I've always looked at "HIM" as the "MOB BOSS" type. The problem with that is mob bosses can be taken out by a hit! And many of them take out people by using their posses to rub people out. Just because his "CORRUPTION" is public doesn't make it legal! If he breaks the laws of the land he should face the consequences that go with it.
Trump said it all on the Access Hollywood tape years ago, "If you're a star they'll let you do anything, grab 'em by the pu**y, anything. " Heh heh. What do we want, what do we fear from this Boss?
Amazing!! Yesterday after listening to the Speaker of the House lauding the prez for being corrupt out in the open my hair caught fire. And this morning Mr. Krystol has put my exact thoughts on paper (but using words that have more than four letters and don't start with 'f')!!
You and I had the exact same reaction. I was screaming at the TV and my wife briefly looked up from her phone and said "I agree" (with me). She's sort of getting used to me doing that lately. She doesn't get as vocal and demonstrative, but she literally does agree.
I might have to up my game with a Howard Cosell foam brick or something...
The MAGA rank and file mistook Trump's indifference to polite social norms as a mark of honesty. "He tells it like it is!" - they said. Never mind his abundantly documented prodigious lying.
High-level Trump apologists portrayed his open contempt for rules as a kind of heroic strength. "He's not afraid to challenge traditional norms!" - they said, He would break through obstacles to getting things done. He would plow down the "deep state" machinery that "corruptly" sabotaged his patriotic mission. While he is "transparent," his enemies are conniving in the shadows.
MAGA apologists didn't just insist that Trump is too special to be held to normal standards of ethics. They dressed up his defiance of rules and laws and ethics as a higher kind of virtue, exercised in a righteous cause.
Trumpism is the apotheosis of moral impunity, in plain sight, but still pretending to be a crusade for "Christian civilization" and against "corruption."
Trying to excuse the corruption, to imply that the corruption is somehow "purer" if there's no cover-up, it's all just a ruse though, isn't it? It's three-card monte; it's the pea under the shifting cups.
It's trying to make a claim of "transparency" when "transparency" is just a deflection. The issue isn't "transparency" or the lack of a cover-up, it's the corruption.
It's all a scam, right down to denying it's a scam.
If MAGA politicians want to claim that their corruption is all right because it's "above board," then Democratic politicians have to keep shouting that it doesn't matter whether corruption is above board or below board, it's sinking the ship.
To paraphrase James Carville, "It's the corruption, stupid."
Something is rotten in the state of America. If we aren't careful, we're going to find the stage littered with corpses at the end of Act V.
RE: Vibe Check. Regarding the fact that many voters do not think the Democratic Party's leaders are doing enough to stand up to Trump. I remember back in 1994, the Republican National Committee launched GOP-TV. It was carried by TV stations. But in the era of Youtube, it should be easy to do broadcasts on a regular basis. They would not need expensive sets or film packages or Hollywood stars. People want to see and hear the leaders speaking to voters about taking on the needless tariffs, the extension of the 2017 tax cuts, why it is important to keep Medicaid intact and then move to offer reforms in the vein of an oped former Governor Kitzhaber (D-OR) wrote about in The Washington Post this week. Just 10-15 minutes a day would be.a big boost. They could produce some simple video spots on issues too that could be previewed on the program and people could put them on their own social media. I do not pay that much attention to what the DNC does and if they are doing it, then I am sorry for the misinformation. I think they do a conference call to party activists. But they need to reach a broader audience. If they are not, then what is the problem? It should be very easy to do. People want to see and hear their party's aspiring leaders speaking to their concerns and things like preserving Medicare or challenging corruption are indeed real and pressing issues.
Ugh you guys, in the words of a song whose title I don’t remember, “nothing in the paper but bad news.” The Sahil Lavinglia story was at least kind of funny, coming in guns a-blazin’ to discover the government sort of works? His grandparents immigrated to the US from India. Wonder what they think of their wonder boy and his associates.
