MS Paint-13 and our Dumbass President

 

TRUMP: He had MS-13 on his knuckles, tattooed!

MORAN: That was photoshopped

TRUMP: Terry, they're giving you the big break of a lifetime. I picked you. But you're not being very nice. pic.twitter.com/NgCpEB8o1S

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 30, 2025

I was certain that Trump was cynically using visual propaganda in a way that took advantage of the utter dupes and dopes that are his people, but the above interview snippet sure does look like someone showed Trump the picture of the knuckle tattoos, helpfully Photoshopped so that he would understand the interpretation of them, and took it to be, uh, part of the picture.  

People around him are offering cynical visual propaganda to use, but he's such a Fox News pilled dopey old grandpa, he believes what he's being told to say.

We saw this just earlier in his Time Magazine interview as well:

"That's not what my people told me--they didn't say it was, they said it was--the nine to nothing was something entirely different."

Yeah. Sometimes his people don't tell him anything, and sometimes they completely lie to his big stupid face, apparently. 

TWGB: The Farce of Law

 

Special Counsel Jack Smith has asked for the dismissal of the election interference case against Trump (without prejudice) and has dropped the challenge to Judge Cannon's dismissal of the classified documents (espionage) case--with respects to Trump, not with respects to his accomplices. 

People are pointing fingers. I see a lot of shit being shoveled Merrick Garland's way. I remember the disappointment folks had with Robert Mueller when Barr terminated his investigation and called for the report, which never did exonerate Trump, except in the eyes of TrumpWorld--and people who hadn't been paying attention. Look--I am not a lawyer, and I don't know what all goes into grand juries, planning a case, and dealing with the sheer firewall of money and privilege that comes with a guy being a former president. like Trump's lawyers were able to throw a lot of chaff up in the sights and gum up the works pretty nicely--no matter what the evidence was. 

There was a pretty damn serious PR game going on, too. And it looks to me like the clear news aspects of what Trump had done, and what those around him had done, got lost.

It seems like a lot to reckon with in a short time. I defer to the expertise of people who are experts about these things, and don't confuse my disappointment with a valid criticism--it truly is not my place to judge that part. I know my limits. 

On the other hand, the political aspect of this farce and who to blame for it all is something I feel competent to judge:

I blame Republicans. The Republican party is without honor. Since the Bush years, I have never gotten a fix on which part of them was dishonesty and which part ignorance, and I have long since stopped caring as both attributes are disqualifying. 

Could be Nothing, But...

 

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas reportedly hid free yacht trip to Putin's hometown https://t.co/8yf1w7OMJe

— Raw Story (@RawStory) July 10, 2024

I mean, it was 20 years ago. However, it was part of 20 years of corruption and undisclosed gifts on Thomas' part, so even if it doesn't mean something more sinister--how bad does it need to look?

I'm not sure how far AOC filing articles of impeachment against Thomas and Alito will go, or how far a request for the DOJ to appoint a Special Counsel to investigate Thomas's possible tax violations will go, but something has to give.

(This post is a nice place to remind everyone that when 13 years of Justice Thomas's financial disclosure forms were amended about a dozen years ago, it was because he failed to include his wife's income from Hillsdale College and the Heritage Foundation. We've obviously been hearing a lot about the Heritage Foundation lately)

TWGB: With Fear for Our Democracy

 

I will respect the limits of presidential powers that I have for three and a half years. But any president, including Donald Trump, will now be free to ignore the law.

I concur with what Justice Sotomayor wrote today:

"With fear for our democracy—I dissent."

So do I. pic.twitter.com/YmrPBMQhgY

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) July 2, 2024

I took a weekend-sized break from commenting on the "replacing Biden" discourse in advance of this actual decision.  Chief Justice Roberts can pretend he limited the immunity of a deranged and/or criminally intentioned officeholder to their "official acts", but I fail to see a brightline or obvious test for what that actually means. It is the decision of Humpty-Dumpty: When the court uses a word (or a phrase) it means what they chose it to mean, neither more nor less.   

