It's All Right

 

President Biden has announced that he is issuing a pardon of his son, Hunter Biden, and for one thing--good. 

Although he had previously said he wasn't going to, I rather hoped he would and am not one bit disappointed. If the power of the pardon is supposed to be for the sake of mercy--why not one's own son? Is his son less deserving by virtue of blood? And if the father seriously believes that the son was persecuted and prosecuted for his political sake, is that not something he can at least do for him?

Some are calling it an "abuse of power." A pardon is an official act. I don't even understand what that argument is supposed to mean. Is he gaining something other than his son not being further punished? 

Is it a norm? Bill Clinton pardoned his half-brother, Roger. George H. W. Bush granted clemency to his son. Neil. Trump pardoned his daughter's father-in-law, Charles Kushner, and has now appointed him to an ambassadorship. You tell me: what is a norm, here? 

If someone wants to say it enrages MAGAs, again: good. They can bite their My Pillows in rage. They are outraged by things all the time. It's what they do. I don't care.

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? 

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. 

TWGB: Are You Buying What He's Selling?

 

Donald Trump said he learned about murder victim Ruby Garcia's "contagious laughter and when she walked into a room, she lit up that room" from her family. The family denies speaking to him, and that language appears in her obituary as reported in Trump's beloved New York Post. pic.twitter.com/RjeuEdLdIW

— Matthew Gertz (@MattGertz) April 3, 2024

I think I want to start this one with a weird lie--Trump said that he met with the family of Ruby Garcia and they talked with him about her and--that did not happen. It really looks like he "remembered" stuff from an obituary he read. I first wondered if he was conflating meeting with Ruby Garcia's family with meeting with Laken Riley's family. That doesn't seem to be it.  He just plumb forgot, after a long history of telling fictional "Sir" stories about strapping big men with tears in their eyes who sing his praises, that if you talk about real people, they can contradict you. 

That's not normal. Most people would understand that you don't lie about something like that. Trump does not. 

Most people would not go out of their way to violate a gag order, either. Trump would, though He would continue to lie about the relatives of a judge in one of his trials, and even insist it was necessary for him to do so. It would seem like he's either really just too dumb to know when to shut up, or maybe he thinks getting tossed in jail will earn him valuable martyr-points. (Jail is bad. Peter Navarro says so.) 

My question today is--are you buying what he is selling? It's a simple question--is this guy Mr. Honesty?  Are any Trump fans ready to wake up and smell the bullshit yet? 

We've got some fun, fun, fun stories about Truth Social today. It was reiterated that yes, Virginia, Truth Social was carried over the finish line to the IPO date by Russian money. And this is connected to the brothers who just pled to insider trading, because that's a very auspicious way to start a business.  And if you want to know where Trump sits in all of this, it's suing the Celebrity Apprentice guys who hooked him up with this scheme for poor management. He wants their shares. The value of the stock he has might be slipping so he saw what they had and went:

You know how he does--possession being nine tenths and a third of the law, or whatever--oh wait: that's his Mar-A-Lago documents strategery!

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: Nearly Nothing to Say

 

The death of Alexei Navalny is an example of how authoritarian power reacts to courage--the strongman is, at heart, a small villain. The warm voice of opposition is the thing that threatens his snowflake grip on power. In the US, we enshrined freedom of speech in the Constitution. In Putin's Russia, it is punished, sometimes fatally. The likelihood that Russia will call this "natural causes" is a laugh--naturally, we know what caused his death. 

But I'm not an expert in Russia politics, so there's only so much I can add to that discussion. I just want to note that the power to eliminate opposing voices was exactly the power that Trump's claim of total presidential immunity would result in. It would be the power of the thin-skinned and weak man to no longer have to argue his case, but to end the argument with one fatal command. 

I won't link to the sickos on the right who linked the imprisonment of Navalny and the straits of former president Donald Trump, except to note them by name, D'Souza, Zeldin, Mace (there's more, but linking to them hardly matters). Trump is not a crusader against corruption--he is corrupt. He is not downtrodden by political violence; he is an ardent encourager of it. This is the real Trump Derangement Syndrome: to never blame poor little Trump for anything, ever. Not even the legal troubles of a long-time 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: He Would Like to Not Have Rules, Thanks.

