Terrifying times, Thank you Greg ... and I live in the UK. I retreat sometimes into fantasy to escape the MangoWanker world at war, or the climate catastrophe vastly accelerating every day. I feel there's no hope unless
1. Fox News owners realise Trump will be a personal disaster for them and their families (nevermind the billions of deaths) or
2. My recurring dream in which #MangoWanker Turdking is at a rally, pisses himself, and has a massive stroke... Disabling and debilitating, unable to type or tweet, incontinent and helpless and unable to speak, fed through an IV and pooping into a bedpan, with Kamala on the radio 24/7, and fully aware of the prison hospital, for the rest of his long life.
I wrote long ago, before Substack even existed, that Fox would repudiate Trump, and that would be the end of him. Still waiting, all these years later. Murdoch is Satan.
2. Well, he did shit himself at the rally. Not sure that counts.
I am 72 now and actually scared (terrified) of the idiocy of the super-rich and Murdoch in failing to stop Trump. Honestly, WaPo and NYT execs will be prosecuted by Trump, so WTF are they up to? “For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind”
Huh? Maybe I’m misinterpreting what you typed, but the DNC has a fuck ton of lawyers gearing up to combat *stop the steal 2024*, at least according to the paper of record.
From the New York Times on Aug. 17, 2024:
“Amid threats of certification battles and mass voter challenges, Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign has assembled an expansive senior legal team that will oversee hundreds of lawyers and thousands of volunteers in a sprawling operation designed to be a bulwark against what Democrats expect to be an aggressive Republican effort to challenge voters, rules and, possibly, the results of the 2024 election.
The legal apparatus within the Harris campaign will oversee multiple aspects of the election program, including voter protection, recounts and general election litigation, and it is adding Marc Elias, one of the party’s top election lawyers, to focus on potential recounts.
The legal group is headed by Bob Bauer, who served as personal counsel to President Biden for years, and Dana Remus, the general counsel to the 2020 Biden campaign, and also includes Maury Riggan, the general counsel for the Harris campaign. Josh Hsu, formerly from the vice president’s office, will join the team, and Vanita Gupta, a former director of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights and a top Biden Justice Department official, is an informal adviser.
The campaign will also lean on the top lawyers at three prominent law firms — Seth Waxman, Donald Verrilli and John Devaney — to handle litigation, and deploy local counsel to eight battleground states and four other states of interest.
Mr. Elias, who has had tensions with Mr. Bauer and other Democratic lawyers in the past, will also bring lawyers from his growing firm, Elias Law Group. He has also previously worked for Ms. Harris, serving as general counsel for her primary campaign in 2020.
Ms. Remus said in a statement that the legal team had been working “uninterrupted over the last four years, building strategic plans in key states, adding more talent and capacity, and preparing for all possible scenarios.”
“This year, like in 2020, we have the nation’s finest lawyers at the table, ready to work together tirelessly to ensure our election will be free, fair and secure — and to ensure that all eligible voters will be able to cast their ballots, knowing their votes will be counted,” Ms. Remus said.
The origins of the effort date back to July 2020, when Walter Dellinger, a former acting solicitor general, called top officials on Mr. Biden’s legal team saying they needed to create “something we’ve never created before,” because the Trump campaign and its allies were beginning to bring cases and lay the groundwork for litigation.
With the lessons of 2020 still fresh in Democrats’ minds, Harris advisers claim that the legal team is about 10 times the size of the 2020 operation.
The expansive new Democratic legal team, and the opposing group at the Republican National Committee, is a reflection of the legal arms race that is the new reality of American elections since Mr. Trump’s election victory in 2016. The battle over whose votes count — not just how many votes are counted — has become central to modern presidential campaigns.”
I think Kamala knows the score, knows what's happening, in a way that Biden does not. That seems to indicate that she does.
For me, I have been burned so many times by waiting for (white male) justice avengers to save the day--people were excited when BILL BARR showed up, ffs--I always assume no one knows anything, although of course plenty of people know much.
Trust. Even Republican election officials and other responsible office holders will follow the law even if their party loses. Not all republicans are beasts.
