A Liberal in Trumpistan: The Orange God of Mar-a-Lago: September 2022

UPDATED 6/15/23.

September 1, 2022: With Independence Hall as backdrop this evening, President Biden warned in a televised speech, that “the soul of the nation” was at risk.

Republicans half-listened (if at all), and reacted as if Biden had called them all pedophiles and cannibals…

No, wait, that’s what the QAnon nuts say about Biden and all of us who harbor liberal values in our hearts.

Anyway, there are bruised and battered feelings across the conservative spectrum. That means it’s time to look at what Mr. Biden said, and annotate his words with witticisms of our own. At one point, he warned, “as I stand here tonight, equality and democracy are under assault.”

Republicans blow up – and say Biden is trying to divide the nation – unlike the time Trump said Democrats were “sick and evil people.” Or the time he said President Obama wasn’t born in this country, and wasn’t a legitimate president, and kept saying it for five years. Or the hundred times he attacked the free press because he didn’t like the way he was criticized.

Biden continued:

So tonight, I have come this place where it all began to speak as plainly as I can to the nation about the threats we face, about the power we have in our own hands to meet these threats, and about the incredible future that lies in front of us if only we choose it.

…We, the people, have burning inside each of us the flame of liberty that was lit here at Independence Hall — a flame that lit our way through abolition, the Civil War, Suffrage, the Great Depression, world wars, Civil Rights.

That sacred flame still burns now in our time as we build an America that is more prosperous, free, and just.

That is the work of my presidency, a mission I believe in with my whole soul.

Biden says he believes “the flame of liberty” still burns bright in our time. Conservative voices point to the red background behind him. Ben Shapiro posts a photo of the president and dramatic red color, and labels Biden’s speech the “most demagogic, outrageous, and divisive speech I have ever seen from an American president. Joe Biden essentially declared all those who oppose him and his agenda enemies of the republic. Truly shameful.”

Yeah, Trump would never have called critics in the free press “enemies of the people.” Or call Democratic lawmakers “treasonous” and un-American.” Or refer to Democrats, generally, as “enemies.”

We might also note that the phrase “enemies of the republic” does not appear anywhere in the Biden speech.

Then came the part that really outraged Trump and his pals. Biden warned:

But first, we must be honest with each other and with ourselves.

Too much of what’s happening in our country today is not normal.

Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic.

Now, I want to be very clear — (applause) — very clear up front: Not every Republican, not even the majority of Republicans, are MAGA Republicans. Not every Republican embraces their extreme ideology.

I know because I’ve been able to work with these mainstream Republicans.

But there is no question that the Republican Party today is dominated, driven, and intimidated by Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans, and that is a threat to this country.

Cue the indignation!!! Sen. Ted Cruz was horrified, insisting that Biden had “vilified millions of Americans in a divisive & angry speech that was detached from the reality of his political failures. He isn’t actually interested in restoring the soul of the nation, he’s only interested [in] pitting his fellow Americans against one another.”

You know, not like those happy days, when Ted, himself, said, “It’s an amazing thing. Liberals, I think, are genuinely like mentally ill.”

Biden continued:

But I’m an American President – not the President of red America or blue America, but of all America.

And I believe it is my duty – my duty to level with you, to tell the truth no matter how difficult, no matter how painful.

And here, in my view, is what is true: MAGA Republicans do not respect the Constitution. They do not believe in the rule of law. They do not recognize the will of the people.

They refuse to accept the results of a free election.

Get mad, if you want, MAGA Republicans. Your standard bearer, the Orange God of Mar-a-Lago, takes time almost every day to insist he won the last presidential election. He’s got no proof. And he’s never going to.

Spot on, Mr. Biden.

Trump’s last Attorney General, Bill Barr, and his replacement, Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen, both told Trump the election was fairly decided. So did Chris Krebs, the head of cyber security at the Department of Homeland Security, a Trump appointee. Republican governors of Arizona and Georgia said Biden won their states and their elections were securely run. Trump tried complaining to state or federal courts more than sixty times – and the judges rejected all his claims.

Do MAGA Republicans refuse to accept results?

As Sarah Palin once said, “You betcha.”

Biden went on to warn that the MAGA bunch tries to justify the violent attack on Capitol Hill – when the plan was to stop the counting of the electoral votes, and hand Trump the win.

They look at the mob that stormed the United States Capitol on January 6^th — brutally attacking law enforcement — not as insurrectionists who placed a dagger to the throat of our democracy, but they look at them as patriots.

And they see their MAGA failure to stop a peaceful transfer of power after the 2020 election as preparation for the 2022 and 2024 elections.

They tried everything last time to nullify the votes of 81 million people. This time, they’re determined to succeed in thwarting the will of the people.

Once again, leading voices in MAGA Land explode. Trump says, if he runs and wins in 2024, he’s going to pardon the rioters and offer a government apology. That includes the guys who beat cops senseless, as they were defending the Capitol, people who threatened to hang Mike Pence, and Proud Boy leaders who called for civil war.

You know. The people who wanted to “unite” all Americans – by killing Americans with differing political views.

THIS BLOGGER would agree. Mr. Biden could have been more careful in how he painted all MAGA folks with one brush. (This blogger knows several MAGA Republicans who are not nuts.) At one point, Biden used a more fitting term, criticizing “extreme MAGA Republicans.” But when he cited Federal Circuit Court Judge Michael Luttig, a respected conservative thinker, who called Trump a “clear and present danger” to democracy, he nailed his point again.

Conservatives decided to ignore what Judge Luttig said, and stick with attacking photos from the speech. They really hated this picture, which meant they really loved it, because it made Biden look bad.

“The fact that this isn’t photoshopped is surreal,” Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy tweeted. “Everytime I think Biden and crew can’t be dumber they outdo themselves,” he said. “Seriously who gives a speech warning people about how dangerous Republicans are to Democracy while having a background that looks like the Soviet Union and Hitler had a baby?”

Yep. We were now quoting the founder of Barstool Sports to try to prove a right-wing talking point.

And Mr. Biden had clearly said not all Republicans were part of the problem, but rather could be part of the solution.

Ohio Senate candidate J.D. Vance was equally clueless. He couldn’t believe it was a “real photograph,” he exclaimed, and Fox News went with the Vance quotation as well. “It depicts the president of our nation, as he took to the airwaves and spoke about his fellow citizens as if they were sewer rats,” Vance tweeted.

I don’t work for Fox. So I don’t get paid millions to overstate ever disagreement, or pick at details, or to quote those who do.

Biden doesn’t use dehumanizing terms in his speech. (You can read it yourself.) The words “sewer” and “rats” do not occur. Nor does Mr. Biden call his political opponents, “sick puppies” or “psychos,” or “perverts,” which Trump did while in office and still does. The current president doesn’t paint anyone on the right as “God-denying demons” and “baby-butchers.” That was a Christian pastor – one who really likes Trump.

Plus, I’m not so ill-informed as to have forgotten a time when Vance correctly took the measure of Mr. Trump. He called himself “a Never-Trump guy,” said he never liked Trump, and called him “noxious” and “reprehensible.”

In the fall of 2016, Mr. Vance wrote of Trump: “My God, what an idiot.”

So was the picture from Mr. Biden’s speech the problem?

Or was the real issue, as Biden pointed out, that the loser of the 2020 election was still refusing to face the truth – that he lost – and still stirring his base with lies?

MAGA Republicans had made a choice to “embrace anger,” Biden claimed. Listen to any Trump rally. You know they did, and Trump fuels it. Biden says they live “in the shadow of lies.” Together, he says, offering a ray of hope, Americans “can choose a different path.” He says he knows the American people, and their “courage.”

This is a nation that honors our Constitution. We do not reject it. (Applause.)

This is a nation that believes in the rule of law. We do not repudiate it. (Applause.)

This is a nation that respects free and fair elections. We honor the will of the people. We do not deny it. (Applause.)

And this is a nation that rejects violence as a political tool. …

We are still, at our core, a democracy. (Applause.)

