April - June 2023 - Fat Donald Won't Go Away

 

April 1, 2023: Scientists warn that in mid-March the world’s oceans hit the highest average temperature ever recorded. 

Climate change, MAGA dopes! 

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This guy is still here?

4/3/23: Warmer ocean waters have led to a record seaweed bloom in the Sargassum Sea: an estimated 13 million tons, to be exact. 

“Satellite images show the 5,000-mile-long belt of seaweed growing denser, and the bloom hasn’t even reached its peak yet.” Researchers “anticipate the seaweed masses will reach their largest size in June or July.” 

Experts at the University of South Florida warn, “Major beaching events are inevitable around the Caribbean, along the ocean side of Florida Keys and east coast of Florida, although the exact timings and locations are difficult to predict.” 

And nothing spells “Florida Fun,” quite like giant masses of seaweed washing up on beaches and then rotting in the sun. 

Rumor is Gov. DeSantis will blame the problem on transgender individuals trying to play girls’ sports.

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4/5/23: Voters in Wisconsin have spoken. By a 55% to 44% margin they elect a Democrat to fill a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court. 

That judge will give Democrats the votes to protect abortion rights, and overturn gerrymandered maps, which have given Republicans huge advantages in recent elections, in a purple state.

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4/6/23: Anytime we can catch crooks in government, it’s a good day for “We the People.” According to federal authorities, Rick Johnson, former Republican Speaker of the House in Michigan, received more than $110,000 in bribes in exchange for supporting companies seeking medical marijuana licenses. 

Johnson and three other defendants have signed plea deals, admitting to all charges. Johnson was, from 2017 to 2019, the chair of the Michigan marijuana licensing board. 

 

Speaking of bribery? Justice Clarence Thomas. 

And speaking of bribery – or what sounds a whole lot like bribery – ProPublica has exposed the friendly connection between Justice Clarence Thomas of the U.S. Supreme Court and Harlan Crow, a billionaire business tycoon. 

For example, we learn that shortly after the court issued its final rulings for 2019, Clarence and his wife Ginni were off for some fun in the sun. 

Justice Clarence Thomas boarded a large private jet headed to Indonesia. He and his wife were going on vacation: nine days of island-hopping in a volcanic archipelago on a superyacht staffed by a coterie of attendants and a private chef.

 

If Thomas had chartered the plane and the 162-foot yacht himself, the total cost of the trip could have exceeded $500,000. Fortunately for him, that wasn’t necessary: He was on vacation with real estate magnate and Republican megadonor Harlan Crow, who owned the jet – and  the yacht, too.

 

In fact, for more than two decades, Thomas has been taking expensive trips nearly every year, without spending his own money. 

Because he and Crow are just friends. 

For example, when Ginni Thomas founded a Tea Party organization in 2011, Crow donated $500,000. 

Then the organization paid Mrs. Thomas $120,000 to run it annually. 

Ironically, in a recent documentary about Justice Thomas’s life – which Crow paid to be made – Thomas claimed he liked to travel, just not in the way ProPublica revealed. “I prefer the RV parks. I prefer the Walmart parking lots to the beaches and things like that. There’s something normal to me about it,” Thomas said. “I come from regular stock, and I prefer that – I prefer being around that.” 

No doubt Harlan and Clarence had a good laugh later about that fable. 

They also vacation together almost every summer at Topridge, Crow’s private resort in the Adirondack Mountains. The resort is in an exclusive area where no one like Crow – or Clarence – has ever parked their RV in a Walmart lot. At a nearby hotel, built by the Rockefellers, rooms start at $2,250 per night. 

(Last September, we were also reminded that on his financial disclosure forms, Justice Thomas once “forgot” to include the $686,589 his wife earned, between 2003 and 2007, from the conservative Heritage Foundation.)

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4/7/23: Fox News proudly reports that Tucker Carlson has declared transgenderism a religion, and the most dangerous extremist movement in America today. Whereas you might have thought, “Neo-Nazis.” 

Or Scientologists. 

 

Does every country, and every person have “a” religion? 

I don’t watch Tucker, but I will read transcripts. So, here, as a public service: A few highlights from his Good Friday program: 

Happy Good Friday. This is the saddest and at the same time, by far the most hopeful day on the Christian calendar. There was a time not so long ago when the overwhelming majority of Americans observed Good Friday. They got up, they went to church, they talked about it at the office and at dinner that night, it was part of their culture, that’s no longer true. 

 

Tonight, you wonder how many Americans even know it’s Good Friday. So after hundreds of years, this has finally become a non-Christian country, but it’s not a secular country. You know sometimes people call it that, but they are wrong. There are no secular countries. Every country has a religion because every person has a religion, even if it’s atheism. Everybody worships something. We’re born that way. We can’t get away from it. So what is America’s religion now? 

 

Tucker is just getting warmed up, prepared to devote another night to petrifying the ill-informed.

 

I think he’s right. Every country (that I can think of) has a religion. Most have a shitload of faiths – most of which like to pick at the faults of all the others. The Baptists oppose the Catholics when it comes to…baptism. Quakers are antiwar. Here in Ohio, over in Adams County, we had a neo-Nazi church, which claimed to worship both Hitler and Christ. Just about every other religion for the last twenty centuries has attacked the Jews – including many QAnon fans who listen to Carlson, dare we say, “religiously,” every night. The Muslims are badly divided and prone to blowing members of opposition sects to bits. So it’s wrong to say every country has “a religion.”

 

That’s simplistic garbage.

 

It’s also absurd on its face to claim that atheism is a religion – since atheists believe in no god or gods.

 

But Tucker needs to build a stupid case on a stupid foundation to make a string of stupid points sound less stupid. So, he claims: “Transgenderism is this country’s fastest growing religion.” It’s the start of a stupid argument.

 

First, Carlson has made up the term “transgenderism,” to scare viewers. Transgender persons just want to dress how they want, and adult transgender individuals want to serve in the military without getting discharged, or take hormones and undergo breast removal surgery if their sexuality is garbled. It’s not a “sacrament” in some “faith” to want to use the bathroom of your choice.

 

But Carlson wants his fans to be petrified. He wants Christians to view transgenders as a threat to their beliefs, and their way of life. As an agnostic, myself, I will say right here that I am okay sharing a bathroom with a Mormon, a Jew, a transgender person, and even Tucker Carlson.

 

No Aztecs, though. A little too fond of human sacrifice.

 

Tucker goes on to insist – because he has an hour to fill every night and has to fill is somehow – that when it comes to Transgenderism, “Like many faiths, its theology features a supernatural transfiguration. The moment a person is transmogrified from one sex to another.”

 

This is akin to saying that if I get a knee transplant, or hair plugs, or a new heart valve, it’s a “spiritual transfiguration.” Carlson has now gone from sounding stupid to sounding idiotic.

 

 

Biden, godless Democrats, transgenders! Oh my!

 

From here on, his claims are increasingly absurd. “Converts to this faith,” he says, “abandon their old lives and embrace an entirely new – their former identities no longer exist. They’re dead names. But here’s one big difference, transgenderists do not believe in the god of monotheism.”

 

There’s no proof of that. You can believe in one God – and still believe He (or She) made a mistake on your sexuality.

 

But Tucker wants his listeners to be scared. He wants them to keep tuning into his show. So scare them he does. The “transgenderists” don’t just want to mess with accepted pronoun usage. “They believe that they themselves are God with the power to control nature and if you think about it, this should be a concern because it’s a recipe for extremism,” he continues. “So if you’re running the government, and you wanted to prevent violence in your own country, you would be very concerned about the growth of a cult like this.”

 

Of course! Now he can work in his nightly shot at President Biden and the “godless Democrats” the right likes to talk about, most of whom go to the same churches, if they go, as Tucker’s listeners. “But the Biden administration is not concerned at all,” he says. “In fact, it is cheering this cult on.”

 

From there, Carlson moves on to ginning up hate – a decidedly un-Christian message for a Good Friday night. Or any other night, frankly.

 

Ironically, he adds,

 

This is not the message to give to religious nuts with weapons, and particularly not this group of religious nuts with weapons. This is a group that has for years been committing acts of violence at rates much higher than you would expect across a cross-section of the population. To give a few examples, last year, a trans girl tried to assassinate Justice Brett Kavanaugh at his home. Then a self-described nonbinary shooter, also a member of the cult, murdered five people at her Colorado nightclub. In 2019, a trans teenager shot nine people in a high school, killing one, that was in Denver. In 2018, a mentally ill transgenderist shot up a Rite Aid distribution center in Aberdeen, Maryland. That massacre killed four. 

 

And on and on it goes – a full hour of Tucker Carlson, on Good Friday, a day of hope, too. Transgenders now want to kill us all. Biden is urging them on. Tucker doesn’t mention – for example – the killer in Las Vegas, who murdered fifty-eight people (more than all the examples he supplies, combined.) 

 

We must fear those who differ from us in their sexuality. 

Eventually, he manages to claim that transgender people want to oppress the rest of us.

 

So here’s a rule of thumb that is worth tacking on your refrigerator because it explains so much. If the people who claim to be victims are working to oppress you, they’re not actually victims. They are oppressors. And once again, with this cult specifically, that is inevitable. Because at its core is a provable lie, defied and revealed by the unchanging laws of science. We do not have the power to change our sex. It is in our DNA. It is in our bone structure. You dig up a fossilized skeleton thousands of years later, and you can tell its sex. We can’t change that much as we might want to. Much as we might feel deep sympathy [emphasis added] for those who want to, we still can’t change it. That is true. And so, of course, they have to criminalize your observing that it’s true because that is a challenge to the core of their faith. These are religious extremists on a jihad against the population. And in order to win, they have to force everyone to lie, period. 

 

Did Tucker just mention “deep sympathy?” He did! But there’s nothing in what he says during an hourlong broadcast that indicates sympathy for anyone. Carlson’s message is that we must fear those who differ from us in their sexuality. 

And if we hate them, frankly, in Carlson’s world, that’s a bonus. 

It’s the same playbook that used to work against gays and lesbians, until those suffering humans came out of the closet – and suddenly we realized they were people we knew, like my favorite cousin, Bill.

 

* 

AFTER plowing through an hour of transcripts, I went looking for studies about transgender folk being more violent than folks like me. (I’ve never started a fight in my life. So I think that’s a good sign. And I was in the Marines.) I see that UCLA has found that transgender people are four times more likely to be victims of violent crime than are people of male or female gender. 

That definitely undercuts Carlson’s fearmongering claims. 

 

“To cherry-pick four of them and say here’s a trend, that’s wrong.” 

Another study found that 1 out of every 2 persons identifying as transgender will be the victim of sexual abuse or assault. 

Then I turned up a study of transgender persons in Sweden, from 2011, which did show a slightly higher risk of violent crimes committed by 324 individual who had undergone sex reassignment – but that was based on a total of fourteen violent crimes. In fact, while trans women were much more likely to commit violent crimes (again based on this very limited sample), they were found to “commit crime, including violent crime, at a similar rate as any other males in the general population.” 

I’m retired, so I also looked at a study of trans teens which found (probably not surprisingly) that they were only half as likely to commit sexual assault as their cisgender peers. (“Cisgender” refers to individuals who identify with their sexual identity listed at birth.) So, that would be a plus for them. 

Finally, I found a story from the Associated Press that seems to torch Tucker’s Good Friday case. If mass shootings are defined as four or more persons killed and wounded at one time, since 2016, there have been 3,561 incidents in this country. Tucker cites four – including one in which no bullets were ultimately fired. 

In fact, I’ll leave it there and go Tucker one better. If everyone has a religion, I’ll say some people worship “Consumerism.” Some of Tucker’s biggest fans worship the “Orange God of Mar-a-Lago.” 

I guess I worship “Joe Burrow.” 

As for Tucker’ scary tales, I’ll let James Alan Fox, a statistician and professor of criminology, law and public policy at Northeastern University explain. “There are a lot of mass shootings, hundreds of mass shootings,” he notes, “and to cherry-pick four of them and say here’s a trend, that’s wrong. You can’t make a conclusion that that’s significant. It is not significant in any statistical sense.”

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4/9/23: On this fine Easter Sunday, Pastor Lance Wallnau streams a video on Facebook, warning that God has told him He will start killing political leaders next month. And why? He is going to smite those who have been “persecuting” Donald J. Trump. 

Wallnau explains, 

The elites in Washington, well, they shrug their shoulders. They’re happy that this is happening [this persecution], but I’ve been listening to prophecies lately about sudden deaths, and it looks to me like there could be some sudden deaths coming in May. In May, you’re going to see some of the disciplinary hand of God come down upon those people that have been standing in the path of what he [Donald] wants to do.

 

So, let the smiting begin…in May!

 

* 

AS FOR his own Easter Sunday message, former President Trump, channeling the spirit of Christ the Redeemer, went with an uplifting rant. 

