Rep. Crockett has 5 minutes of mic-drop moments during impeachment hearing

By Walter Einenkel for Daily Kos

Daily Kos Staff

Thursday, September 28, 2023 at 3:49:29p MDT

 

REPUBLISHED BY:

Blue Country Gazette Blog

Rim Country Gazette Blog 

Democratic Rep. Jasmine Crockett of Texas stepped into the spotlight during the Republican sham-impeachment inquiry on Thursday. She began by modestly reminding everyone that the so-called “evidence” the Republicans keep pointing to is not evidence at all, and never has been. “Repeating the same lies will not somehow turn them into truths,” she said. Then Crockett turned up the heat: “Kind of like the election that Trump lost. Say it with me: He lost it. Repeating the same lie that he won wasn't going to turn the election around.” Hot enough? How about this: “The ‘lost’ in this chamber keep pushing lies and lunacy on behalf of a multitime loser.”

That’s minute one. Crockett proceeded to drop microphones all over the inquiry chamber as she spent the rest of her time hammering home every fact out there about Donald Trump, his dirty dealings, and the charges against him while continuously throwing well-deserved shade at Republicans. Crockett joked that if Republicans “continue to say ‘if’ or ‘Hunter,’ and we were playing a drinking game, I would be drunk by now.”

One of the highlights was when Crockett held up a picture of the boxes of classified documents discovered by the FBI in Trump’s Mar-a-Lago bathroom, saying that when Democratic officials “start talking about things that look like evidence, [Republicans] want to act like they blind.” She then turned the gas all the way up, motioning to the image she was holding up: “They don't know what this is. These are our national secrets. Looks like—in the shitter to me.”

And she didn’t stop there.

Enjoy.

Crockett: Thank you so much, Mr. Chair. Before I begin my questioning, I want to remind everyone that the information recorded in the FBI Form 1023 that my Republican colleagues keep citing is not evidence of anything. This form reflects the years-old secondhand unverified information from a Ukrainian oligarch as relayed to the FBI by a confidential human source. These unverified second-hand allegations have been repeatedly debunked and undermined, including by the confidential human source who relayed this information to the FBI.

The tip, recorded in the Form 1023, was thoroughly explored by the U.S. attorney handpicked by Donald Trump, which was Attorney General William Barr and the assessment was closed. Finally, Devin Archer, Hunter Biden's former business partner who worked with the Ukrainian oligarch in question, told this committee in a transcribed interview in July that he had no knowledge of any such payments allegedly described in this form.

Repeating the same lies will not somehow turn them into truths. Kind of like the election that Trump lost: Say it with me. He lost it. Repeating the same lie that he won wasn't going to turn the election around. The “lost” in this chamber keep pushing lies and lunacy on behalf of a multitime loser. So if we gon’ talk about China, let's go ahead and talk about China.

And let's talk about the dealings. And let me point out the fact that right now each of you has admitted that none of you are fact witnesses. We walked in without facts. And unfortunately, because what we say isn't necessarily evidence, we have wasted the American people's time and we are going to walk out of this chamber, and we still have no facts that are leading to anything.

But let me give y’all a little bit of tea while we're here. So: I have a document that I will ask for unanimous consent to enter into the record. It’s a fact sheet on President Trump's shady business dealings with the Chinese government.

Comer: What are you entering in? A record from who?

Crockett: This is from the Congressional Integrity.

Comer: Congressional Integrity Project, the dark-money PAC. I object. Object to that too.

Crockett: Of course y’all are going to object, but we gon’ talk about it. So it says Trump has extensive financial ties to the Chinese government. President Trump collected millions from Chinese government-owned entities while in office: ‘“I have the best tenants in the world.”President Trump was well aware of the multiple million-dollar lease to Chinese interests. President Trump promised to donate foreign government profits while in office, but he donated less than a third of his proceeds from the Chinese government.

President Trump maintained three foreign bank accounts while in office, including one in China. President Trump's business with China raises legal and ethical concerns. President Trump: “President Xi loves the people of China. He loves his country, and he's doing a very good job.”

Let me tell you something: I don't want to talk about what y’all want to act like is some big mystery because we keep sitting here. And Professor Gerhardt, just just to be clear: As my colleagues have even tried to provide evidence, which they're not the ones to provide evidence. Have you ever heard them say if since we've been sitting here for I don't know how long?

Gerhardt: Yes, I. I've been taking a tally.

Crockett: Oh, okay. Can you show us what the tally is?

Gerhardt: More than 35 times the Republican witnesses and Republican members of the committee have used the word ‘if.’

Crockett: Thank you so much for that. Because honestly, if they would continue to say “if” or “Hunter,” and we were playing a drinking game, I would be drunk by now. Because I promise you, they have not talked about the subject of this, which would be the president. But let me tell you something that was so disturbing as I walked into this chamber today. As I prepared, I said, “What is the crime?”

Because when you're talking about impeachment, you're talking about high crimes or misdemeanors. And I can't seem to find the crime. And honestly, no one has testified of what crime they believe the president of the United States has committed. But when we start talking about things that look like evidence, they want to act like they blind. They don't know what this is.