It would be hard to complain about a president standing up for fair elections and rejecting “violence as a political tool.”

The MAGA folks still manage. Some express outrage because U.S. Marines in dress uniform flanked the stage as Biden spoke.

At Fox News, they quoted Trump’s response to the speech, never noticing the irony. “If you look at the words and meaning of the awkward and angry Biden speech tonight, he threatened America, including with the possible use of military force,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social site. “He must be insane, or suffering from late stage dementia!”

Yeah. Donald. Bringing us all together, like the good old days, when he was in the White House, tweeting like a fool.

Biden finished strong:

That’s why tonight I’m asking our nation to come together, unite behind the single purpose of defending our democracy regardless of your ideology. (Applause.)

We’re all called, by duty and conscience, to confront extremists who will put their own pursuit of power above all else.

Democrats, independents, mainstream Republicans: We must be stronger, more determined, and more committed to saving American democracy than MAGA Republicans are to — to destroying American democracy.

We, the people, will not let anyone or anything tear us apart. Today, there are dangers around us we cannot allow to prevail. We hear — you’ve heard it — more and more talk about violence as an acceptable political tool in this country. It’s not. It can never be an acceptable tool.

So I want to say this plain and simple: There is no place for political violence in America. Period. None. Ever. (Applause.)

We saw law enforcement brutally attacked on January the 6th. We’ve seen election officials, poll workers — many of them volunteers of both parties — subjected to intimidation and death threats. And — can you believe it? — FBI agents just doing their job as directed, facing threats to their own lives from their own fellow citizens.

On top of that, there are public figures — today, yesterday, and the day before — predicting and all but calling for mass violence and rioting in the streets.

This is inflammatory. It’s dangerous. It’s against the rule of law. And we, the people, must say: This is not who we are. (Applause.)

…Democracy cannot survive when one side believes there are only two outcomes to an election: either they win or they were cheated. And that’s where MAGA Republicans are today. (Applause.)

…I ran for President because I believed we were in a battle for the soul of this nation. I still believe that to be true. … The soul of America is defined by the sacred proposition that all are created equal in the image of God. That all are entitled to be treated with decency, dignity, and respect. That all deserve justice and a shot at lives of prosperity and consequence. And that democracy — democracy must be defended, for democracy makes all these things possible. (Applause.) Folks, and it’s up to us.

…My fellow Americans, America is an idea — the most powerful idea in the history of the world. And it beats in the hearts of the people of this country. It beats in all of our hearts. It unites America. It is the American creed. …

We can’t afford to have — leave anyone on the sidelines. We need everyone to do their part. So speak up. Speak out. Get engaged. Vote, vote, vote. (Applause.)

And if we all do our duty — if we do our duty in 2022 and beyond, then ages still to come will say we — all of us here — we kept the faith. We preserved democracy. (Applause.) We heeded our wor — we — we heeded not our worst instincts but our better angels. And we proved that, for all its imperfections, America is still the beacon to the world, an ideal to be realized, a promise to be kept.

…And may God protect our nation. And may God protect all those who stand watch over our democracy. God bless you all. (Applause.) Democracy. Thank you. (Applause.)

IF YOU MISSED this great offer, we are here to help. MAGA fans, did you know you can buy a “MAGAPan” (a.k.a. a “skillet”) for $129.99 and make pancakes with Trump staring back at you every day?

Well, you can.

FUN FACT: Did everyone have a chance to listen to former NFL star quarterback Brett Favre give one of his great inspirational speeches! You didn’t??? That’s because down in Mississippi, the politicians paid Favre $1.1 million to give a series of speeches and – minor glitch – he didn’t give any.

It was part of a $70 million scam, after the folks in Mississippi took all that federal money from a fund earmarked for Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. Then they used it for various programs to help the needy, such as building a new $5 million gym at Favre’s alma mater, the University of Southern Mississippi.

In this case, the crooks were all Republicans; but, as we’ve noted before, Democrats do produce their share of sleazebags.

You want every one of them out of office, posthaste.

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9/2/22: You knew, once Bill Barr opened his mouth yesterday, that Ex-President Blubber was going to blast him right back. Trump did, before the day was out, adding Barr to the ever-lengthening list of people he hired who were terrible people, and awful when it came to doing their jobs.

Trouble began brewing when CBS News host John Roberts asked Mr. Barr if he could think of any legitimate reason the former president would have all those classified documents at Mar-a-Lago.

“I can’t think of a legitimate reason why they should have been – could be taken out of the government, away from the government, if they’re classified,” Barr said. “I frankly am skeptical of this claim that, ‘I declassified everything.’ ’Cause frankly, I think it’s highly improbable. And second, if in fact he sort of stood over scores of boxes not really knowing what was in them, and said, ‘I hereby declassify everything in here,’ that would be such an abuse that shows such recklessness that it's almost worse than taking the documents.”

Taylor Budowich, spokesperson for Ex-President Blubber, blasted the search, calling it unnecessary, unprecedented, and a “SMASH AND GRAB.”

Barr disagreed.

“I think the driver on this from the beginning was you know, loads of classified information sitting in Mar-a-Lago,” he said. “People say this was unprecedented, well it’s also unprecedented for a president to take all this classified information and put them in a country club [emphasis added].”

Why we need whistleblowers.

IN OTHER NEWS, Bayer has agreed to settle a whistleblower case and pay $40 million related to a scheme which paid illegal kickbacks to doctors who would prescribe their fine products, and for lying about the safety of two of those very products, which could cause internal organs to fail. Those two drugs, Trasylol and Baycol, were eventually withdrawn from the market for safety reasons.

Under the False Claims Act, the whistleblower, now revealed to have been Laurie Simpson, who formerly worked for the company, will receive $11 million for her efforts in revealing the truth.

___

9/3/22: Trump reacted angrily at a rally on Saturday to his successor’s speech about the soul of a nation on Thursday. “Biden gave the most vicious, hateful, and divisive speech ever delivered by an American president,” Trump howled. “You’re all enemies of the state. He’s an enemy of the state!”

Trump focused on the red background lighting for Biden’s speech, “like the Devil.” A speech of “hatred and anger.”

The F.B.I. also came under attack. Trump claimed they did a “deep and ugly search of my sixteen-year-old son [that is – his room]. The F.B.I. and the Justice Department have become vicious monsters, controlled by radical Left scoundrels, lawyers, and the media who tell them what to do,” the former president exclaimed. At that point he pointed his finger, and waved it back and forth at the cameras filming his rally. “You people right there,” he continued, “and when to do it.”

The crowd roared with hate.

Trump’s attacks worried even decent Republicans. Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas), ranking member on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” that Trump’s language was “inflammatory.”

“I don’t want to put any law enforcement in the bull’s-eye of a potential threat,” McCaul said.

Trump originally claimed the F.B.I. broke into his home in a “sneak attack,” and “could have planted anything they wanted.”

Now the leader of the MAGA marching band was trying out another discordant tune. Yes, he did have classified folders in his desk drawer at Mar-a-Lago. And when federal agents laid them out on the office floor and took a picture, to indicate where evidence was found, it was part of a plot to make him look like a slob.

“They went to an area and that area is my office, I presume,” Trump told Outside the Beltway host John Fredericks. “That area is very neat. I’m a very neat person. Everything is clean. Everything’s buttoned up and they took documents and they put them all over the floor.

“People think that when you walk into my office, I have confidential documents or whatever it may be ― all declassified ― but I have confidential documents spread out all over my floor, like a slob, like I’m sitting there reading these documents all day long or somebody else would be,” Trump said.

This was opposed to Trump’s first defense: that the documents the F.B.I. found at Mar-a-Lago had been planted.

IN OTHER NEWS, the Lawrence County Republican Party in Alabama had to apologize for posting this picture.

They said it was all a harmless mistake – and nobody in Alabama has ever had any racist inclinations at all!

___

9/5/22: We continue to learn in dribs and drabs more about the search at Mar-a-Lago. For example, a federal grand jury was impaneled and shown evidence to indicate that the former president and his lawyers were still holding top secret information at Trump’s Florida home.