And can someone please show this dope how to turn off the “capitalization” key? He’s mad about all the classified documents he kept. 

THE BOXES HOAX, WHERE I DID NOTHING WRONG, BUT BIDEN DID, IS JUST ANOTHER WAY FOR THE DEMOCRATS TO CHEAT ON ELECTIONS THROUGH, IN THIS CASE, ELECTION INTERFERENCE. I AM COVERED BY THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS ACT AND, UNLIKE BIDEN WHO WAS NOT PRESIDENT, HAVE THE POWER TO DECLASSIFY. MY PEOPLE ARE BEING THREATENED AND HARASSED BY A THUG PROSECUTOR WHO WA PUT IN BY BIDEN TRUMP HATERS, OUR LEGAL SYSTEM IS CORRUPT AND THE DEMOCRATS ARE USING IT TO [RIG] THE 2024 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION. WAY UP IN POLLS! 

 

BLOGGER’S NOTE (6/14/23): Still no smiting to report. Joe Biden did trip and fall after delivering a commencement address at the U.S. Air Force Academy. But it appears he tripped over a black sandbag placed to steady the teleprompter. 

Not exactly pillar of salt stuff 

Plus, it happened in June. 

Plus Donald J. Trump got indicted.

Did god smite Trump?

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4/10/23: During a recent hearing Florida lawmaker – Republican, of course – wanted to make his sentiments clear. At issue was a bill to make it a misdemeanor for an individual to use a bathroom that failed to correspond with the gender listed on their birth certificate. The lawmaker was all in on the bill, labeled the “Safety in Private Spaces Act.” 

 

“Mutants from another planet.” 

“We have people that live among us today on planet earth that are happy to display themselves as if they were mutants from another planet,” Rep. Webster Barnaby explained during Monday’s hearing. 

“This is the planet earth,” he continued, showing off his solid grasp of the solar system, “where God created men male and women female.” 

Webster didn’t like transgender individuals coming before lawmakers, either. “The lord rebuke you, Satan, and all of your demons and all of your imps who come parade before us,” Rep. Barnaby added for emphasis. 

“That’s right, I called you demons and imps, who come and parade before us and pretend that you are part of this world.” 

(He later apologized – one assumes, for having revealed the rancorous prejudice that warps his heart.)

 

FUN FACT: If God did create man in his image, then you could argue all birth defects are God’s fuckups. 

As the Mayo Clinic has noted, it is not unheard of for children to be born who are neither clearly male, nor clearly female:   

Ambiguous genitalia is a rare condition in which an infant's external genitals don't appear to be clearly either male or female. In a baby with ambiguous genitalia, the genitals may be incompletely developed or the baby may have characteristics of both sexes. The external sex organs may not match the internal sex organs or genetic sex.

 

Someone should tell Rep. Barnaby. The Mayo Clinic does an excellent job of explaining how such problems may arise.

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4/11/23: Does a day go by without Trump saying something stupid? In a chat with Tucker Carlson, he said sea level rise wasn’t going to be a problem. The waters would rise an eighth of an inch in 300 years. 

The real problem, he said, was “nuclear warming.” He went on to add that nobody talks about it, but it’s “the biggest problem we have in the world.”

Even Tucker seemed baffled by what Trump was talking about – but apparently, he meant nuclear warfare.

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4/12/23: Fat Donald isn’t going to like this; but the U.S. Navy (in which no Trump has ever served) has blotted out another page in our nation’s glorious history. The guided missile cruiser USS Chancellorsville, incongruously named after a Confederate victory during the Civil War, has been renamed! 

The ship has been rechristened the USS Robert Smalls. During that same Civil War, Smalls, a slave who had developed into a skilled ship’s pilot, managed to steal a vessel loaded with arms one night, and sail it out of the Charleston, S.C. harbor. On board were sixteen other crew and family members, all slaves. 

Smalls approached Union warships on blockade duty soon after, and turned over the vessel to Union hands. 

As recently as seven years ago, pictures of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson, victors in the battle, hung in the wardroom of the Chancellorsville. Lee and Jackson were indeed famous generals – and skilled commanders – but made their reputations fighting to destroy the United States of America.

 

* 

FAT DONALD isn’t going to like this either: Out in Arizona, even Republicans are getting sick of all the election-denying fools. After Rep. Liz Harris invited a speaker to a committee hearing to talk about how drug cartels, Mormons, magic beans, and maybe even a few talking gophers have been used to rig elections in that state (I’m exaggerating, but only slightly), the Arizona House of Representatives voted to oust her from a seat she had barely had time to warm up. Three months into her first term in office – and hopefully her last – Harris was expelled by a vote of 46-13, with all 28 Democrats, but also 18 Republicans in favor of removal.

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4/13/23: Rejected-President Trump is taking his indictment for tax fraud in New York well! 

On Truth Social today, he let ‘er rip:

* 

FOOD PRICES are too high – and Republicans are having fun blaming Joe Biden – at least when they’re not busy bitching about Hunter Biden’s Laptop from Hell. 

In other news, Smithfield Foods Inc. has agreed to pay $75 million in a lawsuit brought by consumers, after the company admitted to conspiring to keep pork supplies low and prices high. 

Hunter Biden was not involved.

 

* 

AND IN OTHER, other news, former Trump White House aide Peter Navarro has been ordered by a federal appeals court to hand over 200 to 250 emails he sent to various individuals while working for the president, using a private email server. 

Shades of Hillary Clinton! 

Only maybe better. When first subpoenaed to hand over those communications, Navarro’s lawyers sued to keep them secret unless Navarro was granted immunity. Immunity from what would be the question? 

COVID-19?

 

POSTSCRIPT: Navarro has also been sued for contempt of Congress, after he refused to give testimony about the post-2020 election plot to keep Donald in office for a second term he (ahem) didn’t win. 

Navarro refused, stalled off investigators for a year, and is scheduled for trial on September 5, 2023. (Navarro is not to be confused with Trump pal, Steve Bannon, who also refused to testify – who ended up on trial – and got sentenced to spend four months in the slammer. He is now – go figure – appealing that sentence.)

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4/14/23: Jeff Bezos, owner of Amazon.com has a new toy. The third-richest man in the world, with an estimated fortune of $126.2 billion, has had a 417-foot sailing yacht, the Koru, constructed for his sea-going enjoyment. Estimated upkeep will be another $50 million annually. 

An accompanying support vessel carries forty-five crew and staff, and comes with its own submarine. It has a helicopter landing pad, and there are luxury cars and jet skis and speedboats that can be launched or off-loaded in ports around the world, as needed. 

As for the Koru, in theory, Bezos and his main squeeze, Lauren Sanchez, can sail the world without leaving any carbon footprint.

 

POSTSCRIPT: In May, Bezos and Sanchez get engaged after five years as a couple. This time, a prenuptial agreement is a prerequisite. Bezos’s divorce from his first wife involved his handing over $38 billion. So he’s being more careful this time. 

What this all proves, obviously, is that Amazon workers should never be allowed to unionize, because if they secure higher wages, the costs will be passed on directly to consumers. And we are definitely not paying for Jeff’s boat. 

Or his private submarine. 

Amazon is said to currently employ 1,541,000 workers. If Jeff and Lauren wanted, they could give back $10 billion, as a wedding present to all those workers. That would allow Amazon to grant each employee a $6,489.29 bonus. 

And the fractions of a cent still remaining would come to $4,110. So you could hand a check over to some random homeless family. 

Bezos and the bimbo.

 

* 

ANOTHER dopey billionaire spoke at the NRA convention this week. And we do mean: Donald J. Trump. He insisted (for the 9,583rd time) that Democrats were scumbags, and should be wiped from the planet. 

“They are either stupid or they hate our country,” he told the gathered gun lovers. “And I don’t think they are stupid. Because anybody that can cheat so well at an election, they are not stupid. That means they hate our country. And I believe they hate our country.” 

(Sound of right-wingers loading their weapons.)

 

Speaking of Bezos and bozos, Kari Lake is in the news yet again. She too believes Democrats are scum, and they cheat in elections, and keep getting more votes than GOP candidates. But she won’t give up the fight to be declared the rightful governor of Arizona. “They’re nervous,” she insists. “They can feel the drumbeat. They know we’re coming at them. They can hear it, and they know we’re not gonna stop. I’m like a dog on a bone.”

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4/15/23: Gov. Kristi Noem of North Dakota, or South Dakota, or maybe Alberta,  wants to be president someday. Or be Trump’s VP running mate in 2024. So she wants to appeal to the GOP base. 

At this year’s National Rifle Association conference she assures the gun-loving audience that her two-year-old granddaughter is set for life. “The girl is set up,” Gov. Noem announces. You are thinking maybe: The kid knows her alphabet and can count to 10. Or she’s potty trained. Nope. Noem wants everyone to know the child already has her own shotgun and rifle.

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4/17/23: Fat Donald continues to prove that it is possible for a human being to spend four years in the White House and emerge more poorly informed than upon entry. For example, Trump continues to downplay the threat of climate change, insisting that scientists have said ocean levels will rise only 1/8th of an inch over the next 300 years. 

Never known for his focus on facts or concern for accuracy, he later changes that line to “1/100th of an inch in 350 years.” 

What the experts at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have actually warned is that sea rise will be 1/8 of an inch yearly – or ten inches, if not more, if my granddaughter lives to be 80. In fact, NOAA has warned that sea levels will rise by a foot along the U.S. coast by 2050. 

By 2100, the rise is likely to be two feet – and if we fail to curb greenhouse gas emissions, the rise could be as much as five feet, putting most of Miami, Florida underwater and drowning New Orleans forever. 

Trump, of course, will be long moldering in the grave, but our grandchildren and great grandchildren will be dealing with the consequences of his, and our, inaction. On this topic, Donald is a moron.

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4/18/23: This blogger has always been amused by the tall tale that if we let businesspeople run schools, education will improve dramatically. It has always been a simplistic argument – and has repeatedly been blown up on its foundation. Case in point: Fox News, where lying is the business model. 

(Also: Trump University, et. al.) 

 

Some very expensive lying. 

In the wake of the 2020 election, it served Fox News well – to hook viewers and keep them – to spend months and years, peddling the lie that Joe Biden didn’t really get 81 million votes, and Donald Trump was the real winner. Now we know. Fox hosts who spread the lie knew they were lying – and there’s been no evidence shown in court to prove that Trump ever came close to winning. 

If you like facts as much as this blogger – who happens to be a retired public school history teacher – and you dislike Trump as much as he does – because the blogger taught history and doesn’t like fascism – it can be a great deal of fun to see the facts keep spilling out in the tall tale of the “Stolen Election.” 

With evidence piling up against the company in court, Fox News, which did more to spread the lie that stealing votes tipped the outcome, and that Dominion Voting Systems was key to that thievery, had no choice but to settle a defamation suit filed by Dominion. 

Today, Dominion was awarded $787.5 million in damages.

 

$787.5 million. 

  

Meanwhile, we have fresh evidence that real learning and big profits don’t always go together.

Consider the nursing programs offered by Florida for-profit colleges Sacred Heart International Institute and Siena College of Health. 

The owners of those fine institutions were recently busted by the feds and had to plead guilty to selling phony nursing degrees to students who didn’t (technically) earn them – or know what they might be doing in a hospital. 

“According to court documents, the system offered students an ‘employment shortcut’ by allowing them to bypass necessary requirements such as hours of clinical work and passing national exams.” 

(Mere details!) 

 

The leaders of the two colleges and more than two dozen individuals involved in the alleged multi-million dollar fraud could face up to twenty years in prison. 

So, next time you or someone you love ends up in the hospital, ask every nurse, “Where did you earn your degree?” 

If they say Siena College of Health, don’t let them so much as empty a bed pan. 

 

FUN FACT: It would appear (to this blogger) that the folks who ran the Siena operation in Florida were hoping people could be duped into thinking they were dealing with graduates from Siena College, located in New York. 

Siena College is legit. 

FUN FACT #2 – MORE CROOKED COLLEGES: The above mentioned lawsuit did not involve Florida Career College (FCC), which operated campuses across Texas and Florida – where governors are working hard to protect us from reading books about gays. 

FCC had the perfect scam going. Prey upon high school dropouts. Promise them the training that would land them in good jobs, like auto mechanics and dental assistants. Help them apply for federal loans. But the dropouts would have to pass a test to qualify for such loans – and many couldn’t do it. So FCC came up with a plan. 

According to NPR, 

Federal investigators found that test administrators “routinely” broke the rules to help students pass, “including by filling in or changing answers after students finished their tests, helping students during testing or taking tests for them, and permitting students to use calculators in violation of testing rules.”