Only leader trump smells that bad and, yes, some few others. Loving America as it exists is not a red or blue ‘thang.’
Agent Orange is a master manipulator. I call bullshit on these nice good people who support the fucking toxic dump. They're either consciously or unconsciously supporting white privilege cloaked in Christian Nationalism. I'm sick to death of the psychological terrorism that has taken hold. I'm sick do death of the lack of accountability from the adults in the room. It reminds me of our fucked up tax laws that allows Cartels to have a foothold in our banking systems. The money laundering machine. Our systems protect banks and predatory practices first. We are an afterthought. Collateral damage. In the meantime, Leonard Leo spends his dark money to rip this country apart for greed and power. The enemy as always been standing right in front of us. Malignant narcissists at the wheel of power.
For the people I cite here, one is completely brainwashed by Fox news, the other from FB. Although I'm sure that happened because, as you suggest, what they see/read there confirms their own biases.
The playbook is no different than historical Trump, did not pay contractors because "work was not up to standard". The standard whatever he felt he could use to stiff contractors.
A check and balance? Get Dems to win the House, perhaps easier than winning the Oval, no sham like the electoral college available to subvert the will of the people. New House sworn in on January 1st, don't they rather than the Mike the porn app asshole House Speaker make the call if election kicked to House? I think so, wouldn't this eliminate the fake elector scheme? Seems like everything I thought I knew has been lost in tons of disinformation, spread sadly by MSM as they sanewash everything dipshit 45. My spinning head, so dizzy trying to separate facts from outright lies. I fear the grosse luge syndrome is working as it commands the news. Watched Harris on The View, Daddy, Howard Stern, Colbert and Obama's PA speech. As great as these events were, left me with a queeziness in my stomach as a hopelessness gripped me. Great events that somehow missed a mark. What mark = success, I seem to be confused and do not know.
There is one known. Early voting starts October 17 and my wife and me will vote blue up and down the ticket. Sorry if there is a well qualified Republican on the ticket, by association in my mind you are a loser. Irrational, perhaps but safe, hopefully so.
The issue with the House isn't having a majority...it's having a majority of STATES. Each STATE would have a vote, not each House rep. At least, that is my understanding. A Senate gerrymander, in the House.
KH did well on all those platforms. The press will never admit it. I don't know what else she's supposed to do. Maybe sell out MSG lol?
Thanks for the clarity, have been confused about this. Will look at House State distribution. Getting very concerned about KH's chances, one thing says a slam dunk, another not good at all. So much shit flying around hard to know.
I've been wondering why my predominately Trump neighborhood has no Trump signs on their lawns. We live in an upper middle class area and many of them had been deeply engaged in displaying signs & working for GOP. The lack of signage is a "tell" that something more nefarious may be up. Since we live near the entrance to the subdivision, our Harris/Walz signs are pretty obvious. In the past, the Dem signs have been destroyed or stolen. Not so this year.. hmmmm?
I think that's a good sign. It either means shame or internal dissent. Those are the voters who will decide the election, not the hardcore MAGA or the lefties.
We seem to be living in a country half-full of stupid people. (I fully realize there’s a distinction between being stupid and being so woefully misinformed that you’re acting stupid, but I don’t think in this election the distinction makes any difference.)
Thank you, Greg & Nina! The saner detritus of the Republican Party electorate is now seeing, possibly too late to organize properly,, that Trump has always been the chaos candidate though they still fail to see that Putin is pulling Maga's strings. They liked that when the magas were attacking non-white immigration & the regulatory agencies which the National Association of Manufacturers has always opposed (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Association_of_Manufacturers). However Republicans understandably failed to foresee that the same impetus & revanchism would eventually get around to attacking the federal law enforcement, intelligence & military establishments, which Republicans had always championed, to weaken US defenses against foreign & domestic threats.
