I just got a little more sane today. A little more.
Yeah I've obviously been waiting for this for about 2.5 years, but also, it's quite possibly too late. Like the other recent indictments, Trump will delay trial until after the 2024 election, which he very well may win. Ugh.
But still; Kudos to Jack Smith. He also gave a three minute press conference that was like "Yep, read the indictment, suckas", and that's really all you need to do after getting a grand jury to indict a former president.
edit: my best guesses on the six as-of-yet unnamed co-defendants: Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, John Eastman, Mike Flynn, Jeffrey Clark, and Jenna Ellis.
Oh cute 45 pages of federal indictment for the 45th president!
The indictment referred to six co-conspirators without identifying them by name, but the details included about them suggest that Co-Conspirator 1 is Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani; Co-Conspirator 2 is lawyer John Eastman, who came up with the plan for then–vice president Mike Pence to use his ceremonial role of counting the electoral votes to throw the election to Trump; Co-Conspirator 3 is Trump lawyer Sidney Powell; Co-Conspirator 4 is Jeffrey Clark, a Justice Department lawyer whom Trump tried to push into the role of attorney general so he could lie that there had been election fraud; Co-Conspirator 5 appears to be Kenneth Chesebro, a Trump attorney behind the idea of the false electors.
Another indictment today, as expected, in Georgia. Fanni Willis has her work cut out for her. Getting a RICO conviction(s) for this case will probably be very difficult. If her cases conflict with Jack Smith's work, she needs to get out of the way. There is at least some overlap regarding the fake electors scheme, apparently. We'll see. Remember: If Willis can secure a state-level conviction against Trump, POTUS can't use presidential pardons to escape punishments. So this is indeed an important case, but it's probably the longest long shot of the four indictments so far.
Used to be errbody on social media would scream "RICO" whenever anybody did anything coordinated. Then errbody on social media would scream "LOLRICO" whenever anybody looked into coordination, because they read that one thread by that one guy about that one thing and since he said he went to law school we all stroked our chins nodded thoughtfully and agreed hmmmmmm yes RICO convictions are very difficult I read it on IFLScience or some shit. Anyone. Who is basing any opinion. On past performance. Is delusional. I don't care what your legal theory is. You are so far off the map your compass is pointing at your car keys. Let her cook.Six days before pro-Trump operatives gained unauthorized access to voting systems, the local elections official who allegedly helped facilitate the breach sent a “written invitation” to attorneys working for Trump, according to text messages obtained by CNN.
Has there ever been a more open and shut case than "Find me the 11,780 votes"? It wasn't like he was oblique about it to try to preserve plausible deniability. He literally said make sure I win this by a single vote or I'm going to make sure you're charged with a crime. I mean, this will likely be a long trial but it should last for maybe like 6, 7 minutes.
I mean "would you like us to hack the voting machines for you" "yes please" is a lot more direct than that. But I'm too busy being reminded that Briscoe Cain exists to have a serious discussion
So far as I can tell, the conservative media sphere has more or less settled on the Sideshow Bob defense of attempted murder being nothing more than a liberal thought crime. WSJ keeps screaming "BUT IT DIDN'T EVEN WORK SO IT CAN'T BE A CRIME!!!!!!!!!"I don't care what your legal theory is. You are so far off the map your compass is pointing at your car keys.
If you prefer, Heather Cox Richardson has the kremlinology take. It's worth looking at Trump through the lens of Russian oligarchy. Nothing that has happened would surprise any Democrat if his name were Deripaska or Navalny.
Right - there are so many exercises in empathy that you can't help but expand your horizons. The problem is that liberals start these things with "what if my president" or "what if the front runner from my political party" without recognizing that the game is entirely different. You have to go "what if my chieftain" or "what if my shaman" or "what if my living god" in order to get there. "What if my chieftain had committed dozens of crimes against the world and my tribe will lose all power if I don't defend him? How can I spin that in the Wall Street Journal?" etc etc etc Democrats have it easy here - because liberals and Democrats spend so much time reasoning out whether or not this or that Democrat is worthy of their support, their rejection muscles are well-toned. "Oh, Al Franken held his hands in front of someone's boobs on a USO flight fifteen years ago? Yeah he's got to go." They don't really grasp just how spiritually, viscerally and completely the Republicans are ensnared. After all, they tried to banish Trump from the tribe for two solid years and he ran through them like clap through a whorehouse. He is the Republican Party, through and through, the big kahuna, the master of disaster, the undisputed heavyweight champion of the world. You can't unseat a champion through parliamentary procedure what kind of pussy are you? The smart ones know, however, that there will be a power vacuum if the other tribe murders their chief. But the smart ones know, however, that if they are complicit in murdering their chief they will be CAST OUT. Have you noticed how much "hostage language" every unnamed source has been using for the past 7-8 years? They did their best and now they're trapped. But so long as they're trapped, they gotta do what the tribe chooses to do, and the tribe chooses to well ackshully slavery. So they simultaneously spit fire and brimstone at those evil heathens hell bent on murdering their beloved chief while privately praying their chief will be murdered soon for the good of all mankind. I've come around on Mitch McConnell. I think I've realized that he set himself a goal, he knew there was only so much he could get done in his time left on this earth, and he went full nihilism on it. He doesn't give a shit what it will do to the Republican Party to strike down Roe V. Wade, what he cares about is striking it down to say he did, because he's been hell-bent on striking it down since Robert Fucking Bork. Promises made, promises kept, name an airport after me when I'm dead. times every Republican.