The contentiousness of the debate over whether Biden. finding himself tongue-tied and twisted in a 90-minute fact-free-for all against a serpent-tongued bigot, misogynist, traitor, rapist, and white collar fraud, should step down pales before this--of course Trump is a bad man and Joe Biden is a good man. But who the fuck among them believes in the American experiment of a country of the people, by the people and for the people?  Because don't be mistaken, and far too many were in 2000 and in 2016:

You aren't just voting for a person, you are voting for a government. Will that administration care about good government that tries to lift us all up because it is the right thing to do? Or are you getting a petty tyrant and corruption? (Please ask yourselves what legalizing bribes and inviting everyone to go on ahead and sue to get the law you like, the congress be damned means--draining the swamp my fat ass.) 

Our talking heads and assorted media jackals aren't up to this shit. If Trump has a political enemies list, then the press-the folks he has called "enemies of the people" are going to be on it, it's just a question of when.  And they want to talk about whether an old man with a cold who has won back our allies, stands up to our enemies, and has reinvigorated our economy glitched during a dog and pony show? 

Are they not up to this historical moment? Do they have no read on the failures of history? Are they entranced by the notion that It Can't Happen Here? 

SCOTUS and the Conclusions

 

It's really not hard to draw an obvious and unpleasant conclusion regarding the conservative justices' rulings regarding effectively legalizing bribery and privileging the opinions of courts over subject matter experts in government agencies with respects to regulatory matters, and to keep this blog post terribly brief, let me just sum it up this way:

The Republican-appointed justices have shown us what they are, and all that's left is billionaires haggling over the price. I'm sure putting it this way would offend Sam Alito and his missus, so to also keep this blog post brief, I will refrain from suggesting what else they can run up a flagpole if they don't like it.

I really shudder at conservative justices using their slapdash "textural" approach to the law as a "public service" to overrule agency decisions based on science. What this means for climate change, curbing pollution, food and drug regulation....

Vergogna!

 

EXCLUSIVE UNDERCOVER AUDIO:
Martha-Ann Alito Unfurled

"I want a Sacred Heart of Jesus flag because I have to look across the lagoon at the Pride flag for the next month." pic.twitter.com/okNsW7SPlu

— Lauren Windsor (@lawindsor) June 10, 2024

There's a lot to unpack in the conversations that undercover reporter Lauren Windsor had with the Alitos. The verification of Samuel Alito's sense of culture war driving his juris-imprudence doesn't entirely surprise me. Does he endorse the return of our country to "a place of godliness? So he does!

It seems to me he must be using his own personal notes for what he thinks godliness means--as for myself, I'm less ambitious, and would like to see the Supreme Court be a place of cleanliness, which would, I am told, be the next best thing and a bit closer to his job. 

But it's Mrs. Alito's sense of an ax to grind over Pride flags, her desire for revenge against the media (how dare they report unpleasant things--like her squabble with the neighbors, or the way her family's security detail may be threatening them), her combination of privilege and aggrievement, that fascinates me. It's her unselfconscious use of the term "feminazis". It's her reference to her German heritage. How she intends to get even. Eventually.

Flagpole Sitta

 

Samuel Alito—who wrote the opinion overturning Roe v. Wade—says his wife “makes her own decisions, and I have always respected her right to do so.” pic.twitter.com/r52Yjf35ih

— Sawyer Hackett (@SawyerHackett) May 29, 2024

Far be it for me to question how the Alitos manage their affairs at home--although Justice Alito certainly questions how American women and their families make other important decisions, for example, regarding their reproductive health care--but I love the idea that because the Mrs. is a property owner, he (also an owner of the same property) could not abrogate her important first amendment flag-raising choices by taking the thing down himself. 

Well, one hears of such things. A man can be, for example, top dog in his place of work, but be barely able to raise a peep, let alone lower a flag, in his own home. It appears, based on the report of the Alitos' neighbors, he might well have reason to fear her temper. 

She might have left him hardly able to comfortably sit on a bench, is what I'm getting at. Having foregone that particular conflict, however, he sees himself as still eminently qualified to rule from the highest bench in the country.