Democrats have been equally myopic. Obamas's failure to appreciate, even in retrospect in 2014, that Putin's 2008-2014 campaign to weaken Ukraine with continuous chaos was his preparation for the invasion/annexation of Crimea. This was previously Hitler's policy against Austria & Czechoslovakia, arousing anti-state conflicts by internal ethnic populations & exploiting the resulting chaos that aided his destruction of two sovereign democracies. Obama's 2014 low-energy response to Russia's Crimea gambit today sounds distressingly like Neville Chamberlain's Munich betrayal of Prague:
"The fact is that Ukraine, which is a non-NATO country, is going to be vulnerable to military domination by Russia no matter what we do ... . This is an example of where we have to be very clear about what our core interests are and what we are willing to go to war for."
Even after Crimea, Democrats failed to see that the same was not Putin's ultimate goal & that he continued to generate conflict & chaos inside Ukraine with information warfare, by flooding Crimea with migrants & attacking the Donbas region.
Here in the US, Putin's 2016 campaign to install Trump is already established history. Post-2016, they together more than nurtured the birth of internal terrorist elements not so much (at that point) to put rightwing armed forces at their disposal but to ratchet up US social anxiety. I also don't doubt that Putin & Trump worked from outside the US to generate Latin migratory patterns northward against Mexican & US borders which they exploited with agitprop & deza to raise the anti-immigration temperature for the same chaos anxiety-nurturing purpose. The brazenly anti-democratic corruption of the Supreme Court, the defeat of the bipartisan immigration reform bill, regular threats of government shutdowns & the induced Congressional paralysis & perhaps even the bungled COVID pandemic are all works of Maga.
Hitler didn’t create the economic disasters which Germany had faced since 1929 but with his 3 million-strong Stormtrooper army that brought visible lawlessness, violence & the feeling of chaos he created Germany’s second-worst problem which he claimed in his 1932 campaign only he could solve. We’re seeing the same playbook but with Putin’s notional invisible participation today.
I don't disagree. Putin is pulling the levers here. These two go way back. Agent Orange burned through all his cash. Everything is leveraged to the 10th degree. Banks said no more credit. Putin came to his aid. Putin has his nuts in a jar on his desk. He owns him. And Agent Orange is paying interest on his debts. Mr. KGB has enough dirt on him and everyone else to fill a library.
My theory since 2016, when all the talk of the Rosneft sale came out, is that Trump did not get paid money but rather had his debt ($300m at the time) forgiven.
Well said, Richard. I agree, and to your point: at this stage of the game, the chaos agents are domestic. The Russians planted the seed, watered it, cared for it, but the poison ivy spreads independently now.
Obama's flaccid response to Crimea was the third biggest mistake of his presidency, the second being his flaccid response to the Senate on Merrick Garland, and the first his negligent failure to appoint a special counsel who was not an aging GOP on his way out the door to do the Russia investigation. Had he done that, we would NOT be in this position, I don't think.
Yesterday Trump was invoking some Alien Exclusion Act from 1798. Also Hitlerian. God help us.
On a presumably lighter note we can recall KAOS, the international organization of evil and the main enemy from the satiric 1960s tv series Get Smart.
"KAOS" was not an acronym. In an episode of the series, after making a series of demands in a recording, the speaker mentions the demands are from "KAOS, a Delaware Corporation". When Smart asks the chief about this, he mentions they did it for tax reasons.
I think this is the first time I'm aware that MAGAts (I prefer the spelling with the "t" at the end. Am I dehumanizing them? Yes, I am. Fuck them.) are running around thinking, "That's never going to happen." Aren't these the same people that told us they take Trump seriously, but not literally? The rest of us have learned through the years, that INSANE though it may be, one actually has to ALWAYS take Trump literally because he will do absolutely anything he wants to do. In the deep fog of their admiration for this man, are they STILL in denial about what he will actually TRY to do if re-elected?
Color me, ACTUALLY SURPRISED by this. I've been under the delusion that they were completely onboard with everything he wants to do; deport 11 million (or 20 million, or 50 million -- can't decide) people from the country, putting them in "camps" while awaiting their turn to GET OUT; happily sign a national abortion ban; have HIS DOJ and HIS FBI start rounding up people who have spoken or written against him, including journalists, authors, Democrats, gays, trans people, and any woman who DARES try to find health care; fire every Schedule F "deep state" employee and replace them with the MAGAts waiting in the wings, and on and on and on. "That will never happen?" Let's guard against it, just in case!