 

Between 2016 and 2021, more than half of FCC students dropped out of the programs with nothing to show for their time except large student loan debts. The annual cost at FCC’s largest program at a Tampa campus was $35,000. 

FUN FACT #3 – EVEN MORE CROOKED COLLEGES: Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a settlement which would forgive 3,500 students $6 billion in loans, after they were bilked by another set of shady college operators. Lincoln Educational Services, American National University and Everglades College were accused of offering low-quality courses and lying about career prospects after graduation. 

And this was just part of a huge class-action lawsuit, involving 200,000 students, and 151 institutions of “higher learning.” 

This larger lawsuit was brought in 2019, while Trump (he of Trump University) was president and Betsy DeVos (she of Amway sales scams) was Secretary of Education, and until Team Biden took over, had gone nowhere. 

$$$$$$$$

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4/19/23: In an attempt to put a “modern” spin on GOP policies, nine Michigan state senators voted to uphold a 1931 law that bans cohabitation of unmarried individuals – because that’s what Jesus always wanted. Under that 92-year-old statute a couple “who lewdly and lasciviously associates and cohabits together” could be subject to a $1,000 fine and up to a year in jail. 

A bill to overturn the law, however, passed on a bipartisan basis, 29-9, and will next move to the House of Representatives. 

This stance by half of Republican senators is in keeping with biblical teachings; and in line with similarly outdated laws that criminalized homosexual behavior. 

Next, I would like to see GOP leaders move to bring back stoning of adulterers – also popular with the folks who wrote the bible. (Leviticus: 20:10-12 and Deuteronomy 22:22-24.) Not so popular to Donald J. Trump. 

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4/20/23: Yay, TSA! If you have flown on a plane recently, you will be happy to know that the number of guns seized at airport checkpoints was up more than 10% again in the first quarter of this year. 

In the first quarter of 2023, 1,508 boneheads thought it would be a fantastic idea to bring a gun onboard the plane, in case they had to shoot at some other passenger – or the pilot or some crew member. That was up from 1,367 guns seized in the same period in 2022. And 93% of those guns were loaded this year.

 

* 

IT SUCKS to be Mike Lindell lately. Mike put forward a reward of $5 million after the 2020 election, insisting he had mathematical proof that votes must have been stolen and Trump couldn’t have lost. 

 

A Trump supporter proves Mike wrong. 

Five million big ones to anyone who could prove his evidence wrong. Robert Zeidman, a software expert – and a Trump supporter – took up the cudgels. If Trump had been cheated, Zeidman would want to know. 

And lo, he did prove, according to an independent arbitrator, that Mike’s “evidence” was s**t. Mike said he had proof that China participated in stealing votes. 

Zeidman proved, according to the arbitrator, that Mike’s evidence wasn’t even from 2020, nor was China involved. 

Lindell has been ordered to pay up within thirty days.

Lindell, left.

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4/24/23: The humble blogger is an enthusiastic fan of U.S. and NATO support for Ukraine – on the principle that Vladimir Putin is a murderous scumbag, and the people of Ukraine are being systematically brutalized. 

So, I will not complain and (unlike former President Trump) will pay my share of federal income taxes. 

Still, it can be eye-opening to learn that in 2022, the United States spent more on its military ($877 billion) than the next ten largest spenders combined did on theirs. 

#2: China ($292 b.), #3 Russia ($86 b.), #4 India ($81 b.), #5 Saudi Arabia ($75 b.), #6 United Kingdom ($69 b.), #7 Germany ($56 b.), #8 France ($54 b.), #9-10. Japan and South Korea ($46 b. each) and, not surprisingly, #11 Ukraine ($44 b.). 

Or: $849 billion combined.

M1A1 Abrams tanks will be sent to Ukraine. 

 

* 

IN OTHER eye-popping news, Fani Willis, Fulton County, Georgia, District Attorney, has announced that a decision to indict in the case of Donald Trump and his allies, in an election fraud investigation, will be coming this summer. Willis sets out a timeline – between July 11 and September 1 – and warns local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies to begin gearing up to provide extra security. She cites the explosion of violence that took place on January 6, 2021. 

 

“CRYSTAL clear.” 

You shouldn’t have too much trouble reading between the lines to grasp the import: Willis is going to indict former President Trump. 

In a related matter, Tucker Carlson, the top-rated host at Fox News has been fired – for lying about the 2020 election and doing his level best to convince his deluded viewers that Trump somehow won. 

Trump didn’t. And as of this morning, at least 604 January 6 rioters have been convicted of crimes related to their attempts to overturn the results of that fair election. (Trump is still lying about losing.) 

The judge in the defamation case filed against Fox News, by Dominion Voting Machines, was brutal in his most recent ruling. It was “CRYSTAL clear,” he ruled, that none of the claims of a rigged election – made by Carlson and others at Fox – were true. These are the same claims Trump is still spewing.

___

May 1, 2023: If you’ve never noticed, Donald Trump routinely turns on people he once hired and considered great. 

 

Trump takes shot at McEnany, Loomer racks up Bigot Points. 

Today, he got May off to a strong start, taking a shot at his last lying White House press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany. In February, Kayleigh urged Gov. Ron DeSantis to announce as candidate for president in 2024. 

“How can you wait when you are currently the hottest governor in Republican politics…?” she wondered. 

With DeSantis slumping in recent polls, Trump thought it over this morning, and  decided to post on Truth Social: “I guess Kayleigh is no longer speaking so favorably about DeSanctimonious now that his Polls are shot!” 

This, in turn, prompted the equally classless, far-right commentator Laura Loomer to take a slap at McEnany. Said Laura of Kayleigh: 

Over the last few months, she’s been a cheerleader for @GovRon DeSantis even though she owes her career to President Trump.

 

She still hasn’t endorsed him for 2024.

 

#Ingrate

 

Since Loomer did the hashtag schtick, we could hashtag her for some of her twisted ideas: “#hatesMuslims,” would work. Loomer scored high marks with religious bigots some time back when she called Islam a “cancer on humanity.” She also complained because whenever she used Uber or Lyft she had to sit in the back while Muslim drivers took her where she wanted to go. 

Loomer, who ran for a seat in Congress but lost, also racked up #Bigot Points when she suggested that no Muslim American should be allowed to serve in the legislature, even if elected. 

(Apparently Loomer has never read Article IV in the U.S. Constitution.) 

As an added “bonus,” when not hating on members of an entire religion, Loomer has found time to call both the massacres at #Sandy Hook and #Majory Stonemen Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida “hoaxes.” 

Naturally, Trump had to be talked out of hiring Loomer recently, to help run his 2024 campaign.

 

* 

WE SHOULD not confuse Trump’s attack on McEnany (rather mild by Trumpian standards) with, for instance, his recent attack on Mick Mulvaney. If you have forgotten, Mulvaney, known as a “fiscal conservative,” was first hand-picked by Mr. Trump to head up the Office of Management and Budget in his administration. Mulvaney held that post from February 2017, following his Senate confirmation, till March 2020. Meanwhile, Trump decided to give him a second post, with Mulvaney serving as Acting Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. 

Admittedly, neither post was particularly taxing, since Team Trump did less than nothing to protect consumers, and Trump never tried in the least to balance the budget. Still, Donald thought Mick could manage even more responsibility – and in January 2019, Mick was made Acting White House Chief of Staff. Mulvaney also held that post until March 2020. Then he was sent off to Northern Ireland, to relax a bit, recuperate, and serve as U.S. Special Envoy. 

Recently, Trump lambasted him in a screed on Truth Social. He insisted that Mulvaney was made only “‘Acting’ Chief of Staff because I never would have named him to the permanent position.” Trump went on to call him “perhaps the dumbest person” working at the White House during his administration. “Merely a ‘backbencher,’ who once gave a news conference that was legendarily bad,” Donald fumed, “he is now with CBS Fake News, and should be grateful to the man who made him ‘famous.’” 

Finally, in hopes of hammering home some kind of point into the skulls of those dumb enough to believe what Donald posts on Truth Social – about what a great judge of character he was, and how he always hired the “best people” – Trump added: “This guy was uncharismatic, a born loser.” 

 

FUN FACT: Trump once called his first choice as Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, “dumb as a rock.” 

Mulvaney was dumber than that? And still Trump gave him four different posts in his administration????

 

BLOGGER’S NOTE: On May 30, Trump blasts McEnaney again, after she appears on Fox News. He accuses her of putting out the wrong poll numbers on purpose, to make it look like DeSantis is doing better than he is. He calls his former press secretary a “milktoast,” spelling it wrong, of course. “The RINOs & Globalists can have her,” he adds. “FoxNews should only use REAL stars.”

___ 

 

5/5/23: Good news on the job front. In April, the U.S. economy added 253,000 jobs. Unemployment fell to 3.4%. 

That is: Lower under Joe Biden than at any time during Trump’s four impeachment-filled years in office. 

Job gains were revised downward for March, to 165,000. 

Meanwhile, election-deniers continued to keep clumps and clusters of lawyers employed. It was a minor slap: But Kari Lake’s legal team has been ordered to reimburse the State of Arizona $2,000 for making “false factual statements” regarding Ms. Lake’s defeat in the 2022 gubernatorial election. 

Like her orange-tinted mentor, Kari continues to insist she won that election. 

The Arizona Supreme Court has ruled that her claim that more than 35,000 ballots had been improperly added to the total vote was bogus and false and pig poop. Kari’s folks have ten days to write out a check to the Clerk of Courts.

___ 

 

5/6/23: Trump calls his former Attorney General Bill Barr a “coward,”  calls him “weak & angry,” “a Republican in name only,” and adds for good measure that Barr is “pathetic and slovenly.” 

And, while he’s at it, Fat Don (speaking of slovenly) announces that if we are dumb enough to give him a second shot at the presidency, he will revive his “Muslim ban.” 

This will surprise his friends in Saudi Arabia, who now run half of professional golf in this country.

___ 

 

5/9/23: E. Jean Carroll easily prevails in her lawsuit for defamation against Donald J. Trump. In a civil case, the jury votes, 9-0, taking only three hours to decide, that the former president did sexually assault Ms. Carroll thirty years ago. She is awarded $5 million in damages and assorted costs. 

Nevertheless, Trump apologists call it a win, after the jury decides it can’t be sure Ms. Carroll was raped, but does believe sexual assault occurred.

 Donald, of course, handles defeat with typical maturity. On Truth Social he explodes, “I HAVE ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA WHO THIS WOMAN IS. THIS VERDICT IS A DISGRACE – A CONTINUATION OF THE GREATEST WITCH HUNT OF ALL TIME!” 

9-0, DUDE. 

AND YOU PAID A LOT FOR THE “BEST” LAWYERS.

 

* 

THERE are days when you have to ask yourself how much stock Republicans really put into their “family values” claims. 

Texas state Rep. Bryan Slaton, a married man in good standing, is forced to resign from office the day before a vote to kick him out of the legislature. As HuffPost notes, Rep. Slayton has made a career out of warning other Texans about drag queens and other “groomers,” who want to sexualize our children and break all of the Ten Commandments and cheat at Scrabble in one fell swoop. 

He was found, following an investigation, to have “engaged in a sexual relationship with his 19-year-old intern, plied her with alcohol and demanded her silence.” 

Or as the Texas Tribune put it more pungently, Slaton gave the young woman “enough alcohol before their encounter that she felt dizzy and had double vision.” Had Slaton not cashed in his chips, he would have been the first Texas lawmaker booted since 1927. 

Being the diligent blogger I am, when I note that the 16-page investigative report is available, I take a look. It turns out three interns in Slaton’s office complained about sexual harassment and retaliation. Two were 19, Sophie A. and Emily J., and one was 21, Hannah W., which tells you where this story is headed. 

Findings include: 

11. On or about March 31–April 1, 2023, Slaton violated House Rule 15, §§ 1(b) and (c)(1) by engaging in harassment prohibited by law, specifically sexual harassment, and by not conducting himself in a manner free of harassment, by both inappropriate physical behavior and having sexual intercourse with a legislative aide working in his state office and over whom he had primary responsibility for overseeing and who was unable to give effective consent.

 

19. At all times relevant to this matter, Sophie A. was a legislative aide in Slaton’s Capitol office. She was initially hired effective January 8, 2023, as a full-time employee at a monthly salary of $1,500. She received a $1,000 raise effective February 1, 2023.

 

20. Hannah W. recounted a lobbying event early during this session at “some hotel downtown” that she attended along with Sophie A. and Emily J. Hannah W. stated that at this event there were “chips” needed in order to obtain alcoholic beverages. Hannah W. said that Slaton arrived and handed one chip to Hannah W. and two chips each to Emily J. and Sophie A. Hannah W. said that Sophie A. used that chip to obtain an alcoholic beverage and that Sophie A. made a remark about it being her “first real Capitol drink.”

