine mandates andwhat he calledthe “complete dismissal of natural immunity.”

Hevoiced supportfor lockdowns early in the pandemic and encouraged universal masking. But in the subsequent years, he became increasinglyoutspokenagainst certain COVID-related decisions made by federal health agencies. Hecalled the CDCunder the Biden administration, “the most political CDC in history.”

<snip>

“He’s a well-trained internist. He’s practiced medicine,” says Dr. Georges Benjamin, head of the American Public Health Association. “He doesn’t [seem to] have traditional public health training, but we’ll learn more when he goes through Senate confirmation.”

As a congressman from Florida, Weldon “worked with the CDC to enact a ban on patents for human embryos,” Trump said in his Truth Social post. Weldon also introduced protections for health care workers and organizations that do not provide or aid in abortions. Known as the Weldon Amendment, the clause has been attached to the annual HHS spending bill in Congress since 2005.

The Weldon Amendment and related policies apply to public funds. But according to theGuttmacher Institute, a research group that supports abortion rights, it also “emboldens health insurance plans, health care institutions and medical providers to deny abortion services and coverage … often under the rubric of protecting ‘conscience’ or ‘religious freedom.’ “

<snip>

As with several of his picks for his Cabinet, Trump’s new surgeon general comes with experience at Fox News.

Nesheiwatis a medical contributor for the network and author ofBeyond the Stethoscope: Miracles in Medicine, a book described on her website as “a vivid Christian memoir” that recounts her experiences during the pandemic and after. She’s also medical director at CityMD, a network of urgent care centers in New York and New Jersey — experience she has drawn on inselling her own line of vitamin supplements.

Along with Dr. Oz and RFK, jr., we should see a healthy business, perhaps called Trump Pharmaceuticals, in quack medicine. We also see the footprints to ensure children get polio again and that women die from pregnancy again. This comes after ProPublica has found yet another black woman who died unnecessarily from the Trump Abortion Ban law put into place in Texas. “Are Avoiding D&Cs and Reaching for Riskier Miscarriage Treatments.Thirty-five-year-old Porsha Ngumezi’s case raises questions about how abortion bans are pressuring doctors to avoid standard care even in straightforward miscarriages.”

Wrapping his wife in a blanket as she mourned the loss of her pregnancy at 11 weeks, Hope Ngumezi wondered why no obstetrician was coming to see her.

Over the course of six hours on June 11, 2023, Porsha Ngumezi had bled so much in the emergency department at Houston Methodist Sugar Land that she’d needed two transfusions. She was anxious to get home to her young sons, but, according to a nurse’s notes, she was still “passing large clots the size of grapefruit.”

Hope dialed his mother, a former physician, who was unequivocal. “You need a D&C,” she told them, referring to dilation and curettage, a common procedure for first-trimester miscarriages and abortions. If a doctor could remove the remaining tissue from her uterus, the bleeding would end.

But when Dr. Andrew Ryan Davis, the obstetrician on duty, finally arrived, he said it was the hospital’s “routine” to give a drug called misoprostol to help the body pass the tissue, Hope recalled. Hope trusted the doctor. Porsha took the pills, according to records, and the bleeding continued.

Three hours later, her heart stopped.

The 35-year-old’s death was preventable, according to more than a dozen doctors who reviewed a detailed summary of her case for ProPublica. Some said it raises serious questions about how abortion bans are pressuring doctors to diverge from the standard of care and reach for less-effective options that could expose their patients to more risks. Doctors and patients described similar decisions they’ve witnessed across the state.

Leonard Leo continues to be a religious crusader against human rights and still has the billions to do so. This article from NPR is probably one of the reasons why MTG wants to defund it NPR and NPTV. Haven’t we been through all this before? Don’t we learn anything? “The man who helped roll back abortion rights now wants to ‘crush liberal dominance’.” It’s not liberal dominance. It should be a dominance of facts, law, and sanity. Here’s some of an interview that shows where he wants to stick his tentacles next.

Inskeep: Mr. Leo, I want people to know about something called the Teneo Network, if I’m pronouncing it correctly. There’s been some reporting on this, an effort that you’re involved with to bring conservative influence to businesses Wall Street, Silicon Valley, Hollywood, in the same way that you brought more conservative influences to the judiciary, will you help me understand what you’re doing there? With judges, you identified young law clerks, young lawyers to try to promote them into the judiciary. What are you doing with, say, Hollywood?

Leo: It’s very important, in my view, to create pipelines of talent and networks of very driven, strategic people in all sectors of American life. If you want to introduce, you know, the Western cultural tradition and traditional values. So in the case of Hollywood, for example, the idea is to recruit and identify talented young professionals who have a knack for content creation and other aspects of the production of entertainment. People who believe in a sort of family-centered entertainment, where there’s a high demand. And Hollywood recognizes that. And then really helping them find opportunities to use their skills to create that kind of entertainment in the Hollywood space and beyond. And there are a lot of young professionals in entertainment and in journalism and in business and finance who are looking for opportunities to inject their traditional values and the Western cultural tradition into other aspects of American social and cultural life.

Inskeep: ProPublica obtained a video of you promoting this project and saying you wanted to “crush liberal dominance.” Is that what you want to do?

Leo: Yes! And the reason Steve – and I would really call your attention to the words I used: I want to crush liberal dominance. In other words, I want to make sure that there’s a level playing field for the American people to make choices about the lives that they want to have in their country. I’m perfectly happy having a world where people can make choices between various kinds of things. But what I don’t want is a system where our entertainment system or our world of news media or our business and finance worlds are heavily dominated by left ideology that either chokes out other ways of thinking about things, or that just creates a system where sort of inappropriate political and policy decisions are being made in places where politics and policy don’t really have a proper place.

Politico asks this question. “Could Trump sideline government watchdogs? Some are already quitting.The president-elect’s allies have called for a wholesale replacement of the more than 70 inspectors general across the federal government.”

Two in-house investigators at U.S. intelligence agencies recently quit their jobs. There’s growing fear in Washington that they could be the start of an exodus — or a purge — of government watchdogs.

A wave of departures by inspectors general would give President-elect Donald Trump the opportunity to nominate or appoint people of his choice to the watchdog posts — leaving dozens of federal departments, agencies and offices subject to oversight by people who would owe their positions to Trump.

In the wake of Trump’s election, CIA Inspector General Robin Ashton and Intelligence Community Inspector General Thomas Monheim revealed they plan to leave government in the coming weeks. Neither cited Trump’s victory as a basis for the decision, but the timing of the announcements troubled some longtime advocates for IGs.

