Brief Thought On the Current Primary Status of the Democrats

What the fuck Dems, why isn't Warren doing any better?

More detailed thoughts next month.

Damn this Leap Day.

Overwhelmed February 2020 Edition

I have to apologize for not blogging as often as I want to.

There's an article I want to write, but it's so depressing and hard to think through that I'm not finding the time to even START it.

And it doesn't help that the constant rush of bad, crazy news - oh Lord, trump's mishandling of the incoming pandemic would require three separate articles of wailing by itself - makes it that difficult to focus.

All I want to do at the moment is beg my seven readers' patience, pray for our salvation from the violence and madness consuming us all, and let you know that sooner or later I'll get my head straight enough to write what I need to say.

Good luck, and GODS HELP US.

NSFW You're DAMNED RIGHT I'm Cursing trump For His Corruption of Pardon Powers

Just a few notes to consider:

trump's recent use of pardons - freeing white collar criminals and political scandal figures like Blagojuice, Blagomeister, DAMMIT lemme speel it right Blagojevich (!) - is essentially the Shitgibbon signalling to the federal Judiciary that he can fuck up any criminal accountability and free anybody - especially his own lackeys facing jail time like Flynn, Manafort (already in jail) and Stone - he likes. trump is basically attempting to shove every one of his scandals under the rug so he can crow about it to his MAGA fans during the 2020 campaign.

Never mind this exposes his "drain the swamp" campaign "pledge" for the fraud it has ALWAYS been. His base will never question it and the Mainstream Media will gloss it over, normalizing the new reality that JESUS GODDAMN CHRIST WE HAVE A GODDAMN MOB BOSS IN THE OVAL OFFICE.

Jesus. I didn't think I'd ever have to stumble over spelling Blago's name ever again. Christ, this is going back to 2009, before I was more serious about hashtags. DAMN YOU trump!

Today is apparently the big day. Roger Stone is facing his sentencing hearing, something trump and his AG lackey Bill Barr had been meddling in during the past week. The over/under on trump issuing Stone a full pardon by nightfall would be good betting odds.

Goddamn us. We are heavily royally motherfucking screwed.

The trump Criminal Empire Threatens The Rule of Law

This is how fucked up our federal government is under the misrule of KING trump. Via Jamie Ross at Daily Beast:

The head of the Federal Judges Association has reportedly taken the unprecedented step of calling an emergency meeting to discuss President Trump and Attorney General Bill Barr’s intervention in Roger Stone’s sentencing recommendation. U.S. District Judge Cynthia Rufe, who leads the association of around 1,100 life-term federal judges, told USA Today that the issue “could not wait.” She said: “There are plenty of issues that we are concerned about... We’ll talk all this through.”

Rufe’s announcement follows an open letter signed by more than 1,000 former Justice Department employees calling on Barr to resign over the Stone case. Last week, Trump made clear that he was angry about the length of the sentence recommended for his friend Roger Stone, then Barr’s Justice Department withdrew that recommendation. Trump also attacked the judge in the Stone case, Amy Berman Jackson, with unfounded accusations of political bias. The Washington Post reported that the Federal Judges Association has never called an emergency meeting such as the one described by Rufe in the USA Today interview...

This has never happened before.

That is because we've never had a goddamned dictator-wannabe con artist asshole crook in office before. Yes, this is including the likes of Nixon and Harding and Jackson (and if you're so inclined I will include Bill Clinton in that mix).

That is because previous Presidents showed due deference to the independence of the Judiciary, whereas this President Loser of the Popular Vote trump wants every branch and every office of government bowing to him with undeserved fealty.

The amount of concern among other Republican leaders, especially the cowering ass-covering Senators who just gave trump their Stamp of Approval to break every law he wishes, will most likely rise to the level of telling Fox Not-News "Well, we'll write a strongly-worded letter to the White House as soon as we can find a typewriter that still works."

Christ.

Traditionally, the judges in our federal system try to avoid the appearance of partisanship or political bias - even as they pass rulings that have bias, thanks a lot Rehnquist Court for the Bush v. Gore monstrosity - but in this regard they can no longer avoid it. trump and his lackey AG Barr are directly attacking the independence of the third branch of our government, hacking at the checks and balances that are supposed to keep power shared and out of the hands of just one person.

But that's what trump wants, after all. trump has no respect for others unless they're rich and powerful, what he aspires to be (and what he secretly may not be, hence his refusal to ever show his tax returns). trump WANTS all that power, refuses to share it to those he views as lackeys and servants and losers. he chafes against the restrictions of dealing with Congress (even when his fellow Republicans controlled it between 2017-18, he couldn't handle sharing power with them), and he's expressed his disdain for judges before.

And now trump is unleashed. he thinks Congress can't touch him now (and with the Senate refusing to hold him accountable, he's right). The only thing standing in his way of Absolute Rule is a court system still holding his business buddies and Russian connections to count for their law-breaking before and during the 2016 elections.