These are our national secrets. Looks like in the shitter to me. This looks like more evidence of our national secrets—say on a stage at Mar-a-Lago. When we're talking about somebody that’s committed high crimes, it’s at least indictments.  Let's say 32 counts related to unauthorized retention of national security secrets. Seven counts related to obstructing the investigation. Three false statements. One count of conspiracy to defraud the United States.Falsifying business records.Conspiracy to defraud the United States.Two counts related to efforts to obstruct the vote certification proceedings. One count of conspiracy to violate civil rights.Twenty-three counts related to forgery or false document statements.Eight counts related to soliciting. And I could go on because he's got 91 counts pending right now.

But I will tell you what the president has been guilty of: He has, unfortunately, been guilty of loving his child unconditionally. And that is the only evidence that they have brought forward. And honestly, I hope and pray that my parents love me half as much as he loves his child. Until they find some evidence, we need to get back to the people's work, which means keeping this government open so that people don't go hungry in the streets of the United States.

And I will yield.

I could listen to this all day long.

"Until they find some evidence, we need to get back to the people's work, which means keeping this government open so that people don't go hungry in the streets of the United States."

Republican impeachment inquiry gets off to a perfect start - if you enjoy clowns

 

Rep. Jason Smith.

By Mark Sumner for Daily Kos

Daily Kos Staff

Thursday, September 28, 2023 at 7:28:12a MDT

 

REPUBLISHED BY:

Blue Country Gazette Blog

Rim Country Gazette Blog 

On Wednesday afternoon, Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee held a press conference to announce the start of their impeachment inquiry against President Joe Biden. If this was intended as a preview of what’s to come, it was perfect.

At that conference, NBC reporter Ryan Nobles pointed out that much of the supposed evidence took place at a time not only before Joe Biden was elected, but at a point where he wasn’t even a candidate. But time … is apparently a very fuzzy concept to Rep. Jason Smith. The resulting exchange was hilarious.

Nobles: “Can you explain the timing of the Aug. 6 WhatsApp message? Why is that evidence of some wrongdoing?”

Smith: “I’m not an expert on the timeline. I would love to have, um, President Biden and his family to tell us about all the timeline.”

Nobles : “But if he's not the president or the vice president at that time, where’s the wrongdoing? He wasn’t even a candidate for president at that time.”

Smith: “He was a candidate.”

Nobles : “On Aug. 6 of 2017?”

Smith: “So apparently, apparently … what source are you with?”

Nobles: “I’m with NBC.”

Smith: “So apparently, you’ll never believe us.”

Nobles: “I’m not saying I don’t believe you. I’m asking you a very direct question. You presented a piece of evidence that you say came on Aug. 6 2017, that demonstrates that Joe Biden was using political influence to help his son.”

Smith: “What’s that?”

Nobles: “The WhatsApp message you put up. How does that demonstrate that there was some sort of political influence put over him if at that time he wasn’t a political figure, he’s not an elected official?”

Smith: “I’m definitely not going to pinpoint one item.”

Nobles: “You presented it. It was your first thing that you brought.”

Smith: “So, apparently you don’t agree with it.”

Nobles: “It’s not that I don’t agree with it. I’m asking you to explain it.”

Smith: “I’ll take the next question.”

The inquiry gets underway today with three witnesses slated to testify:

• Bruce Dubinsky, an accountant who has previously appeared on Fox News as a commentator about Hunter Biden.

• Eileen O’Connor, a former assistant attorney general at the Justice Department’s Tax Division during the George W. Bush administration and a member of Donald Trump’s transition team.

• Jonathan Turley, an attorney who Republicans also called as a witness to defend Trump during his impeachment hearings.

So, the first three witnesses include no one who has any direct knowledge of anything involving either Hunter Biden or President Joe Biden, no one who has served in public office in the last two decades, and no one with any connection to any of the officials or events that are the supposed focus of the inquiry.

That also sounds perfect. It all gets underway at 10 AM ET. And yes, we will be covering it.

Even Joe got a laugh out of Rep. Jason Smith's antics at the press conference announcing his impeachment for NOTHING.

House Republicans Are Hurtling Toward the Most Pointless Shutdown Ever

 

President Biden joined members of United Auto Workers (UAW) on the picket line in Wayne County, Michigan. (photo: AFP)

Biden on the picket line and Republicans in disarray. A tale of two parties.

Ryan Grim / The Intercept 

27 September 23

 

In a rather striking split screen, Joe Biden became the first president ever to walk a union picket line, grabbing a bullhorn and using the word “we” to rally striking autoworkers. His Federal Trade Commission teamed with 17 attorneys general to sue Amazon for unfair competition (which was fun to see Jeff Bezos’s Washington Post report). And the FCC, finally under the control of Democratic commissioners, announced it would be moving to restore net neutrality rules undone by Trump.