“I’m very disappointed that the two IGs have resigned,” said former Justice Department Inspector General Michael Bromwich. “My view is that when things get tough, IGs should not resign, but instead redouble their efforts to do their jobs. Doing a tough job in difficult circumstances is what they bargained for. I think preemptively resigning makes things too easy for the incoming administration to avoid oversight. To prematurely run for the exits, in my view, that is not the way to handle the responsibility.”

Trump frequently clashed in his first term with some IGs, who are responsible for investigating alleged misconduct by the government, and his team briefly floated a plan to call on all of them to resign, though Trump never did. This time around, Trump allies have urged the president-elect to clean house and remove from their positions all watchdogs appointed by other presidents, though it’s unclear if Trump will do so.

This kind of chaos is just what Trump thrives on. It gets him all junked up so he can lie and get media attention. It will be incumbent on all of us to protect the vulnerable people that this Regime of Chaos will go after. There are fewer safeguards against his desire to join the Putin circle. We must also steel the nerves of the public servants and representatives in this battle of law and order against Thievery and chaos.

This news is a stab in the heart of Lady Justice. “Special counsel Jack Smith asks judge to dismiss Trump’s election interference charges.” No Justice. No Peace.

Vive la résistance

I’m updating this to include something I just read on @threads tonight. Look what he’s announced and he’s not even in office yet. Be prepared. https://www.threads.net/@dakinikat/post/DC0U99Rt7Ts

Canada and Mexico? It’s like we’re just blowing ourselves and all of North America up!

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

Posted: January 12, 2024 | Author: dakinikat | Filed under: just because | Tags: #TrumpCult, Letter from a Birmingham Jail, Swatting, Themis, Threats from Trump, Trump Shit Show, Trump's Trials, Violent Trump Supporters | 13 Comments

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

The headlines are tough out there for the Orange One. Since he’s such a toddler, will he actually thrive on the lousy attention today?

This is from Politico. It’s written by Michael Krause. “‘This to Him Is the Grand Finale’: Donald Trump’s 50-Year Mission to Discredit the Justice System. The former president is in unparalleled legal peril, but he has mastered the ability to grind down the legal system to his advantage. It’s already changing our democracy.” I’m waiting for Don the Con to become Don the Con if you catch my drift.

What happened in Room 300 of the New York County Courthouse in lower Manhattan in November had never happened. Not in the preceding almost two and a half centuries of the history of the United States. Donald Trump was on the witness stand. It was not unprecedented in the annals of American jurisprudence just because it was a former president, although that was totally true. It was unprecedented because the power dynamic of the courtroom had been upended — the defendant was not on defense, the most vulnerable person in the room was the most dominant person in the room, and the people nominally in charge could do little about it.

It was unprecedented, too, because over the course of four or so hoursTrump savaged the judge, the prosecutor, the attorney general, the case and the trial— savaged the system itself. He called the attorney general “a political hack.” He called the judge “very hostile.” He called the trial “crazy” and the court “a fraud” and the case “a disgrace.” He told the prosecutor he should be “ashamed” of himself.The judge all but pleaded repeatedly with Trump’s attorneysto “control” him. “If you can’t,” the judge said, “I will.” But he didn’t, because he couldn’t, and audible from the city’s streets were the steady sounds of sirens and that felt absolutely apt.

“Are you done?” the prosecutor said.

“Done,” Trump said.

He was nowhere close to done. Trump’s testimony if anything was but a taste. (In fact, he said many of the same things in the same courtroom on Thursday.) This country has never seen and therefore is utterly unprepared for what it’s about to endure in the wrenching weeks and months ahead — active challenges based on post-Civil War constitutional amendments to bar insurrectionists from the ballot; existentially important questions about presidential immunity almost certainly to be decided by a U.S. Supreme Court the citizenry has seldom trusted less; and a candidate running for the White House while facing four separate criminal indictments alleging 91 felonies, among them, of course, charges that he tried to overturn an election he lost and overthrow the democracy he swore to defend. And while many found Trump’s conduct in court in New York shocking, it is in fact for Trump not shocking at all. For Trump, it is less an aberration than an extension, an escalation — a culmination. Trump has never been in precisely this position, and the level of the threat that he faces is inarguably new, but it’s just as true, too, that nobody has been preparing for this as long as he has himself.

BB, JJ, and I had another one of those conversations yesterday where we basically admitted that we can no longer watch him, listen to him, or see his pictures. Most of what I saw was a new, very icky hairstyle that was reminiscent of Dennis the Menace. The people who surround him–mostly lawyers right now–are weird, too. Please, make him go away somehow. Trump’s last words for the Trump Family Crime Syndicate’s fraudulent activity are hard to describe. I cannot imagine any crook already found guilty would get an opportunity like this. This is from the Washington Post. “Trump assails his fraud trial in courtroom speech as case winds down.” Who, but Trump, would insult a judge that’s deciding how many hundreds of millions of dollars to grab from you as they shut down your ability to ever do business in New York State again? State AG Leticia James and her team brilliantly executed the prosecution case. Trump forced his lawyers to ask the judge for an opportunity to speak. It was the usual Trump shitshow.

On Thursday in court, Kise revived his request for Trump to be able to speak as part of his side’s closing remarks. Engoron asked if Trump would agree to stick to subjects related to the case, echoing his emailed request. Instead of answering directly, Trump launched into a speech from his seat in the courtroom.

“What’s happened here, sir, is a fraud on me,” Trump said. “If I’m not allowed to talk about [the political motivation] — it really is a disservice. I would say that’s a big part of the case. I would say it’s 100 percent.”

Engoron asked Kise to “please control your client,” but Kise did not appear to make any effort to do so. Engoron audibly sighed and gave Trump one minute to wrap up his remarks.

“I know this is boring to you,” Trump said. “You have your own agenda. You can’t listen for more than one minute.”

Engoron also challenged Trump on a claim that he had never been in trouble with banks before.

“By the way, you said you’ve never had a problem — haven’t you been sued before?” Engoron said.

“I should have won it every time,” Trump replied.

After Trump spoke, Engoron said the defense had used its allotted time and that the court would break for lunch. Later in the afternoon, Trump spoke to reporters, repeating his complaints about James and the case.

The New York case is a civil matter, not criminal, so nobody faces possible time behind bars as a result. Trump has also been charged infour separate criminal casesin New York, D.C., Florida and Georgia. He has denied wrongdoing in all of those cases, as well.

This unwanted speech came on the same day as the Judge and his family endured a bomb threat. Trump’s creepy cult swatted the Judge. This is from the New York Times. “Judge in Trump’s Civil Fraud Trial Is Swatted at His Home.Authorities responded to a fake bomb threat at the home of Justice Arthur F. Engoron on the day he was set to hear closing arguments in New York’s suit against Donald Trump.

Nassau County authorities on Thursday responded to a hoax bomb threat at the house of the judge presiding over the civil fraud trial of Donald J. Trump.