That grand jury finding opened up the way to the search.

___

9/7/22: On Trump Social, the former president – a lard ass if ever there was one – has been railing about the F.B.I. visit to his humble Mar-a-Lago home. His latest blast included a bit of unintended humor.

As Mr. Blubber explained,

Not only did the FBI steal my Passports in the FBI Raid and Break-In of my home, Mar-a-Lago, but it has just been learned through court filings that they also improperly took my complete and highly confidential medical file and history, with all the bells and whistles (at least they’ll see that I’m very healthy, an absolutely perfect physical specimen!), plus personal Tax Records (Illegal to take), and lawyer/client/privileged information, a definite NO, NO. Days of the Soviet Union!

Yes.

The guy sees himself as “an absolutely perfect physical specimen!” Now you know how he can spend the last two years predicting that the 2020 election would be stolen and then insisting it was.

The main is delusional.

SINCE OUR TOPIC for the day is delusion, we should toss Justin Kuchta into the soup. The 39-year-old Maryland man, and aficionado of all things QAnon, decided it would be a brilliant idea to send a death threat to a member of Congress.

After receiving an email from a Texas lawmaker, to attend an event, Kuchta RSVP’d:

Thank you for the address!!! I’m coming to murder all of you Satanist *******fuckers!!! Especially the chuckle-**** Zodiak [sic] Killer [Member of Congress 1]!! That fat fake ****** **** will be the first on the gallows!! SEE ALL OF YOU ******* REALLY SOON!!! With my fresh militia and weapons!!! Thanks for the info *******!!!

America. Where more guns in more hands will surely someday make us all safe.

YOU could also say that our topic is “dangerous idiots,” which means we need to circle back to the former president of the United States.

According to William Cohen, once a Republican senator from Maine, there could be no earthly reason for Donald J. Trump to have a stash of secret documents under his Mar-a-Lago bed.

“The notion that the former president had documents, highly classified documents, in his possession and in unsafe circumstances, or any circumstances, puts our nation at risk, potentially,” Cohen told a reporter on Wednesday. “So, I think there’s no justification.” Cohen, who also served as Secretary of Defense, added that he (or you, or me) would already “be in handcuffs,” if the same kinds of documents had been found in his (our yours, or my) home.

Trump, he added finally, “is a clear and present danger to democracy.”

LET’S STICK with “dangerous idiots.” If you are a Republican politician, your job is to deny climate change is a problem, and hug every lobbyist from Big Oil who drops by your office to donate lavishly to your next campaign.

We have often mentioned how profoundly dense Trump was, whenever he tried to address the matter. Now the GOP gives us an even denser candidate for office, namely Herschel Walker.

Trump could never decipher the difference between weather and climate. As for Mr. Walker, it’s not even clear he can figure out what the cloud symbol on tomorrow’s weather prediction means.

Sadly, evidence that climate change is coming for us all – particularly our children and grandchildren – continues to accumulate. In the last few days high temperature records have been broken all over California. Sacramento hit 116° for the first time ever, topping the old record, set on July 17, 1925, by two degrees. Stockton hit 115°, tying the city’s previous record set in 2006. San Jose, Santa Rosa, Livermore, Redwood City, King City and Napa, all in the Bay Area, set all-time record highs. San Jose hit 109° degrees Tuesday, topping the old record of 108° set five years ago. Santa Rosa hit 115, breaking a record set in 1913, and Napa had a high of 114. Both Livermore and King City reached 116 degrees. Those are killing highs.

Wildfires in a dry California burned up a large part of the town of Weed.

WE KNOW, if we have any brains in our skulls, that “dangerous idiots” can be found hiding in the political weeds, regardless of party. (Trump is mostly different, because he doesn’t bother to hide – and his followers still can’t see him for the vengeful, unprincipled huckster that he is.)

Today, the Democrats did their part, giving us Nevada’s Clark County public administrator Robert Telles.

We aren’t ready to scream, “Lock him up!” But we are ready to say you might not want him to get close to your cutlery drawer.

Police have executed a search warrant at his home, related to the stabbing death of Jeff German, an investigative journalist, who had written about the hostile work environment Telles had created.

That cost Telles in the last election.

FINALLY, we can drop a few notches, into the simple “idiot” category and end our post for today. If you missed it, Sarah “I’m Going to Quit before I Finish My Term Anyway” Palin was defeated in a bid to fill a seat in Congress, left open in Alaska, after the incumbent up and died.

Alaska has implemented a “ranked choice” voting system, where a voter may pick Candidate A as first choice. Then the voter can select Candidate B, as second choice. If Candidate A fails to get enough votes to win, then Candidate A’s votes are refigured, according to second choice. If 502 people marked “Candidate B” as second choice, and 397 marked “Candidate C,” then those candidates get those votes.

As you can probably guess, Palin blamed the new system for her loss. She didn’t say the election was “rigged,” but in her own way hinted that it was. And all of America, she said, should be mad!

Like, “death panels for granny” mad – if you remember that famous Palin line from the political past.

Well, here in Ohio, this boy is NOT mad about Palin’s loss. He’s mad because Republican lawmakers, who dominate the show, have failed for seven years to redistrict the state, as more than 70% of voters asked them to do.

Twice!

That means we’re stuck with convoluted voting districts, both for seats in the Ohio General Assembly, and for seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. As it stands, it is virtually impossible for Democrats to unseat a Republican in most of the gerrymandered parts of the state, and in a few districts, also impossible to dump a Democrat for a Republican or even a Federalist or a Whig.

That – and not ranked choice elections – should make every voter mad, whether the gerrymandering is in Ohio, a red state, or New York, a blue.

___

9/8/22: Steve Bannon turned himself in to New York authorities today, had himself fitted for handcuffs, and got perp-walked into the New York Supreme Court. At one point, he could be seen, being led down a hall, shouting that he was being “persecuted” because he was a conservative – when, in fact, he’s just an alleged crook. You may remember that Steve was indicted, along with two partners, for fraud while Trump was still president. And then Trump pardoned him. Now, state authorities are coming after Bannon – since presidential pardons cover only federal crimes. Once again, Bannon finds himself charged with money laundering, conspiracy, and fraud.

Bannon was one of the masterminds behind the “We Build the Wall” scheme, meant to bilk the dolts. He and his partners, Brian Kolfage and Andrew Badolato, promising that if enough of the MAGA faithful would donate piles of dough, Bannon and Co. would make sure a border wall, funded privately, was built. The silly dolts chipped in with millions, and the schemers pocketed almost every dollar, and not even a white picket fence went up as a result.

Bannon’s pals were not granted Golden Pardons by then-President Trump – and so they’ve already had to plead guilty, and await sentencing. They may soon be spending their days and nights in jail for years to come.

Places with real walls.

Nor should we forget that in July, Bannon was found guilty of contempt of Congress, after refusing to testify or hand over documents related to the January 6, 2021, attack on Capitol Hill.

Or to put it another way, in Trumpistan, he’s going to have to hope Donald gets reelected in 2024. Baby needs a new pardon!

IN OTHER NEWS, Republicans now fear they will blow their chance to retake control of the U.S. Senate in November. This has led to finger-pointing, with members of the party blaming one another and the former president. Sen. Rick Scott, who leads the GOP effort to support Senate candidates, knew this week exactly who to blame.

The media!

“As is predictable for this time of year, the vultures in the left-wing news media – The Washington Post, NY Times, CNN and the like – are roaming about trying to divide and defeat Republicans,” he whined.

Maybe if Republicans wanted to win back the Senate, they shouldn’t be pushing the idea that we need more rape babies. Or, as Sen. Ron Johnson did, recently, suggesting that we need to make cuts to Medicare and Social Security. Johnson, himself, faces a difficult reelection battle.