Over on the Republican side, the House GOP continued barreling toward a government shutdown over … what exactly? “Madam Speaker, forgive me, but what the hell is going on here?” wondered Democratic Rep. Jim McGovern from the House floor this evening. And Trump will be skipping Wednesday’s Republican debate to speak at a non-union auto parts company that has nothing to do with the UAW strikes against the Big Three.

It’s a tale of two parties taking unusually divergent governance paths.

We’re headed for a government shutdown on Saturday, September 30, for no reason at all. Indeed it’s hard to think of a single person who could benefit from one, except, perhaps, someone facing a few federal indictments and hoping to drag out their trials beyond the coming election. For that person, you can see an upside in a shutdown.

Republicans spent Tuesday evening jawing at each other. Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, one of the Republican firebrands leading the shutdown charge, to his credit, had the night’s best joke, saying that federal spending had so devalued the dollar that you need gold bars to bribe Democratic senators now. He also lashed out at Speaker Kevin McCarthy on Twitter, calling him “pathetic” for a paid advocacy campaign Gaetz said attempted to pay Republican influencers to trash-talk Gaetz and his shutdown effort. McCarthy issued a cease-and-desist order to a consulting firm, which appears to be — or is accused of being? — Democratic. What a mess.

I don’t think people quite have a grasp of how thoroughly absurd the Republican position is on a government shutdown, and I’m not speaking from a partisan perspective, or saying that I disagree with their approach. What I’m saying is that it’s just completely insane.

To put it simply, Republicans previously agreed to a very specific deal to fund the government, have not made any serious demands or proposed any way forward that would keep the government open, yet they are still pushing for a shutdown. When I read that sentence back to myself, it sounds unusually partisan, but it’s just the simple truth, and I don’t see any other way to say it honestly.

They can’t even pass a bill through their own chamber, the House, that would fund the government. They’re not even proposing big changes to federal spending, because they already took that off the table during Biden’s State of the Union.

At least when Trump shut the government down in 2018 he had an actual demand: money for his border wall. (He eventually caved, got no money, and built some of the wall illegally anyway, by moving money from other places.)

Taking a close look at the legislative situation really reveals how absurd it is. Let’s run through it quickly.

Perhaps it seems like too long ago, but this whole thing was already worked out in May. Biden and McCarthy, as you’ll recall, sat down to craft a deal to avert a default and a global financial crisis.

The deal was straightforward and announced publicly: The debt ceiling would be lifted until January 2025 (so a lame duck Congress can lift it again). Discretionary and military spending for the next fiscal year would be capped at $1.59 trillion: $886 billion for the war-making folks and $704 billion for the rest. Cuts to spending for Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and veterans benefits were off limits, because Biden had boxed Republicans in when they all hooted and hollered at him during his State of the Union.

So all of this has already been hashed out. As Hank Williams Jr. would put it, “It’s all over but the crying.”

The holdouts are calling for budget numbers several hundred billion below what was already agreed on, which is fine — that’s their right — but it doesn’t mean anybody should listen to them. Today McCarthy suggested he needs another meeting with Biden, which the White House quickly rejected, noting they already cut a deal and his problem is with Matt Gaetz and that crew, not with the White House. AOC suggested McCarthy be told to go “pound sand,” which is one of my favorite cliches.

How This Is Completely on Republicans

There are only a few different ways to fund the government:

1. You can do it the way Congress was designed to work but doesn’t: by passing a dozen individual spending bills through the House and the Senate and having the president sign them. How quaint. That hasn’t happened since 1996.
2. Then there is a CR, or a “continuing resolution.” A CR essentially keeps things as they are until a certain date, though you can also have an amended CR that includes policy and spending changes.
   

That’s it. If you don’t pass one of those, the government shuts down. And there are enough Republicans opposed to each one of those pathways that none of them are viable.

So Republicans are spending this week belatedly attempting option 1, passing all 12 appropriations bills. That’s impossible to do in this short amount of time, and the party is only going to try to actually pass four. It’s just for show, and if I were a betting man, I’d take the under. Maybe they can pass the defense bill. The homeland security one is a remote possibility. The next two — State … Foreign Ops and Agriculture — are going to be tougher. Late this evening, they passed a rule on the House floor that allows them to start debating those four bills. It got 216 Republican votes (Marjorie Taylor Greene voted no) and Republicans gave themselves an ovation on the floor, even though passing a rule is standard stuff. Nancy Pelosi never lost a rule vote in her entire tenure.

Their next plan will be to draft a CR and stuff it full of right-wing priorities, such as dewokeifying the military, attaching symbolic border-related provisions, and slashing social spending. All of that is DOA in the Senate and not even a sure thing in the House.

Each one of these votes is a trap for Republicans, because they’ll never be good enough for the most ardent conservatives and they’ll include draconian cuts and extreme social policy that will then be used against moderate Republicans running in Biden districts.

Here’s how the Washington Post framed the latest proposed cuts: “Cutting housing subsidies for the poor by 33 percent as soaring rents drive a national affordability crisis. Forcing more than 1 million women and children onto the waitlist of a nutritional assistance program for poor mothers with young children. Reducing federal spending on home heating assistance for low-income families by more than 70 percent with energy prices high heading into the winter months.”