A spokesman for the Nassau County Police Department confirmed that there had been a swatting incident — a fake threat intended to prompt a mass police response — at the house of the judge, Arthur F. Engoron, who is currently hearing closing arguments in Mr. Trump’s case. Two people with knowledge of the matter said that the threat involved a bomb and that the bomb squad came to the house.

The threat came the morning after Mr. Trump againattacked Justice Engoronon Truth Social, his social media site, saying that the judge and the New York attorney general, who brought the fraud case, were trying to “screw me.” And itcame just days afterthe police in Washington were called to the home of the federal judge overseeing Mr. Trump’s election interference case.

Mr. Trump planned to speak in his own defense at closing arguments Thursday. Justice Engoronsaid he would have to abide by rulesthat apply to lawyers giving closing arguments and refrain from delivering a “campaign speech.”

Swatting by the Trump Cult is an orchestrated event these days. Jamelle Bouie has this Op-Ed in the New York Times. “Trump Is Playing With Fire. To be a Republican politician in the age of Trump is to live under the threat of violence from his most fanatical and aggressive followers.”

In the aftermath of the Civil War — when political allegiances were up for grabs in much of the former Confederacy — opponents of Black suffrage, of Black governance and of the Republican Party used violence and intimidation to dissuade and disciplinethose whiteswho either contemplated cooperation or had already reconciled themselves to the new order.

There is also a parallel to draw with the present in the way that this and other forms of Reconstruction-era violence interacted with the political system. “The objective was not simply to destroy the Republican governments by attacking and dispersing their supporters,” the historian Michael Perman noted ina 1991 essay on the subject, “but to enable the Democrats to regain power by winning elections. Ironically, the intention was to use violent and illegal means to win power legitimately, through the electoral process.”

You can get a good illustration of what this looked like in the historian George C. Rable’s account of the 1875 Mississippi statewide elections, in his 1984 book “But There Was No Peace: The Role of Violence in the Politics of Reconstruction.” On Election Day in one county, Rable points out, Democratic partisans “placed an old cannon on a hill ominously aimed toward the polls.”

You should think of the intimidation and death threats — along with Trump’srecent warningthat there will be “bedlam in the country” if he’s disqualified from the ballot — as a more modern cannon on a hill, ominously aimed toward the polls.

The former president is no longer in a position to try to subvert an election outcome using the power of the federal government. But Trump can try, whether he is the nominee or not, to use the fervor of his followers and acolytes to tilt the playing field in his direction. He can use the threat of violence to make officials and ordinary election workers think twice about their decisions. And he can use the example of those Republicans who have crossed him as a warning to wavering lawmakers — to anyone who resists the force of his will.

The story we like to tell about American democracy is that for the most part, our experiment in self-government has been characterized by restraint and nonviolence more than the reverse. The opposite is true, of course; violence is deeply entwined with the American experience of democracy.

But there are times when the violence is more pervasive than not, when the conflicts are more acute. And the thing to keep in mind is that political violence doesn’t simply wind down of its own accord. There is almost always a settlement. There is almost always a winner. The violent campaign against Reconstruction ended with the so-called Redemption of the South — with the defeat of Southern Republicans and the victory of counter-revolutionaries and recalcitrant ex-Confederates.

He’s also back to his old antics of birtherism. This is from NPR. It’s written by Franco Ordoñez, “Bringing birther back, Donald Trump questions Nikki Haley’s right to be president.” There’s no one that can go lower than Trump.

As Nikki Haley surges in Republican polls, former President Donald Trump has turned to his social media outlet where he is promoting a “birther” conspiracy theory against the former South Carolina governor.

Trump posted an article on his Truth Social account from a right wing outlet that claims Haley is ineligible to be president because her parents were not U.S. citizens when she was born.

While her parents became citizens after her birth, Haley was born in South Carolina. Under the 14^thAmendment of the U.S. Constitution, being born in the United States makes her a natural-born citizen. She is therefore eligible to become president.

The Trump campaign has long said that he would target whoever was most threatening him in the Republican primaries. Haley has emerged as his top rival in recent weeks. A new University of New Hampshire/CNN poll shows Haley trailing Trump in the Granite State by just single digits.

This is not the first time, Trump has raised birther claims. For five years, Trump routinely questioned former President Barack Obama’s birthplace – a lie that many saw as a racist dog whistle.

The Haley campaign did not respond to requests for comment.

Famously, Trump also has a parent born outside of the U.S. His mother, Mary, is from Scotland.

This opinion is from the Op-Ed pages of the New York Times. It is written by David French. “The Greatest Threat Posed by Trump.”

I dread the division and conflict of a second Trump term, and I don’t minimize the possibility of Trump doing permanent political damage to the Republic. But the problem I’m most concerned about isn’t the political melee; it’s the ongoing cultural transformation of red America, a transformation that a second Trump term could well render unstoppable.

To put the matter as simply as possible: Eight years of bitter experience have taught us that supporting Trump degrades the character of his core supporters. There are still millions of reluctant Trump voters, people who’ve retained their kindness, integrity and good sense even as they cast a ballot for the past and almost certainly future G.O.P. nominee. I have friends and family members who vote for Trump, and I love them dearly. But the most enduring legacy of a second Trump term could well be the conviction on the part of millions of Americans that Trumpism isn’t just a temporary political expediency, but the model for Republican political success and — still worse — the way that God wants Christian believers to practice politics.

Already we can see the changes in individual character. In December, I wrote about the moral devolution of Rudy Giuliani and of the otherMAGA men and womenwho have populated the highest echelons of the Trump movement. But what worries me even more is the change I see in ordinary Americans. I live in the heart of MAGA country, and Donald Trump is the single most culturally influential person here. It’s not close. He’s far more influential than any pastor, politician, coach or celebrity. He has changed people politically and also personally. It is common for those outside the Trump movement to describe their aunts or uncles or parents or grandparents as “lost.” They mean their relatives’ lives are utterly dominated by Trump, Trump’s media and Trump’s grievances.

You can go to social gatherings here in the South and hear people whisper to friends, “Don’t talk about politics in front of Dad. He’s out of control.” I know that rage and conspiracies aren’t unique to the right. During my litigation career, I frequently faced off against the worst excesses of the radical left. But never before have I seen extremism penetrate a vast American community so deeply, so completely and so comprehensively.

Greg Sargent–writing from his new home at The New Republic–offers this up about Trump’s political acolytes. “Elise Stefanik’s Ugly “Hostages” Barb Points to Serious GOP Mayhem Ahead.Not all House Republicans agree that the January 6 criminals are hostages. This is a division that is sure to deepen between now and Election Day.”

