Bending the Knee and Politics in 2025

[batmagadanleadoff]

I'm beginning to suspect that the outrageous SCOTUS Trump immunity decision didn't just come out of thin air in the private deliberations of the scumbag portion of that court, and wasn't an "organic" decision, but Instead was fed to the court by the GOP machinery as part of a broader plan to implement Project 25, should President Combover win reelection, which he did. The madman has immunity and can't be prosecuted however the hell he abuses his powers to destroy the government.. SCOTUS gave him permission to commit crimes.

[Benjamin Grimm]

SCOTUS gave him permission to commit crimes.

Yup. That was clear from the very beginning. There's no way the founders ever would have approved of this.

[rchurch314]

SCOTUS gave him permission to commit crimes.

Yup. That was clear from the very beginning. There's no way the founders ever would have approved of this.

Well, they've been dead for roughly 200 years so seems unlikely.

[batmagadanleadoff]

DEI is now a crime, sez political hack Attorney General Pam Bondi.

Pam Bondi Instructs Trump DOJ to Criminally Investigate Companies That Do DEI

It’s hard to overstate both the constitutional wreckage this crusade will leave in its wake and the havoc it could wreak on the American workforce. In the name of protecting constitutional rights, Bondi’s Justice Department is teeing up an all-out assault on fundamental First Amendment rights to speak, organize, and associate. (A request to the DOJ for more information about the memo had not been responded to as of press time.)

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/202 ... anies.html

The scumbag President with the Combover, who's been whining about how the DOJ has been weaponized, is about to weaponize the DOJ like youse never seen before.

[batmagadanleadoff]

Everybody, I mean everybody, WAPO, the NYT, The Feline Cat Journal, should cover President Combover the way good 'ol Charley Pierce covers him:

Trump Bizarrely Compares the D.C. Plane Crash to Hitting Golf Balls on the Driving Range

Let’s just say that his analogy was a little hard to follow.
By Charles P. Pierce Published: Feb 06, 2025 5:50 PM EST

Personally, I wish the National Prayer Breakfast, that relic of the dangerous commingling of red-baiting politics and red-baiting religion from the 1950s, never existed in the first place. (Worse, there now are two of the damn things.) Watching politicians take their performative faith out for a walk is never edifying. It starts out bad and ends up inevitably worse. However, the NPB on Capitol Hill Thursday provided an invaluable service. It demonstrated that the president of the United States has had the cheese slip off his cracker in a very big way. For example, let’s talk about midair collisions ... and golf balls.

We should have had the proper control. We should have had better equipment. We don’t, we have obsolete equipment. They were understaffed for whatever reason. I guess the helicopter was high. And we’ll find out exactly what happened. But the odds, even if you had nothing, if you had nobody, the odds of that happening– extremely small. It’s like, did you ever see, you go to a driving range in golf and you’re hitting balls, hundreds of balls, thousands of hours. I never see a ball hit another ball? Balls going up all over the place. You never see ’em hit. It was amazing that that could happen.

Will it surprise you to know that The Washington Post’s account of this weird, disordered digression places it as an ancillary element of his undoubtedly empty plans to improve the air-traffic-control system? Or that NPR didn’t mention it at all? Neither did NBC. What does he have to do? Play with his toes? And that’s not even to mention the fact that the guy remains the most thoroughgoing heathen ever to hold his job, and none of the coverage of the event mentions this, instead taking serious his pose as a Defender of the Faith, even though he’s still three wives short of Henry VIII.

https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/p ... air-crash/

[Lefty Specialist]

I'd like to see Golf Digest weigh in, too.

[MFS62]

The Petty Pumpkin just revoked Biden's security clearance.
There's really no reason for him to have one because I doubt he'll be sitting in on any top secret meetings.
But still ...
Later

[Benjamin Grimm]

It's because Biden did the same to Trump. Of course, Trump is an insane blabbermouth, so that was a prudent thing to do.

[batmagadanleadoff]

It's because Biden did the same to Trump. Of course, Trump is an insane blabbermouth, so that was a prudent thing to do.