I'm still asking myself what would Mitch do in this situation, and the answer is almost always "Not what Schumer is doing". He now seems to have finally decided that Trump is a (minor) threat and will hold up some DoJ appointments. Has he noticed the authoritarian things that Trump has been doing for over 100 days? It doesn't seem so, unless you consider a few letters as doing much. Perhaps if he can't do his job at least as well as Mitch, it's time to leave.
Schumer really has to go. I hope AOC primaries him. Somehow the party has to see that their elder statesmen need to retire gracefully. If ever there was a time for new blood it’s now.
Here's my unsolicited advice for Democrats lamenting the polls - ignore them. Get out there and say what you really think. Make mistakes but stick to your core values. If Trump has done you any service it's that people do not like political mumbo jumbo. Speak from your heart. Forget about poll-tested bullshit and worrying about offending some fringe constituency. The pain Trump and his administration are inflicting has only begun to be felt by Americans. The midterms are 537 days away. Ignore the fucking polls of today. Be real and fight to win.
We lost an election, not our minds. We still believe in the same things we fought and voted for then. Everyone has a right to their opinion of "what happened" but to continually play the blame game, making Biden the scapegoat, condemning each other, is not productive or helpful. Republicans can do that to us, without our help. The target of our ire should be on them, not each other. Let's move on- there's real work to do.
Noem is nothing more then a no talent phony who like photo ops in costume. Substance? Zero. Talent? Zero. The felon picked her because he likes looking at women in tight clothes. She was a dud as Governor and is a disaster as Homeland Security Secretary.
I still wonder if the losses in the courts and any hassles the administration get from Congress (obviously minimal), plus assertions from folks like us that he and Congressional Republicans are subverting the Constitutional order, are actually net wins in the medium to long term for the MAGA leaders. If you can claim that this "friction" is working against your patriotic objectives - and furthermore, that what we call "corruption" is actually "patriotic deal making" - then you can generate enough popular support for a movement to formally acknowledge a move to a different system of government. One that is more Putin-style - authoritarian mob-boss oligarchy / plutocracy - and castigates the Constitution as outdated, unpatriotic, and enabling / corrupted by "wokeness." I surmise that the high-level MAGA ideologues (Vance, Vought etc.) do want this and know that getting the MAGA cult philosophically in line gives them the power to bring it about.
Which would of course mean that our appeals to the Constitutional order and against naked corruption become labeled as "unpatriotic" and working against us with a disturbingly large segment of the American populace. I'm afraid that too few of us recognize, and have been educated about, the inherent value of our Constitution.
Ask AG Pam Bondi. "No one is above the Law". (Except her Boss because all his acts are "official acts" as are the acts of much of his cabinet and GOP leadership).
The GOP has been selling "greed in the name of fiscal responsibility" to working America for years. The enemy is "big government, high taxes and the welfare state".
No one has been greater than Trump at creating the smoke and mirrors needed to slide though a $2 trillion tax cut along with heartless cuts to critical social services for the neediest. Why? He does it in plain sight.
Particularly creative for this cycle's GOP greed is increasing tariffs fees in the name of economic development but actually to help pay for tax cuts on the wealthiest Americans.
The secret sauce is that tariffs will raise prices on basic consumer goods while maybe bring in a few hundred $ billion for tax relief for the wealthiest. At the same time they will act as a consumption tax that hurts America's neediest.
Imagine, the GOP can cut services to the poor and get the same poor people to pay for taxes to the rich!! Trump is definitely a genius.
OMG. Joe Biden was old. Who knew?
I thought was the same age as Trump?
I've always looked at "HIM" as the "MOB BOSS" type. The problem with that is mob bosses can be taken out by a hit! And many of them take out people by using their posses to rub people out. Just because his "CORRUPTION" is public doesn't make it legal! If he breaks the laws of the land he should face the consequences that go with it.
Trump said it all on the Access Hollywood tape years ago, "If you're a star they'll let you do anything, grab 'em by the pu**y, anything. " Heh heh. What do we want, what do we fear from this Boss?