It's a matter of judgment. 

Appeal to What, Now?

 

Breaking News: A second provocative flag linked to Jan. 6 was flown at a home of the Supreme Court justice Samuel Alito. https://t.co/DCnJ1drXPR pic.twitter.com/MB3JN3TapZ

— The New York Times (@nytimes) May 22, 2024

Funny old thing about me, if you didn't know--I'm big on the separation of church and state. Once I realized the incompatibility of the first commandment and the first amendment, the idea that the ISA is, in any sense, a Christian or even biblically based nation flew out the window, and I realized that no person tries to present a government as divinely inspired without there being some real fuckery afoot.

Trump, a hedonist, a personification, in his way, of the deadly sins, is a "tool" in the vernacular, but has also been used by Christian Nationalists as a tool to get their feet in the door of the White House. Why? How? I suspect it's that his hands are dirty and theirs stay clean, while their agenda will fall into place under him because he simply is an authoritarian. They don't care "what's in his heart". 

He's a gift to them. A gift from heaven. He'll outlaw abortion and birth control and eradicate wokeness and restructure society back to where everyone knew their "place" in the great chain of being. Where's the catch?

This is a democracy, and most people here don't actually want that, is the catch. We were supposed to have done away with the idea of terrestrial kings who have a "divine right" to do anything. Let alone place religious tests on who participates in government or how laws should induce people to behave. The founders of the US were all too aware of European sectarianism and the dangers thereof, and were trying to manage a system that would accommodate an already diverse society.

Justice Alito Should Pack it In

 

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito is facing calls to recuse himself from cases involving the 2020 presidential election after reports emerged of an inverted American flag flown outside his home days after the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. pic.twitter.com/BumAk9E8y1

— CBS Evening News (@CBSEveningNews) May 17, 2024

If ultra-conservative SCOTUS Justice Samuel Alito (and family) feels so thin-skinned about the burden of the public commenting on the job he's doing (which affects all Americans, and no shit people are rightly concerned) , so much so that the US flag, inverted, was flown on his lawn like a cry for help or a signal that it was time for a revolution (or insurrection), if his bias has become so apparent that people deem it fit that he recuse himself from the most important cases relating to the preservation of our republic and the continued relevance of the Constitution as well as the court on which he sits (what the whole hell else is the "presidential immunity" question?), then he can really do us a favor and retire. 

Before the election, thanks. Because apparently, elections make him just too emotional, and as a nation, we've already had two long national nightmares over that sort of thing. 

TWGB: This Situation is not Hypothetical

 

In today's SCOTUS hearing, Samuel Alito argued that immunity for former presidents is good, actually, because without it, ex-presidents might refuse to leave office peacefully if they lose reelection...

Make it make sense. https://t.co/HepJVcgN2Q

— Mother Jones (@MotherJones) April 25, 2024

If I were to take Justice Alito as a good-faith interrogator adhering to the actual facts of the Trump presidency--the actual president this case is about, and not some future generic president we're just having a classroom thought-experiment about, are we supposed to play along and imagine a path where 1/6 does not happen because Trump can rest safe in his bed at Mar-a-Lago certain that no ill shall befall him, because he had immunity. So, he just gracefully turns over the keys to the established firm:

And maybe that even means he is just fine keeping those documents from the White House that he doubtless acquired during his presidency--several boxes of, in fact--and selling them, because we are just going to assume a president does official things officially, and not shady-ass criminal stuff because one has always been a shady-ass criminal? 

On a day where Justice Brown-Jackson noted that immunity (or should we rather call it, impunity?) would turn the Oval Office into a center of criminal activity, we received testimony that Hope Hicks and Sarah Huckabee Sanders were in contact--via their White House offices, with David Pecker regarding the election interference/hush money cover-up scheme. 

And When There is No State to Go To?

 

Simone: If you had to travel to another state to get an abortion, it’s not the worst thing in the world. Hopefully this is very rare occurrence in your life… Buying a bus ticket to go somewhere to get it is not the worst thing in the world. pic.twitter.com/EmaCoft18T

— Acyn (@Acyn) April 9, 2024

This is the glib, dismissive way that abortion bans are spoken about by people who have simply never had to think about reproductive health care in a personal, urgent way. 