GOP Representative Elise Stefanik no doubt thought it was shrewd todescribethe rioters who attacked the Capitol as “January 6 hostages.” This sort of talk hits a sweet trifecta for a GOP leader with seemingly limitless ambition. It reassures the right-wing media that the GOP leadership is fully behind Donald Trump. It fires up the MAGA base’s small-dollar donors. And it infuriates the libs, which excites the right-wing media and MAGA voters all over again.

But it turns out vulnerable House Republicans aren’t too thrilled about Stefanik’s barb.TheWashingtonPostreports that many are distancing themselvesfrom it, a sign that being associated with pro-insurrection sentiments is politically dangerous in swing districts across the country

News flash, vulnerable Republicans: This will almost certainly get much worse. If you think some throwaway sound bite designed to pump up Sean Hannity creates political problems for you, what will it mean for you if Trump goes to trial this year or even earns a criminal conviction?

Here’s an overlooked possibility to contemplate: While commentators often assume the prosecutions of Trump are only driving the GOP to unite behind Trump, it’s perfectly plausible that when his legal travails grow more serious, it will ensure that GOP divisions grow deeper—perhaps much deeper.

Stefanik’s insurrectionist outburst suggests a misplaced confidence that none of this threatens the party. Last month, Trumpsaidof thehundreds of peoplecharged or convicted in relation to January 6, “I don’t call them prisoners. I call them hostages.” ThenonMeet the Presslast Sunday, Stefanik brashly echoed his language: “I have concerns about the treatment of January 6 hostages.”

The way vulnerable Republicansran from thisis telling. “They’re criminal defendants, not hostages,” said Representative Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania. “I don’t defend people who hit cops, who vandalized our Capitol,” added Nebraska’s Don Bacon, pointedly adding of the “hostage” language: “The broad, broad electorate doesn’t like it.”

Given that Fitzpatrick and Bacon represent two of the 17 districts held by Republicans that Trump lost in 2020, that’s an indication of how politically outside the mainstream it is to deny the gravity of January 6 and smear the justice system’s response to it as illegitimate.

The really horrifying thing is watching the Grand Inquisitors of the White Christian Nationalist movement preach this crap from a pulpit. This is from Axios. It’s written by Sophia Cai.“Tectonic shift in power”: How MAGA pastors boost Trump’s campaign.” It’s easy to see the historical role of religion in oppression and supporting evil in this campaign.

How we got here:“It’s a tectonic shift in power,” said Matt Taylor, a scholar at the Baltimore-based Institute for Islamic, Christian and Jewish Studies, who has a bookcoming this fall on charismatic evangelicals and their ties to Trump.

• “You have all these pastors who would have been laughed out of the room 20 years ago,” Taylor said.
• Now, they’re “driving the dynamics.”

The author and another contributor have a list of some horrifying people and their role in the Iowa Caucuses. Iowa has been a hotbed of this kind of activity since the Pat Robertson campaign for President. It’s poisoned the wells of the surrounding states, too. As you know, I’ve been in the middle of these creepy, angry crazies, and they’re scary.

But then, Trump surrounds himself with fellow evildoers. This is from MediaIte. “EXCLUSIVE: Here’s The Tape of Roger Stone Discussing Assassination of Democrats — Which He Denied Ever Doing.” All the bottom-feeders are attached to Trump.

Roger Stonehas contested Mediaite’sreportingthis week regarding comments he made on tape floating the assassination of two members of Congress.

“I never spoke about assassinating anyone,” Stone wrote in an X post Thursday. “Fake Mediaite can’t produce the recording they claim to have.” In another post he wrote that Mediaite “has produced NO audio of me threatening 2 Dem Congressmen. Where is it? Post it !”

Mediaite is now publishing an excerpt of the audio, which was recorded in person at Caffe Europa, a public restaurant in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, weeks before the 2020 election. It has been lightly edited in order to protect our source, who requested anonymity out of fear of repercussions from Stone, whom they believe to be dangerous.

“Roger spent election day and the months prior calling for acts of violence,” the source told Mediaite.

The conversation, which can be heard above, was between Stone and his associateSal Greco, who at the time served as both an NYPD officer and security for the longtime political operative and confidant toDonald Trump. During the discussion, Stone speaks with Greco about assassinating two prominent House Democrats,Jerry NadlerandEric Swalwell.

“It’s time to do it,” Stone told Greco. “Let’s go find Swalwell. It’s time to do it. Then we’ll see how brave the rest of them are. It’s time to do it. It’s either Swalwell or Nadler has to die before the election. They need to get the message. Let’s go find Swalwell and get this over with. I’m just not putting up with this shit anymore.”

How many sheriffs, federal marshalls, and other law-enforcement officials will be needed to protect people this year? Why can’t we stop this?

Monday is our national celebration of Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, who spent time in prison. Here’s a section from one of his Letters from aBirmingham Jail from April 1963. This was just over 60 years ago. I chose this section because he addresses the idea that “justice too long delayed is justice denied.” I think about this as Trump whines daily about the Justice Department’s dealings with him. His reign has left women bereft of reproductive healthcare, pitted family members against each other, supported Dictators over struggling democracies and allies in the fight for genuinely representative democracies, and you may add to the list because I’ve gone on long enough. King spent time in jail for just being there and speaking up for those unable to do so. What a difference in human character that is from the perpetually aggrieved Orange Shitgibbon.

We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the
oppressed. Frankly, I have never yet engaged in a direct-action movement that was “well timed” according to the timetable of
those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word “wait.” It rings in the
ear of every Negro with a piercing familiarity. This “wait” has almost always meant “never.” It has been a tranquilizing
thalidomide, relieving the emotional stress for a moment, only to give birth to an ill-formed infant of frustration. We must come
to see with the distinguished jurist of yesterday that “justice too long delayed is justice denied.” We have waited for more than
three hundred and forty years for our God-given and constitutional rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike
speed toward the goal of political independence, and we still creep at horse-and-buggy pace toward the gaining of a cup of coffee
at a lunch counter. I guess it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say “wait.” But when you
have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen
hate-filled policemen curse, kick, brutalize, and even kill your black brothers and sisters with impunity; when you see the vast
majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when
you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she
cannot go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her little eyes
when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see the depressing clouds of inferiority begin to form in her little
mental sky, and see her begin to distort her little personality by unconsciously developing a bitterness toward white people; when
you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son asking in agonizing pathos, “Daddy, why do white people treat colored
people so mean?”; when you take a cross-country drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable
corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs
reading “white” and “colored”; when your first name becomes “nigger” and your middle name becomes “boy” (however old you
are) and your last name becomes “John,” and when your wife and mother are never given the respected title “Mrs.”; when you are
harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never knowing what to
expect next, and plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of
“nobodyness” — then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs
over and men are no longer willing to be plunged into an abyss of injustice where they experience the bleakness of corroding
despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience.