 

So, like, Trump's lawyers really said: pic.twitter.com/qWiQxWxMpN

— Vixen Strangely (@VixenStrangely) January 9, 2024

 As any thinking person may have predicted, Trump's extreme view of presidential immunity absolutely sanctions death squads, thank you very much. His lawyers just "what if'd" themselves into supporting a sitting president offing a rival, only to be chastised if the Congress can't get with it. But you would be amazed what some people can "get with" once the assassinations start rolling. 

It's a real good thing you did, Mr. Trump, wishing those people into the cornfield, Trump lawyers might add, as Rod Serling showed in his most harsh indictment of totalitarianism. What if a child-brain had absolute power to coerce others with violence? What if every competent person was labeled "the Deep State"? What if every competent journalist was declared an enemy? The "lying press"? 

This is what our Bill of Rights in the Constitution was about--not giving the state absolute power or resting absolute power in the guy who was made executive of the state. We protect the press and witnesses of crimes. We're supposed to have due process for individuals accused of a crime. Even if Trump's investigation (s) were "supposed" to be political at their source, the purpose of our legal system is that the political fuckery is minimized by design. People can hear out the facts, and then be the judge of them.

You wouldn't even need to tamper with witnesses or the jury if you were innocent. If a fair hearing of facts benefitted you, why would you even tamper with witnesses or a jury or the judges or the prosecutors, or want violence for any of them? You wouldn't need your little fan club to swat judges and prosecutors. You wouldn't even have their names in your mouth, because you could be assured the facts set you and them straight. 

Magnets-How Do They Work?

 

Trump: All I know about magnets is this, give me a glass of water, let me drop it on the magnets, that’s the end of the magnets pic.twitter.com/TopK4BRsOq

— Acyn (@Acyn) January 6, 2024

Look, just take a kitchen magnet and get it wet.  It will still work. I don't know what he thinks will happen.  I don't know where this thing came from. Anyway, he thinks gas sells for $8 a gallon. He has said people need to show their ID to buy groceries. He doesn't know how things work, which is why he also says things like he was going to sell US oil and gas to Europe to pay the national debt.  He has a real problem with windmills. He just kind of thinks everyone else also does not know how things work and will also think what he is saying is great and smart. 

He still seems to not know how bills become laws or what branch of government does what or how he got indicted four times. It's very concerning.

Judge Chutkan and Jack Smith were recently swatted. It's really hard for me to reconcile going out of one's way to terrorize people to try and get one's favored candidate for office clear of a lot of very serious charges with that person also being a transparent idiot. 

TWGB: The Hot Stove Lessons of Democracy

 

A couple of days ago, one of the insurrectionists sometimes called "Pink Hat Lady" (government name: Rachel Powell) took to Twitter to complain of her treatment.  She has apparently spent the last three years barefoot and mooning out the window like a princess in a tower...no wait, she was able to move about, but violated her pre-term release and got home confinement. She pretends she has no representatives, but she had lawyers. She exhorted her fellow 1/6 dopes to enter the Capitol that day--why isn't she being looked at as a possible "Fed" provocateur, huh?

She's living in a whole different universe from our reality. She went from saying on social media: “We will do what we want and there’s nothing the gov can do to stop us,” to asking, “Why should I go to jail? Over what? A broken window?”

Burglars break windows, too, and are felons. And apparently, the government actually DOES do something about that. These windows were broken because the stolen-election-believing sheeple who went to the capitol on 1/6 wanted to steal the election back for their Peerless Feeder. 

Will incarceration "fix" Rachel? Who knows? But maybe she educates others as an example to not be her. 

This is why I look at nattering nabobs like David Axelrod with disdain. OOoooooohhhh, taking Donald Trump off the ballot will divide the country, will it? Tell it to the fuckfaces who already thought we were in a Civil War on 1/6. A Civil War, because Trump's election is a Lost Cause that he keeps fighting, and maybe, just maybe, that shit needs to be removed from his grasp, and the people who lived through our bloodiest conflict on this soil understood that very well.