Now trump wants the judges to arbitrarily give him and his buddies Stone, Flynn, Manafort and others a clean break, no more jail time for the sins they've plead out or convicted of, before trump has to resort to the obvious step of pardoning each of them anyway (trump and his lawyers have to understand the risks of pardons - if accepted, you can't claim Fifth Amendment protections from testifying later - so they want the judges to do the dirty work for them).

We are at a critical moment in our nation's history.

One branch of government - the Executive - is at war with another branch - the Judiciary - and the stakes are high. Above all the power of the Constitution itself serving as the Law of this Land.

Gods help us.

P.S. Dear judges, now would be a good time to figure out how to issue Contempt rulings on trump, Barr, Stone, and every other corrupt Republican threatening our legal system. KaiThnxBye

Injustice with trump and Barr

Remember when a number of trump's cronies and campaign handlers were caught, charged with felonies, convicted, plead out, and/or sentenced to jail?

That shit's over now.

Now that the Congressional Republicans have signed off on trump getting away with any crime he likes, trump has set his sights on clearing out the debris of the legal matters surrounding his people getting dirty with the Russians and lying about it all.

All it will take is trump tweeting out a message about something he doesn't like and then his lackey William Barr at the Attorney General's office will do his bidding and fuck things up.

For example, just today: trump's campaign ally Roger Stone was getting set to have a hearing on the sentencing recommendations that the prosecutors - working from the Mueller investigations - were filing over the seven GUILTY counts Stone received from a jury about witness tampering, lying to investigators, and obstruction.

When it got out that the prosecutors were looking for seven to nine years total - roughly one year for each Guilty count - trump tweeted out his displeasure that the sentencing was too harsh.

Let's go to Andrew Prokop at Vox.com for details:

Stone was indicted by Mueller’s team in January 2019 and charged with making false statements, obstruction, and witness tampering. The charges focused on Stone’s alleged lies to the House Intelligence Committee in 2017 about his statements on and efforts to get in touch with WikiLeaks during the 2016 campaign. He was convicted on all seven counts at trial in November.

With Stone’s sentencing date of February 20 approaching, prosecutors had to submit their sentencing memo for him on Monday. In it, the prosecutors said that a sentence for Stone of between 87 and 108 months (about seven to nine years) — a range calculated by the probation office, in accordance with standard sentencing guidelines — would be “appropriate.”

President Trump responded to this with outrage in a set of late-night tweets and retweets. “This is a horrible and very unfair situation,” he tweeted at 1:48 am Tuesday. “The real crimes were on the other side, as nothing happens to them. Cannot allow this miscarriage of justice!”

This immediately stoked speculation about whether Trump planned to pardon Stone or commute his sentence. Then later Tuesday morning, reporters started to hear that the Justice Department was in fact going to change its position.

A senior Justice Department source told the Washington Post Tuesday that “the Department finds seven to nine years extreme, excessive and grossly disproportionate” — and that they’d “clarify” their position “later today.” That source claimed they made this decision to do so before Trump posted his tweet (a claim that’s been greeted with much skepticism).

Such interference in a sentencing recommendation made by career prosecutors is highly unusual. And what happened next was even more unusual — Zelinsky informed the court he was withdrawing from Stone’s case just days before sentencing and resigning his special posting with the DC US Attorney’s Office. Kravis then said he was resigning from DOJ entirely, which was followed by Jed and Marando withdrawing from the case as well...

The prosecutors, clearly seeing their authority getting kneecapped by their boss Barr, decided to resign rather than accept the bullshit getting shoved down their throats. The replacement guy then presented the judge with an open-ended "Well, we don't know what will be appropriate" and left everything burning in the dumpster as of now.

This is what happens, Republican Senators, when you tell a corrupt, self-serving bankrupt con artist that he can break every law and violate every procedure to his "Absolute Authority" whims. But they wanted this, after all. The Republican Party for years showed disdain for the federal system of checks and balances, they hate it when their own have to answer to the law, and now they've got a guy in the White House and a willing lackey in the Attorney General's office to let them do what THEY will at the expense of our legal system.

Any minute now, we should expect trump to issue pardons to Mike Flynn, Paul Manafort, and everybody else who plead out or got jailed for doing trump's dirty work back in 2015-16.

trump and the Republicans are gleefully destroying each branch of the federal government one agency at a time. Here goes the Dept. of Justice, America.

We are so very royally extremely fucked.

We Warned You. trump Is Getting Worse (w/ Update)

Update: Thanks again to Crooks & Liars promoting this blog via Mike's Blog Round Up, and many thanks to Tengrain choosing me for the Tuesday reads. Please take the time to read through here, and above all GET THE VOTE OUT FOR WARREN - yes, I chose a side - IN NEW HAMPSHIRE TODAY.

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We knew the Republicans were going to "vindicate" trump's Impeachment with an unqualified acquittal. What we didn't expect was that a number of Senators - Maine's Susan Collins in particular - would go with the excuse that "trump will learn from the experience to not do it again," that he will somehow be humbled by the public scandal and behave himself onward.

Nope.

trump is raging against Mitt Romney - the only Republican to actually vote in favor of ONE of the Impeachment articles - and trump's lackeys are openly plotting ways to hurt Mitt for that vote.