A bus ticket? Well, across how many states? How long would that journey take? How soon/when/for how much time will one be able to get off work for? Will one also have to pay for lodgings, depending on the distance? Does one's state have a law that limits travel (this is proposed in several states) Will one need someone else's assistance in obtaining travel? Will the patient and/or the accomplice face felony charges for trying to get abortion services? 

Will these circumstances open up one's private, personal business to other people's investigation and judgment? (Depending upon one's community, it can be hard to schedule a sudden trip without some people speculating why one left.) 

As Goes Ohio? Kansas? Arizona?

 

If Nikki Haley, who dropped out weeks ago, is pulling 20% in the GOP primary against Trump in Ohio--this is a worrisome thing for him. Here's what I'm thinking--it's well-educated and female voters who realize that Trump is an appalling person. Some of these people will end up voting for Biden. Some will stay home. But this is an issue that Trump actually CAN'T address. 

What do I mean by that? Take the E. Jean Carroll defamation suit. He counter-sued and lost, because what in the hell is the difference between assaulting someone digitally vs. with a penis? He's going back in against ABC and George Stephanopoulos because Nancy Mace kind of made him do it.  So we are now going to be talking about Trump's being a rapist and Trump INVITED it. 

We are going to go back to the Ukraine issue in the first impeachment because Trump invited that, too. We are going to se him condition Jewishness as it relates to Zionism, for a degree of Zionism that truly is anti-Palestinian. We are going to question what he REALLY wants done at the border because he stopped the border deal. We are going to question whether he understands foreign policy because after all--Russia is being expansionist, dare I say, imperialistic? And there's stupid tyrant fanboy Trump, wanting to be recognized by the Big Kids Dictator Club. 

Did I Expect Something Else?

 

'This was in no way a win for Trump': SCOTUS’ ballot ruling knocked by watchdog grouphttps://t.co/nkXX6ABdda

— Raw Story (@RawStory) March 4, 2024

The day before Super Tuesday, what SCOTUS was not going to do was decide Trump was going to be taken off of primary ballots and definitely declared a no-goo insurrectionist who better not try running for dogcatcher. What they did decide was that the statute couldn't be applied by the states as is--and I don't try to pretend to be the Constitution-understander, but if this was some kind of cop-out, it was a UNANIMOUS cop-out. 

For what it's worth, the states most likely to toss Trump off the ballot would be those where he wouldn't win anyway. If a loosey-goosey standard for who gets declared an insurrectionist is accepted, I would expect red states to get completely silly over labeling anyone who ever protested on the left being labelled "antifa" and a potential insurrectionist. (I feel like Ted Cruz and Tom Cotton have political fanfic about doing just that stuffed under their mattresses.) 

I can't get disappointed. After all, if SCOTUS thinks they have saved themselves from some kind of legal free-for-all today, surely, they are aware by now of what their docket will look like November- January 2025. And as for the idea that Congress do something about settling this same issue NOW--I don't think you'll find enough huevos for an Easter Egg hunt. 

What was it a very smart man had said? "Don't boo. Vote." I don't think there was ever going to be a better answer than that. 

TWGB: Broke and Losing It

 

Donald, man. Check the tape. pic.twitter.com/PwXb9iqP4j

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) February 29, 2024

I would call that mean, and unfair, and I would call it ageist and far, far out of context, except, I have written about how Trump never would have come up with the idea of him being a "stable genius" and defended that tooth and nail if he wasn't already well aware his stability and intellect were being regularly challenged. I also don't think much of the sarcastic "jokes" of a person who doesn't seem clear about what sarcasm is. Or what jokes are. Trump has long been a bully, and what I like about Biden is, he doesn't care for bullies and comes at them--no malarkey. 

Anyway, Biden got a physical recently and did not get a cognitive test because he didn't need one. Trump has to constantly talk about his. Trump takes the slight regarding his mental state very seriously. It's all about the Democrats! They are making him look crazy! 