With 91 charges you dont actually need any functional legal theory except that that legal system can bankrupt and destroy anyone at scale. Trump is beyond done, it dosent matter even if he were innocent of every charge when the states bring that many lawsuits against you its impossible to defend. I dont think he would be able to get elected before these totally destroy him.
Given Kemp's broad clemency powers in the state, I think the Georgia GOP picked a really bad time to piss him off. I remember reading a while back that he didn't even attend the state GOP convention. They've taken to labeling him a RINO. There's no longer any extreme version of conservatism that can't get you labeled RINO, given that their official platform is quite literally "Trump".
At this point, I've begun to think that Trump is literally following the Hitler playbook - get thrown in prison to become a martyr on pre-trial court violations regarding witness/jury tampering and intimidation. He knows that he'll be afforded almost every luxury, and has his Secret Service detail to help him with the rest. It would likely only last for about 1 month or something, too. I'm not going to say anything else for now except thanks, everyone, there's a lot of great comments here.
Okay I know you said this nine days ago but I'm scrolling down and you said the H word and we've talked about this. Hitler didn't "get thrown in prison to become a martyr" - the Beer Hall Putsch was a legit attempt to overthrow the government with over a dozen killed. Hitler ran like a bitch - he wasn't at all interested in martyrdom. I wrote this September 1, 2020 and I wouldn't change a fucking word. I have been shouting down "Trump is Hitler" idiocy since fucking 2016 and I HAVE YET TO BE WRONG. Trump isn't Hitler, will never be Hitler, does not vaguely fucking resemble Hitler and is our own sort of miserable badness that deserves consideration in a framing of something other than fucking Weimar Germany.
"I've called for federal TAKEOVER of Washington DC". This guy needs to fucking disappear. Absolute insanity personified.
Y'all keep acting like "but that's not rational" is any kind of defense and then getting salty when the other side refuses to see reason. The whole party - the entirety of conservative political thought - is here's how you should feel about this. In looking for the New York Times quote I want, I discovered that the editorial board used some variance of "America is governed by laws and norms and Trump doesn't care about norms" like four times. I'll go deeper than that - Liberals believe "norms" should be whatever changes to culture they've managed to win while Conservatives believe "norms" are the things they've recently lost. The Russia watchers like to point out how negotiations with Russia have gone since the time of the Tsars: (1) Offer something reasonable (2) Russia demands the stars (3) Offer something with serious concessions (3) Russia demands the Moon (4) offer something with unreasonable concessions (5) Russia accepts, calls you a patsy for negotiating like such a simp, signs your document and then pisses on it five years later. It's a fundamental tenet of Chinese culture: you don't have to honor contracts with dogs because they are dogs, and by "dogs" they mean anyone who isn't Han Chinese. And yet here we are, pointing at Lucy and insisting she pulled the fucking football. Again. The only way this changes is with people going "no mas tequila". You're not going to argue anyone out of the Republican Party. They have to detox. And every indication is that they are: every poll I've seen is big on how self-professed Republicans are 100% on board with this shit but self-professed Republicans are an endangered species. I've recently strapped on Invisible Hands. It's aiiight. At this point these books have to be pretty fuckin' out there to teach me new shit. One thing Kim Phillips-Fein's book makes clear, however, is that the New Deal existed because of the groundswell uprising of a "we're sick of your shit" coalition of people who rarely voted before, rarely got politically involved, and were hell-bent on knocking the crony capitalists out of office. David Simon recently wrote that we're having to fight every 20th Century battle over again; he's not wrong, but he neglects to note that the overwhelming majority of the country is pretty content with this shit being settled. Kind of a bad mood to be taking money from Harlan Crow in, if you know what I mean. McDonald’s “data support what is self-evident: that Trumpism peaked in 2016, and that it leads to a dead end,” says former US Rep. Carlos Curbelo, a Florida Republican. “We saw this in 2018 when Republicans lost the House; we saw it in 2020 when they lost the presidency and the Senate, and we saw it in last year when Republicans were supposed to have big gains in both chambers and [did not]. All of these failures can be attributed to Trumpism. These data just confirm what is visible to the naked eye.”