IT’S NOW the fashion in conservative circles to insist, anytime you lose an election, that the other side cheated, even in states where voting is controlled, lock, stock, and ballot by your own side. In fact, Palin – who lost a special election to fill a seat in Congress from Alaska (see: 9/7/22) – showed up on Steve Bannon’s podcast to whine. She called her state’s new “ranked choice” voting system a “cockamamie scheme.” It was, she told Bannon, a system that was “very, very potentially fraught” with fraud. (Alaska voters narrowly approved the new system in 2020.)

Meanwhile, Republican Marla Fernandez, who hopes to win a seat in the Colorado House of Representatives, did a bit of damage to her chances – although she may have locked up the racist vote – when she referred to several dark-skinned members of the Colorado branch of the America Federation of Teachers, as “chimps.” She also claimed teachers’ unions were part of the “deep state.”

Republicans may also blow their chance to retake control of the House of Representatives in the coming election. The polls are suddenly changing from red, to purple, and even light blue. It hasn’t helped to have leading GOP voices trying to backpedal furiously in the matter of abortion.

Down in Texas, for example, conservatives were giddy when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. They could hardly wait to start punishing mothers who had abortions and charging doctors with murder. Attorney General Ken Paxton promised he would rigorously enforce the old anti-abortion laws in Texas, which had never been repealed.

Under the new old rules, you could not have an abortion if you were raped and became pregnant. You could not be tested to find out if your fetus had Down Syndrome, and decide to abort. If your doctor told you your fetus had profound birth defects, and could not possibly survive, you could not abort.

Paxton was thrilled! He issued an advisory letter, warning that henceforth Texans “‘may not knowingly perform, induce, or attempt an abortion’ except under limited circumstances, such as a lifethreatening condition to the mother caused by the pregnancy.” If “an unborn child dies as a result” of a forbidden abortion those involved would be charged with first-degree felonies, and might “incur civil penalties of not less than $100,000 for each violation.”

Paxton promised that his office would be “specifically authorized to pursue and recover those civil penalties, and I will strictly enforce this law.”

That might sound draconian to you – and even many Texans – but Governor Greg Abbott wanted rape victims to know there was still hope. Even though that “hope” would involve breaking the law that Paxton wanted to “strictly enforce.” Gov. Abbott suggested, cluelessly, that rape victims could purchase Plan B pills and take them to block any pregnancy that might result.

Since it’s the new “rule” in red America that life begins at conception…this would seem to be murder by pill.

Gov. Abbott and Sen. Cruz: Right to choose.

FUN FACT: Ex-President Blubber is threatening to sue Fox News (and maybe never talk to Sean Hannity again), after a local outlet broadcast an anti-Trump campaign ad in the TV market for Florida.

In a Truth Social blast, Blubs let rip:

The Perverts and Lowlifes of the Lincoln Project are back on, where else, Fox News. I thought they ran away to the asylum after their last catastrophic campaign, with charges made against them that were big time sleaze, and me getting many millions more votes in 2020 than I got in 2016. The Paul Ryun run Fox only has high standards for “Trump” ads, but not for anyone else. The Perverts should not be allowed to “false advertise,” and Fox News should not allow it to happen. See you all in Court!!!

Rick Wilson, who helps run the Lincoln Project, responded immediately, saying he’d be “delighted” to go to court. “Go for it. Go for it, bitch,” he added. “Come at me. I can’t wait. Do it. Do it. I double dog dare you.”

In a final slap, Wilson called the threat “impotent, flabby, and pathetic,” like Donald, himself.

FUN FACT #2: If there was ever a more dysfunctional crew in the White House, than the Trump bunch, this blogger is not aware of the fact. And I am not ignoring Warren G. Harding and the Teapot Dome bunch. This week, former White House aide Peter Navarro (he also faces contempt charges in court), went after Jared Kushner, and former Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin.

“If Steve Mnuchin, the treasury secretary, and Jared Kushner, the Rasputin son-in-law, had never, ever darkened the door of the White House, I believe that Trump would still be in the Oval Office,” Navarro wailed.

He said the pair “not only created bad policy,” but also “bad politics.” Jared, he claimed, faked a cancer diagnosis, just to sell more copies of his recently released memoir. In his new book, covering his White House years, Kushner says he was treated for thyroid cancer while working for his father-in-law.

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9/10/22: My conservative friends, at least those who still talk to me, continue to baffle. If I tell them Trump is the most dangerous politician in U.S. history, they retort, “What about Biden and inflation?”

Or: “I hated being told to wear a mask!”

That seems to them like a violation of every principle of freedom – right up there with the Holocaust.

I’m baffled.

Trump “unconstitutionally attempted to remain in power illegally.”

Today, another person who used to work for President Trump weighed in on his old boss’s legal problems. This time the voice of sanity issued from the lips of Ty Cobb, who defended Trump during the Mueller investigation.

Now, Mr. Cobb has offered his thoughts on the search at Mar-a-Lago and investigations in Congress, related to the January 6, 2021, attack on Capitol Hill. “I think the president is in serious legal water,” he told CBS News, “not so much because of the search, but because of the obstructive activity [emphasis added] he took in connection with the Jan. 6 proceeding. That was the first time in American history that a president unconstitutionally attempted to remain in power illegally.”

Cobb went on to describe the former president as “a deeply wounded narcissist,” and suggested that he could be barred from holding further office under the Fourteenth Amendment.

“There is a simple way to disqualify President Trump,” he explained. “He clearly violated the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution’s Article III when he gave aid and comfort and three hours of inaction with regard to what was happening on the grounds of the Capitol,” Cobb continued. “That clearly gave aid and comfort to the insurrectionists.”

Cobb went on to blast the former president for spreading the “Big Lie” about a stolen election, a lie he spreads to this day. Trump’s treatment of his own vice president in January 2021 should disqualify him from holding office again. “Interfering with Pence, saying Mike deserves this when people are shouting ‘Kill Pence,’ I think that’s outrageous,” Cobb said. “I think interfering with what the vice president was obligated to do, trying to persuade him in a very aggressive effort not to certify the election, and to send certain electors back, I think that was criminal.”

___

9/15/22: Some people are willing to die to for their beliefs – for example, early Christian martyrs. Others protested bravely against the Nazi regime, like Sophie Scholl, or Jim Crow laws, like John Lewis.

David Hanson had a cause he fervently believed in. He decided to take a stand against dangerous dictionary definitions.

Hanson was angry when Merriam-Webster, in a recent edition, included transgender pronouns, with an explanation of usage. He decided to stand up for the purity of the English language, and threatened to bomb the company’s headquarters and kill employees in a mass shooting. Because transgender pronouns are the real danger. In one angry, anonymous post, Hanson complained, “It is absolutely sickening that Merriam-Webster now tells blatant lies and promotes anti-science propaganda. There is no such thing as ‘gender identity.” Then he called the person who wrote the new definitions an “imbecile,” and said that person should be “hunted down and shot.”

Hanson railed against “Leftists,” and “Marxists,” for good measure, finally threatening, “I am going to shoot up and bomb your offices for lying and creating fake definitions. Boys aren’t girls, and girls aren’t boys … I will assassinate your top editor.”

Hanson, whose true identity was quickly revealed, plead guilty Wednesday and could face up to five years in prison.

As for the question of gender identity, Mr. Hanson might want to spend part of his sentence reading up on what the Mayo Clinic has to say about “ambiguous genitalia.” Since he’s a big science buff.

IF MR. HANSON was riled up and ready to open fire to protect the old pronoun system, Ex-President Blubber suggested today that his loyal followers might be ready to shoot a few holes in other Americans, should he be indicted in any of the multiple investigations he is currently facing.

By the way, he could be innocent – although you do have to wonder, when in just one of those investigations, Blubs showed up for deposition and “plead the Fifth,” to more than 400 questions.

In an interview for the Hugh Hewitt show, the former president warned that if he were to be indicted for (take your pick) any of the following: election fraud (a Georgia grand jury is investigating), tax fraud (New York investigation), plotting to steal the 2020 election (congressional investigation), or mishandling highly classified information and obstructing justice (Justice Department investigation), the MAGA army “wouldn’t stand for it.”

