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She's racist, bigoted filth. What more explanation is required?
So a holocaust survivor speaking out against the slaughter of women and children, is like a black person supporting Trump?
Got it.
Israel Israel, uber alles!
“Better to have a Jewish state on part of the land than have the whole land without the Jewish state,” he said. “Israel should implement the two-state solution for her own sake because if we should lose our majority, and today we are almost equal, we cannot remain a Jewish state or a democratic state . . . That’s the main issue, and to my regret they (the government) do the opposite.”
I had a column from Gideon Levy expressed much the same sentiment. I can't locate the column though.
Essentially, Israel will cease to be a democracy. I would argue they already have. The settlements are a fact on the ground, and the majority is not Jewish. The land has been effectively annexed and the Palestinians have no rights at all, let alone a vote. And when, not if they do get a vote, Israel will no longer be a Jewish state.
They won't survive, certainly not in the present form. In good conscience, I can't hope that they do.
Yeah... I've seen those comparisons
Hamas got 42% of the vote in 2006. At that point Israel tried to instigate a coup by Fatah, and Hamas seized power instead. That was the last election.
More than half of Gazans are under the age of 20, which mean that very few people alive in Gaza today could have voted for Hamas, and of that number 58% voted for someone else.
As far as the ahole's straw man arguments... Who fucking cares? He's a ruthless bigot. How do you argue with that?
Ahh Jeff. The jokes continue to write themselves, but thanks for bring them to our attention. 😆
... more
https://www.jefftiedrich.com/p/narcoleptic-old-dipshit-wakes-up?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=1162742&post_id=143863531&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=6zfhm&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
"But that doesn't mean he's not still radically conservative, or a religious fanatic. He's both."
Yes. All of that. And if he hadn't acted, you can also surmise that there would have been a discharge petition at some point as well.
But he stepped up right then, and he did it at the risk of his own career, when the rest of the MAGAts were all prostrating themselves before Trump and Putin (and still are).
And yes, he's still a young earth creationist... a biblical literalist, a Seven Mountains Dominionist who believes men cavorted with dinosaurs, and doesn't appear to believe in banks, and all that. But here, you have to give him some credit where it's due.
Interesting reading from "The Fucking News" this morning.
(emphasis mine.)
Everyone left of Mussolini is a "giant faction of liberal professors" to that stench of a poster.
I just heard an important point made.
Michael Cohen was a salaried employee of the Trump Organization.
Who writes checks for legal fees to an employee? I'm intrigued.
Al didn't invent the Interwebs. He did however contribute a great deal to their development into the Interwebs as we know them today. Gore was a fan, always something of nerd and a visionary.
As an aside, Eisenhower didn't invent roads or even highways. But we still refer to the Eisenhower Interstate Highway System as if he did.
In recognition Al has received the following technology awards:
We don't support the Iranian regime.
I thought I'd clarify that for you, you genocidal filth.
flatulent dipshit cancels hate-rally due to rain
dozy dotard Donny whines about his criminal trial, too
Jeff Tiedrich
Apr 21, 2024
life sucks out loud right now for Little Donny Fuckface. he’s forced to shiver in a frigid shithole of a courtroom all day long. everything is ugly. look at the place — there isn’t one beautiful gold-plated object in sight.
they make Trump get up so early in the morning — haven’t these peons ever heard of ‘executive time’? — and as a result, he keeps nodding off while enveloped in a dense fog of his own fecal stench.
why is there no big red button on the defendant’s table? where is Number One Flunky Walt Nauta to bring Trump a cool, refreshing Diet Coke?
and that stupid old Judge Merchan won’t stop telling him what to do. why, just the other day Donny stood up and the judge pointed at his chair and told him to sit his stinky ass back down. what the fuck? who talks to God-Emperor King Fuckface the First like that?
but the worst of it — the absolute worst — is that Donny had to sit there and listen as jurors’ tweets were read out loud in court. they called him fat! they called him a criminal! they called him dumb as fuck!
these people — these fucking enemies of the state — they’re all going to Gitmo the very second Donny regains power. just you wait and see.
another thing Donny rages about is how all this trial bullshit is keeping him off the campaign trail.
which makes it all the more hilarious that on Saturday — because weekends are now the only time Trump is able to bask in the glow of his doltish worshipers — he had to cancel a hate-rally in North Carolina because of a little bit of rain. here’s Donny literally phoning it in from his private jet.