 

21. After the Member football game in March 2023, Emily J. stated that Sophie A. told her that the following happened in connection with that event: throughout the day, Sophie A. and “Bryan” would go off from the group and that on the bus Slaton was handing her alcoholic drinks. Sophie A. denied that Slaton gave her alcohol on the bus.

 

22. Emily J. stated that Sophie A. also told her that throughout the day Slaton was taking pictures of Sophie A. and sending them to Sophie A. and saying that she (Sophie A.) looked really good. Sophie A. stated on April 28, 2023, that Slaton did take a picture of her but did not make any comments about her appearance. When asked about the picture, Sophie A. stated “typically I would take pictures of him and he’d take pictures of me.” Sophie A. did state that Slaton on at least two occasions made comments about her appearance. Sophie A. said he told her “that I was pretty” and at a dinner he commented on her “nice features.”

 

24. Emily J. was concerned enough to address the matter with Sophie A., telling her that “people are starting to notice” her close interactions with Slaton. On multiple occasions, Emily J. told Sophie A. that it was “wrong” for Sophie A. and Slaton to be so close, in part, because he was married. Sophie A. responded to Emily J.’s concerns by, at times, saying that nothing was going on and, on at least one occasion, responding that “he [Slaton] and his wife had problems.” Sophie A. stated that it was “kind of becoming a pattern for him [Slaton] to call me in the evenings.”

 

26. On the evening of March 31, Emily J. stated that as she and Sophie A. were walking to Hannah W.’s apartment around 10:00 p.m., “Bryan” called Sophie A. Sophie A. says that around 10:00 p.m., when they were heading to Hannah W.’s, she received a phone call from Slaton and that he invited her to “have some drinks and hang out.” After the call, Sophie A. told Emily J. who had called and at times, Emily J. could hear the call and recognized the voice of Slaton. Emily J. stated that Slaton “did not want to drink by himself” and was asking Sophie A. to come to his apartment. Sophie A. told Slaton that she would come over to his apartment. When Emily J. learned this, she became mad at Sophie A. because they already had plans and because she believed Sophie A. was making a bad decision. Emily J. stated that they had a “pretty long argument” over it and that she was trying to explain to Sophie A. that if a man is calling that late “it’s probably sexual.” This was significant to Emily J. because she knew that Sophie A. was a virgin who was saving herself until she was with someone “special.” Emily J. stated that Sophie A. had never really had a boyfriend before and was somewhat naïve.

 

27. On the same evening, at some time before midnight, Sophie A. received another phone call from Slaton. At least a portion of the phone call was on speaker phone, and Emily J. recognized the voice of Slaton. Emily J. overheard Slaton asking when Sophie A. would show up as it was getting late and he was “ready to go to bed.” When Sophie A. insisted on going over there, Emily J., Hannah W. and Jack P. (Hannah W.’s boyfriend) concluded that they should all go as a protective measure. Jack P. recalls that “time was of the essence” because Sophie A. was on her cell phone with whom he presumed to be Slaton.

 

Sophie A., and the others hailed a ride-share sometime after midnight, and headed over to Slaton’s apartment. “Emily J. stated that when they arrived Slaton said ‘I didn’t know you were bringing other people.’ Jack P. recalled that Slaton was ‘surprised that I was there.’” 

No doubt, the horny bastard! 

At any rate, a lot of rum and coke in “tall” Yeti cups was served and consumed. 

30. … Sophie A. stated that throughout the evening Slaton “kept refilling” her Yeti with rum and coke. She thinks that happened perhaps twice. Sophie A. stated that over the time at Slaton’s on April 1 that she consumed “a lot of alcohol” and that she felt “pretty rough,” “really dizzy,” and had “split vision.” Sophie A. believes that she was “drunk” after consuming alcohol at Slaton’s condo. Sophie A. stated that Emily J. also had “a lot of alcohol” at Slaton’s condo and that Emily J. threw up because she drank too much.

 

Both Emily and Hannah observed behavior that they considered “inappropriate” that night, and decided they had to get their friend home. 

33. Sometime after 2:00 a.m. on April 1, Emily J. told Sophie A. that it was time to go. Sophie A. told the group that she was not ready to go. Hannah W. stated that Emily J. said that she was not comfortable leaving Sophie A. there alone with Slaton and would be leaving with Sophie A. Hannah W. and Jack P. departed Slaton’s apartment. At approximately 2:39 a.m. on April 1, Emily J. announced to Sophie A. that it was time to go home. Sophie A. stated that she did not want to go home. Emily J. continued to try to convince Sophie A., and Slaton told Emily J. that “she [Sophie A.] did not have to leave if she did not want to.” Emily J. then left.

 

Sophie later told investigators that she had not felt “pressured to stay” but after her friends left, she felt like she was in “an inappropriate situation.” 

Obviously, she admitted, “I had too many drinks. Kind of hard to think in the moment when you’re intoxicated. But now that I look back at it, it was definitely an inappropriate situation.” 

35. At some point later on the morning of April 1, Emily J. received numerous calls from Sophie A.’s mother who could see, via a phone tracker, that Sophie A. was not at her apartment. Emily J. said that around 10:00 a.m. on the morning of April 1, she texted Sophie A. that she needed to come home. Emily J. said that sometime later Sophie A. arrived home after being dropped off by Slaton and that Sophie A. went to the drugstore that morning before coming home to obtain the “Plan B” medication to prevent pregnancy.

 

That’s one of my favorite Hypocrite Details, since we all know every good Republican ever born reads the Bible every morning for guidance, and both abortion and abortion pills must be banned. 

37. Emily J. recalled her conversation with Sophie A. on the morning of April 1. Emily J. asked Sophie A. “did you have sex with him [Slaton]?” and Sophie A. replied “yes.” Sophie A. told Emily J. that she had lost her virginity and that she bled a great deal as a result. Sophie A. told Emily J. that “they” had to change the sheets the next morning because of the blood. Sophie A. had bloody underwear with her that she attributed to her loss of virginity. … Sophie A. told Emily J. that she and Slaton had sex in various places throughout his apartment and that it “went on the entire night.” Sophie A. told Emily J. that it felt weird to have sex with him [Slaton] with pictures of his wife in the apartment. Sophie A. told Emily J. that they did not use a condom. Sophie A. told Emily J. that at some point after they had sex, Slaton stated that “I’m not scared of anyone else. You know you own me now?” Sophie A. told Emily J. that Slaton also asked her if Emily J. could be trusted. Sophie A. told Emily J. that she was in love with Slaton.

 

From that point forward, it got more complicated. Slaton did his best to keep Sophie A. from talking about what had occurred, but the story was leaking out. He showed her an email that seemed to threaten anyone who talked. The three young interns later came to suspect that Rep. Slaton had written the email himself and tried to make it look as if it was sent by someone else. At that point, Sophie began to fear she would lose her job. “Slaton told her that ‘everything would be fine. Everyone involved just has to stay quiet.’ Sophie A. understood that to mean that Hannah W. and Emily J. had to stay quiet as well.” 

One night, Emily J. and Sophie A. stayed up all night, talking about what they needed to do. They finally talked to other lawmakers they thought they could trust, and the investigation followed. 

So, one final detail: 

47. Emily J. says that she and Sophie A. have had many conversations about what happened. Emily J. says that Sophie A. has told her on multiple occasions that “if she [Sophie A.] hadn’t been drunk, she would not have done it [sex with Slaton].”

___ 

 

5/10/23: Realizing that they have been getting crushed by younger voters in every election, Republicans have done a little soul-searching, and… 

No, of course they haven’t. 

GOP presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy (who has no more chance of being the party nominee in 2024 than this blogger) suggested that if you can’t beat ‘em, disenfranchise ‘em. 

He wants to raise the voting age to 25. 

He’d make a couple of exceptions – for people who serve in the military, and first responders. But every young American has a stake in what the government does or doesn’t do, just like us old geezers. For example, the young are going to be living with the severe effects of climate change all their lives.

The ideal Republican voter.

 

* 

SPEAKING OF FOOLS, Trump showed up for a CNN “Town Hall” this evening, and did what he does better than any politician in the last sixty-three years. He turned an hour of TV into an extravaganza of lying. He even managed to call moderator Kaitlan Collins “a nasty person.” 

Trump’s answer to Collins’ first question set the tone for the evening: 

Collins: Why should Americans put you back in the White House?

 

TRUMP: Because we did fantastically. We got 12 million more votes than we had in – as you know, in 2016. I actually say we did far better in that election, got the most that anybody’s ever gotten as a sitting president of the United States.

 

I think that, when you look at that result and when you look at what happened during that election, unless you’re a very stupid person, you see what happens.

A lot of the people – a lot of the people in this audience and perhaps maybe a couple that don’t, but most people understand what happened.

 

That was a rigged election, and it’s a shame that we had to go through it. It’s very bad for our country. All over the world, they looked at it, and they saw exactly what everyone else saw. And you look – even if you just look recently with the 51 intelligence agents, that made a 16-point difference.

 

Yep. 

More than nine hundred days later, Trump was still insisting he won the 2020 election – despite the fact that no court, and no recount in any state, has found proof of significant fraud that would have turned the election.

 

* 

LOOK, if you voted for Trump, that’s fine. That’s your right, and more power to you. But if you still believe the election was rigged, and there’s no way Biden got 81 million votes, you need to get out of the house more often and stop bingeing on Fox News. It was always clear to pollsters and political insiders that turnout in 2020 was going to be huge. During the 2018 midterms 53% of eligible voters showed up at the polls, which was 30 million higher than in the 2014 midterms. 

Even the most obtuse observer – Fat Donald comes to mind – had to have known that turnout in the presidential election was going to be huge. 

So his vote total did go up by twelve million. 

Democratic votes went up by even more millions. Turnout among voters, 18-29, went up 79% for starters. 

They broke overwhelmingly for Joseph R. Biden Jr.

 

* 

THE FORMER PRESIDENT also did what he does so well during the Town Hall discussion. He mangled the simplest facts. 

 

“Upon his bare back, thirty-nine lashes.” 

“Remember, we have seven hundred million guns – seven hundred million. Many people, if they don’t have a gun, they’re not going to be very safe,” he told Ms. Nasty. He then doubled down on the idea of arming teachers, many of whom are “soldiers, ex-soldiers, ex-policemen,” who “really understand weapons.” 

You would think on an issue of grave importance, Fat Don (we use juvenile insults sometimes, because Fat Don does, and it’s kind of fun) would have his facts in a nice, straight row. First, you would imagine a man who was once president would know the approximate population of this country. 

According to the 2020 Census, there were 331,449,281 people in this country. So if every man, woman, child, and transgender person carried a gun in both his/her/they hands, we’d still have 70 million guns left. 

You’d think a man who sat in the White House for four years would realize that’s kind of a head scratcher. But he didn’t. And the right number is still terrible: an estimated 393 million guns. Not enough for every toddler to carry two. 

As for arming teachers, there are so many flaws in that particular ointment  -  the idea that this would keep our kids safe – that it would require a serious discussion to explain. In 2021, according to Axios, for the first time ever, more than 200 students and staff were killed or wounded in and around our nation’s schools. Education Weekly uses a different standard – school shootings on K-12 property, but says that in 2022, there were 51 such incidents, with 140 injured or killed. If more guns did make us safer, we should be the safest nation on earth.

But they don’t. 

And we aren’t. 

In the case of New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc., et al v. Bruen, last summer, the Supreme Court struck down New York’s permit limits on who could carry a concealed weapon. Justice Clarence Thomas took time off from vacationing with billionaire Harlan Crow to write the majority opinion.

The Founding Fathers were okay with slave auctions,
but not slaves owning guns.

 

Focusing on the Founding Fathers and our nation’s “historical tradition,” Justice Thomas held that when looking at gun laws, it should be presumed that “ordinary, law abiding citizens” have the right to own whatever guns they want for self-defense and to carry them wherever they please, barring only carrying weapons in “sensitive places.” 

This is especially interesting since Thomas is black and the Founding Fathers had a lot of fun living in states where blacks and mulattoes and Indians were barred from owning firearms. Justice Thomas, who lives in Georgia, conveniently ignores the “historical tradition” of his own state, where in 1833, a law was enacted so that it would henceforth not “be lawful for any free person of colour in this state, to own, use, or carry fire arms of any description whatever …… that the free person of colour, so detected in owning, using, or carrying fire arms, shall receive upon his bare back, thirty-nine lashes, and that the fire arms so found in the possession of said free person of colour, shall be exposed to public sale …” 

Slaves, of course, from the time of the founding of the colony of Georgia, a century earlier, had been prohibited from owning or carrying weapons, on the grounds that every inch of Georgia (I suppose) was a “sensitive place.”