(For any Secret Service reading, the following is a thought experiment.)
IF Trump IS reinstalled in office, someone is going to kill him. Not me, but SOMEONE is going to judge that their own life is worth it. People are SICK of this shit, and there are some that are REALLY sick of it and crazy enough to try to pull it off. No, of course, we don't want to see that happen (we'd MUCH rather defeat him at the ballot box), but the man has done almost nothing in the past six months but stoke political violence with his actions and rhetoric. There have been, I'll say, 1.5 attempts on his life already, and it's not the Democratic rhetoric that's causing it, as much as they'd like everyone to believe, it's Trump's own. The shit WILL eventually hit the fan, so I hope that for the sake of his family, and those that still inexplicably love him, he's defeated at the ballot box, because I just don't see this balloon being able to stand the pressure of more inflation beyond that. These "officials" in states that think they're going to INSTALL him no matter what the vote turn out to be, should probably "stand back and stand by," because I simply don't see Trump illegitimately back in the presidency as the VICTORY they seem to think it will be.
1/ The people I cite here are not MAGA but regular GOP who will vote for him. The MAGA DO believe he will do what he says, I think. That's the difference.
2/ Tony Michaels theorizes that the number of people he will attempt tp deport will be = the number of people who vote for KH.
3/ JD will take care of that, one way or the other, as I've been warning for months now. A vote for Trump is a vote for the fascist couchfucker.
Oh, then I misread. Still, fuck them! I saw Tony Michaels on the Five-8 last night and loved it! He has a new subscriber, for sure. It should be known though that if I'm to be deported, I'd prefer Canada, as I really don't care for hot weather, but I AM voting for Kamala Harris!
“A slice of that fortune has gone to indulging Schwarzman’s famously extravagant tastes, such as the $5 million bash he threw in 20o7 to celebrate his 60th birthday, or the roughly $200 million worth of vacation homes he’s purchased in England; Jamaica; Palm Beach, Florida; St. Tropez, France; and the Hamptons in New York. Another chunk has gone to the GOP and Donald Trump. A longtime Republican megadonor, Schwarzman said in 2022 that he’d no longer support the former president, having called the January 6 insurrection “an affront to democratic values.” But when the abstraction of “values” bumped up against the reality of money, money won. Schwarzman is a major donor again this election cycle, giving more than $20 million to Republican candidates—with the GOP’s tax cuts for the superwealthy set to expire less than a year into the next president’s term.”
Hanna Levintova
MOTHER JONES 10/10/24
“Newport Was Used to Billionaires. Then Stephen Schwarzman Came to Town”
You’ll love this little tidbit then about the bitcoin craze in big money political circles.
My thoughts exactly. DNC needs boots on the ground armed with local lawyers in all these threatening arenas. I’ve been advocating for calling in the National Guard to oversee this Election. Best case scenario Harris wins in landslide then if a rogue county in Pennsylvania won’t honor the count that’s when Dark Brandon emerges & calls in the Guard.
This was what I feared about the electoral college. I didn't understand why there was a resignation to so much abuse yet so little said or done to counter what is expected ( bar the extraordinary drive of Marc Elias & co) 'Hope' is not a strategy at the endgame.
Thank you Greg!
True & Terrifying. Sharing.
Terrifying times, Thank you Greg ... and I live in the UK. I retreat sometimes into fantasy to escape the MangoWanker world at war, or the climate catastrophe vastly accelerating every day. I feel there's no hope unless
1. Fox News owners realise Trump will be a personal disaster for them and their families (nevermind the billions of deaths) or
2. My recurring dream in which #MangoWanker Turdking is at a rally, pisses himself, and has a massive stroke... Disabling and debilitating, unable to type or tweet, incontinent and helpless and unable to speak, fed through an IV and pooping into a bedpan, with Kamala on the radio 24/7, and fully aware of the prison hospital, for the rest of his long life.
I wrote long ago, before Substack even existed, that Fox would repudiate Trump, and that would be the end of him. Still waiting, all these years later. Murdoch is Satan.