So, who among us needs the sweet relief of justice received and the scales of Themis, and who needs to feel her sword? Who are the oppressed, and who are the oppressors? Donald Trump does not confuse the majority of us. We need to make that known.

Have a very good long weekend! I’ll see you on the other side.

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

Posted: May 19, 2023 | Author: dakinikat | Filed under: just because | Tags: #TrumpCult, Christoban, christofascists, death penalty for miscarriages, Medically necessary Abortions, Michael Flynn, Roger Stone, Ron Densantis, Severe Fetal Abnormality, Torturing pregnant women | 12 Comments

Good Day Sky Dancers!

There’s a lot of news today. Some of it’s good, but still, a lot of it is awful. The best news is that we may see the Fulton County, Georgia Prosecutor start arresting Trump allies, and Trump himself, in August. The New York Times reports that “Georgia Prosecutor Signals August Timetable for Charges in Trump Inquiry. The Fulton County district attorney said most of her staff would work remotely at times, and asked judges not to schedule trials in the first half of August.”

The Georgia prosecutor leading an investigation into former President Donald J. Trump and his allies has taken the unusual step of announcing remote work days for most of her staff during the first three weeks of August, asking judges in a downtown Atlanta courthouse not to schedule trials for part of that time as she prepares to bring charges in the inquiry.

The moves suggest that Fani T. Willis, the Fulton County district attorney, is expecting a grand jury to unseal indictments during that time period. Ms. Willis outlined the remote work plan and made the request to judges in a letter sent on Thursday to 21 Fulton County officials, including the chief county judge, Ural Glanville, and the sheriff, Pat Labat.

“Thank you for your consideration and assistance in keeping the Fulton County Judicial Complex safe during this time,” wrote Ms. Willis, who has already asked the F.B.I. to help with security in and around the courthouse.

Ms. Willis had said in aprevious letterthat any charges related to the Trump investigation would come in the grand jury term that runs from July 11 to Sept. 1. Her letter on Thursday appears to offer more specificity on timing.

The bad news is that there seems no end to the damage done by Trump and McConnell with the appointment of three Justices to the Supreme Court. There are ongoing signals that the Christobans are lined up to do more damage. They have several allies in their religious crusade to end American Democracy and Religious freedom as it was written in the Bill of Rights and the Constituion.

My friend and neighbor put these two articles upon Twitter that I had just finished reading. I sobbed through these stories. The Supreme Court has invented a uniquely American form of Torturing Women with its ruling that ended Roe v. Wade. This is what happens when Doctors and Women don’t get to make decisions. Ron DeSantis appears to be uniquely positioned to torture Women, the GLBT community, immigrants, librarians, and any one that doesn’t conform to his radical social agenda. Florida is quickly becoming a failed state.

I discovered this wonderful artist, Evgeni Gordiets while trying to find flowers for baby Milo and his mother. His art is exquisite. I’d love to have his paintings all over my house. Baby Milo’s story is summarized in the Raw Story article below. The original story is in today’s Washington Post. “The short life of Baby Milo.”

Nobody expected Baby Milo to live for long. He arrived in the world with no kidneys, underdeveloped lungs and a life expectancy of between 20 minutes and a couple of hours. He lived for 99 minutes.

I’m not going to quote from this story because it is triggering, heart-wrenching, and worthy of a read and crying jag.

This second story in Raw Story shows us how having backwoods, religiously fanatical ignoramuses writing medical law is a very bad idea. It’s turning medical staff into accomplices to torture. It also sounds like the attempted murder of the mother.aQ7 This is also about providing abortions but it’s not about severe fetal abnormality like the family above experienced. It’s about medically necessary abortions to end ongoing miscarriages.

In the 11 months since the Supreme Court overturned Roe vs. Wade, similar stories have been reported in the 14 states where abortion bans have gone into effect. In Texas, five women aresuing the statefor denial of care, including one who went into septic shock and almost died.

Now, the Biden administration is employing one of the few tactics it has available to try to hold hospitals accountable for denying pregnant patients abortion care for high-risk conditions.

In April, a first-of-its-kind federal investigation found two hospitals involved in Farmer’s care were violating a federal law that requires hospitals to treat patients in emergency situations. If the hospitals do not demonstrate they can provide appropriate care to patients in Farmer’s situation, they stand to lose future access to crucial Medicare and Medicaid funding. Physicians who fail to treat patients like Farmer could incur fines, and patients may be able to sue for monetary damages, Farmer’s attorney, Alison Tanner, said.

The investigation, conducted by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, documented that both Freeman Health System in Joplin, Missouri and the University of Kansas Health System breached their internal policies for complying with theEmergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, and that their protocols continue to place patients in “immediate jeopardy” of serious health risks, the highest level of violation.

Investigators concluded that future patients in similar situations could face “serious injury, harm, impairment or death.” The hospitals will remain under investigation while they come up with plans to ensure that patients in need of emergency abortion care are not turned away, federal officials said.

A “statement of deficiencies” from the investigation contains summaries of interviews with doctors, nurses and a risk manager involved in Farmer’s care. They reveal the extent to which health care providers went against their own medical judgment to comply with new state laws or political pressure. They also provide an on-the-ground view of how strict state abortion bans have altered care for patients with high-stakes pregnancy complications.

The agency did not disclose whether it is pursuing other investigations related to abortion denials. A spokesperson declined to share the number of complaints the agency has received related to denials of abortion care.

Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra has sent letters to all hospitals that participate in Medicare, warning them that federal law supersedes state abortion bans. The Department of Justice has also sued and won a case in an Idaho federal district court, arguing the state’s abortion law violates the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act.

There seems no end to how far the Trump and DeSantis teams will go to attract the christobans. This first one is from Steven Beschloss’s Substack. “The Pursuit of Ignorance. Ron DeSantis proudly defunds diversity, equity, and inclusion programs in Florida, part of his ongoing attacks on education and democracy as his official run for the presidency approaches.”

It’s not subtle. His intentions arenot mysterious. It’s not like he’s advocating for the value of education and slipping in his ideological wishes while the majority is not paying attention. No, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, with the backing of the Florida legislature, is engaged in a frontal attack on education that tells us everything about his hostility to democracy and what kind of kind of citizenry DeSantis wants in his America. I’d call it his pursuit of ignorance.

Knowledgeable of American history, including the study of slavery and institutional racism? Nope. Knowledgeable and respectful of the rich diversity that defines and distinguishes America? Nope, not that either. Seeking academic freedom and the right of students and teachers alike to pursue a full buffet of ideas that can motivate and nourish their hunger for knowledge? You must be kidding.