"Former" KGB officer Vladimir Putin is rubbing our noses in it.
In the twilight demise of the American Empire think I will just spin in tight little circles and foam at the mouth. Works for me, YMMV.
Amazing!! Yesterday after listening to the Speaker of the House lauding the prez for being corrupt out in the open my hair caught fire. And this morning Mr. Krystol has put my exact thoughts on paper (but using words that have more than four letters and don't start with 'f')!!
You and I had the exact same reaction. I was screaming at the TV and my wife briefly looked up from her phone and said "I agree" (with me). She's sort of getting used to me doing that lately. She doesn't get as vocal and demonstrative, but she literally does agree.
I might have to up my game with a Howard Cosell foam brick or something...
The MAGA rank and file mistook Trump's indifference to polite social norms as a mark of honesty. "He tells it like it is!" - they said. Never mind his abundantly documented prodigious lying.
High-level Trump apologists portrayed his open contempt for rules as a kind of heroic strength. "He's not afraid to challenge traditional norms!" - they said, He would break through obstacles to getting things done. He would plow down the "deep state" machinery that "corruptly" sabotaged his patriotic mission. While he is "transparent," his enemies are conniving in the shadows.
MAGA apologists didn't just insist that Trump is too special to be held to normal standards of ethics. They dressed up his defiance of rules and laws and ethics as a higher kind of virtue, exercised in a righteous cause.
Trumpism is the apotheosis of moral impunity, in plain sight, but still pretending to be a crusade for "Christian civilization" and against "corruption."
Well stated.
How can anyone pretend like Trump's not the biggest liar of any POTUS in our history?
Those who haven't come to grips with this are in some serious cognitive dissonance.
Trying to excuse the corruption, to imply that the corruption is somehow "purer" if there's no cover-up, it's all just a ruse though, isn't it? It's three-card monte; it's the pea under the shifting cups.
It's trying to make a claim of "transparency" when "transparency" is just a deflection. The issue isn't "transparency" or the lack of a cover-up, it's the corruption.
It's all a scam, right down to denying it's a scam.
If MAGA politicians want to claim that their corruption is all right because it's "above board," then Democratic politicians have to keep shouting that it doesn't matter whether corruption is above board or below board, it's sinking the ship.
To paraphrase James Carville, "It's the corruption, stupid."
Something is rotten in the state of America. If we aren't careful, we're going to find the stage littered with corpses at the end of Act V.
I just read JVL's Triad today. We have a similar vocabulary in confronting the "rotten" state of affairs.
RE: Vibe Check. Regarding the fact that many voters do not think the Democratic Party's leaders are doing enough to stand up to Trump. I remember back in 1994, the Republican National Committee launched GOP-TV. It was carried by TV stations. But in the era of Youtube, it should be easy to do broadcasts on a regular basis. They would not need expensive sets or film packages or Hollywood stars. People want to see and hear the leaders speaking to voters about taking on the needless tariffs, the extension of the 2017 tax cuts, why it is important to keep Medicaid intact and then move to offer reforms in the vein of an oped former Governor Kitzhaber (D-OR) wrote about in The Washington Post this week. Just 10-15 minutes a day would be.a big boost. They could produce some simple video spots on issues too that could be previewed on the program and people could put them on their own social media. I do not pay that much attention to what the DNC does and if they are doing it, then I am sorry for the misinformation. I think they do a conference call to party activists. But they need to reach a broader audience. If they are not, then what is the problem? It should be very easy to do. People want to see and hear their party's aspiring leaders speaking to their concerns and things like preserving Medicare or challenging corruption are indeed real and pressing issues.
Ugh you guys, in the words of a song whose title I don’t remember, “nothing in the paper but bad news.” The Sahil Lavinglia story was at least kind of funny, coming in guns a-blazin’ to discover the government sort of works? His grandparents immigrated to the US from India. Wonder what they think of their wonder boy and his associates.