 

* 

TRUMP also insisted last night that he had finished the border wall with Mexico during his first term in office. Ms. Nasty said Fat Donald had built only fifty-two miles of wall in four years – and noted that Mexico hadn’t paid for a single inch. Fat Don responded with bluster, insisting he built “hundreds of miles” and finished the Great Wall of Trump. Yet, somehow, the “border is a disaster.” 

Almost as if the wall hadn’t stopped anyone. 

Finally, Rejected-President Trump told anyone who was still listening after the first few minutes (when he entered, he received a standing ovation from the audience, and I turned it off) that he had a plan for how to deal with the approaching deadline to raise the federal debt limit. 

It was similar to his plan to replace Obamacare – which never really existed – except in Donald’s fantasies. 

“I say to the Republicans out there – congressmen, senators – if they [the Democrats] don’t give you massive cuts, you’re going to have to do a default. It’s better than what we’re doing right now because we’re spending money like drunken sailors,” said the lush, himself, who used to lead the drunken sailors. 

At that point, at least one U.S. senator from Trump’s own party came away appalled. When a group of reporters asked Sen. Todd Young later why he wouldn’t be supporting Trump in 2024, he responded, “Where do I begin?” 

(This blogger would say the same.) 

 

“We can’t have leaders that undermine it and disrespect it.” 

In particular, he cited Trump’s remarks on the Ukraine War. Trump, of course, told the audience that he didn’t really care who won or lost – but insisted he could end the fighting in “twenty-four hours” if only he were back in the White House. Sen. Young explained: “I think President Trump’s judgment is wrong in this case. President Putin and his government have been engaged in war crimes. I don’t believe that’s disputed. He's an enemy of the United States.” 

The senator wasn’t the only Republican horrified by Trump’s performance. Former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson responded to Trump’s mockery of E. Jean Carroll – despite her $5 million win in court the day before. 

“By and large,” he told CNN host Erin Burnett, juries in this country get it right. “Republicans should not be dismissing this and saying this is not of any significance. It is ... What’s remarkable about the United States of America is our rule of law and our justice system...We can’t have leaders that undermine it and disrespect it.”

___ 

 

5/11/23: At CNN, they’re having a bad day. The news corporation has been lambasted, even by some of its own reporters and staff, for allowing Trump an hour last night to spew his tired lies and reflexive hate. The respected journalist, Christiane Amanpour, noted that had she been in Kaitlan Collins’s position as soon as Trump called her a “nasty person” she would have dropped the mic. 

I’m of mixed feelings, however. Chris Licht, the chairman of CNN, may be right. In an email to everyone working for the company, he defended the decision to give airtime to Donald Trump. 

I absolutely, unequivocally believe America was served very well by what we did last night [he said]. People woke up, and they know what the stakes are in this election in a way that they didn’t the day before. And if someone was going to ask tough questions and have that messy conversation, it damn well should be on CNN.

 

When members of the audience applauded Trump’s “nasty person” remark, for example, Licht was taken aback. Still, he said, 

While we all may have been uncomfortable hearing people clapping, that was also an important part of the story, because the people in that audience represent a large swath of America. And the mistake the media made in the past is ignoring that those people exist. Just like you cannot ignore that President Trump exists.

 

The lead paragraph in The New York Times this morning, summed up the show succinctly, I thought: 

In little over an hour, Donald J. Trump suggested the United States should default on its debts for the first time in history, injected doubt over the country’s commitment to defending Ukraine from Russia’s invasion, dangled pardons for most of the Capitol rioters convicted of crimes, and refused to say he would abide by the results of the next presidential election.

 

He even called January 6, 2021, a “beautiful day.” 

As has often been the case, people who served in Trump’s first administration are now worried about what a second might become. With Trump talking about “retribution” if he were elected again, one former cabinet member sounded warning. “From my perspective, there was an evolution of Donald Trump over his four years, with 2020 I think being the most dramatic example of him – the real him,” said Mark T. Esper, who served as Mr. Trump’s defense secretary. “And I suspect that would be his starting point if he were to win office in 2024.” 

Esper didn’t mean that as a compliment, and that should worry every American; but, of course, Trump fans tend to be ill-informed, so it won’t.           

___ 

 

5/12/23: In Keene, Texas a worker at a Sonic drive-thru restaurant is shot and killed, the gun fired, allegedly, by a 12-year-old assailant. 

Only a good guy with a milkshake and fries can stop a bad guy… 

Aw fuck it.

 

* 

IN RAPID CITY, South Dakota a candidate for school board has had to apologize after tweets he sent in 2019 surfaced. 

I think we can all agree that local businessman and Marine veteran Gerald Alvin Harvey II isn’t the kind of person we would want making decisions that might affect kids. 

The guy can’t even spell. 

On June 13, that year, Mr. Harvey replied to a post from Barbara Lee, a California Democrat and then-candidate for a seat in Congress, writing: “There will BE ANOTJER[sic] CIVIL WAR...AND EVER[sic] DEMOCRAT WILL BE EXICUTED[sic]..YOU HAVE F***ED MY COUNTRY UP ENOUGH. IM READY AND WILLING TO DIE TAKING OUT EVIL DEMOCRATS FOR MY VOUNTRY [sic] AND MY President...”  

That same day, also in response to Lee, Harvey added: “THERE WILL BE ANOTHER CIVIL WAR AND ALL OF YOU EVIL DEMOCRATS WILL BE EXICUTED [sic].. GO MAKE YOU EVIL C**TS.” 

When a reporter for the Rapid City Journal contacted the candidate, he first denied making such posts. 

Confronted with evidence that he had, Harvey admitted it was him, but by way of mitigation claimed he was drinking.

___ 

 

5/14/23: On Truth Social, Fat Donald has a Mother’s Day message he’d like all our sweet mothers to read. 

I am not making this up:

*

THE MONTH of May will turn out to be a bad stretch for several leaders of the party of “family values.” 

For starters, Noelle Dunphy, who used to work for Rudy Giuliani, will file a lawsuit against her old boss. She will claim “abuses of power, wide-ranging sexual assault and harassment, wage theft and other misconduct” after Giuliani hired her as  his business development director in 2019. 

 

“Alcohol-drenched rants.” 

Even better, Dunphy will say she has recordings of Rudy, launching into “alcohol-drenched rants that included sexist, racist and antisemitic remarks.” 

According to Ms. Dunphy, Giuliani promised her a million dollars if she worked for him for a year. (If what she says about working conditions turns out to be true, even a million was far too little.) What looked to the younger woman like a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity” turned out to be a “sham.” 

What Rudy wanted more than help with business development, was sex with Ms. Dunphy, whether she wanted it or not. 

As Politico explains, according to a 70-page filing in her lawsuit: 

Giuliani forced Dunphy to perform oral sex on him in his Upper East Side apartment, and while he took phone calls. Giuliani “aggressively pursued a sexual relationship” with Dunphy, the filing says, and “made clear that satisfying his sexual demands” was a requirement of her job. He “continually pressured her into sex,” and was “unconcerned” about whether Dunphy had given consent, the complaint says.

 

Politico also notes that as part of her job, Dunphy was given access to Rudy’s email accounts. So this case could prove to be a great deal of fun. In addition to the tawdry details, her filing alleges that Giuliani told Dunphy he could break any laws he wished because he had “immunity.” Such as: a friend in a high place – who could offer him a pardon if necessary. Rudy allegedly told her that he was selling pardons for $2 million, half for him, half for President Trump. 

Giuliani also repeatedly told Dunphy not to speak with the FBI, the lawsuit alleges. When she told Giuliani that FBI agents had visited her family’s home in Florida looking to question her, he “demanded” she not speak to or cooperate with them, and claimed that one or two of the agents were going to “get totally destroyed.” 

Last, but not least, according to Dunphy’s lawsuit, a plan was already brewing in early 2019, should Trump be defeated in a quest for a second term in the White House. 

“On February 7, 2019, Giuliani told Ms. Dunphy to take a note to remind him to pay taxes on a private jet ride he was gifted by a friend. The same day, Giuliani told Ms. Dunphy, in her capacity as his employee, about a plan that had been prepared for if Trump lost the 2020 election. Specifically, Giuliani told Ms. Dunphy that Trump’s team would claim that there was ‘voter fraud’ and that Trump had actually won the election. This plan was discussed at several business meetings with Giuliani and Lev Parnas.”

 

* 

RUDY could prevail in court. And maybe someday Donald will find evidence of actual voter fraud in 2020, and prove his case in court. We’ll need to wait and see. But Rep. James Comer is in the news again – and not for his sterling family values either. Dust from an old story has been kicked up once more. 

In 2015, when Comer ran unsuccessfully for the Republican nomination to be governor of Kentucky, Marilyn Thomas, an old college girlfriend surfaced with a story of abuse. During a two-year relationship, she claimed, “Jamie” had hit her and abused her mentally to such an extent that she finally moved out of state. Their relationship, she said, “was toxic, abusive and caused me a lot of suffering. His controlling and aggressive personality alienated me from most of my family and friends at the time.” 

“Everything I did, everywhere I went, and everyone with whom I interacted had to be approved” by Comer, [she] wrote. “Consequences were violent and swift otherwise.”

 

She said Comer became “enraged” in 1991 after they visited a Louisville abortion clinic and learned that she had used his real name on a form requiring proof that she had an escort to drive her home.

 

Thomas’s old college roommate backed up her story. 

Wendy Curley, who said she shared a dorm room at Western Kentucky with Thomas, said that Thomas and Comer had “a very rocky relationship.”

 

“I would see bruises on her wrists and stuff where she’d say, ‘Oh, I ran into a table,’ ‘I fell,’ just that kind of stuff,” Curley said.

 

Curley said Thomas never told her she was being abused. “It was always something to cover (for him). She didn’t want anybody to know that he was abusive to her.”

 

She also said Comer took Thomas for an abortion.

 

“I know she ended up getting pregnant in like October of 1991 and had an abortion in the beginning of November, and I remember him seeing her to the dorm and just dropping her off after they got back from the abortion,” Curley said.

 

The Louisville Courier-Journal continued: 

Thomas said she still has paperwork from the visit to the clinic. “I kept that piece of paper as a reminder of what desperation and rock bottom feel like. For more than 20 years, that piece of paper has been a source of anxiety and shame. But it was mine. It was only mine.”

 

She said the paper is in a lock box at a Kentucky bank and she didn’t have immediate access to it.

 

In the letter, Thomas said that Comer once called her parents at 2 a.m. to “make violent threats against me.”

 

Mary Rose Thomas, Marilyn Thomas’ 83-year-old mother, said in an interview that Comer called her home one morning some 25 years ago. “I couldn’t understand everything he was saying, but he said something about your daughter’s going to be killed. ... It was something like that.”

 

In any case, Comer’s quest to be the next governor of Kentucky came up short; but his political career was not derailed. Now he’s working hard to block access to abortions for all women.

___ 

 

5/15/23: The vote technology company Smartmatic has made it clear it will not settle its defamation case against Fox News unless it gets at least as much money as Dominion Voting Systems – and a full apology. 

Once again, Fox News’s nuts may be in the cracker. Bad enough that they lied about Dominion rigging the 2020 election. Dominion systems were used in 24 states. Smartmatic technology was used in one county in one state, Los Angeles County, California. That county has gone blue in just a “few” recent presidential elections. Such as  1988, 1992, 1996, 2000, 2004, 2008, 2012, 2016 and…2020. 

And the company wasn’t founded until 2000. That year, Al Gore got 63.6 percent of the vote in Los Angeles County. 

Whereas, Democrats supposedly had this amazing system where they could cheat to win any election – even on Mars – and yet Gore lost his chance to become president by 537 Florida votes. 

In the last four elections, Democratic presidential candidates have gotten between 69-72% of the votes in Los Angeles County. So if you’re going to “cheat” to win, you don’t need to bother in this jurisdiction. 

For a more detailed explanation of why Smartmatic’s case is stronger than Dominion’s, read the story at Public Notice. (Authors do make one mistake – saying that Los Angeles County has gone blue in every presidential election since 1968.)

 

* 

REPUBLICAN LAWMAKERS are working overtime to keep us all safe from being bothered by transgender persons – who might watch us peeing. But they can’t keep us safe from teenagers with assault rifles. 

In New Mexico, an 18-year-old using an “AR-15 style” weapon opens fire on passing cars, and random homes in his neighborhood. Three women are killed, and six other persons are wounded. 

That includes two police officers.

 

* 

ALSO HAVING A BAD DAY: Rejected-President Trump, down in Mar-a-Lago. As rumors of possible indictments spread, Donald turns to “Truth Social,” and starts venting. In ALL CAPS, as usual: 

JACK SMITH AND THE SPECIAL PERSECUTORS OFFICE ARE PLAYING THE SAME GAMES WITH ELECTION INTERFERENCE AND FAKE PROSECUTIONS AS JAMES COMEY, ONLY FAR MORE OBVIOUS. THE DOJ MUST END THIS CHARADE RIGHT NOW, AND THAT GOES TO THEIR USE OF D.A.’s & A.G’s IN ATLANTA AND NEW YORK. MAGA!!!