The only man ever to be elected president and then claim he had the power to pardon himself, suggested that if he were indicted, that would give him even greater incentive to run for president in 2024.

You know: to pardon himself.

“If a thing like that happened, I would have no prohibition against running,” Trump said. “I think if it happened, I think you’d have problems in this country the likes of which perhaps we’ve never seen before. I don’t think the people of the United States would stand for it.”

What did Trump mean by “problems?” Hewitt asked.

“I think they’d have big problems. Big problems. I just don’t think they’d stand for it. They will not sit still and stand for this ultimate of hoaxes,” Blubber warned.

Since Trump’s use of pronouns in that sentence is fuzzy, let’s be clear. “They’d have big problems,” would mean F.B.I. agents, prosecutors, both state and federal, judges, juries, maybe witnesses.

“They will not sit still and stand” would be the MAGA faithful – the same people who rallied to Trump’s call to show up on January 6, 2021, and riot their way to success, gaining Donald a second term.

Hewitt rightly asked if Trump didn’t think he was inciting his followers to commit violence.

“I’m not inciting,” his guest replied. “I’m just saying what my opinion is.”

___

9/19/22: Is inflation still too high and is that still an issue? Yes. Do we need to secure the border? Yes. The question “how,” is far more complex. A gas prices high? They are, but falling. Are liberal pedophiles really cannibalizing children?

Okay, that nonsense is for idiots.

In recent days, clever conservatives have taken to loading up planes and busses and sending unwanted border crossers to various blue states and cities. This is a brilliant effort by conservatives to shoot themselves in the feet. First, they claim they want to stop illegal immigrants at the border. Build the wall and all.

Next, start grabbing some of the illegals and send them deep into the interior – kind of every illegal immigrant’s dream!

Also, can we point out, once more, that Governor Greg Abbott, presides over the State of Texas – where hiring undocumented workers is a “best business practice.” Don’t want any illegals, conservative Texans? Stop hiring them, just because they work hard for low wages. In 2020, it was estimated that 1.2 million undocumented workers had taken jobs in … yes … Governor Abbott’s state.

The same might be said of Florida, where Governor Ron DeSantis is trying to position himself for a run at the presidency in 2024. One out of every sixteen workers in his backyard is undocumented. And those undocumented workers have paid an estimated $8.5 billion in state and local taxes, without really being able to claim any state or local benefits.

Because they’re undocumented.

Finally, this liberal blogger has never hired an undocumented worker to roof his house, or point the main chimney, or paint the whole place. In that respect, he has Donald Trump beat too.

No undocumented workers on this job!

___

9/22/22: The blogger has been busy the last three days, what with pedaling his bicycle 172 miles, from Cincinnati to Granville, Ohio.

So what news did he miss?

Since the blogger had had a heart attack, he does carry
nitroglycerine tablets.

Several of the worst January 6 rioters have now been handed lengthy prison terms. That would include Thomas Hale-Cusanelli, who complained that “Hitler should have finished the job,” sentenced to four years. Jake Whitton, who helped batter police bloody is looking at a term of between 6.5 and 8 years, after pleading guilty. Doug Jensen, who believed in both Donald J. Trump and QAnon myths, went to trial before a jury, only to be convicted on all five felony and two misdemeanor charges he faced. None of these men will be out in time to vote during the next presidential election.

So – the courts have taken a chip out of the Trump base.

Speaking of chipping the base – the U.S. death rate from COVID-19 has remained virtually unchanged since April 15, fluctuating slightly, rarely dropping below 350 deaths per day. Another 61,524 Americans have died since mid-April – equal to the worst death toll from flu, in any of the last ten years.

That brings the toll to 1,050,631 American dead.

Since many MAGA types still hate masks, vaccines, and Dr. Anthony Fauci, who urged them to wear masks, and get shots, the toll continues to fall heavily on the ranks of the red-hatted folk. The State of Washington, for example, reported recently that unvaccinated patients with COVID, 65 years or older, were four times as likely to die from the disease as those who had been vaccinated.

Scientific American painted a broader picture this past June. Based on CDC data from 28 U.S. jurisdictions, the death rate per week, ages 12 and up, from COVID, was 1.71 persons per 100,000 among the unvaccinated.

For those vaccinated, but not boosted, the death rate fell to 0.22, meaning the “unvaxxed” were eight times more likely to die.

For those of us vaccinated, and having had booster shots, the death toll plummeted to 0.1, meaning people who were furious about getting shots (people like Alex Jones of Infowars) were seventeen times more likely to go over the rainbow unnecessarily, and never come back.

That no doubt included many of the poor dopes who purchased bogus COVID-19 cures on Jones’s website. (See: 9/24/22.)

___

9/24/22: Rep. Kevin McCarthy and his party have real hopes of retaking control of the U.S. House of Representatives in November. With that lofty goal in mind the GOP rolled out its “Commitment to America” plan, to explain what it would like to do once they took charge.

You are thinking, maybe, “Finally come up with a good healthcare plan?” Or: “Hang Hunter Biden on live TV?”

Well, Republicans had a plan regarding abortion – they just didn’t want you to really know what it was.

__________

“You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.”

Abraham Lincoln

__________

Alas, Kevin and pals botched the delivery of their “Commitment” from the start. They included footage of American oil drillers, boosting energy independence, and having a grand time – because you knew in MAGA world, climate change wasn’t real. (It is, of course.) It turned out the film of the drillers they used were drilling…in Russia. Which given the slaughter in Ukraine was not a good GOP look.

Next, they used a quote from Abraham Lincoln, which to this blogger’s ear didn’t sound like Abe in any way, shape, or form. “Commitment is what transforms a promise into reality,” Mr. Lincoln supposedly said.

A little research by the free press soon uncovered the true source of the quote: Lehman Brothers, 1986, not Abraham Lincoln, 1864, in a newspaper ad, thanking employees for a good year. This was long before Lehman went belly up, declaring bankruptcy, turning a promise into a sea of red ink and touching off the massive economic catastrophe that nearly destroyed the U.S. economy in 2008.

As far as the question of abortion itself, the GOP plan promises vaguely that Republicans will fight for the unborn. What they don’t say is that their real positions are deeply unpopular with most Americans, including many Republicans, who haven’t been fooled. In Arizona, where the party controls the levers of government, a law from 1864, when Arizona was still a territory, has been reinstituted. Henceforth, abortion shall be illegal in all cases, including incest and rape. Under old territorial law, any individual who provided a woman with medicine or offered procedures with intent to cause a “miscarriage” faced two to five years in prison.

Now, they may again.

Meanwhile, Republicans in both houses of Congress have signed on in support of bills like the one introduced by Sen. Rand Paul, that would define life as beginning at the moment of “fertilization or cloning,” protecting the “born” or “preborn” (a zygote and fetus are now defined as “human persons”). All abortions can then be banned under the Fourteenth Amendment provision, which provides for equal protection to all persons under the law. “Nothing in this Act shall be construed to require the prosecution of any woman for the death of her unborn child, a prohibition on in vitro fertilization, or a prohibition on use of birth control or another means of preventing fertilization,” the Rand Paul version explains. But it’s just the first step in a chain, leading to total bans and laws like the one now in force in Arizona, or the one in Texas, or the one in Mississippi, which would all strike most Americans as nuts.

The House version is even more stringent, and makes no mention of protections for couples interested in in vitro fertilization or access to birth control – which should, according to GOP zealots, be curtailed, if not banned.

A zygote, or fertilized egg would now be protected.

“I’m not really that smart.”

IN OTHER NEWS, Republicans keep shooting themselves in their feet, as they keep damaging their chances to retake control of Congress. Democrats are likely to hold on to the Senate, at least.

Herschel Walker, GOP candidate for the Senate from Georgia, endorsed by none other than Donald J. Trump, did not bolster his chances for the win when he admitted last Tuesday, “I’m really not that smart.”

Walker, at left, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, right.