... an insane blabbermouth who had stolen hundreds of pages worth of highest level, top secret classified documents.

[batmagadanleadoff]

It's because Biden did the same to Trump. Of course, Trump is an insane blabbermouth, so that was a prudent thing to do.

... an insane blabbermouth who had stolen hundreds of pages worth of highest level, top secret classified documents.

... which he'll go right on doing, especially now that he fired the nation's archivist, who's in charge of keeping track of where all those documents are. And through DOGE, being that the info is digital. It's no longer necessary to drive a fleet of moving vans into a parking lot to steal thousands of pounds worth of office filing cabinets. The sensitive data can be stolen with just a few mouse clicks and keystrokes. Remotely. From anywhere. At any time. From the comfort of your own home. While you're naked, even.

[batmagadanleadoff]

It's because Biden did the same to Trump. Of course, Trump is an insane blabbermouth, so that was a prudent thing to do.

... an insane blabbermouth who had stolen hundreds of pages worth of highest level, top secret classified documents.

... which he'll go right on doing, especially now that he fired the nation's archivist, who's in charge of keeping track of where all those documents are. And through DOGE, being that the info is digital. It's no longer necessary to drive a fleet of moving vans into a parking lot to steal thousands of pounds worth of office filing cabinets. The sensitive data can be stolen with just a few mouse clicks and keystrokes. Remotely. From anywhere. At any time. From the comfort of your own home. While you're naked, even.

And the courts are too goddamned slow and weren't designed to deal with this kind of theft. In the time it takes some lawyer to write the emergency motion he or she intends to file with a court, the data could have been stolen ten times over. And with enough access, the crooks can wipe the evidence that the data was stolen in the first place if they know what they're doing.

[batmagadanleadoff]

Another day. Another Presidential action designed to hurt innocent Gazans.

President Caligula considers rescinding Biden policy and sending $34M worth of assault rifles to Israel, where they will surely be used against innocent Gazans..

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/31/us/p ... ifles.html


Haha. You stupid Michiganers who didn't vote for Kama-lala-lalala. Instead youse voted for the racist President who loathes youse because your skin is brown and your god isn't the white-skinned Jesus Christ that the President's voters worship, but the Allah-lala-lalala god. How's that working out? Maybe youse can sing Deck the Halls of Holly, Falala lala lala lala to your Allah lala lalala god praying that maybe Allah-lala-lalala will use his magic God powers to put Kamala-lala-lala in the White House. Let's see how powerful your Allah-lala-lalala god is while your Gazans get slaughtered thanks to the madman in the White House that youse voted for. Don't you realize that youse are just low life riff-raff to the President and he wants you out of the Gaza so that he could build a hotel with casinos on your Gaza land. Fala lalala lala la.

Aern't youse glad that youse voted for the Madman instead of Kamala lala lala? Fa lala lala. Lala. Lala.

Here's the latest for the jackass "Let's Not Vote for Kamala lala lala crowd from Michigan:

Trump says US will take 'take over' Gaza: 'We'll own it'

He said the U.S. would "level the site" and create "an economic development."

Excerpt:

President Donald Trump said Tuesday that the U.S. will "take over" the Gaza Strip, 'level the site" and rebuild it, after earlier saying Palestinians living there should leave.

"They instead can occupy all of a beautiful area with homes and safety, and they can live out their lives in peace and harmony" in other areas or countries, he said at a news conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

"The U.S. will take over the Gaza Strip, and we will do a job with it, too. We'll own it and be responsible for dismantling all of the dangerous unexploded bombs and other weapons on the site. Level the site and get rid of the destroyed buildings. Level it out," he said.