In his latest initiative to undermine higher education in Florida and cause harm to students, teachers, staff and other Floridians, DeSantissigned into lawthis week the defunding of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs in the state—claiming that such programs intensify racial conflict. As if the only perspectives that should be included in higher education are white-defined ones. As if it’s a danger to enable people of color and people from diverse backgrounds to be considered, and to feel and actually be safe and supported.

“If you look at the way this has actually been implemented across the country, DEI is better viewed as standing for discrimination, exclusion and indoctrination,”DeSantis saidat a news conference at New College of Florida in Sarasota. “And that has no place in our public institutions. This bill says the whole experiment with DEI is coming to an end in the state of Florida.”

DeSantis made clear what he thinks of “niche subjects,” such as so-called critical race theory and gender studies. “Florida’s getting out of that game,” he said, his words brimming with culture war fervor. “If you want to do things like gender ideology, go to Berkeley.”

The Trump side of the Equation is equally crazy and ignorant. This is what the Republican Party offers these days. Dangerous, autocratic demigods looking for acolytes that will do anything. “Why top Trump allies like Roger Stone are using apocalyptic religious rhetoric. “My sense is [Stone] has recognized how important this sector of Christianity is for the ongoing radicalized Trump base,” says Christian scholar.” This is written by John Ward.

“I am a soldier in the army of the Lord,” Stone, who has said he converted to Christianity shortly after his 2019 conviction,announced last Fridayat a meeting of Pastors for Trump at the former president’s Doral resort in Miami.

The meeting was organized by a failed U.S. Senate candidate from Oklahoma anda Missouri couplenamed David and Stacy Whited, who havea background in multi-level marketingand host a podcast calledFlyover Conservatives.

The 2024 election, Stone said, will be “a fight between light and dark…a struggle between good and evil…an epic fight between the godly and the godless.”

Stone spoke alongside Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser, as well as Stacy Whited, who promised the crowd that Trump will be elected president again in 2024.

Like Flynn, Stone has been using more explicitly religious language over the past few years, especially when attending the Reawaken America tour events thatmix evangelical church serviceswith speeches promoting Qanonconspiracy theoriesand Trumpism.

The events combine a devotion to Trump with an apocalyptic religious view of politics. Flynn and Stone, over the past two years, have joined pastors and podcasters from a particular stream of American evangelicalism incalling their political opponents evil and even demonic.

“This is a war that we’re in, this is a big spiritual war,” Flynnsaid last year, with Stone standing behind him. “I mean people like Nancy Pelosi, she’s a demon.”

We know these autocratic sorts have been hiding at the FBI, the military, and local police forces for years. BB covered the creeps in the FBI that were basically working against our country and for its overthrow. ABC reports this on a police lieutenant in the DC police aligned with the Proud Boys.

A D.C. police lieutenant was arrested and charged Friday with obstruction of justice and making false statements over allegations that he leaked information to then-Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio, who wasconvicted of seditious conspiracylast month for his role in the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol.

The Justice Department announced Friday that Shane Lamond, 47, was indicted by a grand jury in D.C. with one count of obstruction of justice and three counts of making false statements.

Lamond was repeatedly mentioned throughout the course of the nearly four month seditious conspiracy trial over his ties to Tarrio.

The indictment unsealed Friday alleges he obstructed the government’s investigation into Tarrio for his burning of a Black Lives Matter flag in December 2020 by telling the Proud Boys leader law enforcement had a warrant out for his arrest.

Lamond is further alleged to have given confidential law enforcement information to Tarrio that in turn passed along to other Proud Boys members.

When Lamond was interviewed in June 2021 by law enforcement, he allegedly lied about his contacts with Tarrio multiple times, the indictment alleges.

Lamond’s alleged conduct is “not consistent of our values and our commitment to the community,” the Metropolitan Police Department said in a statement Friday.

A 24-year veteran of the department, Lamond was put on administrative leave in February 2022.

It’s tough to live in a country that follows the rule of law as laid out in the Constitution when an entire party, its elected officials, and those holding public positions in law enforcement or national security are out to overthrow it all. Is this the sort of country we want to live in and leave to our children?

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

Posted: January 31, 2022 | Author: dakinikat | Filed under: just because | Tags: #TrumpCult, Covid-19 and children, Neil Young, presidential pardons | 11 Comments

Good Day Sky Dancers!

It’s finally warmed up around here again! I’m still thinking about all of our Sky Dancers–including BB–that got slammed by that wicked snowstorm over the weekend. I hope it’s melting faster than the wicked witch of the west after that bucket of water hit her!

We’re gearing up for Mardi Gras. I’m still hoping that turns out okay but I’m not going to head someplace and wallow in crowds that likely include folks from the plague rat states and our surrounding rural areas. I know the city needs the cash and folks need jobs but still, I fret.

There are now two Republican governors who have openly decided to diss a Trump second run for the Presidency. That happens while Susan Collins dithers. Ron DeSantis is getting a little feisty too. It seriously couldn’t happen to a better crowd of turncoats. This is from the New York Times: “Trump’s Grip on G.O.P. Faces New Strains.Shifts in polls of Republicans, disagreements on endorsements and jeers over vaccines hint at daylight between the former president and the right-wing movement he spawned.” It’s written by Shane Goldmacher.

About halfway into his Texas rally on Saturday evening, Donald J. Trump pivoted toward the teleprompter and away from a meandering set of grievances to rattle off a tightly prepared list of President Biden’s failings and his own achievements.

“Let’s simply compare the records,” Mr. Trump said, as supporters in “Trump 2024” shirts cheered behind him, framed perfectly in the television shot.

Mr. Trump, who later went on to talk about “that beautiful, beautiful house that happens to be white,” has left increasingly little doubt about his intentions, plottingan influential role in the 2022 midterm electionsand another potential White House run. But a fresh round of skirmishes over his endorsements, fissures with the Republican base over vaccines — a word Mr. Trump conspicuously left unsaid at Saturday’s rally — and new polling all show how his longstanding vise grip on the Republican Party is facing growing strains.

In Texas, some grass-roots conservatives are vocally frustrated with Mr. Trump’s backing of Gov. Greg Abbott, even booing Mr. Abbott when he took the stage. In North Carolina, Mr. Trump’s behind-the-scenes efforts to shrink the Republican field to help his preferred Senate candidatefailed last week. And in Tennessee, a recent Trump endorsement set off anunusually public backlash, even among his most loyal allies, both in Congress and in conservative media.

The most appalling Trump event speech hit when Orange Caligula offered up pardons to his insurrectionists.

This is from the CBS link above.