Here in Ohio, J. R. Majewski, running for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives (with a Trump endorsement, of course), has stumbled badly since the Associated Press fact-checked his campaign biography. Majewski first rose to fame after painting his lawn to look like a Trump shrine. Then he bolstered his run for office by claiming to have served bravely in Afghanistan, dodging enemy fire, in noble service to flag and country. And to Donald J. Trump.

In fact, he once explained, he had gone 40 days without a shower or running water, because conditions in Afghanistan were “tough.”

That would be true – if you were serving in Afghanistan – but Majewski had not, in combat or otherwise. He did at least put on an Air Force uniform, and did his duty in a supply unit that worked out of Qatar – which is more than any member of the Trump clan has ever done.

Then again, he claimed to be “an executive in the nuclear power industry,” but that wasn’t true, either.

YET ANOTHER sterling candidate for a seat in Congress, John Gibbs, also ended up doing more explaining to voters than is good. As a young man, attending Stanford (so you figure he’s got some brains) he laid down a variety of his thoughts in essays that even then didn’t sound good. It’s still possible to see what Gibbs wrote, back in 2000, and I took a look for myself.

I wondered if some of the initial media coverage might have taken his words out of context – but they did not.

“Gender roles,” Gibbs argued two decades ago, should never have been challenged by feminists, or changed as a result. “Why is it implausible that ‘traditional’ gender roles are natural, not societal,” he asked, describing them as “constructs designed to make life as livable as possible.”

“Why is patriarchy bad?” he continued, then answered himself. “We propose the idea that patriarchal organization is the best model for the continued success of a society.”

The Gibbs version of the good old days?

Gibbs admitted that in academics women often performed as well, or better than men. But if one were to answer the question, “Are men smarter than women?” Gibbs believed the answer was clear. “If by ‘smart’, one means the ability to think logically about broad and abstract ideas in order to deduce a suitable conclusion, without relying upon emotional reasoning,” yes, men were smarter, for sure.

This superior ability to “think logically,” went a great way to explain why “all major scientific and political advances in all societies have been carried out by men, and why males consistently outscore females on abstract math and logic portions of standardized tests in all nations.”

For example, in Afghanistan. The fact girls are barred from attending high school has nothing to do with their failure to excel in math or struggle with logic on standardized tests. And those Taliban men? Superior “ability to think logically about broad and abstract ideas” for sure.

Ladies, don your burqas!

In fact, Gibbs suggested that the idea women had been oppressed for “so long,” was false, and a product of poor feminist logic, itself.

He did concede that some men lacked ability to think logically – unlike himself. Then he proved his point (according to his own version of logic) by noting, “It occurs very frequently that men who do not have the ability to think logically in an abstract manner end up supporting feminism and other irrational ideologies.”

Patriarchy, he insisted, has always been the natural state of the world – and patriarchy has always been good, and women were never downtrodden. Child brides? Excellent! Husbands allowed, by law, to beat their wives to teach them obedience – genius! Foot binding of girls in China? Polygamy allowed according to several major religions? Serfdom and then slavery validated by man’s laws? All the best practices were instituted over the centuries by logical men!

Gibbs did agree that fathers should play “an integral part” in raising kids. “We simply believe that this is not the father’s primary task, whereas it is the mother’s.” Even the increase of women working outside the home, he considered a mistake – and also females having the right to vote. Women had been duped by feminists into believing that working for wages was good, that being “family women or child-raisers,” was not enough for them to feel real “self-worth.”

In his view, feminism was making American women sad.

As a result, a great many women may be experiencing unhappiness that they would not have otherwise felt had they not been socialized into market production [work outside the home] since the day they were born. There is no way to measure the number of women and abandoned children that have been negatively affected by the ideology of female market production.

Then Gibbs hit on a critical point. Men were also suffering as a result of the feminist menace:

And clearly, having more women in the workplace does not benefit men, it only strains them. In the post-feminist workplace, men must bend over backwards to make sure that they do not inadvertently offend any woman who might happen to hear a joke or comment uttered in humor and harmlessness. Numerous sexual harassment laws are introduced, which spawn a barrage of sexual harassment cases of frivolous proportions, wasting the time and energy of the courts and legal system, and taxpayer dollars … Businesses must make a concerted effort to hire and promote women who may or may not be up to par with their male counterparts. In addition, the chemistry of having women in a masculine environment may reduce business cohesiveness and productivity from what it might have been otherwise (this is especially true of the military, although by no means limited to it).

Women, he went on to add, are not less dependent than they once were on husbands to provide all economic support. Now they work for companies and depend on them to provide pay, instead.

In fact, Gibbs goes full-on Founding Fathers, when he talks about women and the right to vote.

Some argue that in a democratic society, it is hypocritical or unjust for women, who are 50% of the population, not to have the vote. This is obviously not true, since the founding fathers, who understood liberty and democracy better than anyone, did not believe so. In addition, all people under age 18 cannot vote, although they too comprise a significant portion of the population. So we cannot say that women should be able to vote simply because they are a large part of the population.

Yes. See the superior logic of Mr. Gibbs? If toddlers and kindergartners and thirteen-year-olds in braces can’t vote, why should adult women be allowed?

(One might assume he thinks African Americans should still be counted as 3/5^th’s humans, as the Founding Fathers decided, though he does not say.)

He continued:

Most importantly, we should consider whether or not our democratic process and our country has benefited from women’s suffrage. Before suffrage, the size of federal and state governments remained constant and small. For times of crisis in which more spending was needed, spending returned to normal levels after the crisis was over. In other words, a constantly increasing federal government was not always the norm. However, after women’s suffrage, government spending skyrocketed. More and more laws went on the books, and taxes increased to levels that could not have been imagined beforehand. This is because women tend to vote more “socialistic” than men, for larger and more intrusive government; this is part of what is known as the “Gender Gap.”

“It goes without saying,” Gibbs suggests, “that larger government is clearly counter to the basic principle of our free and democratic society, which is that the smallest government is the best government.” The bigger government becomes, the greater the chance that our freedoms are put at risk. This, he says was “considered the most important principle during the construction of the American government,” hence the “system of checks and balances” the Founders put in place.

“Thus, we conclude that increasing the size and scope of government is unequivocally bad. And since women’s suffrage has caused this to occur on a larger scale than any other cause in history, we conclude that the United States has suffered as a result of women’s suffrage.”

In summary, Ohio voters, you should send Gibbs to Washington D.C., where he will employ his superior logic to ensure that if Ohio women are raped, they will have to have the rapists’ babies. He will cut down on healthcare coverage for poorer families, and work to end Social Security, because he will not be ruled by emotion, like a woman. And he will support huge tax cuts for billionaires, just as George Washington and John Adams always intended.

Also, it might be fun to bring back witchcraft trials and charge feminists, and then burn them at the stake, since logical men once believed witches were real and a threat to all that was right and good in a patriarchal world.

___

9/25/22: Rejected-President Trump, his toadies, and loyal minions endured a sustained beating in the courts last week. So you had to be paying close attention to have any hope of figuring it all out.

EX-PRESIDENT BLUBBER has been in the news repeatedly, himself, after making a series of false and ludicrous claims.

Where do we even begin?

He has said the F.B.I. planted classified documents during the search of his Mar-a-Lago estate. In court, however, his lawyers have not made that same claim – because lying in court would leave them facing serious legal jeopardy. Trump has also insisted that he declassified everything that was found during the F.B.I. search – simply by “thinking about it” in his head.

Marc Short, former Vice President Mike Pence’s old chief of staff, responded as most people with even minimal reasoning skills would. The claim was “absurd, obviously,” he said. “And I think it would make it very difficult for the intelligence community to have a classification system if that was the case.”

(Trump made the claim that he had magical declassification skills on Sean Hannity’s show – and Hannity didn’t bother to push back, which shows you what a hack Hannity is and has always been.)