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-p ... =118463249

Of course. Because to President Combover, youse are nothing but lowlife brown-skinned scum. He wants youse out of the Gaza so that he can fill it up with well-heeled Israelis and white people. Because he doesn't think that you low-life brown skins will be able to afford to pay for the tacky hotels and casinos he intends to build in Gaza once the riff-raff (youse) are cleared out. Economic Development? What President Combover means by that is that after his tacky, tasteless garish Gazan hotels are built, maybe he'll give youse jobs cleaning the toilets of the rich white hotel guests. Maybe to save money, the cheapskate will have you cleaning his toilets with your tongues. Wanna know what the clearing out of Gaza is to President Combover? It's a business deal. The President, whom youse helped to put in the White House, is using the power of the Presidency to make business deals for himself and his family of crooks.

So let me offer youse my thoughts and prayers. Youse deserve it. Youse couldn't vote for Kamala lala lala because, I dunno, because she once spilled some ketchup on her blouse while she was eating some french fries. So naturally, youse were left with no other alternative but to vote for the lunatic madman with the combover who did everything but telegraph it by tattooing it on your fucking foreheads that he was going to annihilate whatever was left of the Gazans.

So here are my thoughts and prayers. I'll even send them to your own special god, Allah lala la lala.

I pray to Allah lala la lala on behalf of the jackasses in Michigan who didn't wanna vote for Kamala lala lala.

Happy?

Hey, youse stupid fucking jackass Michiganers who didn't wanna vote for Kamala lala lala: Aren't youse glad that instead, youse voted for President Draft Dodger with the Combover and now he's gonna ethnically cleanse your brown asses out of Gaza and move youse to Antarctica with the Eskimos. Or some El Salvadoran medieval prison. It's all the same to the madman youse voted for. Ethnical cleansing is fancy talk for the rubes that really means slaughter and annihilate youse with tanks and tear gas and bombs and bullets. Youse are so dumb youse probably think it means that he's gonna give you showers. Yeah! Showers that shoot poison gas! So are youse missing Kamala lala lala yet? Make a reservation at the Trump Gaza Resort and Casino Hotel.

Hey! Youse motherfucking let's not vote for Kamala lala lala's. Get a load of this:

Trump Administration Moves to Send $8 Billion in Arms to Israel, Bypassing Some Lawmakers

Whaddyayouse think that your favorite scumbag President with the combover and the 34 felony convictions that youse voted for wants Israel to do with those arms? He wants Israel to wipe youse out of Gaza so that he can put up his tacky hotels and casinos there with his tacky combover name on the facades. And you motherfuckers actually thought that he gave a shit about anything, world peace, humanitarianism, anything beyond making more money for himself and his kunt fraud daughter. What a bunch of suckers youse are. He's gonna wipe youse out if he has his way and all I can do about it is to write these schadenfreude posts because youse dragged me down into this mess youse made with your stupid ideas. Oh my god, what have youse done with your let's not vote for Kamala lala lala?

[Edgy MD]

I dinna think you will find a pro-Palestinian/anti-Harris support bloc here.

[batmagadanleadoff]

I dinna think you will find a pro-Palestinian/anti-Harris support bloc here.

I'm talking about the morons in Michigan. The Michigan Morons.

[Edgy MD]

I would encourage you to take that campaign to them.

And I would beg you to please refrain from slurs.

[batmagadanleadoff]

Like what? Like moron? President Combover? Gimme a break.

[Edgy MD]

No.

[batmagadanleadoff]

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/ ... ty/681600/

Government IT experts say they are so terrified of what Musk and his lackeys could do with access to the systems, that it is beyond their ability to put into words, the potential damage and abuse. Among other things, in a system that manages trillions of dollars, they could have already stolen money for themselves and covered up the theft so that it is literally impossible to detect-- and that no future audit would ever discover. Obviously, whatever data they might have already downloaded can't be undone and will be theirs forever. Me, I assume the worst. I also assume that they continue to access the systems even if a court has issued a temporary stay or injunction against accessing the system or systems.

But not to worry. The Dem Senators, all three of them, are going to yap and yap and yap on the Senate floor till their lungs collapse, even if they have to go without sleep, so as to delay the inevitable Cabinet confirmations of President Combover's crooks and thugs by a whole 25 minutes. That'll show them. After that, when they're really feeling their oats, they might call up Ted Cruz's office and ask for Al Coholic. Or Jacques Strappe.