The Justice Department is navigating unique and profound logistical problems with its January 6 cases. The D.C. federal courthouse remains closed to jury trials through at least February 7, due to COVID risks. Most hearings are occurring virtual, through Zoom and phone connections. But trials must occur in person inside the courthouse, which is a short walk from the U.S. Capitol.

The agency is also trying to corral an unprecedented avalanche of evidence. The U.S. Capitol riot prosecution, which the agency has characterized as one of the largest criminal cases in U.S. history, is saturated with tips and possible evidence.

In a series of recent court filings, the Justice Department said there are 14,000 hours of Capitol surveillance video, 250 terabytes of data and more than 200,000 tips from the public. Along with a growing collection of social media posts, phone videos and witness interviews, federal prosecutors are trying to manage and organize a growing tower of evidence and materials.

This week, the agency notified a judge there is still “work to do” in preparing the evidence for the court, defense lawyers, defendants and trial.

“This investigation has generated an enormous amount of evidence,” the Justice Department said in a court filing Thursday, as part of its request for a time extension in the case of a defendant from New Jersey.

Judges have set some trial dates, including in the high-profile cases against accusedOathKeepers conspirators. Some of those trials are scheduled to begin in April, while others are expected in July and September. The later dates include defendants charged with seditious conspiracy, some of whom are in pretrial detention.

CBS News has learned approximately 40 defendants in January 6 cases are in pretrial detention in the Washington, D.C., jail, some of whom have spent nearly a year behind bars, without firm trial dates. Judges have said the cases involving defendants in pretrial custody should be prioritized for the earlier trial dates.

Could a president pardon people involved in a crime he incited? Remember, Nixon secretly promised pardons to the Watergate instigators and those active in the cover-up. Haldeman eventually asked for a pardon. Nixon, however, would’ve directly implicated himself in the crime and he resigned quickly after the request.

Trump, however, is openly offering pardons. This is from The Guardian:Trump pardon promise for Capitol rioters ‘stuff of dictators’ – Nixon aide.”

John Dean, 83, was White House counsel from 1970 to 1973 before beingdisbarred and detainedas a result of the Watergate scandal, which led to Nixon’s resignation in 1974. Dean responded to Trump on Twitter.

“This is beyond being a demagogue to the stuff of dictators,” hewrote. “He is defying the rule of law. Failure to confront a tyrant only encourages bad behaviour. If thinking Americans don’t understand what Trump is doing and what the criminal justice system must do we are all in big trouble!”

Trump was generous with pardons in office, recipients including Steve Bannon and Michael Flynn, both now targets of the House committee investigating January 6 and with Trump in its sights. On Sunday morning, the New Hampshire governor, Chris Sununu, widely seen as a relative moderate in Trump’s Republican party, was asked if pardons should be offered to Capitol rioters.

“Of course not,” he told CNN’s State of the Union. “Oh, my goodness. No.”

Even Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina senator anddogged Trump ally,said the former president was wrong.

“I don’t want to send any signals that it was OK to defile the Capitol,” he told CBS’s Face the Nation. “I want to deter what people did on January 6, and those who did it, I hope they go to jail and get the book thrown at them because they deserve it.”

But a moderate Republican, Susan Collins of Maine, indicated the hold Trump has on the party.

Appearing on ABC’s This Week, the senator said Trump should not “have made that pledge to do pardons. We should let the judicial process proceed.”

But Collins, who voted to convict Trump over the Capitol attack, would not say that she would not support him if he ran for president again.

“Well certainly it’s not likely given the many other qualified candidates that we have, that have expressed interest in running,” she said. “So it’s very unlikely.”

Dither away, Susan. We see you.

We need people to fight all this Trumpism in the trenches of Main Street. I found this article in TNR to be invigorating.

https://twitter.com/melindahoehn/status/1488079523170197506

These folks–retired election auditors–protected the Arizona election results. We may need more like them throughout many states.

Trump’s agents wereplottingto fabricate a favorable vote count. But they were stymied by their vast inexperience in elections. As important, they were boxed in at key junctures bythree retired election technologistswho used public records to hold themaccountable. The trio warned the pro-Trump contractors and their legislative sponsors that their “audit” was being watched, repeatedly reported why it was a propaganda-filled hoax, and gradually won local and national presscoverage.

Most strikingly, it was thetechnologists—not Arizona’s Democratic Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, nor Democratic Party lawyers, experts in policy circles and academia, or journalists—whoshowedthat tens of thousands of loyal Republican voters from Phoenix’s suburbs did not vote for Trump. That pattern alone, based on hard data, confirmed his loss in Arizona.

The retirees didmore. They rebutted the lie from Trump’s noisemakers that tens of thousands of dead people and made-up people voted, by pairing every ballot cast with a legal voter. They showed that there was no collusion to alter vote counts when local election officials reviewed sloppily marked ballots to determine a voter’s intent, again using public data that tracked the officials’ actions.

And months after Arizona Senate Republicans hired theCyber Ninjas, a data security firm led by a Trump cultist with no experience in elections, to oversee its 2020 election review in Maricopa County (greater Phoenix), the retirees boxed the Ninjas into revealing that they could not accurately recount votes—againusingpublic records. That strategy culminated last September, when Cyber Ninja CEO Doug Logantestifiedthat Biden had won Arizona, after all.

Read more at the link.

So, I have to adult today. I can no longer be completely feral as I’ve got places to go outside my neighborhood where they are used to me. I may even cut my hair again! Y’all take care and be safe if you’re going to venture out. The Covid-19 numbers are not looking good. Oh, btw my less evil Senator did something positive with Senator Tammy Baldwin today so I sent him a nice note.

This is the most disturbing news. I would just like to say Fuck you to all those anti-Vaxxers.

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

And just a small tribute to Neil Young who lived as a child with polio and epilepsy and whose children all have challenging diseases present from childhood. His daughter has epilepsy and his two sons have cerebral palsy. This comes from his album Trans. The music was to help Young communicate with his youngest son who could not speak. Young has a foundation to help children live with long-term health disabilities. I have left Spotify.

Posted: July 19, 2021 | Author: dakinikat | Filed under: Mid Day Reads | Tags: #TrumpCult | 21 Comments

Good Day Sky Dancers!

I’m having a tough time getting started today on things. BB and I’ve been talking about the weirdish dreams I’ve been having the last few years with a fairly constant theme although changing setting. Now, I read just about every dystopian science fiction novel as a kid that I could get my hands on. And, that habit has pretty much continued up to the onset of my social security years. But, why is it just recently that I keep thinking my home is located somewhere in a mall of some kind from which I never go outside? It’s filled with even stranger people.