 

Okay, technically, there are two lower-case “s’s” used in his rant.

___ 

 

5/17/23: In news that shouldn’t surprise anyone, it turns out that Wade Searle, director of digital services for Rep. Paul Gosar, is a white supremacist. 

 

Rep. Gosar has a habit of flirting with anti-Semitism himself. 

Rep. Gosar has a habit of flirting with anti-Semitism himself. He has, for example, claimed that the “Unite the Right” march in Charlottesville, Virginia, which ended in violence in 2017, was secretly organized and paid for by Jewish billionaire George Soros – to make anti-Semites look bad. As for Nick Fuentes, an avid anti-Semite himself, Gosar has been happy to invite him to campaign fundraisers. 

Now it is alleged that Searle previously pledged his undying loyalty to Fuentes – which might have helped him land a job in Gosar’s office. 

Fuentes, whose fulltime job as leader of the “Groyper” crowd boils down to spewing hatred of minorities, once cited Searles (who went by fictitious labels on his social media accounts) and another man, as two of “the strongest soldiers, the strongest soldiers of the movement. God bless and we salute you.” And since Searle holds a job in a congressional office: Your tax dollars at work. 

FUN FACT: Tim Parlatore, one of the lawyers representing Rejected-President Trump in the investigation into mishandling of classified documents has left the building. Recently, Parlatore had focused on the argument that all former presidents and vice presidents take classified documents when they leave office – simply by mistake, when they shouldn’t. In one letter, he called on lawmakers in Congress to take any investigation away from Special Counsel Jack Smith, and give it to the U.S. intelligence committee. That would have eliminated any chance Trump might be indicted. 

The New York Times explains: 

The letter also seemed to preview some of Mr. Trump’s potential defenses in the documents case, noting that during his chaotic departure from the White House, aides “quickly packed everything into boxes and shipped them to Florida.” This hasty process, Mr. Parlatore argued, suggested that “White House institutional processes,” not “intentional decisions by President Trump,” were responsible for sensitive material being hauled away.

 

Last week, Mr. Trump appeared to undercut those assertions on live television, declaring at a CNN town hall event that he knowingly removed government records from the White House and claiming that he was allowed to take anything he wanted with him as his personal property.

 

“I took the documents,” he said at the event. “I’m allowed to.”

 

In point of fact, he wasn’t.

 

FUN FACT #2: Unless you enjoy a little arsenic and lead in your coffee, you might like to know what Team Biden is up to, in an effort to protect the environment. Recently, the E.P.A. moved to “close a loophole that had exempted hundreds of inactive coal ash landfills from rules designed to prevent heavy metals like mercury and arsenic from seeping into groundwater.” 

The New York Times reports: 

Coal ash is a byproduct from burning coal in power plants, and contains lead, lithium and mercury. Those metals can [and often do] pollute waterways and drinking water supplies and have been linked to health effects, including cancer, birth defects and developmental delays in children. They are also toxic to fish.

 

The proposed regulation, part of a settlement between the E.P.A. and environmental groups, would require those responsible for the coal ash to monitor groundwater supplies and clean up any contamination from the landfills.

 

Across the country, coal ash is stored in holding ponds, in a kind of thick slurry, since getting rid of it is a perplexing problem. In 2008 a six-story high dike in Kingston, Tn., holding back a toxic sauce, gave way. A billion gallons of slurry spilled across surrounding homes and farmland. 

According to National Geographic, there are 1,400 of these holding ponds scattered across the U.S.A.

___

 

 5/19/23: Friday, Rudy Giuliani was spotted entering the federal courthouse in Washington D.C. He was there for a hearing related to a defamation lawsuit filed by two Georgia poll workers, Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss. Rudy accused them of stealing tens of thousands of votes in Georgia during the 2020 election. 

Bold prediction: He’s going to get his ass smoked in court. 

Rudy, and Rejected-President Trump and a whole sh*tload of conservative media types accused Freeman and Moss, her daughter, of perpetrating massive voter fraud. On this, the 927th day since the 2020 election, NO EVIDENCE has been discovered to prove significant voter fraud in Georgia. 

Trump also cited the two women by name, claiming they were instrumental in cheating him out of a win in Georgia during the last presidential election. And let’s be blunt. Rudy and Donald have serious problems. Despite their claims, three vote counts in Georgia showed Trump lost the election. Both the F.B.I. and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation looked into claims against the two women, and absolved them of wrongdoing. 

A Special Grand Jury which recently wrapped up its report has also called for indictments, undoubtedly of thus-far unnamed members of Team Trump. And that Grand Jury found that there was no evidence of significant voter fraud in the 2020 election. Whereas there was evidence that thus-far unnamed members of Team Trump, called to testify, committed perjury. 

(Never forget, as president, Trump claimed he could pardon himself.) 

 

FUN FACT: Rudy’s chances in court, in another defamation suit, were not enhanced this week when Bruce Castor, former Trump impeachment lawyer, and Giuliani’s attorney in that lawsuit quit the case. 

Why? 

“He’s not cooperating, and he’s not paying me,” Castor said of Rudy, to one reporter. In this case: 

James Savage, a Delaware County voting-machine supervisor, sued Trump, his 2020 presidential campaign, Giuliani, and two local Republican poll watchers in November 2021, saying their unsubstantiated claims about the 2020 election made him a target of hatred, ridicule, and physical threats.

 

Castor went on to explain, in a court filing asking to be excused from the case, that Giuliani has not been cooperating. He has not been producing documents or bothering to schedule depositions, even after Castor set a deadline and “unequivocally threatened” to quit the case, according to the motion.

 

FUN FACT #2: This week, Kari Lake, Arizona’s favorite election-denier, who insists she’s going to be declared winner of the 2022 governor’s race any time now, decided it was time to do a little fawning. During a radio interview, Ms. Lake insisted that Donald Trump was “so strong” he could run the government by himself, if “We the People” gave him a second crack at the White House. 

“I don’t think he needs a vice president,” Ms. Lake gushed. “If there’s ever one president who’s so strong he doesn’t need one, it would be him.” 

(See: Mike Pence – January 6, 2021.) 

 

She did add, however, that if Donald did want to pick a running mate, he should pick someone the media hated more than him. 

Such as: Imaginary Governor of Arizona, Kari Lake.

Kari Lake, right, "Imaginary Governor," with the "Imaginary President."

 

FUN FACT #3: Fani T. Willis, the Fulton County, Georgia, district attorney, is expecting a grand jury to unseal indictments in her investigation into election fraud in the 2020 election, during the first three weeks of August. She has told most of her staff that they will be working from home during that period, and has asked judges not to schedule any trials during that time period. 

Outside observers believe that Willis is preparing to indict former President Donald J. Trump, and a number of his political allies. 

As The New York Times notes, “Ms. Willis, who has had some staff members outfitted with bulletproof vests, is clearly concerned about the potential for unrest after any indictments in the Trump inquiry. “

___ 

 

5/20/23: Did you know that Rejected-President Donald Trump is leading Ron DeSantis, and every other Republican vying for the party nomination in 2024, by wide margins in recent polls? It’s true. Any poll that shows Trump ahead is true. Any poll that shows Trump behind is “rigged.” 

Donald Trump says so. 

(Sometimes, for variety, he calls polls that show him or his party trailing “Fake Suppression Polls.”) 

 

FUN FACT: Don and Ron used to love each other. Gail Collins, writing in The New York Times remembers: 

DeSantis and his wife/political adviser, Casey, have three small children, who once starred in a gubernatorial election ad in which he demonstrated his devotion to President Donald Trump by showing one of his daughters how to build a toy wall and reading his son “The Art of the Deal.” (“Then Mr. Trump said, ‘You’re fired.’ I love that part.”)

 

Now the bromance is over. Collins focuses on some of the differences in where the two gentlemen stand on issues. DeSantis is a “devout Catholic,” and just signed a law banning abortions in Florida after six weeks of pregnancy. He is also working hard to keep children from reading books about gay children and families, or letting transgenders see us “normal” folks pee. 

I don’t believe he has taken a position on pedophile priests in his state, however. 

As for Donald, Donald will take any position on abortion (or any other topic) if he thinks that position will help him win. If the votes where there, and he could get a second term in office – and pardon himself – he’d support the ancient Spartan practice of exposing children with birth defects to the elements, or the go with infant sacrifice, like the Carthaginians who worshipped Baal.

___ 

 

5/21/23: One should never underestimate the depths of stupidity that Mr. Trump can plumb. Friday, with debt ceiling negotiations stalled, and default looming (basically destroying the world’s faith in the U.S. government’s credit), Trump revealed his heart’s desire. 

 

Trump signed a deal to suspend the debt limit. 

He would destroy his  political enemies, by first destroying the country. “Republicans should not make a deal on the debt ceiling unless they get everything they want (Including the ‘kitchen sink’),” Donald howled on Truth Social. “That’s the way the Democrats have always dealt with us. Do not fold!!!” 

So, let’s hop in our time machine and go back to 2017, when Republicans controlled all the levers of power. We know that under President Trump the debt limit was raised to $20.5 trillion, in December 2017. 

The red ink came in fresh waves during Donald’s four years in office. In his first full fiscal year in charge, Fat Donald ran up a deficit of $779,140,000 in 2018. The debt limit was raised to $22 trillion in March 2019. Then, later that year, President Trump signed a deal to suspend the debt limit – the equivalent of Republicans saying, “Aw f**k it,” in August. That suspension was set to last until August 2021. For Fiscal Year 2019, Trump racked up a deficit of $983.596,000. That compared to a deficit in FY 2017, the last deficit determined mostly by policies under President Obama, of $665,450,000. With the debt limit now suspended Trump rang up $3,132,457,000 in new debt in Fiscal Year 2020 alone, the highest figure ever. 

And, of course, we had another massive deficit in FY 2021, topping out at $2,775,359,000. (President Biden did pass a $1.9 billion stimulus package in March 2021, shortly after taking office. So a good chunk of the second worst deficit was his doing – I’m just not sure how much of that debt would have fallen under the FY 2021 total. 

We do know this: Trump never called on Congress to default while he was in the White House. In the meantime, he racked up at least $5,870,552,000 in new deficits. And the GOP never blinked, or blushed or belched out the alphabet. 

In fact, we may remember that when Team Trump cut taxes on the wealthiest Americans in 2017, the president and his economists promised the cuts would more than pay for themselves. Magic math – magical thinking. 

Candidate Trump, while running in 2016, even claimed he could wipe out the entire federal deficit (then $19 trillion) if we gave him eight years in office. 

Chuck Todd, on “Fake News” NBC, recently pinned down Rep. Byron Donalds and asked him about a statement President Trump made on July 19, 2019, when he was getting ready to raise the debt ceiling. “I can’t imagine anybody ever even thinking about using the debt ceiling as a negotiating wage.” 

“Wage,” clearly wasn’t the word he meant to use – “tool” or “tactic,” most likely – but Todd wanted to know why Trump has now called on Republicans in Congress to refuse to budge from their demands and force a default. Rep. Donalds said the difference was that Trump wasn’t president now. 

Todd said that sounded “absurd,” and Rep. Donalds launched into a defense of Fat Donald, saying what a great negotiator he had been, and how the economy was “thriving” under Trump, and “we didn’t have the massive deficits we have now.” Basic math seems not to be the lawmaker’s forte. 

Even members of the ultra-conservative Freedom Caucus in Congress understood how stupid the former president sounded – although, as good Republicans they didn’t put it so starkly. 

Rep. Bob Good (R-Va.) told Axios “there won't be any default, that’s ridiculous … That is a scare tactic from people who just don’t understand quite frankly, or they’re intentionally trying to deceive.” 

“We shouldn’t default now or later,” Rep. Warren Davidson (R-Ohio), added, noting that he was open to compromise. 

Default “would be bad on the economy, it would be bad on the American people and it would be bad on national security,” added Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-Ga.), a former Freedom Caucus member. 

Rep. Clay Higgins (R-La.) didn’t think Trump’s comments were having much impact on how lawmakers were approaching the debt ceiling. He said Fat Donald (my characterization) was “on the periphery of these things.” 

He went on to add, “I’m a big supporter and I consider him a friend,” but “when the president is in an element where he can speak openly and candidly ... He’s going to say whatever he wants to.” 

Yeah, no matter how stupid it is.

___ 

 

5/22/23: Imaginary Governor of Arizona, election-denier Kari Lake, suffered yet another in a long series of court defeats on Monday. 

This was the coup de grace. 

Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Peter A. Thompson ruled that Ms. Lake had failed to prove her claim that Maricopa County did not properly verify signatures on mail ballots in the 2022 election, as required by law. 

Lake did not comment when reporters asked about her loss – but went home, looked in her mirror, and no doubt said to herself, “Looking good, Imaginary Governor Lake.” 

Only one person in America has been a more diligent election-denier: Rejected-President Trump. 

A grand total of 930 days has passed since the 2020 election, and not one court in any state has found significant evidence of voter fraud that would have cost Fat Donald a second term in the White House. 

There has been talk that Trump is considering the Imaginary Governor for his running mate in 2024. Possible campaign motto: “We already know we won. Counting the votes doesn’t matter.”

___ 

 

5/23/23: Clearly, Fat Donald is a slow learner. A day after E. Jean Carroll filed in court to amend a second defamation suit against him – after she won $5 million in damages in her first, and he defamed her again in a CNN “Town Hall” meeting – he goes for the defamation trifecta. 

 

Fifty pages of notes from meetings. 

Today, he lashes out again. 

I don’t know E. Jean Carroll, I never met her or touched her (except on a celebrity line with her African American husband who she disgustingly called the “Ape”). I wouldn’t want to know or touch her, I never abused her or raped her or took her to a dressing room 25 years ago in a crowded department store where the doors are LOCKED, she has no idea when, or did anything else to her, except deny her Fake, Made Up Story, that she wrote in a book. IT NEVER HAPPENED, IS A TOTAL SCAM, UNFAIR TRIAL!

 

Meanwhile, a judge in New York has set a trial date (March 25, 2024) in the case involving Donald J. Trump and 34 possible felonies for tax fraud. He has also informed the former president (and future felon?) that he will have to be ready to attend.

We'll be seeing a lot of this.

As for Fat Donnie, he reacts exactly as you might expect:

And that’s still not the end of Donald’s legal troubles. Fearing that he might soon be indicted for stealing classified government documents after leaving the White House – and then lying about it, and likely obstructing justice in the process – his lawyers have demanded a meeting with Attorney General Merrick Garland. 

Based on the quality of the letter Team Trump sent, his attorney had the legal and writing skills of a nine-year-old. 

Or someone gave Trump a crayon and he wrote it himself, and them someone typed it for him. It reads: 

We represent Donald J. Trump, the 45^th President of the United States, in the investigation currently being conducted by the Special Counsel’s Office. Unlike President Biden, his son Hunter, and the Biden family, President Trump is being treated unfairly. No President of the United States has ever, in the history of our country, been baselessly investigated in such an outrageous and unlawful fashion. We request a meeting at your earliest convenience to discuss the ongoing injustice that is being perpetrated by your Special Counsel and his prosecutors.

 

To show you what boneheads participated in getting this letter out, they posted it on Truth Social, with the lawyers’ phone numbers in plain view. 

(I was tempted to call them and critique their work, but decided to act maturely.) 

 

To give you some idea of why Trump might be worried, the Special Counsel was able to pierce the client-attorney privilege – a near impossibility in most cases, and for good reason – but allowed if client and attorney might be plotting new crimes or frauds. Trump lawyer Evan Corcoran was then required to turn over fifty pages of notes from meetings with the former president. According to three sources, The Guardian, a British newspaper, is reporting that Corcoran warned Trump in the summer of 2022 that he could not legally retain classified documents or other materials (such as “love letters” from Kim Jong-un, which were required to be turned over to the National Archives by law). 

The Brits also note that Trump’s valet Walt Nauta told authorities that he was ordered to move boxes out of a storage room where documents were kept, both before and after Fat Donald was sent a subpoena, and ordered to turn over all classified materials. Which he did not do.

 

* 

IN RonDesantisLand parents can complain about any book or any lesson plan used in school if – for example – gay people are mentioned. Or they believe a lesson on slavery teaches hatred of white folk. 

I am thinking “lynching” is pretty much a taboo subject. 

A Miami-Dade elementary school, however, is the first to limit access to Amanda Gorman’s presidential inauguration poem, The Hill We Climb, after a parent complained that it contained indirect “hate messages.”

In other Florida news, the hunt for massive voter fraud continues – with Governor DeSantis’s Voter Integrity Police missing the real killer. Yalemis Onasch, 28, a registered Republican, has been charged with voting illegally in the last two presidential elections. 

Before she was made a citizen (in 2022). 

Ron didn’t catch Onasch. Her ex turned her in, and the feds have charged her with multiple felonies. 

 

FUN FACT: Former Trump lawyer Ty Cobb, who helped defend him during the Mueller investigation, believes his old boss will be going to jail. Special Counsel Jack Smith has been building a “tight case” against the former president, he said during a CNN interview. “All they really have to do is show that Trump moved these documents at various times when DOJ was either demanding them or actually present,” Cobb explained. 

See: Walt Nauta.

___ 

 

5/24/23: Rep. Matt Gaetz, GOP representative from Florida, says he doesn’t believe Republicans should negotiate on the debt ceiling. Gaetz told reporters he thinks “conservative colleagues for the most part support ‘Limit, Save, Grow,’ and they don’t feel like we should negotiate with our hostage.”  

That hostage being: the U.S. economy.

 

* 

RON DESANTIS formally announces that he is running for president in 2024. Sadly, his attempt to launch his campaign on Twitter, with the help of Twitter boss Elon Musk, fizzles. Their audio site keeps crashing, leaving 700,000 people tuned in to hear the news listening to total silence.

 

* 

NOT SO SILENT: Pastor Jason Garber, of Spokane, Washington, also had a few ideas about how to handle the transgender issue he wanted to share. 

Any parent that would have their child, would have a transgender surgery done on them, any parent that would do that, they just need to be shot in the back of the head. … They need to be convicted in trial and immediately shot in the back of the head. Okay, and then we can string them up above a bridge so that the public can see the consequences of that kind of wickedness.

 

In the same religious vein, a bill in Texas fails to pass. That bill would have required every public school classroom to have a poster of the Ten Commandments displayed, large enough for anyone in the room to read and see. (I am assuming the lawmakers had considered Braille versions for the blind, and copies in Spanish, Mandarin, etc. I think posters in bathrooms should also have been considered.) 

Or, if you wanted to children to understand Christianity, you could send them to church on Sunday – such as Pastor Garber’s place of worship and hate.

 

* 

NOT SO SILENT #2: Conservative radio commentator Jesse Kelly has agreed with a Twitter user who suggested that “Weimar problems eventually lead to Weimar solutions.” That is: When the Weimar government in Germany couldn’t solve the problems cause during the Great Depression, you got Hitler and Nazis. 

Kelly responded with a tweet of his own:

 

Let me tell you all an uncomfortable truth:

 

This country needs a dictator. As the great John Adams said, a free country only works for a “moral people”.

 

We are not worthy of freedom. A dictator is coming.

 

I’m pretty sure, Jesse is waxing nostalgic and hoping for the return of Donald J. Trump, Version 2.0.

___ 

 

5/25/23: On Fox News, Newt Gingrich, disgraced former U.S. Speaker of the House, and big fan of Fat Donald, insults Trump supporters without intending to. The genius of the former president, he tells host Laura Ingraham, is that Trump speaks on a level so simple that people with a third grade education understand him. 

Newt was explaining Donald’s advantage over Gov. Ron DeSantis in the battle to be the GOP nominee for president in 2024. “One of Trump’s great advantages is that he talks at a level where 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade educations can say ‘Oh yeah, I get that. I understand it,’ Gingrich said. 

“And in fact,” he added, “Trump has now made the Republican Party the party of working Americans in a way that probably hasn’t been true for almost 100 years.” 

That’s true – because for a hundred years the Republicans battled against working-class Americans. 

Then, along came Trump, who managed to bamboozle the poorly-educated with absolute bulls***.

___ 

 

5/27/23: Can an election-denier ever catch a break? In Arizona, a judge has ordered Mark Finchem, who ran in 2022 to be Arizona’s next secretary of state, and his lawyer, to pay $47,706 in legal fees, after bringing a “groundless lawsuit” to court. 

Finchem and Daniel McAuley III were claiming that Finchem actually won the election – despite the fact he came up 120,000 votes short.

___ 

 

5/28/23: Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton – famous for backing Fat Donald to the hilt in his claims of election fraud in 2020 – is resting quietly at home this Memorial Day weekend. He has been impeached, and under Texas rules, immediately suspended. Paxton now has the distinction of being only the third member of the Texas government ever to be impeached. And the vote against him in the House of Representatives wasn’t exactly a cliff hanger. There were 121 “yes” votes to can his corrupt ass, only 23 “nays.” 

Paxton is accused of taking bribes to ensure his mistress would be hired, doing favors for individuals accused of fraud (who would hire his mistress), and firing multiple members of his staff who blew the whistle on his nefarious conduct. Four of those fired workers later sued and won $3.3 million in damages – which Paxton somehow figured the taxpayers of Texas should pay. 

Naturally, he has two staunch defenders: Rejected-President Donald Trump and Sen. Ted Cruz, a man who defies nature by walking upright despite the lack of a spine. Ken likes to advertise himself as a good “Christian man,” who supports “family values.” The vote to impeach Paxton was bipartisan – with 60 Republicans voting in favor, including all five from Collin County, where Paxton and his wife (a Texas senator) have lived for decades, and 23 against. 

Trump insisted that impeachment was the work of “Radical Left Democrats, RINO’s, and Criminals that never stop.” 

 

* 

MEANWHILE, somebody besides this hardworking blogger referred to Fat Donald yesterday as “delusional.” 

Namely, Gov. Ron DeSantis, who took time off from banning books, to lambast the GOP’s nominee most likely to run for president in perpetuity. 

“Florida’s crime rate is at a 50-year low. That’s just a fact, and it hit a 50-year low during my administration,” DeSantis said during an interview on The Ben Shapiro Show Friday. “It’s hit a 50-year low while crime has been spiking in other places around the country.”

 

“One of the main reasons families have moved to Florida since I’ve been governor is because of public safety, because they know we’re a law-and-order state. So that’s delusional to say that somehow Florida, you know, has bad crime,” DeSantis continued. “You can see that in the migration patterns. People are leaving high crime areas, and they’re coming here. When the Floyd riots were going on in Minneapolis, I called out the National Guard in Florida immediately. I had state law enforcement deployed. We worked with our local partners. And we said very clearly, ‘You’re not burning cities down here. We’ll put a stop to it if it happens.’ And sure enough, it didn’t end up happening.”  

___ 

 

5/29/23: Rejected-President Trump decides to offer the kind of observation on Memorial Day that only he could. 

On Truth Social, he sends out an all-caps message, which begins harmlessly enough: “HAPPY MEMORIAL DAY TO ALL.” 

Okay, might have been a good idea to stop there. But no: 

BUT ESPECIALLY TO THOWSE WHO GAVE THE ULTIMATE SACRIFICE FOR THE COUNTRY THEY LOVE, AND TO THOSE IN LINE OF A VERY DIFFERENT, BUT EQUALLY DANGEROUS FIRE, STOPPING THE THREATS OF TERRORISTS, MISFITS AND LUNATIC THUGS WHO ARE WORKING FEVERISHLY FROM WITHIN TO OVERTURN AND DESTROY OUR ONCE GREAT COUNTRY, WHICH HAS NEVER BEEN IN GREATER PERIL THAN IT IS RIGHT NOW. WE MUST STOP THE COMMUNISTS, MARXISTS AND FASCIST ‘PIGS’ AT EVERY TURN AND, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!

 

By contrast, President Biden posted on Twitter:

See, Donald, how easy that is?

 

* 

SPEAKING OF FOOLS – This story would be sad – except it’s about gullible Trump fans, who will fall for anything, as long as the tale makes their Orange God appear all-powerful and good. 

So, in a sense, this is a funny story. 

Still, even the pitiful dolts who worship Donald and the ground (i.e.: the fairways) he treads on don’t deserve to be scammed. If you know any of his fans, please warn them. 

Forbes explains: 

Colorado-based companies Patriots Dynasty, Patriots Future and USA Patriots have been advertising products with Trump's likeness, including black $10,000 “Trump Bucks” – sold for $99.99—they said could be redeemed as legal tender at most banks, including JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Wells Fargo, though none responded to inquiries from NBC News.

 

The items – which include coins, checks and membership cards – are sold alongside “Trump Rebate Banking System” handbooks, which the companies claim are “official documents” that allow the items to be used.

 

Bank of America spokesperson Bill Halldin told NBC News there were reports of customers coming into the bank to exchange “Trump Bucks” for cash.

 

One Trump supporter claimed to spend $2,200 on the items before warning others on Twitter about the scam, while a woman from Alabama said she spent $1,500 on “Trump Bucks,” before a Bank of America employee told her she had been scammed.