[batmagadanleadoff]

The scariest part about the megalomaniac's crooked rampage through the government is that the courts are our best hope to stop this madness. The courts! The same wingnut partisan hack SCOTUS that invented presidential immunity from crimes committed and that refused to enforce the plain meaning of the insurrectionist clause of the 14th Amendment. In any other civilized country, anybody who orchestrated a violent plan to overthrow the government which included the filing of fake electoral slates from all over the country would have been hung upside down by his balls in the public square.

I say that the courts are our best hope because the GOP controlled Congress is totally in on all of this corruption. Congress can't even get out a subpoena against Musk with these GOP crooks in the majority. And if they could, the subpoena would probably be ignored. Instead of investigating, issuing subpoenas and challenging the Executive Branch, they gaslight everybody every single minute of every single day with these absurd alternate reality notions of Kash Patel's fitness.

[batmagadanleadoff]

The scariest part about the megalomaniac's crooked rampage through the government is that the courts are our best hope to stop this madness. The courts! The same wingnut partisan hack SCOTUS that invented presidential immunity from crimes committed and that refused to enforce the plain meaning of the insurrectionist clause of the 14th Amendment. In any other civilized country, anybody who orchestrated a violent plan to overthrow the government which included the filing of fake electoral slates from all over the country would have been hung upside down by his balls in the public square.

I say that the courts are our best hope because the GOP controlled Congress is totally in on all of this corruption. Congress can't even get out a subpoena against Musk with these GOP crooks in the majority. And if they could, the subpoena would probably be ignored. Instead of investigating, issuing subpoenas and challenging the Executive Branch, they gaslight everybody every single minute of every single day with these absurd alternate reality notions of Kash Patel's fitness.

Hah!

Why Federal Courts May Be the Last Bulwark Against Trump

With a compliant Congress and mostly quiet streets, the president’s opponents are turning to the judicial branch with a flurry of legal actions. But can the courts keep up?



Excerpt:

“No president should be able to rewrite 120-plus years of interpretation of the Constitution with a stroke of a pen,” said Dan Rayfield, Oregon’s attorney general, in an interview. “That is the existential threat.”

Some legal experts see the executive branch’s deliberate effort to push the boundaries of legality as a bare-knuckle strategy to overwhelm the president’s opposition and eventually win at least some precedent-shattering decisions from the conservative Supreme Court.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/09/us/t ... suits.html

[Edgy MD]

So, anybody heading up to Northeast New York to join in the effort to flip the New York 21st?

That district, along with the Florida sixth and the Florida first have all been abandoned by President Trump appointees leaving for jobs in his administration and/or to avoid being humiliated by the ethics committee and possibly stripped of a seat.

(1) All are pretty staunchly Republican seats, (2) but none are impossibly so, (3) winning all three would flip control of the House, and (4) winning all three is highly unlikely, but (5) they have to try, and (6) at least anti-Trump forces get to focus their energy on three districts instead of playing Pop-a-Mole across the map.

While I write above that "none are impossibly so," those two Florida districts are a pretty quixotic target.

[MFS62]

So, Is the United States part of Oceania, Eastasia or Eurasia?
I forget my Orwell.
Later

[Benjamin Grimm]

Let's just call it Gilead.

[batmagadanleadoff]

Here's the latest for the jackass "Let's Not Vote for Kamala lala lala crowd from Michigan:

Trump says US will take 'take over' Gaza: 'We'll own it'

He said the U.S. would "level the site" and create "an economic development."