"God has done a pretty poor job with humans over the past five or six thousand years."
Yeah... and he wants to make it all about us, right?
It's a poor craftsman who blames his own creations. 🤨
James Comer refuses to learn anything from his investigation into Biden
In a heated exchange with Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), the House Oversight Committee chairman reiterated repeatedly debunked claims
Analysis by Philip Bump
National columnist
April 17, 2024 at 3:15 p.m. EDT
The House Oversight Committee's top Democrat, Rep. Jamie Raskin (Md.), left, and Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), the committee's chairman, at a March hearing. (Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post)
House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer’s angry effort to rebut the committee’s top Democrat, Rep. Jamie Raskin (Md.), in the middle of a hearing on Wednesday got off to an unusually promising start. The now-discredited allegation that President Biden had taken a hefty bribe from a Ukrainian businessman was, in fact, not the “genesis” of the Republican-led investigation into Biden as Raskin had said; instead, it was merely one of several ultimately unproductive avenues of inquiry that Comer (R-Ky.) and his allies explored.
Then, goaded into a debate by Raskin, Comer quickly lost the high ground.
“If you believe that it would have been illegal for Joe Biden to take $5 million from Ukraine — it certainly would have been,” Raskin asked. “What do you think about Donald Trump taking more than $5 million from the Chinese government while he was president?”
“Well, we know that Donald Trump had a legitimate business that he talked about and he campaigned on,” Comer said. He followed that up a moment later with a question: “What business were the Bidens in?”
Comer has been told the answer to this question again and again, but — either because he refuses to acknowledge any fruit of his investigation that undermines his case or because he somehow remains unaware of it — he still presents it as though it is unanswered.
Before we again explain the answer, it’s worth addressing Raskin’s allegation about money from the Chinese government. It is the case that the Trump Organization received millions of dollars in foreign income from two of its properties while Trump was president, including rent paid by a state-owned Chinese bank for space at Trump Tower. Comer’s response, in essence, can be distilled thusly: Because Americans knew or could have known Trump had foreign business partners when he was elected, the money he received at his businesses — however subsequently inflated — is off the rhetorical table.
So we return to Comer’s question: What business were the Bidens in?
There are a few Bidens at issue here, but the investigation largely centered on the president’s brother James and son Hunter in an unsuccessful effort to link their partnerships back to the president.
James Biden explained his work when he was interviewed by investigators working for Comer’s committee.
“I have a company that provides voluntary worksite benefits to major institutions on behalf of the employees,” he said during the February deposition. Asked about specific limited-liability companies he and his wife had established, he explained further that he was also engaged in “consulting in many different areas.” When he and Hunter Biden worked together, he said, “I basically consulted with and gave advice to Hunter Biden, who is my nephew, … depending on what the particular enterprise was at the time.”
Hunter Biden explained his background at length when he testified that same month.
“I was a vice president at a major national bank, where I worked in the General Counsel’s Office and then as manager of a unit within the Fraud Department,” he said. “I was executive director of e-commerce policy coordination with the Department of Commerce during the Clinton administration. I founded and built a successful law firm, Oldaker, Biden & Belair, and represented not-for-profit institutions, including close to a dozen primarily Jesuit universities all over the country from Philadelphia to Los Angeles, from Detroit to Denver, and everywhere in between. I then founded and built the successful small business in advising global infrastructure and alternative investment clients.”
When the Oversight Committee interviewed Hunter Biden’s former partner Devon Archer last year, Archer confirmed that Hunter Biden had been asked to join the board of the Ukrainian energy company Burisma for the reason Hunter Biden himself indicated: as an expert in corporate governance. Archer and Biden disagree on the extent to which Biden’s last name was an incentive, but it remains that Comer’s demand has an answer.
Questioning Raskin about the Bidens’ work, Comer established the sorts of business that, in his estimation, qualified as legitimate ones for engaging with foreign partners: “Did they have hotels? Did they have a social media company? Did they have golf courses? Did they have casinos? Did they have office buildings?” Those are all things in which Trump has been involved, of course, but the idea that owning a casino is less fraught for a political actor than providing advisory services on business partnerships is certainly unusual.