It’s pretty fascinating that Republican sentiment about the Court has taken a nose dive, as well. I guess it’s because they said that treaties with Indians are still treaties and that, no, you can’t just let state legislators just say that republicans win…you have to disenfranchise the old fashioned way, but even that has its limits. All things that can only be read as “liberal” in the most bizarro of worlds. It’s hilarious to read the WSJ comments screaming about Karl Rove, John Roberts and Christopher Wray being RINOs.
I know this is an unpopular opinion, but I would actually like to see a plea deal that lets him avoid jail but bars him from seeking office. It would be an unsatisfying end to a unthinkable saga, but at least it would let the country move forward with him in the review mirror. Eastman, Giuliani and Powell can all rot in prison, but anything that removes the possibility of Trump running for president again is good enough, and I think good enough is good enough at this point. My concern is that Trump would spin it as “see the swamp just doesn’t want me to be president again”. Not that it can get much more ‘political’ at this juncture, but still Edit: like maybe even a no contest plea, since we know he’ll never admit to any wrongdoing. Just fucking get on with it. The country desperately needs him out of the political scene, and that’s my chief concern.
That deal would permanently add "armed insurrection" to the electoral tactics of the Republican Party. Try and tell me that a President DeSantis wouldn't have that in his playbook the minute he won the primary - if Trump skates without anything substantial, every noteworthy political candidate from now until the dissolution of the union would factor in some form of "might makes right" as part of their strategy. It would also leave Donald Trump as the titular head of the conservative movement of the United States and permanently enshrine the Trumps as the kingmakers of half of our political process. The Right doesn't give a shit how feckless Don Jr. and Jared Kushner are - they'll totally donate for Don to go do a couple rails and shoot a rhino so long as he says something negative about Hunter Biden while he's doing it. Finally, it would draw a line in the sand for every toadie in every campaign from here to the end of the time - if you simp hard enough you get a golden ticket, if you half-simp you will go to jail. Roger Stone is out there living his best life but you think locking up a Renfield like Giuliani is somehow going to be enough on this one? The way you defeat an emperor is by showing he has no clothes. I think it's no accident that the Attorney General slow-walked this mess until they could virtually guarantee this sort of lineup: As feckless as the Republican opposition is likely to be, spoon-feeding them details is probably the closest anyone can come to forcing the Republicans to reckon with the mess they've made for themselves.
No, I'm actually on board with that too. Sadly, it'll never happen. But also? DeSantis is a fuckin' psychopath. Trump is just a sociopathic narcissist. The whole GOP field is insane in the membrane, at this point, really.
I find that the minute you argue your opponent is not rational is the minute you have given up understanding the problem. LOOK The current it-girls of the Republican Party are Viktor Orban. Roderigo Duterte. Augusto Pinochet. "The base" wants strongmen, and it wants them old-school - none of your "spin dictators" here, they want dissidents dropped out of helicopters. Only... they live in a democratic republic with a long and healthy history of human rights and political protections for minority parties. So they have to appear ruthless and strong - cracking down, talking tough - but they can't actually be ruthless and strong... except to the truly defenseless. Ron DeSantis is treating librarians the way Duterte treated drug dealers... within the confines of a modern civilized republic. All the flourish, all the bravado, all the ruthlessness, none of the stakes. And they do this because they have not yet reached the tipping point where rationality and reasonability out-poll red-blooded queer-bashing... not when you're talking to the true believers, anyway. Get a time machine. Go talk to 2004 Mitt Romney. Tell him "so 20 years from now your party will choose to make the merits of slavery a wedge issue. Do you have any advice to your future self?" I imagine he'd take a few board seats and nope the fuck out 'cuz the middle of the country ain't comin' round on that, not never, not no how. But nobody took a time machine to Mitt, so he's gotta sit there going "so my team has painted themselves into the worst corner imaginable... but they're still my team." (Hey has anybody seen Paul Ryan lately?) I have no doubts that the fair weather Republicans will be back. They're gone now, though... so you're not going to get their money for your campaign and if you go for their vote, you're going to piss off the only people who are paying you. Remember: 2023 is the year that the governor. Of Florida. Picked a fight. With Disney. And he did that not because he's bugshit... but because it's what the mob wants. If you're not in a mob? You stay away from the mob. And if you're in the mob? You either lead it by being the most bloodthirsty or you try to stay alive by hanging towards the back. One thing you don't do is go "look here old chaps are we sure these torches and pitchforks are really called for" because that ship has sailed. I wouldn't say they're insane. I would say they're (A) desperate (B) out of options (C) convinced that they can ride this out in a direction that benefits them. But (C) is because they're inveterate gamblers. When even Jason Fucking Chaffetz nopes out of this shitshow you know the smart money has long since left town.The whole GOP field is insane in the membrane, at this point, really.