Excerpt:



https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-p ... =118463249

Of course. Because to President Combover, youse are nothing but lowlife brown-skinned scum. He wants youse out of the Gaza so that he can fill it up with well-heeled Israelis and white people. Because he doesn't think that you low-life brown skins will be able to afford to pay for the tacky hotels and casinos he intends to build in Gaza once the riff-raff (youse) are cleared out. Economic Development? What President Combover means by that is that after his tacky, tasteless garish Gazan hotels are built, maybe he'll give youse jobs cleaning the toilets of the rich white hotel guests. Maybe to save money, the cheapskate will have you cleaning his toilets with your tongues. Wanna know what the clearing out of Gaza is to President Combover? It's a business deal. The President, whom youse helped to put in the White House, is using the power of the Presidency to make business deals for himself and his family of crooks.

So let me offer youse my thoughts and prayers. Youse deserve it. Youse couldn't vote for Kamala lala lala because, I dunno, because she once spilled some ketchup on her blouse while she was eating some french fries. So naturally, youse were left with no other alternative but to vote for the lunatic madman with the combover who did everything but telegraph it by tattooing it on your fucking foreheads that he was going to annihilate whatever was left of the Gazans.

So here are my thoughts and prayers. I'll even send them to your own special god, Allah lala la lala.

I pray to Allah lala la lala on behalf of the jackasses in Michigan who didn't wanna vote for Kamala lala lala.

Happy?

Hey, youse stupid fucking jackass Michiganers who didn't wanna vote for Kamala lala lala: Aren't youse glad that instead, youse voted for President Draft Dodger with the Combover and now he's gonna ethnically cleanse your brown asses out of Gaza and move youse to Antarctica with the Eskimos. Or some El Salvadoran medieval prison. It's all the same to the madman youse voted for. Ethnical cleansing is fancy talk for the rubes that really means slaughter and annihilate youse with tanks and tear gas and bombs and bullets. Youse are so dumb youse probably think it means that he's gonna give you showers. Yeah! Showers that shoot poison gas! So are youse missing Kamala lala lala yet? Make a reservation at the Trump Gaza Resort and Casino Hotel.

Hey! Youse motherfucking let's not vote for Kamala lala lala's. Get a load of this:

Trump Administration Moves to Send $8 Billion in Arms to Israel, Bypassing Some Lawmakers

Whaddyayouse think that your favorite scumbag President with the combover and the 34 felony convictions that youse voted for wants Israel to do with those arms? He wants Israel to wipe youse out of Gaza so that he can put up his tacky hotels and casinos there with his tacky combover name on the facades. And you motherfuckers actually thought that he gave a shit about anything, world peace, humanitarianism, anything beyond making more money for himself and his kunt fraud daughter. What a bunch of suckers youse are. He's gonna wipe youse out if he has his way and all I can do about it is to write these schadenfreude posts because youse dragged me down into this mess youse made with your stupid ideas. Oh my god, what have youse done with your let's not vote for Kamala lala lala?

Hey youse Michigan Morons who didn't vote for Kamala lala lala: Get a load of today's latest from the President youse voted for, all because Kamala lala lala's favorite color is purple and yours is green. So youse just hadda vote for the madman with the 31 felony convictions who tried to overthrow an election:

Trump Says Palestinians Will Not Be Allowed to Return to Gaza Under His Proposal

President Trump, speaking to Fox News, reiterated his plan to rebuild the Gaza Strip and said its population would be resettled in a “permanent place” elsewhere.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/10/worl ... eover.html

Don't youse know that elsewhere means anywhere. It could be the moon. Or with the penguins and polar bears on a melting ice cap in the Arctic Circle. He doesn't give a shit about youse. Don't youse know that? Of course youse don't. Youse are stupid morons. Youse probably also believe that he's not coming for your medicaid and food stamps. Too stupid to know that if it was up to him, he'd have you removed from Dearborn, too. He passed a fucking muslim ban on youse people and your shithole countries, for christ's sake. No matter. Just tralala lala lala and don't youse vote for Kamala lala lala. Better learn to speak Penguin soon because that's where youse are headed.

[batmagadanleadoff]

The scariest part about the megalomaniac's crooked rampage through the government is that the courts are our best hope to stop this madness. The courts! The same wingnut partisan hack SCOTUS that invented presidential immunity from crimes committed and that refused to enforce the plain meaning of the insurrectionist clause of the 14th Amendment. In any other civilized country, anybody who orchestrated a violent plan to overthrow the government which included the filing of fake electoral slates from all over the country would have been hung upside down by his balls in the public square.