That’s not just terrible for people, it’s terrible politics.

Once that theater is over, the only option will be a normal, clean, bipartisan CR. The Senate voted 77-19 (!) to move forward on a CR this evening to keep the government open another 47 days. But it includes some $6 billion for Ukraine, and House Republicans want to reject that outright.

Here is where McCarthy faces a choice. He can prevent the Senate bill, which has the support of Mitch McConnell and a host of Republicans, from coming to the floor. His right-wing rebels have said that if he passes it with Democratic votes, they’ll depose him. And they might, but A) they don’t have an alternative who could get 218 votes and B) Democrats could vote to save him which would be C) hilarious.

The other option for House Republicans is to say that a spending bill supported by a majority of Senate Republicans is simply unacceptable, and so the government needs to shut down.

There are other mechanisms a coalition of Democrats and Republicans could use to end the standoff, including either a discharge petition, defeating the previous question and seizing the floor (don’t worry about it), or temporarily ousting McCarthy and installing a caretaker speaker who puts the bill on the floor, lets it pass, then turns the gavel back to Republicans to fight over. Unlike in the Senate, in the House, where there’s the will of a majority, there really is a way. All of that will take time, though.

Because the shutdown will be so obviously pinned on Republicans — Trump himself has demanded they do it, promising, absurdly, that Biden will get the blame — the thinking in Washington is that Democrats won’t help Republicans resolve their internal problems, preferring to let them burst into public display.

So it’s all spectacle all the way down. Which, ultimately, is what Gaetz is after. This shootout inside the Republican Party is all about showing Trump and his supporters who’s willing to fight the hardest, regardless of whether any of it makes any sense even for them — and with the rest of the country caught in the crossfire.

Kevin McCarthy is so busy sucking up to Matt Gaetz and reneging on his budget deal with President Biden that he appears to have bitten his tongue.

New Cassidy Hutchinson memoir alleges mass incompetence, corruption in Trump White House

Former Trump White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson

By Hunter for Daily Kos

Daily Kos Staff

Tuesday, September 26, 2023 at 1:10:04p MDT

 

REPUBLISHED BY:

Blue Country Gazette Blog

Rim Country Gazette Blog 

Former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson's new book detailing the last days of the Donald Trump administration, “Enough,” is now on shelves. It appears safe to say that whatever you thought was going on inside Team Trump, the reality was probably worse. Initial reviews of the book mostly appear to be expressing dull shock at the many, many anecdotes of recklessness, incompetence, and law-skirting.

CNN's initial review seems the most complete so far, and even the summary is a ride. "If I can get through this job and manage to keep [Trump] out of jail, I'll have done a good job," White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows allegedly told Hutchinson in June of 2020 as Trump's reelection fight was in full swing. That really does seem to describe the larger White House Cult of Trump: Keep your head down, keep the boss happy, and try to distract the buffoon when he demands you do something criminal.

One of the most noteworthy episodes of something criminal might be Hutchinson's allegations that Meadows was burning so many papers in his office fireplace that his wife complained she couldn't keep up with the dry cleaning. "[A]ll his suits smell like a bonfire," she complained. But Hutchinson also relates Meadows handing over classified documents to far-right media personalities, as well as both White House counsel Pat Cipollone's attempts to get them back and his acidic request to her to inform Meadows that "we cannot pardon Kimberly Guilfoyle's gynecologist.” And no, he wasn't joking.

It seems the mishandling of classified documents was widespread on the Trump team. On a Monday appearance on the “Rachel Maddow Show,” Hutchinson carefully allowed that she and "colleagues" were "under the impression that how classified documents were being handled was not within proper protocol." We may never know just how many classified documents left the White House after Trump, Meadows, or others simply handed them off.

And to this day, we've never gotten a satisfactory answer on what might have been burned in those days when Meadows’ fireplace was apparently billowing smoke like an evacuating Russian embassy. There hasn't been much speculation on it, either. When it comes to things Meadows and others would absolutely want the public to never see, the possibilities seem nearly infinite.

It's Hutchinson's many apparent examples of cavalier lawbreaking and worse that would appear to be the most noteworthy bits of the book. One example is her already-known account of Trump's furious reaction when his security team informed him that his Jan. 6 crowd wasn't going through the metal detectors to get into the area of his planned speech, and Trump demanded that they get rid of the detectors and let the crowd stay armed. The press has seized more quickly on some of the more tawdry goings-on, however. Among the first leaks from the book was Hutchinson's account of being groped by Rudy Giuliani on Jan. 6, just before the mob stormed the Capitol. It’s another gross episode for Giuliani, to be sure, but not nearly as consequential as the coup attempt that the rally had been organized to help facilitate.

Likewise, there's one exceptionally satisfying bit of gross in Hutchinson's description of Rep. Matt Gaetz being an obnoxious manslut. Hutchinson described that incident during her Maddow interview, and Jeebus, this guy may be the creepiest creep in Washington—but at least Hutchinson gets her public revenge.