2. Well, he did shit himself at the rally. Not sure that counts.
I am 72 now and actually scared (terrified) of the idiocy of the super-rich and Murdoch in failing to stop Trump. Honestly, WaPo and NYT execs will be prosecuted by Trump, so WTF are they up to? “For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind”
The sick monster Rupert Murdoch has done more to destroy civilisation than anyone since Hitler and Stalin. All for money and ego.
#MangoWanker #Mobster #Traitor
#GOPtraitors against humanity
#Murdoch
Huh? Maybe I’m misinterpreting what you typed, but the DNC has a fuck ton of lawyers gearing up to combat *stop the steal 2024*, at least according to the paper of record.
From the New York Times on Aug. 17, 2024:
“Amid threats of certification battles and mass voter challenges, Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign has assembled an expansive senior legal team that will oversee hundreds of lawyers and thousands of volunteers in a sprawling operation designed to be a bulwark against what Democrats expect to be an aggressive Republican effort to challenge voters, rules and, possibly, the results of the 2024 election.
The legal apparatus within the Harris campaign will oversee multiple aspects of the election program, including voter protection, recounts and general election litigation, and it is adding Marc Elias, one of the party’s top election lawyers, to focus on potential recounts.
The legal group is headed by Bob Bauer, who served as personal counsel to President Biden for years, and Dana Remus, the general counsel to the 2020 Biden campaign, and also includes Maury Riggan, the general counsel for the Harris campaign. Josh Hsu, formerly from the vice president’s office, will join the team, and Vanita Gupta, a former director of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights and a top Biden Justice Department official, is an informal adviser.
The campaign will also lean on the top lawyers at three prominent law firms — Seth Waxman, Donald Verrilli and John Devaney — to handle litigation, and deploy local counsel to eight battleground states and four other states of interest.
Mr. Elias, who has had tensions with Mr. Bauer and other Democratic lawyers in the past, will also bring lawyers from his growing firm, Elias Law Group. He has also previously worked for Ms. Harris, serving as general counsel for her primary campaign in 2020.
Ms. Remus said in a statement that the legal team had been working “uninterrupted over the last four years, building strategic plans in key states, adding more talent and capacity, and preparing for all possible scenarios.”
“This year, like in 2020, we have the nation’s finest lawyers at the table, ready to work together tirelessly to ensure our election will be free, fair and secure — and to ensure that all eligible voters will be able to cast their ballots, knowing their votes will be counted,” Ms. Remus said.
The origins of the effort date back to July 2020, when Walter Dellinger, a former acting solicitor general, called top officials on Mr. Biden’s legal team saying they needed to create “something we’ve never created before,” because the Trump campaign and its allies were beginning to bring cases and lay the groundwork for litigation.
With the lessons of 2020 still fresh in Democrats’ minds, Harris advisers claim that the legal team is about 10 times the size of the 2020 operation.
The expansive new Democratic legal team, and the opposing group at the Republican National Committee, is a reflection of the legal arms race that is the new reality of American elections since Mr. Trump’s election victory in 2016. The battle over whose votes count — not just how many votes are counted — has become central to modern presidential campaigns.”
There’s more …
🎁 https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/17/us/elections/democrats-election-legal-challenges.html?unlocked_article_code=1.RU4.wv-E.vrEXxnBiUg_X&smid=url-share
I also donate to Democracy Docket weekly now to boost the number of legal warriors. Not to mention Kamala ground game recruiting. You too I hope
Of course! 🤣
Likewise and we watch their podcasts,$120 for annual membership, monthly option available. Upcoming with Al Franken
And just like that, the morning roundup from the Philly Inquirer put an article about the *election lawyer arms race* happening RIGHT NOW in PA.
https://www.inquirer.com/politics/election/election-litigation-pennsylvania-court-hearings-ballots-20241011.html?
Good good double good!
Well said! billserle.com
Many thanks, BBB!
As more of these jackass MAGA lawyers get disbarred and indicted, maybe some will eventually decide it's not worth it. We can hope.
I keep waiting for that, too. Surely there must be a limit to how many there can be?
This is very good news. Thank you for sharing.
I think Kamala knows the score, knows what's happening, in a way that Biden does not. That seems to indicate that she does.