And there's all the stuff happening this weekend, filed under #FridayNightMassacre as his wrath flows out towards anyone who crossed him over his Ukraine shakedown. Via Nancy LeTourneau at Washington Monthly:

One of the people who was most undermined by Trump’s remarks was Senator Susan Collins, who said previously that Trump had learned his lesson from the impeachment process. She had to walk that one back almost immediately...

Based on Trump’s remarks at his celebration and at Thursday’s prayer breakfast, it is clear that attacking Romney will be front and center for the foreseeable future...

But Romney isn’t the only one. Trump is also planning to go after the staff who had the courage to testify against him.

Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman — a National Security Council aide who testified during House Democrats’ impeachment hearings — will be informed in the coming days, likely on Friday, by administration officials that he is being reassigned to a position at the Defense Department, taking a key figure from the investigation out of the White House.

Trump and his allies are considering doing more than just launching verbal fusillades at his perceived enemies over impeachment as the decision regarding Vindman shows. Some of the president’s aides are discussing whether to remove or reassign several administration officials who testified during the impeachment inquiry, according to aides and advisers who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the plans...

Just as CBS reported, the president is in the midst of putting heads on pikes to demonstrate what happens to those who cross him. The fact that so many Republican Senators caved to that kind of threat is shameful, but perhaps instructive of what the GOP has become...

Vindman was pushed out Friday... along with his twin brother who worked as a lawyer for the NSC, but who hadn't testified at all. Sondland, who had been a trump financial backer but testified about the Ukraine extortion to cover his own hide, is paying the price as well. And the reports are that half the NatSec staffing will get fired/removed because trump doesn't want to risk any further interference from them if he tries to extort more nations to help trump cheat at the 2020 elections.

In short: trump was always a vindictive prick, and remains so today.

The office of the Presidency never changes the character of the person entering that office: Professor Barber's work on that should be required reading for everyone in U.S. politics. trump's bullying narcissistic habits were not going to be moderated or tempered by the obligations of duty: If anything, those troubling traits are amplified past eleven on the dial.

The only way to stop trump's destructive habits is to vote him out of office.

It's up to us, America, to hold trump and the craven Republican lackeys to the rule of law in our nation.

We Knew The Republicans Have No Spine, No Love For Justice. Rise Up, Voters. This Is On You Now.

Their easy acquittal of trump - in the face of damning evidence, the Republicans in the Senate refused to even uphold their oath to fairly hear witnesses and review the paper trail - was unavoidable.

It's also horrific, a blatant slap in the face of the majority of Americans - some Republican voters included - who wanted a fair and just Impeachment.

This is now all on them, America. Every Republican who voted to acquit is an accomplice to trump's criminal ways.

The Republicans who gave trump a "Get Out of Jail Free Forever" card deserves the only remaining form of accountability left to us: Getting voted out of office forever.

To every registered voter out there: FOR THE LOVE OF GOD HOLD REPUBLICANS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE CRIMINAL MISDEEDS OF donald trump. The rot is not just at the top, America: The entire Republican Party was a cesspool long before trump announced his campaign, he's merely profiting from their greedy broken habits as well.

Fight back, America.

GET THE VOTE OUT, America.

AND FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, DO NOT VOTE FOR ANY REPUBLICAN AT ANY LEVEL OF OFFICE.

Please.

We're barely surviving four years of this crap: Tariffs shredding our farms and manufacturers, massive income inequality in the face of questionable employment numbers, growing federal deficits as GOP tax cuts for the rich fail to pay themselves, an immigration system consumed by racism and an obsessive need to break families - WHERE ARE THE CHILDREN, STILL? - and a loss of global prestige from trump's temper tantrums against our own allies. Can you imagine another four years of trump, convinced by whatever corrupt method he's used to cheat another election - because he will get worse now that the Senate "vindicated him" - that he can break even more laws, violate more norms, destroy more lives? And never have to answer for any of it ever again?

For the Love of GOD, America. trump is destroying us. Throw him out before he can do any further damage to us.

Quick Reminder That trump's Wall is a Godless Con Job

The fckers building it aren't even factoring in wind conditions for the damn thing.

Via Rosie Perper at Business Insider:

The border wall collapsed about midday Wednesday and landed on a row of trees, according to the police in Mexicali, a town on the Mexico-California border...

The fallen length of wall was about 130 feet long.

Agent Carlos Pitones of the Customs and Border Protection sector in El Centro, California, told CNN that the wall was newly installed and had been set in concrete that had not yet hardened.

According to CNN, the National Weather Service recorded wind gusts up to 37 mph when the wall fell down...

Simple rules of construction, especially for high-walled structures like warehouses I've been seeing along the Polk County line where dozens have been going up: REINFORCE THE MOFOS.

And even then, has anyone working on these 50-foot monstrosities put into consideration how resonance and wind vibrations would work against something sticking up THAT high across a wide and flat landscape?!

We've had about 80-90 years of construction history telling us we need to model out tall structures for wind effects because this is what you get when you don't:

Which always begs the question: JUST WHAT THE FCK ARE WE TAXPAYERS PAYING FOR IN trump's GODDAMN CONSTRUCTION BOONDOGGLES.