Bending the Knee and Politics in 2025

[MFS62]

How he and Biden responded to the California fires.
You can guess how each did. :(

President Biden stood next to Gov. Gavin Newsom, a fellow Democrat, at a fire station in Santa Monica and pledged to provide full federal support to the state.
“We’re prepared to do anything and everything for as long as it takes to contain these fires,” Biden said.

Hours earlier, Republican President-elect Donald Trump, just days away from being sworn in on Jan. 20, blamed “Newscum and his Los Angeles crew” for the unfolding calamity.
In a post on his social media site, Truth Social, Trump said the Democratic governor “refused to sign a water restoration declaration,” which he alleged would have allowed millions of gallons of rain and snowmelt to flow south to the areas on fire.

Turning tragedy into political ammunition.
What a reprehensible slug.
https://www.latimes.com/california/stor ... -and-trump

Later

[MFS62]

Jimmy Carter's grandson Jason is the anti-Vance.
I hope someone convinces him to run for office.
Later

[MFS62]

5 Supreme court Justices didn't bend the knee.
They voted NOT to overturn or delay the felon's sentencing scheduled for tomorrow.
Later

[batmagadanleadoff]

5 Supreme court Justices didn't bend the knee.
They voted NOT to overturn or delay the felon's sentencing scheduled for tomorrow.
Later

Still very scary that only five justices were in the majority. This scumbag court has normalized frivolous, batshit crazy motions made on behalf of the lunatic-elect.

[Benjamin Grimm]

I guessed that Roberts and Barrett joined the majority... And I was right.

No way it would have been Alito or Thomas.

[batmagadanleadoff]

The Simple Truth About Trump’s Felony Sentencing

It was a rueful moment for many reasons, and of course the president-elect wallowed in self-pity.

Watching Judge Juan Merchan sentence the once and future president to absolutely nothing at all, except to be called a convicted felon for the rest of his days, which almost nobody of any substance in the elite political media will do anyway, was a perfectly rueful moment for many of us, a moment to reflect on the lost chances of accountability, on the failure of Merrick Garland as attorney general, on the stunning lack of principle on the part of American conservatism and the political party that is its primary vehicle, and on the deep-running corruption of the current Supreme Court. Because there was one simple truth about the proceedings in New York on Friday.

If you get this guy in front of a jury—any jury, anywhere, on anything—he will lose.

That’s why his primary legal strategy always involves distract and delay. That’s why his lawyers look for any loophole that allows them to gum up the works, and if they can’t find one, they make their own ... or have someone like Chief Justice John Roberts carve one out for them. Presidential immunity, anyone? But put his case in front of 12 good folks and true, 12 of his fellow citizens whom he considers sheep to be sheared, and the entire rickety infrastructure of his strategy falls to sticks and splinters for all the world to see.

This should have been the strategy of the Department of Justice from the moment Joe Biden’s hand came off the Bible in 2021. It should have been the primary mission of national law enforcement and whatever local law enforcement wanted to join in. Any outraged screams from MAGAland, any midnight ranting from the White House, be damned. Make cases. Get the man in front of a jury and a) they will see him in the flesh and despise him and b) you will beat him. The federal government is not some glazier from Atlantic City suing to get the money he earned whom you can bury in billable hours until he just gives up. The G doesn’t run out of time or money. It only runs out of want-to, and under Garland that was in very short supply.

In the end, all the defendant had was self-pity. From NBC News:

“This has been a very terrible experience,” a dour Trump said, speaking remotely from his Florida home when allowed to address the judge. “It was done to damage my reputation so I would lose the election,” he said. “I am totally innocent. I did nothing wrong,” he maintained.

He never does.

https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/p ... discharge/

[Fman99]

It's going to take real work and self discipline on my part to not fall back into the four year doomscroll I lived from 2016-2020. I feel it weighing upon me as inauguration day draws closer.

[Johnny Lunchbucket]

It's going to take real work and self discipline on my part to not fall back into the four year doomscroll I lived from 2016-2020. I feel it weighing upon me as inauguration day draws closer.

That's where I am. Killing Twitter was a good start, and it's really time to blow up facebook too, although where will we organize otherwise.

Mostly hoping the "find out" phase is quick and self-evident.

[DanielTigerSS]

It's going to take real work and self discipline on my part to not fall back into the four year doomscroll I lived from 2016-2020. I feel it weighing upon me as inauguration day draws closer.

That's where I am. Killing Twitter was a good start, and it's really time to blow up facebook too, although where will we organize otherwise.

Mostly hoping the "find out" phase is quick and self-evident.

Which was the goal, is the goal, of the Musk's and the Zuck's, et al. To them, free speech means "Do not criticize me, track my jet, organize or cause things to go viral that are damaging to me or might make me have to pay money or adjust my businesses to make less money."

Musk didn't buy Twitter to grow it, or to try to make speech there more free, he did it because that's where people were and there wasn't enough kowtowing to the rich white men. People were coming together to fight The Man, and one of The Mans couldn't have that.

[MFS62]

The Special Council report says there was evidence to convict donnie boy.