Part of it might be due to the invasion of the hipster gentrifiers in my neighborhood coupled with a decaying abandoned Navy Base that was key to get sailors to both World War 1 and 2 theatres. It’s now filled with a ton of the region’s opioid-addicted who live off rag-picking trash cans and scrapping metal wherever they can get it. It’s also next to a detail shop turned hipster hangout bar where tourists come for something that doesn’t resemble a New Orleans experience at all. So, it’s a one-stop drug, and booze yourself into oblivion gateway. It seems to be a popular place to film porn these days too. Folks come all the way from Atlanta to do that.

Then there are those addicts that commit crimes like petty theft or burglary or busting into homes that appear to be abandoned to set up camp. All of that is really dystopian, believe me. Plus, the weather keeps getting looking more climate-impaired all the time. Plus, I let a friend escape a violent marriage who has been here for over 6 years and came with a drug problem, PTSD, and severe brain damage. She now calls me a “vaccine bully” as I struggle to reason with her about why she needs to get the Fauci Ouchi while telling me that it might change my DNA so fully I could become a zombie. No, she’s not a Trumper, but it frequently sounds like she could be.

I still think there’s something about the Trumpist regime and its cult that really tripped these dreams into me, although I have no dear leader in any of them. Just simply, people living in airports or shopping malls, or other semi-functional artifices of the 20th century. I’ve had doozies of them the last two nights.

So, when I read this headline in Salon, I thought, well, maybe it’s not just my anxiety running away with my sleep. From Salon: “Dr. John Gartner on America after Trump: “Dystopian science fiction … is actually happening”.Former Johns Hopkins professor on the aftermath of Trump’s coup — and whether he was a Russian stooge after all.”

If Trump had successfully ordered the United States military to keep him in power by usurping the will of the American people,the result could well have been a second American Civil War. The nation was saved from such an outcome, at least for the moment, through good fortuneand the choices of a few real patriots such as Gen.Milley and his allies.

Unfortunately, Trumpism was not routed or finally defeated, and the Trump coupis ongoing. Trump remains in firm control of the Republican Party.At least 30 percent of the American people have been seduced by the Big Lie that the 2020 election was “stolen” from Trump and that Joe Biden is an illegitimate president.

The Jim Crow Republicansare escalatingtheir war on multiracial democracy by proposing laws in numerous states designed to stop Black and brown people and others who support the Democratic Party from voting. The end goal of this anti-democraticcampaign is to turn the United States into a plutocratic theocratic fasciststate where dissent is not allowed and the Trump-Republican Party rulesuncontested.

In a recent interview on MSNBC, historian Timothy Snyder, author of the bestselling book “On Tyranny,” described this state of peril: “A failed coup is practice for a successful coup. … We’re now working within the framework of a Big Lie … so long as we’re in that framework of a Big Lie, we can expect one of the parties to try to rig the system.”

Like other fascist and fake populist movements, Trumpism draws its power and a type of life force from the slavish loyalty of Trump’s followers. Normal politics is fundamentally ill-equipped to grapple with fascism andits commands to ignore reality in deference to the Great Leader, the elevation of that leader into a type of God and extension of the self, and itscollective celebration of narcissism and other anti-social behavior including violence and hatred. Ultimately, Trumpism is a cult movement: If Trump and other leaders are the brain and the arms, Trump’sfollowers serve as a hammer meant to smashmultiracial democracy.

From The Daily Beast and Molly Jung-Fast: “As a twice-impeached, one-term historical freak show of a president, his only hope is to turn his movement into a cult, worshipping himself. It’s the Trump Steaks of religion.”

Seriously, literally, this is a cult.

Donald Trump, who regrets not orderingthe White House flag to be flown at half-staff to mourn Ashli Babbitt, therioter and Qanon believer killed while storming the U.S. Capitol, is determined to create a narrative that his idiot insurrectionists are in fact part of an army of holy MAGA warriors.

“I would venture to say it was the largest crowd I had ever spoken before… It was a loving crowd too, by the way. Many, many people have told me that was a loving crowd. It was too bad, it was too bad that they did that” Trump said inone of his post-presidency interviews from Mar-a-Lago. He didn’t mention the violence, but insisted that, “In all fairness, the Capitol Police were ushering people in… They were hugging and kissing. You don’t see that. There’s plenty of tape of that.”

You don’t see that tape because that didn’t happen, but that’s the point of this cult: Never mind your lying eyes, have faith in yourDear Orange Leader.

“Personally, what I wanted is what they wanted,” he concluded, meaning to overturn the results of the election because he’dsaidthere was fraud and never mind all of the judges appointed by Republicans and Republican state and election officials who said there was no evidence of any of that. Heretics. The GOP is dead, and there’s only the MAGA movement now, as the party’s “leaders” sojourn to his sacred golf clubs to confess their sins.

I know a lot of this has its roots in the absolute abandonment of reason to the politicization of white American evangelicism to the point you hardly recognize the “christ” in their “Christianity.” Grifters of a feather flock together. This is also from Salon: “How evangelicals abandoned Christianity — and became “conservatives” instead. As an evangelical pastor for many years, I saw faith in Jesus Christ gradually replaced by right-wing ideology. I watched this happen when Pat Robertson brought his presidential campaign to small Iowa towns. Since then, the Republican party has never been the same, although it’s been on the road to reinstating Jim Crow since Nixon’s Southern Strategy. It was logical they’d follow along. This is written by Nathaniel Manderson, who is no stranger to that Journey.

Over the last 70 years, Christian theology has been steadily replaced, within the evangelical world, byRepublican or “conservative” ideology. I noticed this in my time at an evangelical seminary and during my years in ministry, whenever political discussion would go beyond abortion and gay rights.When the conversation turned towards gun rights, immigration, taxing the wealthy, educationorhealth care, the tenets ofChristian theology disappeared behind Republican talking points.

The evangelical political message was that the Bible shouldbe used in politics to attack certain people, but never to question oneself.That’s how you get people to donate: Make the enemy clearlyvisible and easily definable.That’swhy the Bible is almost never used in politics as a justification forservingthe poor, welcomingthe foreigner, healing the sickor promotingequality.That agenda is not likely tomotivate donations fromwealthywhiteheterosexual men. Therefore, over time the evangelical message became that“American” and “Republican”were more important labels than “Christian” — or that they were effectively the same thing.

They may have loved Dubya–who they recognized as part of the flock–, but they worship Trump as the one that will do anything for ultimate power, attention, and money. He has fully embraced the right-wing culture wars, so the sheeple just found their shepherd no matter his behavior or demeanor or outward displays of mean exclusivity.

Plus, the DOJ under Merrick Garland continues to disappoint.

This is getting ridiculous.

So, anyway, I’m watching a few other stories, but it really seems like there’s a lot of inaction on some pretty important things right now. But then, it’s summer, and everyone is out spreading Covid-19 again. Stay safe! The variants are stewing and brewing and out there!

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?