DeSantis doesn’t scare me. He might be worse than trump on policy in a lot of ways, but he doesn’t now and never will enjoy the cult following. Kinda have to have a personality before you can have a cult of personality. His electability is close to 0 and get asymptomatically closer every time he screams about culture war bullshit. Even Trump felt the need to nominally say that he would be lgbtq+ friendly at the gop convention in 2016. And he got cheers for it, if you remember. Which was weird. But it happened. Ronny D has his Herman Cain 999 moment in the sun already. He’s done. The gop is in that trap where the only candidates that the general could elect are the ones with no chance of winning the primary, became their party is run by and beholden to absolute sadist-morons.
Vivek is polling around 10% and with zero msm coverage. I think he has a shot. I would recommend listening to this interview: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/honestly-with-bari-weiss/id1570872415?i=1000623065583
I respect what he did with roivant, so I’m aware he’s a good thinker. I think he leans a little too hard into the culture wars, but I’ll vote for him in the GOP primary if he’s still a candidate by then. I hadn’t seen him as high as 10%, but it’s not surprising. Lots of people just want trump to fuck off and also can’t stand desantis. Will listen. Thanks for the link.
Vivek seems pretty wild too - raising the voting age to 25 unless they pass a poll test or work in the military ?? halt any mandate to even measure carbon dioxide ?? no offense but this guy sucks: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vivek_Ramaswamy#Political_positions if you want a moderate republican vote for biden lol
I mean yeah that's where we're at. There was a time I thought Nikki Haley had a pretty good chance to make a run at it from the normal seats. But she took one look at the state of play in 2022 and went "normal ain't gonna win a primary within my lifetime" and yolo'd straight into fascism. I think Liz Cheney had the same look around and went "when you come to your senses and look back on this moment, I'll be there, staring you down" and knew she could sit out an electoral cycle or two. I doubt we've heard the last of Paul Ryan either. The fact of the matter is, however, there's a snowball's chance of a moderate Republican even making it through the debates at this point.if you want a moderate republican vote for biden lol
Vivek has some crazy ideas. I feel like that’s how change happen though. There are decades of presidents that tow the line, they make changes that are incremental and then BAM there’s an FDR and society is fundamentally altered. Vivek could be that guy. Not saying that’s a good thing. FDR wasn’t all good either. But big swings could be good right now. Lots of tools exist that have never existed before. I get the attraction of the citizenry test for all voters. But it seems like it would be a hard pill to swallow for the left. “ Whenever the people are well informed, they can be trusted with their own government; that whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them to rights” -TJ We have a lot of dumbasses voting. On both sides.
Its a hard pill to swallow for the left because it is very explicitly voter suppression against them. Why target youth specifically? What makes the military so enlightened that they don't need to take the test? (rhetorical- its because the military votes republican)
I'm due for a re-watch of this, thanks. Some people were unable to detect the satire. So sad.
It's not that nobody got the satire, it's that Heinlein was deadly serious about it while Verheuven wasn't. The satire in Robocop isn't a whole lot subtler but it also had some stuff that wasn't satire that allowed everyone to attach to it. One of my big beefs with "golden age" science fiction is it's mostly a one-world-government libertarian triumph of the white man. Heinlein was the worst. Starship Troopers was such a McCarthyist screed that Scribner refused to publish it. I've never read it; my family worships Heinlein but that one was just a bridge too goddamn far. It's worth noting, however, that without Starship Troopers there would be no Forever War, a vastly better book with a much greater influence on culture.
Vivek doesn't want a citizenry test for all voters. He wants a citizenry test for people aged 18-24. It's very obviously targeted to help Republicans.