For me, I have been burned so many times by waiting for (white male) justice avengers to save the day--people were excited when BILL BARR showed up, ffs--I always assume no one knows anything, although of course plenty of people know much.
Trust. Even Republican election officials and other responsible office holders will follow the law even if their party loses. Not all republicans are beasts.
Only leader trump smells that bad and, yes, some few others. Loving America as it exists is not a red or blue ‘thang.’
A ten million majority sounds good. billserle.com
Ten million. Boom.
TGIF🎉🎉🎉
Agent Orange is a master manipulator. I call bullshit on these nice good people who support the fucking toxic dump. They're either consciously or unconsciously supporting white privilege cloaked in Christian Nationalism. I'm sick to death of the psychological terrorism that has taken hold. I'm sick do death of the lack of accountability from the adults in the room. It reminds me of our fucked up tax laws that allows Cartels to have a foothold in our banking systems. The money laundering machine. Our systems protect banks and predatory practices first. We are an afterthought. Collateral damage. In the meantime, Leonard Leo spends his dark money to rip this country apart for greed and power. The enemy as always been standing right in front of us. Malignant narcissists at the wheel of power.
For the people I cite here, one is completely brainwashed by Fox news, the other from FB. Although I'm sure that happened because, as you suggest, what they see/read there confirms their own biases.
My father's friends and neighbors in Florida's Village of the Damned, have told me to my face that Agent Orange is payback for Obama.
The playbook is no different than historical Trump, did not pay contractors because "work was not up to standard". The standard whatever he felt he could use to stiff contractors.
A check and balance? Get Dems to win the House, perhaps easier than winning the Oval, no sham like the electoral college available to subvert the will of the people. New House sworn in on January 1st, don't they rather than the Mike the porn app asshole House Speaker make the call if election kicked to House? I think so, wouldn't this eliminate the fake elector scheme? Seems like everything I thought I knew has been lost in tons of disinformation, spread sadly by MSM as they sanewash everything dipshit 45. My spinning head, so dizzy trying to separate facts from outright lies. I fear the grosse luge syndrome is working as it commands the news. Watched Harris on The View, Daddy, Howard Stern, Colbert and Obama's PA speech. As great as these events were, left me with a queeziness in my stomach as a hopelessness gripped me. Great events that somehow missed a mark. What mark = success, I seem to be confused and do not know.
There is one known. Early voting starts October 17 and my wife and me will vote blue up and down the ticket. Sorry if there is a well qualified Republican on the ticket, by association in my mind you are a loser. Irrational, perhaps but safe, hopefully so.
The issue with the House isn't having a majority...it's having a majority of STATES. Each STATE would have a vote, not each House rep. At least, that is my understanding. A Senate gerrymander, in the House.
KH did well on all those platforms. The press will never admit it. I don't know what else she's supposed to do. Maybe sell out MSG lol?
Thanks for the clarity, have been confused about this. Will look at House State distribution. Getting very concerned about KH's chances, one thing says a slam dunk, another not good at all. So much shit flying around hard to know.
I've been wondering why my predominately Trump neighborhood has no Trump signs on their lawns. We live in an upper middle class area and many of them had been deeply engaged in displaying signs & working for GOP. The lack of signage is a "tell" that something more nefarious may be up. Since we live near the entrance to the subdivision, our Harris/Walz signs are pretty obvious. In the past, the Dem signs have been destroyed or stolen. Not so this year.. hmmmm?
I think that's a good sign. It either means shame or internal dissent. Those are the voters who will decide the election, not the hardcore MAGA or the lefties.
We seem to be living in a country half-full of stupid people. (I fully realize there’s a distinction between being stupid and being so woefully misinformed that you’re acting stupid, but I don’t think in this election the distinction makes any difference.)
Stupidity can be a choice.
Thank you, Greg & Nina! The saner detritus of the Republican Party electorate is now seeing, possibly too late to organize properly,, that Trump has always been the chaos candidate though they still fail to see that Putin is pulling Maga's strings. They liked that when the magas were attacking non-white immigration & the regulatory agencies which the National Association of Manufacturers has always opposed (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Association_of_Manufacturers). However Republicans understandably failed to foresee that the same impetus & revanchism would eventually get around to attacking the federal law enforcement, intelligence & military establishments, which Republicans had always championed, to weaken US defenses against foreign & domestic threats.