CERTAINLY, the court defeats have piled up for Team Trump in the last few days. Rudy Giuliani, who skipped out of a court appearance on Friday, was ordered to pay $225,000, plus legal fees, to his third ex-wife, and do so within two weeks or go directly to jail. Mike Lindell, the crazy QAnon-spouting MyPillow guy, and Sidney Powell, former Trump attorney are both in a jam over their parts in an alleged MAGA-Republican plot to commit election fraud in 2020, in multiple states. Mike was stopped in the drive-thru lane of his local Hardee’s, when federal agents surrounded him, served a warrant, and confiscated his phone. Sidney was scheduled to appear before a Georgia grand jury, investigating but simply failed to appear – which means she could face legal consequences.

Hardee’s enjoyed all the free advertising that came in the national news, and took advantage in a TV barrage, suggesting to customers, “Now that you know we exist... you should really try our pillowy biscuits.”

We also learned, earlier this month, that the Justice Department has subpoenaed 30-40 of the former president’s aides and associates (dare we say “accomplices”) as part of the investigation into the alleged election fraud plot. (The idea being: to create fake electors in seven key states, send in fake votes to gum up the January 6, 2021 count, and somehow pressure Vice President Mike Pence to go along, and throw out real votes from said seven states.)

We don’t know all of the lucky recipients – but we do know Boris Epshteyn and Mark Roman also had phones seized. Epshteyn, for example, is known to have copied on emails sent by Professor John Eastman, believed to be the mastermind of the plot. And we know Eastman has already refused to answer questions in two investigations, one in Georgia, and one in Congress, citing his Fifth Amendment right not to be forced to incriminate himself. So, there’s that. Dan Scavino, Trump’s former social-media director, also had a subpoena delivered to his hands. Also served, according to CNN, were former Trump 2020 campaign manager Bill Stepien and Sean Dollman, the chief financial officer of the campaign.

Stephen Miller, who bills himself as “Senior Advisor to President Trump,” has served the Orange God of Mar-a-Lago during his entire political career. Miller, in fact, deserves the blame for supporting many of his boss’s worst impulses – including pushing the idea of locking up children in cages to “protect” the southern border, and also the white race. In Miller’s mind, however, none of the Trump aides or allies have broken any laws. Rather, he and they are in a fight to save the country from “irreversible decimation.” For example, from too many white people marrying darker-skinned people, or from not enough white immigrants and too many yellow, black and brown. In fact, Miller sees himself as a victim in the story, tweeting Friday, “The DOJ is now an extension of the Democrat Party – armed with the power of personal destruction.”

In point of fact, DOJ wasn’t destroying anyone. It was investigating a plot, and judges kept upholding the efforts of various investigators across this great land. Kelli Ward, the head of the Arizona GOP, got punched in the legal jaw by a federal judge – who ruled that she and her husband would have to turn over phone records, since they too are alleged to have been part of the plot to submit fake electoral votes. Steve Bannon, as many of you may already know, has been convicted by a jury for “contempt of Congress,” after refusing to answer questions related to the same alleged plot.

Plus, he’s facing trial in New York for money laundering and fraud – in a state version of a federal case, where his two accomplices have already had their day in court, and been convicted of various crimes.

On Thursday, Alex Jones melted down during another one of his trials for defaming families of children killed at Sandy Hook – and the judge had to warn him that another outburst would lead to him being charged with contempt. That meant Jones decided not to testify in his own defense on Friday, and rant instead outside the court, calling proceedings a “show trial,” worthy of what you might see in North Korea, instead. He went on to describe his trial as “totally rigged,” and “an absolute, total fraud.”

Jones called himself a crack journalist, and insisted he was serving people “hungry for real independent analysis and commentary and opinion,” on his show. His problem wasn’t lying about the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre, and unleashing a torrent of abuse that lasted for years. “I’m a populist, conservative, nationalist patriot Christian,” he claimed, outside of court.

Then he bellowed warning at the gathering of spectators and reporters, before ending with a plug. “They want your free speech. They want your guns. They want your whole world,” he howled. “They want your whole life. But at the end of the day, America is waking up to them and the deep state … All right, guys – Infowars.com.”

Really, you couldn’t begin to make this all up, even if you were the greatest novelist who ever lived, writing about the most corrupt government in the history of this great land. The former president himself has kept reporters busy in recent days, tracking down all the stories of his legal risks. In New York, he has been sued for his role in an alleged $250 million fraud scheme. (This is the same basic scheme which led the Allen Weisselberg, the chief financial officer of the Trump Organization, to plead guilty to a baker’s dozen, plus two more, of felony charges.)

A fraud that big would take a lot of work to pull off – and as we always say, Trump could be innocent in the end – but it’s a civil case, and he’s already in a legal jam. In a civil case, at least in the State of New York, a defendant who refuses to answer questions, by pleading the Fifth, can be considered to be admitting having committed wrongdoing, and when Donald had a chance to testify in his defense, he invoked his right against self-incrimination a whopping 440 times. If the astute juror in this case failed to catch the general drift of the scheme, it also helped to remember that Eric Trump, also a defendant in the case, took the Fifth 500 times.

In that regard, Eric tied Mr. Weisselberg, who still had to cop a deal and plead to those fifteen felony charges.

So it would seem the Trump folks have more than a little financial chicanery they need to hide. On Wednesday, New York Attorney General Letitia James said her investigation had uncovered “staggering” amounts of falsified business information and fraud in the case. Also charged, along with Eric and his dad, were Donald Trump Jr., Ivanka Trump, the Trump Organization itself, Weisselberg (again) and Jeffrey McConney, the controller at the firm. In one curious example from the 222-page case filing, Ms. James noted that Donald Sr. had claimed his penthouse apartment was 30,000 square feet, and estimated its value at $327 million, when asking for bank loans. Someone should have handled Melania Trump a tape measure, at least, because the apartment was in actuality only a third that size. (Melania, we should note, has not been charged.)

In fact, the former president’s “best” defense may be his nonstop effort to discredit the U.S. justice system.

As The New York Times noted on Tuesday, Trump has described his current legal woes as just another part of the “witch hunt,” that began on that summer day in 2015, when he descended the escalator and announced he would really like to be President of the United States – and pal around with Vladimir Putin for fun. As the Times explained, “Taylor Budowich, a spokesman for the former president, described the various investigations as ‘weaponized government’ by Democrats whose efforts ‘lack credibility, they lack the facts, and they lack the law.’”

Finally, let’s compile a list of the claims, the former president has offered in his defense, regarding his refusal to turn over classified documents he had squirreled away at his Mar-a-Lago estate.

(Worth $739 million, Trump claimed when seeking financial aid from big banks – worth only $75 million, in fact, according to Ms. James.)

Donald seemed to score a win in federal court, when a judge he appointed, put a halt to investigators’ efforts to review all the documents they seized in the raid. Yes! The U.S. judicial system finally working as it should. Then that judge ordered the Department of Justice to appoint a “special master” to review any documents taken, for material protected by executive privilege, and so forth. Team Trump suggested that Judge Raymond J. Dearie would really excel at the job – and maybe drag out the story until after the midterm elections were over.

In other words, Team Trump did have the law on its side (at least this once). Or so they would have liked everyone to believe. Judge Dearie soon disabused everyone of that belief. Trump had offered a variety of idiotic defenses in this stolen, top secret documents case. He had declassified everything the F.B.I. found at Mar-a-Lago, he said – sometimes doing so by just thinking about declassifying materials in his mind. The F.B.I. had also planted materials at his place. Judge Dearie has asked DOJ to provide a detailed inventory of all materials seized during the raid – and then he has told Trump’s legal team to put up in court or shut up.

By September 30, they must respond with a list specific of items in that inventory “that plaintiff asserts were not seized from the premises.” You can’t say the F.B.I. planted materials unless you can back the claim up. Otherwise, you’re lying in court, and that’s grounds for a perjury rap. (At least one Trump lawyer, Christina Bobb, who used to be a TV presenter for OAN, is already in deep legal doo, after informing agents from the Department of Justice in June – before the raid – that all classified documents at Mar-a-Lago had been returned. Then Donald claimed that he had given “verbal orders” to declassify all the classified documents authorities found – which he had also hinted were planted during the raid.