The Department of Justice's long-awaited election interference report against Donald Trump, released early Tuesday, said the evidence against the president-elect would have led to his conviction at trial — if not for his election victory that led to charges being dropped.

https://www.npr.org/2025/01/14/g-s1-423 ... ion-report

Later

[batmagadanleadoff]

The Special Council report says there was evidence to convict donnie boy.

The Department of Justice's long-awaited election interference report against Donald Trump, released early Tuesday, said the evidence against the president-elect would have led to his conviction at trial — if not for his election victory that led to charges being dropped.

https://www.npr.org/2025/01/14/g-s1-423 ... ion-report

So now, the brainwashed moronic electorate will want the lunatic-elect to remain President for another term in 2029. They already voted for him after he was convicted of 34 felony counts in NY state court.

Any minute now, that other poster here is gonna tell us again, with a straight face, how former NY Governor Cuomo is the most crooked politician in America.

What a country. He tried to steal an election by any means possible, including the use of deadly force and has half the country believing that it was Biden that stole the election.

[DanielTigerSS]

What a country. He tried to steal an election by any means possible, including the use of deadly force and has half the country believing that it was Biden that stole the election.

Every accusation is a confession. It's not lost on me that after 12 years of talking about stolen elections and secret votes, it served to make any legitimate complaints about the election process and actual interference look like whining.

[MFS62]

We should call him Mandrake. He has "the power to cloud men's minds".
He "gestures hypnotically" and half the country believes or does whatever he tells them.

Later

[batmagadanleadoff]

Special Counsel Jack Smith found that Donald Trump’s team took his own MAGA faithful for easily manipulated fools when he and several co-conspirators carried out an “unprecedented criminal effort” to overturn the 2020 election.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/donald-tr ... ack-smith/


easily manipulated fools

[Benjamin Grimm]

Well, yeah. They're obviously the some of the people you can fool all of the time.

[Edgy MD]

President Trump was not elected by "half the country."

Nor does half of the country do what he tells them to do.

[batmagadanleadoff]

[Special Counsel Jack Smith] also determined that Trump never believed—despite his public and private lies to the contrary—that he had won the 2020 election, and cynically chose to “leverage” the violence that broke out during the Jan. 6 insurrection because it was “beneficial to his plan to interfere with the certification.”

“Mr. Trump knew that there was no outcome-determinative fraud in the 2020 election, that many of the specific claims he made were untrue, and that he had lost the election,” Smith wrote, citing multiple sources.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/donald-tr ... ack-smith/

[batmagadanleadoff]

President Trump was not elected by "half the country."

Nor does half of the country do what he tells them to do.

/rolls eyes

Thanks. But you know what I mean. Because, so what? The psychopath won anyway. He got more votes than Kamala and that's all that mattered. Third-party votes are wasted votes and might as well have been Trump votes.

[Edgy MD]

You can roll your eyes, but I wasn't actually referring to anything you wrote.

The answer to "so what?" should be obvious. And no, I'm certain you and all of us know that getting more votes isn't all that matters. I certainly understand that he won the election.

Jennifer Rubin, formerly one of the few token right-of-center voices at The Washington Post and who turned into the editorial page's most relentless critic of President Trump (and possibly their strongest cheerleader for President Biden), has resigned and (unsurprisingly) started her own outlet on the way out the door, making torching Jeff Bezos her first order of business at the new home.

[batmagadanleadoff]

I did not know that. I like Rubin. I read pretty much all of her pieces.

[MFS62]

She follows the cartoonist out the door at the Post.
Whether left or right leaning, I commend them for their integrity.
Later

[DanielTigerSS]

I am launching this endeavor with my cofounder, Norm Eisen. Founding contributors will include Joyce Vance, Andy Borowitz, Laurence Tribe, Katie Phang, George Conway, Olivia Julianna, Harry Litman (who recently resigned from the LA Times for reasons similar to mine for leaving the Post), and Asha Rangappa, among many other brilliant voices

lolol

I don't know most of those names, but I do know folks like Andy Borowitz and George Conway are poison, and like the saying goes, I have to assume the rest of that well of writers is just as fascist as the rest of the republican party.

[Edgy MD]

I don't know what saying you are referring to, but I'm pretty sure Conway is the only Republican in the bunch.

[DanielTigerSS]

Well Rubin herself is a a republican. Just because she thinks the current zeitgeist has them slightly beyond her personal beliefs doesn't excuse folks like her, Conway, et al that have been destroying American for decades.

This is basically the same as Liz Cheney, my take is that they seem to think the MAGA crassness is going to push America to the left as a result. It's not so much they want to make America better, they just think they're losing their personal grasp on it. Real bold of her to suddenly take a democratic stance when it affects her personally. That's prototypical republican behavior.

[DanielTigerSS]

Well Rubin herself is a a republican. Just because she thinks the current zeitgeist has them slightly beyond her personal beliefs doesn't excuse folks like her, Conway, et al that have been destroying American for decades.

This is basically the same as Liz Cheney, my take is that they seem to think the MAGA crassness is going to push America to the left as a result. It's not so much they want to make America better, they just think they're losing their personal grasp on it. Real bold of her to suddenly take a democratic stance when it affects her personally. That's prototypical republican behavior.