Democrats have been equally myopic. Obamas's failure to appreciate, even in retrospect in 2014, that Putin's 2008-2014 campaign to weaken Ukraine with continuous chaos was his preparation for the invasion/annexation of Crimea. This was previously Hitler's policy against Austria & Czechoslovakia, arousing anti-state conflicts by internal ethnic populations & exploiting the resulting chaos that aided his destruction of two sovereign democracies. Obama's 2014 low-energy response to Russia's Crimea gambit today sounds distressingly like Neville Chamberlain's Munich betrayal of Prague:
"The fact is that Ukraine, which is a non-NATO country, is going to be vulnerable to military domination by Russia no matter what we do ... . This is an example of where we have to be very clear about what our core interests are and what we are willing to go to war for."
Even after Crimea, Democrats failed to see that the same was not Putin's ultimate goal & that he continued to generate conflict & chaos inside Ukraine with information warfare, by flooding Crimea with migrants & attacking the Donbas region.
Here in the US, Putin's 2016 campaign to install Trump is already established history. Post-2016, they together more than nurtured the birth of internal terrorist elements not so much (at that point) to put rightwing armed forces at their disposal but to ratchet up US social anxiety. I also don't doubt that Putin & Trump worked from outside the US to generate Latin migratory patterns northward against Mexican & US borders which they exploited with agitprop & deza to raise the anti-immigration temperature for the same chaos anxiety-nurturing purpose. The brazenly anti-democratic corruption of the Supreme Court, the defeat of the bipartisan immigration reform bill, regular threats of government shutdowns & the induced Congressional paralysis & perhaps even the bungled COVID pandemic are all works of Maga.
Hitler didn’t create the economic disasters which Germany had faced since 1929 but with his 3 million-strong Stormtrooper army that brought visible lawlessness, violence & the feeling of chaos he created Germany’s second-worst problem which he claimed in his 1932 campaign only he could solve. We’re seeing the same playbook but with Putin’s notional invisible participation today.
I don't disagree. Putin is pulling the levers here. These two go way back. Agent Orange burned through all his cash. Everything is leveraged to the 10th degree. Banks said no more credit. Putin came to his aid. Putin has his nuts in a jar on his desk. He owns him. And Agent Orange is paying interest on his debts. Mr. KGB has enough dirt on him and everyone else to fill a library.
My theory since 2016, when all the talk of the Rosneft sale came out, is that Trump did not get paid money but rather had his debt ($300m at the time) forgiven.
Well said, Richard. I agree, and to your point: at this stage of the game, the chaos agents are domestic. The Russians planted the seed, watered it, cared for it, but the poison ivy spreads independently now.
Obama's flaccid response to Crimea was the third biggest mistake of his presidency, the second being his flaccid response to the Senate on Merrick Garland, and the first his negligent failure to appoint a special counsel who was not an aging GOP on his way out the door to do the Russia investigation. Had he done that, we would NOT be in this position, I don't think.
Yesterday Trump was invoking some Alien Exclusion Act from 1798. Also Hitlerian. God help us.
On a presumably lighter note we can recall KAOS, the international organization of evil and the main enemy from the satiric 1960s tv series Get Smart.
"KAOS" was not an acronym. In an episode of the series, after making a series of demands in a recording, the speaker mentions the demands are from "KAOS, a Delaware Corporation". When Smart asks the chief about this, he mentions they did it for tax reasons.
https://villains.fandom.com/wiki/KAOS_(Get_Smart)
Ha! I love it! As much as I loved Agent 99.
I think this is the first time I'm aware that MAGAts (I prefer the spelling with the "t" at the end. Am I dehumanizing them? Yes, I am. Fuck them.) are running around thinking, "That's never going to happen." Aren't these the same people that told us they take Trump seriously, but not literally? The rest of us have learned through the years, that INSANE though it may be, one actually has to ALWAYS take Trump literally because he will do absolutely anything he wants to do. In the deep fog of their admiration for this man, are they STILL in denial about what he will actually TRY to do if re-elected?
