Sunday, July 21, 2024

I'm With Her

 

President Biden has done something that Trump and his party could never do. He put the country over himself. 

Kamala will be the second woman to have more Americans voting for her over Trump.


I'm with her. 






Monday, July 15, 2024

Reichsmarschall Vance

Then:

Trump’s VP candidate J.D. Vance in 2016:

“But I’m not surprised by Trump’s rise, and I think the entire party has only itself to blame. We are, whether we like it or not, the party of lower-income, lower-education white people, and I have been saying for a long time that we need to offer those people SOMETHING (and hell, maybe even expand our appeal to working-class black people in the process) or a demagogue would. We are now at that point. Trump is the fruit of the party’s collective neglect.”

I go back and forth between thinking Trump is a cynical asshole like Nixon who wouldn't be that bad (and might even prove useful) or that he's America's Hitler. How's that for discouraging?”

Now:

Born-again neo-Nazi Reichsmarschall Vance:


So, what’s the "central premise" behind Trump re-posting this, Herr Reichsmarschall?






Thursday, July 11, 2024

What "Liberal Media"?

 








Our friend Dave Miller posed a question that we need to address. It is one of the most important questions in our country at this time.

“How does the left communicate with a section of the electorate that has decided to ignore all media outlets because, as one sailor said, "they all lie, so why bother?"

The left has very little power in corporate media. Mother Jones isn't the dominant newspaper and NPR isn't the primary source of broadcast news for Americans.

There are a few voices of reason in corpo-media, but the executives are more interested in profit than in informing the public. Thus the "horse race" becomes the game, instead of focusing on the clear and present danger to our democracy.

Combine this with the fact the right successfully pushed their first Big Lies that corporate media is "liberal media" and liberalism is next to communism. It was only a matter of time when "Rigged election" would be their ultimate Big Lie.

Bias is not inherently evil, unless the bias supports evil. As Stephen Colbert put it, "Reality has a well-known liberal bias".

Since Reagan allowed Murdoch, Limbaugh and other extremists to be given free rein over the fairness doctrine, far right partisan media have taken full advantage of their leverage over truth.

Their captive audience was immediately indoctrinated to believe their far-right partisan media was truly "fair and balanced". This was their Big Con. "Everybody is lying to you. We are your only source for truth".

“Goebbels 101” became the MO for them, while the rest of corporate media decided to move to the right instead of holding a bias for reality. This isn’t recent. In the frenzied war fever before Bush invaded Iraq, Phil Donohue’s highly rated show was canceled by MSNBC because he had too many guests who questioned the official lies about WMD’s and Saddam’s “connection to al-Qaeda”.

Look what they are doing to Biden now, while giving Trump and his agenda a pass. If Biden had spoken as LOUDLY as Trump in the debate, we wouldn't be hearing any of the unqualified pundits' "medical expertise" on Biden's mental acuity.

Corpo-Media is tolerating intolerance and promoting false equivalence.

And most of the country thinks THAT is "liberal bias" from the "liberal media".

When Christiane Amanpour delivered the commencement address at the Columbia University School of Journalism she said:

“Journalism is a public service, first and foremost. Journalism is about the truth, first and foremost. Be truthful, but not neutral. Both-siderism, (on the one hand, on the other hand,) is not always objectivity. It does not get you to the truth. Drawing false moral or factual equivalence is neither objective nor truthful. Objectivity is our golden rule. And it is in weighing all the sides and all the evidence. Hearing everyone, quoting everything, but not rushing to equate them when there is no equating. And look at the damage that has done.”

But here we are. The corporate media is rigged in favor of the right. The Electoral College is rigged in favor of the right. The Senate is rigged in favor of the right. And the Supreme Court has been stolen and stacked for the right. They obstructed justice by numerous delays and proceeded to elevate a convicted felon and insurrectionist to the ballot where he is likely to win an election. To top it off they have granted him immunity from further crimes. 

There can be no happy, just, or democratic outcome from this slow moving, decades long, authoritarian coup. 

Monday, July 1, 2024

Trump's "Enabling Act"

 


Justice Sotomayor's fear is grounded in her rational sense of justice and the rule of law, and her dissent is a clear warning. 

President Biden agreed when he said in response:

I concur with Justice Sotomayor's dissent today. Here's what she said..."In every use of official power, the president is now a king above the law...With fear for our democracy, I dissent". End of quote. So should the American people dissent. I dissent.

And I dissent. 

The founders wanted a president, not a king. 

Sadly, they couldn’t have foreseen the disastrous consequences of their horrible decision to mandate lifetime judicial appointments, an anti-democratic Senate and electoral votes for the presidency.

A radical Right Christian nationalist majority on the Supreme Court has decided a president, and former president Trump in particular, is now above the law in his so-called “official acts”. This comes as no surprise to those of us who clearly saw the actions of this court were intended to shield Trump from accountability and to delay, obstruct, and DENY justice.

So why can't Biden now order his DOJ to arrest those justices for obstruction of justice and aiding and abetting Trump's crimes as his "official act"? He can certainly direct them to disrupt and deny state election counts by just saying, "The election was corrupt. Do it over". He can tell Kamala to deny election certification next January. Maybe he can declare Trump a domestic terrorist and by an "official act" have him taken out. Why not?

By protecting Trump from accountability, the corrupt partisan majority with three justices appointed by Trump, has shredded our Constitution and destroyed our republic by allowing the president the virtual immunity of a dictator. A president may now cite any of his crimes as “official acts”. And he has a Supreme Court majority in his pocket to assure every one of his crimes can be called an “official act”.

Among other authoritarian edicts, the Supreme Court has just decided it is an "official act" of the president to order his minions in the DOJ to INTERFERE with an election on his behalf.

We now have a US version of the Enabling Act, passed by the German Reichstag on March 23, 1933, which allowed Chancellor Adolf Hitler to assume dictatorial powers.

Remember the quaint notion of an independent Department of Justice?

Chief Justice Roberts killed it. He essentially implemented Project 2025’s stated goal to politicize and weaponize the DOJ:

Page 552

Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

The Director of the FBI must remain politically accountable to the President in the same manner as the head of any other federal department or agency. To ensure prompt political accountability and to rein in perceived or actual abuses, the next conservative Administration should seek a legislative change to align the FBI Director’s position with those of the heads of all other major departments and agencies.

Or as exemplified by the Third Reich, the Director of the Gestapo must remain politically accountable to the Fuhrer.

The radical Right wants Trump to be a dictator. And that's exactly what we'll get, unless American voters overwhelmingly join Justice Sotomayor's and President Biden's dissent as well.

Chief Justice Roberts endorsed this travesty when he corruptly elevated a person, even a convicted felon, to being above the law to "take care that the laws be faithfully executed".


The fascist decrees by these red hatted so-called Justices have desecrated the very word "justice". 

These authoritarian "In-Justices" have twisted the motto "Equal Justice Under Law" over the entrance to our highest court into an "official lie" that now echoes and establishes as law Orwell's dystopian, "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others".

Is this the final Big Lie that terminates our republic? 

“This country is finished".  - George Carlin