Remember when former Rep. Madison Cawthorn publicly claimed his Republican colleagues had invited him to orgies and done cocaine in his presence? House Republican leadership had a full-on meltdown, reacting with more fury toward Cawthorn for saying that than they ever directed toward any of the sex-trafficking, theater-groping, murder-advocating cretins in their ranks. You'll never convince me Cawthorn wasn't referring to Gaetz, and that dozens of Gaetz's fellow House members know damn well he was referring to Gaetz.

As for what Hutchinson has learned from all of this, it does not seem to include an acknowledgement that the Republican Party is an irredeemable cesspit of fascism and corruption. That seems inevitable for a person who stayed around until the bitter, history-defining, and seditious end of Trump's term. Again on Maddow, Hutchinson said of her party's continued support for Trump: "I don’t think we are a part of the same Republican Party. I still consider myself a Republican. I consider myself a Republican in the sense of Sen. Mitt Romney and the Reagan Republican Party."

But the Republican Party of Romney, Cheney, and Reagan no longer exists, except in the still-starry minds of pundits and book authors. That other Republican Party has been purged. It is dead. It has no staff, no power, and no plausible candidates. The purge was very public and very thorough; Romney was perhaps the last notable survivor. Even among Trump's Republican detractors, challengers like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, the question is not whether to reject Trumpism but how best to capture Trumpism, with its hunger for cruelty and contempt for moderation, and retain it as Republicanism's core even when Trump himself departs the scene.

Hutchinson does, however, at least recognize the urgency of this particular moment—even if she still overestimates the basic morality of all of the Republican power brokers she watched drive us to this point. She told Maddow that the 2024 elections are "make-or-break moment for the Republican Party."

“Now is the time, if these politicians, these men and some women that are currently in Congress, want to make the break and want to take the stand, they have to do it now. We can’t wait any longer for them to do it. I don’t know why they’re so willing to support him. I think it’s extremely disappointing and it is not a hard issue to take. We’re talking about a man who at the very essence of his being almost destroyed democracy in one day — and he wants to do it again. He wants to be president to do it again.”

He does indeed. And nearly every Republican leader in the nation either wants to help him do it, or is willing to remain silent and watch him try. Again.

"I will say, on behalf of myself, I never dated Matt Gaetz. I have much higher standards in men. And Matt, frankly is a very unserious politician." -Cassidy Hutchinson leaves nothing to question about her regard for Rep. Matt Gaetz.

BEST OF PENNYFARTHING (And Still Relevant): Dear F*cking Lunatic: An open letter to Donald Trump

(GAZETTE BLOG EDITOR'S NOTE: Fans of Aldous know he doesn't mince words, but this piece is especially unminced.  If profane language offends you, maybe you should skip this one.  On the other hand, it's hard to handle the Donald any way other than profanely.)

Aldous J. Pennyfarthing

Community

Daily Kos 

Friday, December 29, 2017 at 6:22:20p MST

 

REPUBLISHED BY:

Blue Country Gazette Blog

Rim Country Gazette Blog 

Like most of you, I read Donald Trump’s recent New York Times interview with mouth immutably agape. Then I read this part:

“Yeah, China. … China’s been. … I like very much President Xi. He treated me better than anybody’s ever been treated in the history of China. You know that.”

And fuck me sideways with John Holmes’ fossilized dick, that was quite enough. I'd long since surpassed my recommended yearly allowance of crazy, and as if prodded by some divine imprimatur, this open letter to our “president” poured like incandescent dung from a Chernobyl reindeer’s asshole:

Dear Fucking Lunatic,

I read with interest your recent interview with The New York Times. I couldn’t get past the bit about your being the most popular visitor in the history of fucking China — a country that’s only 2,238 years old, give or take.

Do you know how fucking insane you sound, you off-brand butt plug? That's like the geopolitical equivalent of “that stripper really likes me” — only 10,000 times crazier and less self aware.

You are fucking exhausting. Every day is a natural experiment in determining how long 300 million people can resist coring out their own assholes with an ice auger. Every time I hear a snippet of your Queens-tinged banshee larynx farts, I want to crawl up my own ass with a Union Jack and claim my sigmoid colon for HRH Queen Elizabeth II.

We are fucking tired. As bad as we all thought your presidency would be when Putin got you elected, it’s been inestimably worse. 

You called a hostile, nuclear-armed head of state “short and fat.” How the fuck does that help?

You accused a woman — a former friend, no less — of showing up at your resort bleeding from the face and begging to get in. You, you, YOU — the guy who looks like a Christmas haggis inexplicably brought to life by Frosty’s magic hat — yes, you of all people said that.

You attempted — with evident fucking glee — to get 24 million people thrown off their health insurance.

You gave billions away to corporations and the already wealthy while simultaneously telling struggling poor people that you were doing exactly the opposite.

You endorsed a pedophile, praised brutal dictators, and defended LITERAL FUCKING NAZIS!

Ninety-nine percent of everything you say is either false, crazy, incoherent, just plain cruel, or a rancid paella of all four.