I say that the courts are our best hope because the GOP controlled Congress is totally in on all of this corruption. Congress can't even get out a subpoena against Musk with these GOP crooks in the majority. And if they could, the subpoena would probably be ignored. Instead of investigating, issuing subpoenas and challenging the Executive Branch, they gaslight everybody every single minute of every single day with these absurd alternate reality notions of Kash Patel's fitness.

Hah!

Why Federal Courts May Be the Last Bulwark Against Trump

With a compliant Congress and mostly quiet streets, the president’s opponents are turning to the judicial branch with a flurry of legal actions. But can the courts keep up?



Excerpt:

“No president should be able to rewrite 120-plus years of interpretation of the Constitution with a stroke of a pen,” said Dan Rayfield, Oregon’s attorney general, in an interview. “That is the existential threat.”

Some legal experts see the executive branch’s deliberate effort to push the boundaries of legality as a bare-knuckle strategy to overwhelm the president’s opposition and eventually win at least some precedent-shattering decisions from the conservative Supreme Court.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/09/us/t ... suits.html

Don’t expect the courts to save us from Donald Trump

Courts are inherently reactive institutions. Trump always gets the first move.

Excerpt (long read -- read it all at the link provided at the bottom of this post):

We seem to be in the middle of 16 constitutional crises at once. President Donald Trump and his allies are trying to kill an entire provision of the Constitution, cut Congress out of the federal budgeting process, and cut off agencies’ control of their computer systems.

Let’s imagine that all six of the Supreme Court’s Republican justices wake up tomorrow and decide that their many, previous decisions enabling Trump were wrong, and each pledge to do everything in their power to rein in the seemingly out-of-control executive that they helped create.

Even in this world, where the federal courts could be counted on to aggressively enforce the Constitution and any statutes that are intended to constrain Trump, the United States would still face a constitutional crisis.

The reason why is fairly basic: Courts are inherently reactive institutions. They do not preemptively tell the government how to operate, and they aren’t even allowed to advise the government on whether its planned actions are lawful. Rather, before a federal court can do anything at all, it must wait for the government to do something illegal, wait for a plaintiff to come along who is injured in some way by that illegal action, and then, if conditions are right, the court can intervene.

By the time that happens, permanent damage may already be done. To understand why, consider this example.

The Trump administration plans to essentially shutter the US Agency for International Development (USAID). Shutting down USAID is almost certainly illegal — the agency is funded by Congress, and the president cannot lawfully cut off congressional appropriations (including money set aside to run USAID) without legislative approval. Because of these facts, there’s also a lawsuit, known as American Foreign Service Association v. Trump, seeking to block these efforts to shut down USAID. And that lawsuit may ultimately succeed — the most recent development in that suit is a temporary court order blocking the Trump administration’s attempt to put USAID employees on leave.

By the time this lawsuit fully plays out, however, many of USAID’s employees may have already found new jobs. If the Supreme Court ultimately rules that the agency must continue to function, that decision could take months or years. And, by that point, the agency may have experienced such severe brain drain that it will be a shadow of its former self. (And that’s all assuming that Trump even complies with a court order reopening the agency.)

The Trump administration, in other words, will always be the first mover in a conflict between it and the courts. The federal judiciary can often stop someone who is already violating the law from continuing that behavior, but it can’t prevent the violation from happening in the first place.

Thus, even if we could trust these courts to apply the law fairly and impartially to a Republican administration — and, in a world with Trump v. United States, the decision that said it’s okay for presidents to commit crimes, we simply cannot — Trump and his people can do extraordinary damage before any judge has a chance to even look at what they have done.

[***]

Finally, there’s a question looming over everything Trump does: What if he simply refuses to comply with a Court order?

[***]

https://www.vox.com/scotus/398902/supre ... p-too-weak