OK, but what Democrats are doing this man's make-up and hair and dressing him? Just asking. 

I think the real thing on what's left of Trump's mind now, though, is being broke. He recently tried to play "Let's make a Deal" regarding his NY civil fraud trial damages, offering $100 million. Or maybe a little delay while he searches the sofa cushions in every one of his properties. (He was not aware, to use a very good turn of phrase, that the cruelty of the fines he faced, were, in fact, the point.)  He wanted to apply for an appeal of the E.Jean Carroll damages by fronting nothing at all. The plaintiff side argued that Mr. Broke might not be good for a bond for one thing and his financial situation wasn't getting better for another.

TWGB: Perspective is a Dangerous Drug

 

Something very stupid happened today: Donald Trump as a candidate for POTUS had a hearing before the Supreme Court of the United States as to whether he was eligible to stand for president having participated in an insurrection against the US government, while the current US president, his opponent in that year, was exonerated of a charge regarding keeping classified documents but got some backhanded BS from a partisan Republican Special Counsel about being old with a bad memory. 

So, of course, the discourse on the socials is about the latter, not the former. 

To put things into perspective for me, I selected photos of both guys at my age (roughly) and they look terrible. (I'm not going to drop a selfie but I'm not looking my age--I'm fat but not old.)  Neither settled into their 50-something hairlines with grace. Trump's eyebrows were always bad, but at least this was before he applied his makeup with a wet turd. One is thinking, the other, mid-talking. It looks about right. 

Does that seem shallow?  Bitches please! I'm seeing people talk about whether Biden is a gaffe machine when he's been one since he was younger than me. He has always BEEN confusing names and whatnot, but getting off deep one-liners. And Trump has always been a crook. 

TWGB: Trump is Immuno-Compromised

 

Claims of executive privilege and presidential immunity have been something like Citizen Trump's "Rosebud"--they represented a fantasy of unaccountability and lack of responsibility that might just afford an old crook some peace of mind, and that specter of hope has now been taken away. Someone of course will have to pay for this--and it will be his little rubes. When he goes sniveling that "they" (the Deep State, Biden, black hats--whatever) have singled him out, maybe they won't consider this:

Why is Trump the only president who ever had to make this case regarding immunity? Over 200 years of presidents, and not one had this problem. Maybe they were all previously completely capable of doing the job without just rolling in criminality. Trump apparently is not, because this is how he lives his life.

It's a thought! 

However, in TrumpWorld, Trump can only be failed. That's why it was time again for another really futile and stupid gesture on the part of Matt Gaetz et als.  Marjorie Taylor Greene took up the spotlight in explaining:

"And then when Joe Biden was inaugurated, and this entire Capitol complex was surrounded with 30,000 National Guard troops, none of you stood there and called that an insurrection. No, you all stayed silent."

God damn. She's right. When Joe Biden was inaugurated because he was the lawful winner of the 2020 election, and duly constituted authority were placed as security at the inauguration in case Trump and Marge's little friends started trouble again, no one DID call that perfectly lawful act an "insurrection". Will the wonders of correct syntax never cease?  

TWGB: All Trump Wants for Christmas

 

Well, it's not hard to figure out what Trump wants for Christmas, since it's all been put into a filing available to the public: he wants immunity!  Some people might want their day in court and to be found innocent and to clear their good name. 

He would like to very much not have that conversation out loud if we can at all. His lawyers are claiming that everything he did while president counts as an official act (I guess they mean everything: official Tweets, official watching tv, official golfing, and probably official trips to the bathroom--since that also covers "document handling") and he wasn't convicted by the Senate at his impeachment, so if that was good enough for them, it's good enough for him. 

It's a fantasy. It starts out with a wonderful supposition: 

"During the 234 years from 1789 to 2023, no current or former president had ever been criminally prosecuted for official acts. That unbroken tradition died this year, and the historical fallout is tremendous," the Trump filing reads. "The indictment of President Trump threatens to launch cycles of recrimination and politically motivated prosecution that will plague our nation for many decades to come and stands likely to shatter the very bedrock of our republic—the confidence of American citizens in an independent judicial system."