Oh, by the way, Puerto Rico is still FUBAR. You got yourself and your family billions in tax breaks for Christmas. What do they get? More paper towels?

Enough, enough, enough, enough! For the love of God and all that is holy, good, and pure, would you please, finally and forever, shut your feculent KFC-hole until you have something valuable  — or even marginally civil — to say?

You are a fried dick sandwich with a side of schlongs. If chlamydia and gonorrhea had a son, you’d appoint him HHS secretary. You are a disgraceful, pustulant hot stew full of casuistry, godawful ideas, unintelligible non sequiturs, and malignant rage.

You are the perfect circus orangutan diaper from Plato’s World of Forms.

So happy new year, Mr. Pr*sident. And fuck you forever.

Oh, and Pence, you oleaginous house ferret. Fuck you, too.

Sincerely,

Everyone

And on the left, his beautiful wife ... hey, where'd she go?

Trump Floats the Idea of Executing Joint Chiefs Chairman Mark Milley

  General Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. (photo: Saul Loeb/AFP)

25 September 23

The former president is inciting violence against the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. America’s response is distracted and numb.

Brian Klaas / The Atlantic

25 September 23

 

 

Late Friday night, the former president of the United States—and a leading candidate to be the next president—insinuated that America’s top general deserves to be put to death.

That extraordinary sentence would be unthinkable in any other rich democracy. But Donald Trump, on his social-media network, Truth Social, wrote that Mark Milley’s phone call to reassure China in the aftermath of the storming of the Capitol on January 6, 2021, was “an act so egregious that, in times gone by, the punishment would have been DEATH.” (The phone call was, in fact, explicitly authorized by Trump-administration officials.)

And yet, none of the nation’s front pages blared “Trump Suggests That Top General Deserves Execution” or “Former President Accuses General of Treason.” Instead, the post barely made the news. Most Americans who don’t follow Trump on social media probably don’t even know it happened.

Trump’s rhetoric is dangerous, not just because it is the exact sort that incites violence against public officials but also because it shows just how numb the country has grown toward threats more typical of broken, authoritarian regimes. The United States is not just careening toward a significant risk of political violence around the 2024 presidential election. It’s also mostly oblivious to where it’s headed.

Trump loves to hide behind the thin veneer of plausible deniability, but he knows exactly what he’s doing. If a mob boss were to say, “In times gone by, people like you would have had their legs broken,” nobody would mistake that for a historical observation. The suggestion is clear, and it comes from a man who has one of America’s loudest megaphones—one that is directed squarely at millions of extremists who are well armed, who insist that the government is illegitimate, and who believe that people like Milley are part of a “deep state” plot against the country.

Academics have a formal term for exactly this type of incitement: stochastic terrorism. An influential figure with a large following demonizes a person or a group of people. The likelihood is strong that some small number of followers will take those words literally—when Trump implies that Milley deserves to be put to death, some of his disciples might take it as a marching order. The number of those who take action does not have to be large for the result to be horrific.

Already, one of Trump’s minions in Congress has echoed the incitement to violence. The Republican Paul Gosar of Arizona wrote—in his taxpayer-funded newsletter, no less—that “in a better society, quislings like the strange sodomy-promoting General Milley would be hung.” The meaning is not ambiguous: Gosar is explicitly saying that killing Milley would be desirable.

As a political scientist who studies political violence across the globe, I would chalk up the lack of high-profile assassinations in the United States during the Trump and post-Trump era to dumb luck. Already in 2018, one deranged Trump follower, Cesar Sayoc, sent pipe bombs to public figures (and a media organization) who just so happened to be among those whom Trump most often attacked in his Twitter feed. Thankfully, nobody died—not because the dangers of Trump’s rhetoric were overstated but because Sayoc was bad at building bombs.

Heading toward one of the most consequential, divisive elections in American history, every ingredient in the deadly recipe for political violence is already in the mix: high-stakes, winner-take-all politics; widespread conspiratorial delusions that detach followers from objective realities; a suggestion that one’s political opponents aren’t “real Americans”; a large supply of violent extremists with easy access to deadly weaponry; and a movement whose leader takes every opportunity to praise those who have already participated in a deadly attack on the government.

Eventually, all luck runs out. Political violence is notoriously difficult to forecast with precision, but would anyone really be surprised if Trump’s violent rhetoric led to real-world attacks in the run-up to the 2024 election—or in its aftermath, if he loses?

For all of these reasons, Trump’s recent unhinged rant about Milley should be a wake-up call. But in today’s political climate, the incident barely registers. Trump scandals have become predictably banal. And American journalists have become golden retrievers watching a tennis-ball launcher. Every time they start to chase one ball, a fresh one immediately explodes into view, prompting a new chase.

Eventually, chasing tennis balls gets old. We become more alive to virtually any distraction: The media fixate on John Fetterman’s hoodie instead of on stories about the relentless but predictable risk of Trump-inspired political violence.