As is common, Comer also misrepresented the foreign money that Hunter and James Biden had received. (None of it has been shown to have gone to President Biden.) Raskin, answering Comer’s question about what work the Bidens had done, noted that the president earned money after serving as vice president in part by writing a book.
“That’s why Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Romania, China, Russia — that’s why they paid the Biden family money, because of Joe Biden’s book?” Comer asked.
In the same way that Comer often conflates Hunter Biden and his father by referring to “the Biden family,” he’s presenting money that came from people who live in a country with money that came explicitly from the country itself — i.e., from its government. His inclusion of Russia on that list is particularly egregious since Archer explicitly testified that the money at issue went solely to himself and not to Hunter (or any other) Biden. Again something that Comer should certainly know.
Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.) tried multiple times to interject as Comer and Raskin yelled at each other, offering answers to Comer’s questions. When the time came for his five minutes of questioning the hearing witness — the hearing being focused on Chinese efforts to exert influence in the United States, mind you, not the impeachment inquiry — he came back to the “What do the Bidens do?” question.
“Hunter Biden was a corporate governance lawyer appointed by George Bush to the Amtrak board, and then served on a number of corporate boards and investment firms,” Goldman said. “Jim Biden is a businessman. Joe Biden is the president of the United States and has been a public servant and elected official for the better part of 50 years.”
He acknowledged that Comer might want to question whether Hunter Biden was qualified for his consulting gigs.
“But that has nothing to do with your jurisdiction or the impeachment investigation,” Goldman said, “because you cannot link any of his business dealings a) to any foreign government — which he was never paid by, unlike Donald Trump’s and Donald Trump’s family, or b) to the president of the United States. And that’s why your impeachment investigation is a spectacular failure.”
The spat between Raskin and Comer had concluded a while earlier with Comer attempting to declare victory.
“We’ll let the record show that Mr. Raskins could not answer the question,” he said, “what did the Bidens do to deserve the money.”
Raskin first angrily noted that his last name was “Raskin.” (“We’ve sat next to each other for more than a year,” he said. “You don’t have to add the S.”) Then he insisted that Comer identify what crime President Biden had committed that would warrant impeachment.
“Well, you’re about to find out, very soon,” Comer replied.
Perhaps he needs to take time to become familiar with his committee’s evidence first.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/04/17/comer-biden-impeachment-inquiry-raskin/
Trash seems to be piling up here...
Go back to molesting children, you fucking mutt.
Good story...
I did know a bit of those relationships. I'll play Peter Rowan on the jukebox and Jerry Garcia Band, and Garcia and Grisman stuff.
While I was thinking of it, I went and looked up the chords for Catfish John. Looks easy enough to learn.
in your case?
Maybe the 50th trimester
April 14, 2024
HEATHER COX RICHARDSON
APR 15
Today, on ABC’s This Week, host George Stephanopoulos asked New Hampshire governor Chris Sununu about his recent switch from supporting former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley for the Republican presidential nomination to supporting former president Trump.
“Just to sum up,” Stephanopoulos said, “You support [Trump] for president even if he's convicted in [the] classified documents [case]. You support him for president even though you believe he contributed to an insurrection. You support him for president even though you believe he's lying about the last election. You support him for president even if he's convicted in the Manhattan case. I just want to say, the answer to that is yes, correct?”
Sununu answered: “Yeah. Me and 51% of America.”
Aside from its overstatement of Trump’s national support, Sununu’s answer illustrated the triumph of politics over principle. Earlier in the interview, Sununu explained that he could swallow all of Trump’s negatives because he wanted a Republican administration. “This is about politics,” he said.
Sununu is part of the Republican faction that focuses on cutting taxes and slashing regulations. Trump has promised further tax cuts, while Biden has said he will raise taxes on the very wealthy and on corporations to make sure the nation does not have to cut Social Security benefits and Medicare. Republicans have suggested they will make those cuts to balance the budget, although at least 90% of the current budget deficit not due to emergencies like Covid is a result of tax cuts under George W. Bush and Trump.
Sununu may be embracing Trump for his fiscal policies. But there is possibly another dynamic at play in the shift of Republican leaders behind Trump. As Thomas Edsall outlined in the New York Times on April 10 in a piece about donors, they appear to be afraid of retaliation if they don’t join his team. Certainly he has worked to instill that fear, warning in January that anyone who contributed to Haley’s campaign “from this moment forth, will be permanently barred from the MAGA camp. We don’t want them, and will not accept them.”