We are to believe it would seem, that the officeholders from 1789 to January 20, 2017 may have been simply lousy with crime, but were not prosecuted due to...tradition?  And we are not invited to contemplate the fallout from a president being told that literally anything they do and label an "official act" is without legal consequence? And he's handing that same card to our current sitting president?

Lordy. I think Santa definitely puts one on the naughty list for this kind of jackassery. 

TWGB: Civil War Solutions to Modern Problems

 

I think it's very fitting, after all, that Donald Judas Trump got a ruling against his being on the ballot for fomenting an insurrection under the 14th Amendment, because that remedy was a solution to insurrectionism post-Civil War, and the "1776" plan from Trump and his little friends was not a revolution for the sake of freedom, but a peculiar invocation of a civil war.  Because Trump losing made some people big mad and they believed stupid fraudulent shit about Chinese thermostats and Italian satellites and stuff. It really isn't more intelligent than that. 

I think the Colorado State decision makes a lot of sense, and frankly, I don't personally care if it's popular. Trump's favorability with his party doesn't mean anything to me, because look--how many people supported the Confederacy? A lot. They lost.

That's the point. You don't like the 14th Amendment, go crazy kids, vote for legislators who definitely want insurrectionists to hold office. Pro-treason in defense of random bullshit your whole face off.  But as for me, I will vote for Democrats and support the Constitution because I'm not a whole-ass traitor. You don't vote for pro-insurrection and pretend you are a patriot. You don't get to lie about the election, or pretend Trump is innocent regarding what happened on 1/6, and even have my glancing respect. 

We can all understand that Proud Boys stood back and stood by--until then, and Oath Keepers broke all their oaths that day. It wasn't antifa and the feds, it was Soft-Skulled crabs who were so proud of themselves, they selfied and posted to social media their civil war disobedience. 

Justice Thomas and the Supplemental Income

 

You know, until now, stories about the largesse bestowed upon Justice Clarence Thomas almost sounds like he got appointed to the Court, ran the gantlet of his hearing, and then suddenly, he had all these friends he just wouldn't like to disappoint. And yet this story from ProPublica makes a reciprocal point--

There he was, just in debt as heck in 2000 (the year he would decide on Bush v, Gore, as a matter of fact, because that's not something I can refrain from mentioning) he looked over his public servant's salary and said out loud, "Gee, I sure hope my wealthy friends don't disappoint me or they may well get disappointed."

Genuinely:

After almost a decade on the court, Thomas had grown frustrated with his financial situation, according to friends. He had recently started raising his young grandnephew, and Thomas’ wife was soliciting advice on how to handle the new expenses. The month before, the justice had borrowed $267,000 from a friend to buy a high-end RV. 

 At the resort, Thomas gave a speech at an off-the-record conservative conference. He found himself seated next to a Republican member of Congress on the flight home. The two men talked, and the lawmaker left the conversation worried that Thomas might resign. 

Congress should give Supreme Court justices a pay raise, Thomas told him. If lawmakers didn’t act, “one or more justices will leave soon” — maybe in the next year.

I'm not calling it extortion. All I'd like to point out is, his public servant salary got supplemented with a good deal of private money--and Thomas was very well aware what it was worth to his benefactors for them to do so.  

 

Sandra Day O'Connor, 1930-1923

 

To the surprise of the conservative president who appointed her, the conservative first female Supreme Court Justice kept Roe v. Wade on the books. But on the other hand, try as I might to come up with something different regarding her being a trailblazer, I kept coming back to the Bush v. Gore decision. 

She wanted to retire and wanted a Republican to replace her. George W. Bush replaced her with Sam Alito. 

And Roe v. Wade was eventually undone. 

So?

I can't expect someone to have the foresight to realize that the dominoes lined up like that. On the other hand, it was still some kind of selfish decision on her part, and from the 2000 decision, a lot of nastiness flowed. 

So I'm still mad. And I'm not over it.