Bombarded by a constant stream of deranged authoritarian extremism from a man who might soon return to the presidency, we’ve lost all sense of scale and perspective. But neither the American press nor the public can afford to be lulled. The man who, as president, incited a violent attack on the U.S. Capitol in order to overturn an election is again openly fomenting political violence while explicitly endorsing authoritarian strategies should he return to power. That is the story of the 2024 election. Everything else is just window dressing.

The suggestion is clear, and it comes from a man who has one of America’s loudest megaphones—one that is directed squarely at millions of extremists who are well armed, who insist that the government is illegitimate, and who believe that people like Milley are part of a “deep state” plot against the country.

Confused and stammering Trump calls Biden 'cognitively impaired' and 'in no condition to lead'

By Mark Sumner for Daily Kos

Daily Kos Staff

Monday, September 18, 2023 at 11:04:14a MDT

 

REPUBLISHED BY:

Blue Country Gazette Blog

Rim Country Gazette Blog 

On Friday, Donald Trump was in Washington, D.C., to appear at something called the “Pray Vote Stand Summit.” In a relatively brief speech, Trump repeatedly fumbled basic facts, made mistakes about his own elections, and devolved into what some observers accurately called a “word salad.”

In the middle of this, Trump attacked President Joe Biden, using the same hot button the media can’t stop pressing: Biden’s age. “We have a man who is totally corrupt and the worst president in the history of our country, who is cognitively impaired, in no condition to lead, and is now in charge of dealing with Russia and possible nuclear war,” said Trump.

He added, “Just think of it. We would be in World War Two very quickly if we’re going to be relying on this man, and far more devastating than any war.”

Other gaffes included one in which Trump claims he’s leading Obama in the polls and that he won an election over Obama (before racking his memory and coming up with the name Hillary Clinton).

It’s worth reflecting on an older video that shows the second presidential debate between then-candidates Jimmy Carter and President Gerald Ford. It’s notable for a number of reasons, but it’s largely remembered for a moment in that debate in which Ford declared, “There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe.”

Whatever Ford meant to say, that statement was seized on by the media as a major mistake. Even decades later, there’s still debate about what role Ford’s gaffe played in the outcome of the election, with some feeling that it dinged the prevailing narrative of Ford as the knowledgeable, familiar Washington insider and Carter as the naive, inexperienced outsider.

Rightly or wrongly, gaffes can steer a media narrative around a candidate. They serve as a measure of how much someone understands a situation when not reading from a prompter, and whether a candidate can handle themselves when asked something unexpected.

Everything that Biden says appears to be run through a fine sieve, designed to catch even the slightest misstep, so the media can maintain its he’s-too-old narrative. In the past week, both Fox News and The New York Post have directed attention to Biden saying, in respect to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, that he was “standing there the next day” looking at the destruction, when Biden actually visited over a week after the attack, on Sept. 20. For Biden, this is the kind of thing that merits days of tsk-tsking concern about the clarity of his thinking.

Neither of these sources bothered to mention that Trump claimed to be at ground zero alongside firefighters and police. “I was down there also,” said Trump, “but I’m not considering myself a first responder. But I was down there. I spent a lot of time down there with you.” All of this was a lie. What Trump was really doing that day was going on the radio to brag that his building was now the tallest in Manhattan. Which was also a lie.

But Trump can seemingly say anything without raising more than a yawn from the media. Or he can not say anything for 40 seconds in the middle of a speech, and that’s also just fine.

This is far from the first time Trump has delivered a gaffe-laden speech. In fact, that’s pretty much the definition of any Trump speech. There was the time he claimed that the American army took over the airports in the Revolutionary War. The time he couldn’t recall the names of his own foreign policy advisers. The debate where Trump thought the “nuclear triad” was bombs, power, and who knows what. The statement where Trump said the solution to nuclear proliferation was more nukes. The speech where Trump declared his admiration for former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

On each of these events, Trump fills the spaces between gaffes with outright lies.

The media is still out there, hovering above Biden each time he appears in front of the cameras, looking for the first sign that he might have lost a step after 52 years in public office. But Trump … Trump gets a pass. He gets a pass on his age. He gets a pass on his health. He gets a pass on his lies. And Trump gets a pass on the one thing that was most obvious in both his time in office and his every public appearance—his staggering incompetence. That’s not due to his age. That’s just due to how his ego, narcissism, and hate leave no room for rational thought.

He really does have little hands.  But that's OK, because "Trump fills the spaces between gaffes with outright lies."

Democrat introduces ‘MCCARTHY Shutdown Act’ to dock Congress members' pay

Rep. Angie Craig of Minnesota.

By Walter Einenkel for Daily Kos

Daily Kos Statt

Friday, September 22, 2023 at 7:00:25a MDT

 

REPUBLISHED BY:

Blue Country Gazette Blog

Rim Country Gazette Blog 

On the eve of another failed attempt by House Republicans to do anything resembling governance, Democratic Rep. Angie Craig of Minnesota introduced the “My Constituents Cannot Afford Rebellious Tantrums, Handle Your Shutdown Act.” Also known as the “MCCARTHY Shutdown Act,” the bill would dock Congress members’ paychecks—one day’s pay for every day the government is shut down.