Color me, ACTUALLY SURPRISED by this. I've been under the delusion that they were completely onboard with everything he wants to do; deport 11 million (or 20 million, or 50 million -- can't decide) people from the country, putting them in "camps" while awaiting their turn to GET OUT; happily sign a national abortion ban; have HIS DOJ and HIS FBI start rounding up people who have spoken or written against him, including journalists, authors, Democrats, gays, trans people, and any woman who DARES try to find health care; fire every Schedule F "deep state" employee and replace them with the MAGAts waiting in the wings, and on and on and on. "That will never happen?" Let's guard against it, just in case!
(For any Secret Service reading, the following is a thought experiment.)
IF Trump IS reinstalled in office, someone is going to kill him. Not me, but SOMEONE is going to judge that their own life is worth it. People are SICK of this shit, and there are some that are REALLY sick of it and crazy enough to try to pull it off. No, of course, we don't want to see that happen (we'd MUCH rather defeat him at the ballot box), but the man has done almost nothing in the past six months but stoke political violence with his actions and rhetoric. There have been, I'll say, 1.5 attempts on his life already, and it's not the Democratic rhetoric that's causing it, as much as they'd like everyone to believe, it's Trump's own. The shit WILL eventually hit the fan, so I hope that for the sake of his family, and those that still inexplicably love him, he's defeated at the ballot box, because I just don't see this balloon being able to stand the pressure of more inflation beyond that. These "officials" in states that think they're going to INSTALL him no matter what the vote turn out to be, should probably "stand back and stand by," because I simply don't see Trump illegitimately back in the presidency as the VICTORY they seem to think it will be.
25 fucking days.
1/ The people I cite here are not MAGA but regular GOP who will vote for him. The MAGA DO believe he will do what he says, I think. That's the difference.
2/ Tony Michaels theorizes that the number of people he will attempt tp deport will be = the number of people who vote for KH.
3/ JD will take care of that, one way or the other, as I've been warning for months now. A vote for Trump is a vote for the fascist couchfucker.
Oh, then I misread. Still, fuck them! I saw Tony Michaels on the Five-8 last night and loved it! He has a new subscriber, for sure. It should be known though that if I'm to be deported, I'd prefer Canada, as I really don't care for hot weather, but I AM voting for Kamala Harris!
“A slice of that fortune has gone to indulging Schwarzman’s famously extravagant tastes, such as the $5 million bash he threw in 20o7 to celebrate his 60th birthday, or the roughly $200 million worth of vacation homes he’s purchased in England; Jamaica; Palm Beach, Florida; St. Tropez, France; and the Hamptons in New York. Another chunk has gone to the GOP and Donald Trump. A longtime Republican megadonor, Schwarzman said in 2022 that he’d no longer support the former president, having called the January 6 insurrection “an affront to democratic values.” But when the abstraction of “values” bumped up against the reality of money, money won. Schwarzman is a major donor again this election cycle, giving more than $20 million to Republican candidates—with the GOP’s tax cuts for the superwealthy set to expire less than a year into the next president’s term.”
Hanna Levintova
MOTHER JONES 10/10/24
“Newport Was Used to Billionaires. Then Stephen Schwarzman Came to Town”
You’ll love this little tidbit then about the bitcoin craze in big money political circles.
I remember that name...
https://medium.com/@gregolear/the-rosneft-commission-trumps-inevitable-downfall-will-involve-money-and-lots-of-it-81e87778288f
Indeed.
My thoughts exactly. DNC needs boots on the ground armed with local lawyers in all these threatening arenas. I’ve been advocating for calling in the National Guard to oversee this Election. Best case scenario Harris wins in landslide then if a rogue county in Pennsylvania won’t honor the count that’s when Dark Brandon emerges & calls in the Guard.
This was what I feared about the electoral college. I didn't understand why there was a resignation to so much abuse yet so little said or done to counter what is expected ( bar the extraordinary drive of Marc Elias & co) 'Hope' is not a strategy at the endgame.