The judge has now suggested that his lawyers provide any proof they have of either of these claims. “This submission shall be plaintiff’s final opportunity to raise any factual dispute as to the completeness and accuracy of the Detailed Property Inventory,” he warned.

In the same way, Dearie shot down the former president’s delusional claim that he had previously declassified everything found at Mar-a-Lago during the search. The judge suggested that Trump’s lawyers provide proof of that claim, or he’d have to assume they had no proof at all. “If the government gives me prima facie evidence that this [material] is classified, and you decide not to advance a claim of declassification ... as far as I’m concerned that’s the end of it,” he said.

Unless, one would suppose, the Trump legal team could present someone like Mike Lindell, who might swear under oath that he could read the former president’s mind.

___

9/28/22: Let’s catch up on stories of right-wing ineptitude, malfeasance, and skullduggery you might have missed.

Jeffrey Moore, an appointee to the Gadsden County, Florida board of commissioners, had to resign abruptly after a picture surfaced of Moore at a Halloween party some years ago. Moore thought it would be a really fun idea to put on a KKK robe and attend and there was mirth for all!

Ironically, Governor Ron DeSantis thought Moore would be a perfect person to appoint to the Gadsden board – Florida’s only majority-black county.

Hurricane Ian is bearing down on Florida, packing a Cat 4 punch (and just two miles shy of a Cat 5), after picking up force over the heated Gulf of Mexico waters. Just about every scientist in the world now knows that climate change, heating waters globally, is making storms worse.

The city of Tampa looks to be in the direct path of the storm.

Meanwhile, Governor DeSantis is busy trying to make sure no Florida teacher says “gay,” and shipping undocumented immigrants – which his agent rounded up in Texas – to Martha’s Vineyard (which is not about to get smashed by Hurricane Ian.)

Sadly, while many Republicans continue to believe in QAnon myths, and the tall tale of the stolen 2020 election – like misguided kindergartners, who think Santa is actually a cannibalistic pedophile coming down the chimney to eat them – they refuse to believe in the very real threat of climate change.

Scientists have now discovered white spruce trees spreading north, across the Alaska tundra. Until recently, fierce winds and brutal cold kept the tundra nearly free of trees. According to ecologists at Alaska Pacific University, white spruce are advancing at a rate of 2.5 miles north per decade, a phenomenon known as “Artic greening.” It’s another sign (which Republicans will not pay attention to – or deny, if they do – that the planet is heating up. Good luck to our children and grandchildren!

We’re f**king up the climate.

President Biden, acting like a normal president, has already pledged to commit all necessary federal resources to helping Florida recover from any damage the hurricane will deliver. This is not the same as former-President Trump, in his heyday, threatening to withhold aid after California was swept by massive forest fires.

Trump was angry – because Californians never voted for him. Biden was not angry, because he is not a megalomaniac, and he can deal maturely with the fact that Florida went for Trump in 2020.

Biden doesn’t even care that DeSantis is a giant asshole.

POSTSCRIPT: Speaking of assholes, Ex-President Blubber has been cozying up to his QAnon base lately. In one recent post on Truth Social, he could be seen sporting a “Q” lapel pin. On numerous occasions now, he has linked to stories and memes created by believers in the QAnon myths.

One story he did not link, however, was the one about Igor Lanis, a Michigan husband and father, who shot his wife multiple times in the back with a shotgun, killing her, and then wounded his daughter Rachel, 25, critically. He also killed the family dog – and when police arrived opened fire on them.

Return fire claimed his life, too.

Rebecca Lanis, 21, another daughter was at a birthday party at the time of the shooting. Growing up, she later told reporters, her parents were “extremely loving.” So, what went wrong with dad?

QAnon.

The Daily Beast sums up the tragic tale perfectly.

“He had a sense of reality,” Rebecca Lanis said. “But then after 2020, when Trump lost, he started going down these crazy rabbit holes.”

That year, Lanis became fascinated by QAnon and the idea that Joe Biden stole the election.

“It’s a very big contributor to what happened,” Rebecca Lanis said of her father’s QAnon beliefs.

Igor Lanis’ mental health worsened as he became drawn into the conspiracy theories, according to Rebecca Lanis. He insisted that family members watch conspiracy-theory videos about the 5G cell towers, vaccines, and the election. He started to believe that some world leaders were in fact alien lizard-people in disguise, a fringe conspiracy theory even among QAnon supporters. Rebecca Lanis said family members tried to pull her father out of his beliefs, but arguing with him was “pointless.”

Kind of like trying to convince the MAGA faithful that Trump is lying about the stolen election.

And lizard-people don’t exist.

FUN FACT: According to a DeSantis staffer, in private, the Florida governor has called the former president “a TV personality and a moron who has no business running for president.” Trump, who once referred to DeSantis as his “great friend,” now fumes about his disloyalty, and refers to the governor as a “phony.”

Who says this liberal blogger can’t ever agree with Republicans?

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9/29/22: Remember when a congressman from Florida voted against a $9.7 billion aid package for people who had been flooded out our seen homes destroyed by Superstorm Sandy.

Which hit, much like a hurricane, but farther north than typical.

Of course you don’t. If you are a fan of Ex-President Blubber and QAnon, you are busy worrying about lizard people taking over the world and eating your children. And if you are a normal person, who realizes lizard people positively do not exist, you have your normal life to live.

The blogger, however, is retired (and possibly abnormal). So he remembers – with a little help from the internet – when Congressman Ron DeSantis, now governor of Florida, voted “no,” on the package.

The blogger also remembers that Sen. Ted Cruz voted against the aid package because Texans hadn’t suffered. If a New Yorker or New Jersian couldn’t vote for Ted, Ted wouldn’t have cared if they were tortured by Russians. Ted claimed he hated deficit spending in 2013. He hated it almost as much as he hated Donald Trump in 2016, after Donald insulted Ted’s wife’s looks.

That was all before Ted began groveling at the feet of the Orange God of Mar-a-Lago.

In any case, when Hurricane Harvey blasted Texas in 2017, Sen. John Cornyn leaped into action. He had voted against disaster relief after Superstorm Sandy, probably because he forgot New York and New Jersey were part of the Union. Two short weeks later, Sen. Hypocrite noted on his website that he had proudly voted for a $15.25 billion package to aid victims of Harvey.

Even better, he sponsored and passed a bill to grant Texans $5.5 billion in federal tax relief. Because that’s what fiscal conservatives do!

In October 2017, Cornyn voted again for a disaster relief bill – which passed – this time providing “$36.5 billion in funding relief for Texans as well as those impacted by wildfires in the western United States.”

Even better, Cruz and Cornyn voted in February 2018, for a third disaster aid package, which “included $89.3 billion in emergency funding for areas hit by natural disasters, including Harvey. This includes $23.5 billion for FEMA and $28 billion for HUD to rebuild housing and infrastructure.”

Finally, when brutal winter cold in February 2021 caused the Texas electrical grid to short out, both Texas senators called on President Biden to provide disaster relief for thirteen million people affected by broken water pipes, after they froze, or who had been harmed in other ways.

Sen. Cruz famously fled to Cancun shortly thereafter, where the water pipes weren’t frozen, and he could be toasty and warm.

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September 30 – Mr. Blogger Goes on Vacation: On the last day of September, the blogger and his excellent wife took off for Portland, Oregon, there to visit their daughter and son-in-law, Sarah and Logan.

As in “took off” by car. It was fifty-two years since the blogger was discharged from the United States Marines.

Mr. B. is also a retired teacher. So he likes to drive across the U.S.A. and see the sights (and the historical sites).

Finally, he has pedaled across the country twice on a bicycle. Since he is still in his youth, he is thinking about doing it again – when he hits age 75 in 2024. That meant on this trip he was scoping out potential routes.

For the next nineteen days, it was hard to follow the news. So he is a position of catching up now.