In her announcement of the bill on X (formerly known as Twitter), Craig wrote, “@SpeakerMcCarthy, my constituents shouldn’t have to pay the price for your deals with the Freedom Caucus. I introduced the MCCARTHY Shutdown Act to stop Member pay during government shutdowns. Stop negotiating with crazy & work with us on a deal to stop a shutdown altogether.”

In her press release, Craig stated, “Speaker McCarthy and House Republicans are ready to shut down the federal government and put the livelihoods of working families at risk – while still collecting a paycheck […] because it’s ridiculous that we still get paid while folks like TSA workers are asked to work without a paycheck.”

Congress has until Sept. 30 to reach a funding agreement and avert a shutdown. The only thing standing in its way is the House Republicans’ narrow—and toxic—majority.

Bozo Boebert not only vapes and gropes at the theater, she's also one of the House clowns threatening to shut down the government.  She, by the way, will still get paid when you don't.

Republican congresswoman comes up with most bizarre defense yet for Jan. 6

By Hunter for Daily Kos

Daily Kos Staff

Thursday, September 21, 2023 at 1:35:11p MDT

 

REPUBLISHED BY:

Blue Country Gazette Blog

Rim Country Gazette Blog 

Move over, Rep. Andy Biggs. Stop vaping in that pregnant woman's face, Rep. Lauren Boebert. We've got a new candidate for weirdest Republican in the House, and she is on a roll.

On Wednesday, Attorney General Merrick Garland was summoned to the Capitol to be ranted at by House Republican Jim Jordan's Special All-Clown Revue, or what used to be known as the House Judiciary Committee before Republicans turned it into a dumping ground for congressional crackpots.

Whatever the original plan was, the hearing quickly devolved into the usual circus, with Garland on the receiving end of complaints about a "World Naked Bike Ride" and generally not being able to get a word in edgewise. But there was one Republican bent on making even those complaints look tame: a performatively furious Rep. Victoria Spartz, who took Garland to task over the Jan. 6 insurrection and resulting arrests.

In the past, sedition-backing Republicans brushed off the violence and deaths on Jan. 6 as a typical "tourist visit." Spartz, however, appears to have invented a whole extended universe twice removed from even those claims. The Indiana Republican is outraged that police were attacking families with "strollers and the kids" on that day, and it's a complete mystery what the flying hell she thinks she's talking about.

“You talk about Jan. 6 people, some people came on Jan. 6 here that had bad intent but a lot of good Americans from my district came here because they are sick and tired of this government not serving them,” Spartz told Garland. “They came with strollers and the kids and there was a chaotic situation because proper security wasn’t provided.”

Let's back that trolley up a bit, because what? No seriously, what?

There are several things going on with this, and all of them are muddled together into a great big pile of What The Hell. It's gracious that Spartz is willing to allow that there were at least "some" people in the crowd that had bad intent, given that the crowd attacked and injured over 140 law enforcement officers as they made their way into the Capitol to hunt for lawmakers and ransack their offices—a few bad actors there!—but this is the first anyone has heard of the rioters supposedly wheeling in baby strollers so that their toddlers could get their own taste of the violence.

Spartz, though, just kept on going. "They were throwing smoke bombs into the crowd with strollers with kids. People showed up, you know, FBI agents, to people’s houses. You had, in my district, in my town, FBI phone numbers all over the district."

While it's conceivable that a handful of Trump supporters might actually have brought young children to Trump's planned Jan. 6 march—because Trump supporters, by definition, have the worst judgment of anyone in America—if there's footage out there of rioters bringing their children into the rioting mob, none of us have found it yet.

And I'm going to propose here that if there was indeed any jackass out there who brought a baby to a violent insurrection, how about we all worry less about whether your baby got smoke-bombed and more about taking your kids away from you and throwing you in a cell for a long, long time?

Also, Garland wasn't in charge of the Justice Department back then, so if "proper security wasn't provided," then maybe Spartz should devote some of her apparently voluminous free time to figuring out who the hell did keep "proper security" away from Trump's armed rally mob.

Here is a tip: Witnesses say it was the White House itself.

Curiously, or perhaps not, there doesn't seem to be much of anything in Spartz's rant that is true. She claims that "in my district" the FBI was allegedly running amok, but there appears to be only one Spartz constituent arrested after the riot, a bear spray-wielding Oath Keepers founder who's been cooperating with the federal probe of the seditious conspiracy.

If Spartz is going to argue that law enforcement overstepped in charging the militias that led the attacks on that day, she's going to need to spell it out a lot more clearly. Because it's a damn certainty that none of those Oath Keepers showed up with baby strollers.

Spartz isn't seeking reelection, so chastising a man who wasn't in charge for an insufficiently baby-friendly environment inside the mob of violent attackers is evidently not a play for new votes. She just has really strong thoughts about imaginary babies and imaginary constituents being terrorized by, uh, "FBI phone numbers."

Here's hoping we get some clarification from Spartz. Not because we need it, oh heavens no. Just because her explanation is likely to be a real treat.

By Nick Anderson for Comics

Daily Kos