Trump has been very clear that he intends to use the power of the state to crush those who he feels have been insufficiently supportive of him. There is every reason to take him at his word, as he tried to do exactly that during his presidency. He used the Internal Revenue Service to harass former FBI director James Comey—who refused to kill the investigation into the ties between Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russian operatives as Trump demanded—and Andrew McCabe, who took over as acting FBI director after Trump fired Comey.
He demanded investigations and indictments of former president Barack Obama and then–former vice president Joe Biden, former secretaries of state Hillary Clinton and John Kerry, as well as a Democratic lawyer. Former U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York Geoffrey Berman, whom Trump appointed after he fired Preet Bharara, recalled: “Throughout my tenure as U.S. attorney, Trump’s Justice Department kept demanding that I use my office to aid them politically, and I kept declining—in ways just tactful enough to keep me from being fired.”
That dynamic already appears to be at work as people are obeying in advance. On April 10, Pulitzer Prize–winning photographer David Hume Kennerly resigned from the board of the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Foundation after his fellow trustees declined to present the Gerald R. Ford Medal for Distinguished Public Service to former Wyoming representative Liz Cheney out of concern that a future President Trump would retaliate against the organization by taking away its tax-exempt status.
“The historical irony was completely lost on you,” Kennerly wrote. “Gerald Ford became president, in part, because Richard Nixon had ordered the development of an enemies list and demanded his underlings use the IRS against those listed. That’s exactly what the executive committee fears will happen if there’s a second coming of Donald Trump.”
Harking back to Ford’s service in the World War II Navy, Kennerly wrote: “Did [Lieutenant] Gerald Ford meet the enemy head-on because he thought he wouldn’t get killed? No. He did it despite that possibility. This executive committee, on the other hand, bolted before any shots were fired. You aren’t alone. Many foundations, organizations, corporations, and other entities are caught up in this tidal wave of timidity and fear that’s sweeping this country. I mistakenly thought we were better than that. This is the kind of acquiescent behavior that leads to authoritarianism. President Ford most likely would have come out even tougher and said that it leads directly to fascism.”
As Princeton sociology professor Kim Lane Scheppele told Edsall, those still operating under the impression that they will curry favor with a dictator are painfully unaware of how dictators actually operate: like Russia’s Vladimir Putin or Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, if he is returned to power, Trump will use the power of the state to squeeze the wealthy as well as his political opponents, threatening them with investigations, audits, regulation—even criminal charges—unless they do as they are told.
But Sununu’s cynical announcement that he would destroy American democracy if it meant his party could stay in power is not only a misguided approach to trying to appease a dictator. It is a profound rejection of the meaning of American democracy: that we all are created equal and have a right to a say in our government. Throughout our history, Americans have found those principles so fundamental to human self-determination that they have given their lives for them.
It’s hard to miss that Sununu’s statement fell on the anniversary of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, who stood at the cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, where those who had died to defend the United States in July 1863 were buried and asked his fellow Americans to rededicate themselves “to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
—
© 2024 Heather Cox Richardson
548 Market Street PMB 72296, San Francisco, CA 94104
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/april-14-2024?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=20533&post_id=143590568&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=6zfhm&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
What's with the caps?
"If CONVICTED, imho Secret Service, Pension, Healthcare, etc. should be forfeited. "
I don't think the law allows for any of that though.
On the other hand he's going to be picked apart by lawsuits for quite some time.
Reposted by Chris Hayes
James Fallows @jfallows.bsky.social
·
16h
The US has put itself at the mercy of what Netanyahu thinks "necessary."
A disaster for, in order: people of Gaza; people of Israel; people of US; people.
" the kind of blockhead who wouldn’t vote for JFK because you thought his first allegiance would be to the Pope and the Vatican"
In most cases that's unfair. In your case it's entirely warranted.
Call it what you will, but Israel attacked Iran, not the other way around.
Israel is a malign actor (to put it mildly), and I'd like to see that merit some punishment.
Fort Leavenworth would be a good solution. It would be tougher duty for the Secret Service than riding around in golf carts watching Trump cheat, but hey... that's the job.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Disciplinary_Barracks