I'm still asking myself what would Mitch do in this situation, and the answer is almost always "Not what Schumer is doing". He now seems to have finally decided that Trump is a (minor) threat and will hold up some DoJ appointments. Has he noticed the authoritarian things that Trump has been doing for over 100 days? It doesn't seem so, unless you consider a few letters as doing much. Perhaps if he can't do his job at least as well as Mitch, it's time to leave.
Schumer really has to go. I hope AOC primaries him. Somehow the party has to see that their elder statesmen need to retire gracefully. If ever there was a time for new blood it’s now.
Here's my unsolicited advice for Democrats lamenting the polls - ignore them. Get out there and say what you really think. Make mistakes but stick to your core values. If Trump has done you any service it's that people do not like political mumbo jumbo. Speak from your heart. Forget about poll-tested bullshit and worrying about offending some fringe constituency. The pain Trump and his administration are inflicting has only begun to be felt by Americans. The midterms are 537 days away. Ignore the fucking polls of today. Be real and fight to win.
We lost an election, not our minds. We still believe in the same things we fought and voted for then. Everyone has a right to their opinion of "what happened" but to continually play the blame game, making Biden the scapegoat, condemning each other, is not productive or helpful. Republicans can do that to us, without our help. The target of our ire should be on them, not each other. Let's move on- there's real work to do.
Noem is nothing more then a no talent phony who like photo ops in costume. Substance? Zero. Talent? Zero. The felon picked her because he likes looking at women in tight clothes. She was a dud as Governor and is a disaster as Homeland Security Secretary.
MAGA gun bunny
Mike Johnson, like a quote in a great Billy Crystal film, I crap bigger than Johnson. A failed speaker and a disaster as a man.
He's a religious zealot who would like to establish some form of theocracy. And he's not in a bad position while he waits for Trump to expire.
The moral hypocrisy of our theocratic zealots is a sight to behold.
I still wonder if the losses in the courts and any hassles the administration get from Congress (obviously minimal), plus assertions from folks like us that he and Congressional Republicans are subverting the Constitutional order, are actually net wins in the medium to long term for the MAGA leaders. If you can claim that this "friction" is working against your patriotic objectives - and furthermore, that what we call "corruption" is actually "patriotic deal making" - then you can generate enough popular support for a movement to formally acknowledge a move to a different system of government. One that is more Putin-style - authoritarian mob-boss oligarchy / plutocracy - and castigates the Constitution as outdated, unpatriotic, and enabling / corrupted by "wokeness." I surmise that the high-level MAGA ideologues (Vance, Vought etc.) do want this and know that getting the MAGA cult philosophically in line gives them the power to bring it about.
Which would of course mean that our appeals to the Constitutional order and against naked corruption become labeled as "unpatriotic" and working against us with a disturbingly large segment of the American populace. I'm afraid that too few of us recognize, and have been educated about, the inherent value of our Constitution.
Ask AG Pam Bondi. "No one is above the Law". (Except her Boss because all his acts are "official acts" as are the acts of much of his cabinet and GOP leadership).
The GOP has been selling "greed in the name of fiscal responsibility" to working America for years. The enemy is "big government, high taxes and the welfare state".
No one has been greater than Trump at creating the smoke and mirrors needed to slide though a $2 trillion tax cut along with heartless cuts to critical social services for the neediest. Why? He does it in plain sight.
Particularly creative for this cycle's GOP greed is increasing tariffs fees in the name of economic development but actually to help pay for tax cuts on the wealthiest Americans.
The secret sauce is that tariffs will raise prices on basic consumer goods while maybe bring in a few hundred $ billion for tax relief for the wealthiest. At the same time they will act as a consumption tax that hurts America's neediest.
Imagine, the GOP can cut services to the poor and get the same poor people to pay for taxes to the rich!! Trump is definitely a genius.
The GOP has worked hard to keep the American voter brainwashed, afraid, and sclerotic.
Fed on a diet of RW propaganda and fast food, we have given up the ability to think for ourselves and prefer to wallow in a pool of animal fat.