 

Advertisements for the commemorative items are featured on Telegram and YouTube, including one video that warns “Trump Bucks are not legal tender” before suggesting the membership cards “are official cards issued by Donald Trump.”

 

The advertisements coincide with “reviews” of the novelty items, including an AI-generated promotional video on TikTok that features a fake Trump discussing the handbooks, and a review in “Alternative Science” that suggests former Fox News host Tucker Carlson spoke with a “representative from Trump’s office” about the handbook.

 

* 

THE number of foreign-born workers in this country rose to an all-time high in 2022: 29.8 million (18.1% of the U.S. workforce). 

If you remember that line from Field of Dreams, “If you build it, they will come,” in terms of where immigrants are involved, “If you will pay them to build it, they will come.” 

Until we admit that the American economy relies on immigrant labor (the native-born workforce barely increased, to 134.5 million, last year) all discussion of how to “close the border” is bunkum and babbling.

___ 

 

5/30/23: Reports out today, by Salon, suggest that Rejected-President Trump’s problems in the investigation into his possession of highly classified documents at Mar-a-Lago – and his likely obstruction in an effort to keep them – may be intensifying. Trump lawyer Evan Corcoran has supposedly told investigators that he was “waved off” when he tried to search Donald’s office at his Florida home last summer. The Department of Justice had sent a subpoena calling for the return of any classified documents that might be in Fat Donald’s possession. Corcoran was tasked with leading the hunt at the property. 

Several Trump aides reportedly told the lawyer to search a storage room, where 38 classified documents were found. But another 102 were later uncovered, during an F.B.I. raid, in the former president’s office. 

Corcoran, who was forced to provide testimony before a grand jury, did say that Trump never told him where to search – or not search – but admitted his boss might have “effectively mislead his legal team.” 

Salon further noted: 

Corcoran turned the 38 classified documents he found in the storage room to the DOJ, telling investigators that “records that came from the White House were stored within one location at Mar-a-Lago, the storage room … [and] he was not advised there were any records in any private office space.”

 

That would be…what’s the word…yes…lying! 

This comes on the heels of a recent report in the Washington Post. According to Post reporters, workers at Mar-a-Lago moved several boxes out of the storage room the day before DOJ came for a look in June. Even more damning (if proven), workers have said a “dress rehearsal” was held in May 2022. How would materials be moved in the event investigators came for a look? 

Stymied by such tactics, the F.B.I. arrived unannounced for what Trump loyalists howled was “a raid” last August 8. 

As always: Innocent until proven guilty. But this blogger will say he is glad he is not in Fat Donald’s size-12 golf shoes today. 

And what’s that other word…ah, yes…obstruction! 

In fact, even Donald seems nervous. He has taken to escalating his attacks on the judicial branch of government. He made a point of calling the judge in the E. Jean Carroll case a “Clinton-appointed judge,” and claimed the jurist “hated President Donald J. Trump more than is humanly possible.” 

Another judge, hearing a hush money case against him, also “hates me,” the former president whined. 

As The Hill has reported, this kind of attack is not new. Trump once claimed a judge couldn’t be fair in a case because he was Mexican – even though the judge was born in Indiana. (Last time the blogger checked, that was part of the USA.) He has called a decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, which went against his claims of election fraud in 2020, a “legal disgrace.” 

All of this might be written off as the bluster of a buffoon; but millions of Americans still believe Trump is telling the truth. 

That makes his language dangerous: 

“Irresponsible attacks in social media, that are based on misinformation or untruths or merely designed for partisan gain … do damage to our justice system. They undermine the rule of law and the system we have in place to provide justice for all,” said Marcy Kahn, who spent more than 30 years on the bench and now is the head of the New York City bar’s Task Force on the Rule of Law.

 

“There’s a huge cost to the people who are caught up in this and who are the focus of the untrue statements. And this is really, really dangerous when there is no effort to be restrained about it, and when the person speaking has great influence over a great number of people who, for whatever reason, feel aggrieved and angry and are looking for some target to displace their anger on.”

 

As might have been expected, one of the judges Trump attacked by name, and the judge’s daughter, have been the target of death threats. 

 

* 

IN OTHER NEWS, Tara Reade, who once accused Joe Biden of sexual harassment, has defected to Russia. 

There, she has been greeted by, among others, Maria Butina. 

Saying that her life was in danger in the United States, the accuser has now moved to Russia. Reade told Russian State News agency Sputnik, “I’m still kind of in a daze a bit but I feel very good. I feel very surrounded by protection and safety. And I just really so appreciate Maria [Butina] and everyone who’s been giving me that at a time when it’s been very difficult to know if I’m safe or not. I just didn’t want to walk home and walk into a cage or be killed, which is basically my two choices.”

 

We have looked into Ms. Reade’s story before – but had not heard of her in the last three years. 

As for Ms. Butina, she managed to endear herself to leaders of the National Rifle Association. She slept her way to success in high conservative circles, including with Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne, got indicted for failure to register as a foreign agent, got sentenced to 18 months in a federal prison, and then was deported to Russia. 

On December 18, 2020, Byrne was one of a cast of clowns who showed up at the White House and tried to convince then-President Trump that he had the power to call out the military and seize all the voting machines – at least the ones that were used in states where counting showed he lost. 

We should also note that L. Lin Wood, another clown who decided to push Trump to declare martial law was recently dinged for a $5,000 fine, after he violated a court order to stop insulting his former law partners, who are suing him for breach of contract. 

The judge told him if he kept it up, the next fine would be $15,000. 

“I try to live a Christ-like life,” Wood responded, adding that his “reward will be in Heaven.” 

Tara Reade, back in the day, before heading to Russia.

We will cover Trump’s indictment regarding the Mar-a-Lago documents case in a separate post.

In any case, Fat Donald still refuses to go away.

6/2/23: New Hampshire state Rep. James Spillane, a Republican, now realizes Donald Trump can’t be trusted. 

He had endorsed him in run for reelection  in 2024, but after Donald attacked former White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany, Spillane realized Trump had no loyalty to anyone but himself. 

Who knew! 

“I am officially withdrawing my endorsement, as his most recent attack on Kayleigh McEnany is beyond comprehension and explanation,” James Spillane, who serves in the state’s House of Representatives, told NH Journal. 

“There’s no loyalty in him,” Spillane continued. “He can’t be trusted to stay loyal to the people who supported him in the past.”  

Really? You just realized this? Donald has cheated on all three wives. He cheated on Melania with a Playboy Bunny. 

And a porn star. 

Even on Truth Social, where Donald goes to rant and the loyal chumps come to listen, some were, perhaps for the first time, finally questioning their Orange God. “It was disappointing. Kayleigh is one of the best press secretaries we’ve ever had, and has been a staunch defender of President Trump. This attack for such a minimal disagreement is not a good look,” replied one Truth Social user. “I don’t understand his penchant to go scorched earth on people he disagrees with – especially supporters.” 

Well, I think I do. In fact, my wife had this figured out way back in February 2017, when she insisted Donald had a Narcissistic Personality Disorder. 

I looked it up. It explains everything you’ll ever need to know about the warped man-child that is Trump.

 

* 

WHAT ELSE happened today? Gov. Ron DeSantis tried to score political points by pretending it was too bad President Biden tripped and fell again – which he absolutely did. (This blogger is in his seventies. Every time he goes to the doctor they ask, “Have you fallen anytime lately? It’s what people in our demographic do.) 

Anyway, Ron tried to show a little empathy – which he clearly doesn’t feel – while also pointing out how “feeble” Biden is. 

No one in right-wing land seems to have noticed that once again the latest jobs report for May was great. Under Old Joe, 339,000 jobs were added last month. In addition, the figures for April were revised upward to 294,000. 

During Joe’s 28 full months in office, his “worst” month for jobs added has been 217,000, in February this year. 

That’s better than the average for Trump during his first 37 months – before COVID-19 hit and the world went to shit. 

So far this year, 1,570,000 jobs have been added (subject to slight revisions, as per Bureau of Labor Statistics practices). 

The Labor Participation Rate held steady at 62.6 percent.

 

FUN FACT: Election-denier Kari Lake, the Imaginary Governor of Arizona, was out with a new theory on Friday. 

She believes Donald J. Trump actually won the State of California in 2020. 

Even though he lost by…(sound of calculator buttons)…5,103,821 votes. I think we can say with confidence that a recount isn’t coming anytime soon.

___ 

 6/4/23: You can tell Republicans are getting nervous. Sunday morning, Rep. Ken Buck sits down for a talk with CNN’s Dana Bash. He tells her that he has “a huge amount of respect” for prosecutors with the Department of Justice, and “I’m sure they will do the right thing” on their decision whether to charge Rejected-President Trump. (The blogger refers to him as “Rejected-President,” not Rep. Buck.) 

 

“I think it goes beyond just irresponsible.” 

Prosecutors are said to have evidence that Trump kept a highly classified war plan, with Iran as target. 

Now Team Trump can’t seem to find it. 

When Bash asks if he finds Trump’s handling of the document “irresponsible,” Buck replies, “Well, as a former prosecutor for twenty-five years, I think it goes beyond just irresponsible.” 

He says the former president’s legal jeopardy depends on what the testimony is and suggests that Trump might have been waving around papers for “emphasis,” not actually mishandling TOP SECRET document. 

Bash asks the right follow up question. If Trump did have the classified document, and did show it to others, did Rep. Buck think he should be charged with a crime? Buck answered, I think correctly. He said he wasn’t going to “second guess” what DOJ lawyers would do. He did add, “I worked there. I have a huge amount of respect for them, and I’m sure they’ll do the right thing.” 

Then he reiterated, it would be “irresponsible” for him to say Trump should or shouldn’t be charged – until he saw the document or heard the witness testimony. 

(In 2022, Buck was reelected to his seat in Colorado’s Fourth Congressional District, with 60.9% of the vote. So his seat is safe, and he can speak truth.)

 

* 

MEANWHILE, on Fox News, where election-deniers go to spew drivel for money, Newt Gingrich appears as a guest on Maria Bartiromo’s Sunday show. He tells her that fair elections in this country are no longer possible. “Democrats,” he insists, “have a passion for stealing them.” 

How, exactly? According to Newt, union workers (he also hates union workers) have been intimidating people in nursing homes and forcing them to vote for people like Joe Biden and Fidel Castro. 

Since Bartiromo is already a defendant in a defamation suit, having alleged voter fraud against Dominion Voting Systems, neither she nor Newt dare cite specific unions or locations where these bouts of imaginary fraud occurred. If this claim of dastardly workers could be proven in court, however, this liberal blogger would be all for arresting the offenders. 

But considering the track record of the election-deniers so far – zero proof of significant voter fraud in the 2020 or 2022 elections proven in court – let’s just say we have reason to be dubious.

 

* 

IN OTHER NEWS, Candidate Trump congratulated Kim Jong-un (who keeps firing nuclear-capable missiles, which Trump once promised Kim was going to give up to him), over the heads of U.S. allies South Korea and Japan. 

He said it was wonderful to hear that Premier Kim would have a new position with the World Health Organization. 

The other GOP candidates running for the presidential nomination condemned his words. Ron DeSantis gets it right and refers to Kim as a “murderous dictator.” 

“Whether it’s my former running mate or anyone else no one should be praising the dictator in North Korea,” Mike Pence said. 

Nikki Haley, who was Trump’s ambassador to the U.N., got straight to the point. “You don’t congratulate a thug,” she said. “I mean, let’s keep in mind this,” she continued. “This thug has threatened America. It’s threatened our allies over and over again. This is not something to play with.” 

Finally, former Congressman Will Hurd of Texas, who worked in U.S. intelligence, tweeted, “America is good, and Kim Jong Un is evil. It goes against everything we stand for and believe in to congratulate the Devil.”

___

 

6/5/23: Lawyers for Fat Donald met with U.S. Department of Justice officials this morning, in an effort to convince prosecutors not to indict the former president for mishandling highly classified documents and – as a felon’s bonus – obstruction of justice. Clearly, Fat D spent the weekend worrying. 

 

Special Counsel Robert Mueller uncovered a coven of witches. 

Yesterday, on Truth Social, he blew a social media gasket: 

Reports are the Marxist Special Prosecutor, DOJ, & FBI, want to Indict me on the BOXES HOAX, despite all of the wrongdoing that they have done for SEVEN YEARS, including SPYING ON MY CAMPAIGN. Biden Crimes go unpunished, including that he had Boxes in Chinatown, in his garage by the ‘Corvette,’ & 1,850  Boxes in Delaware that he won’t allow anyone to see. That is real OBSTRUCTION!

 

“They seek retribution for Republicans looking into Biden’s CRIMES!” Trump added. “I HAVE DONE NOTHING WRONG. ELECTION INTERFERENCE!” 

This afternoon he appears to have heard even worse news from his lawyers. He blows a second gasket: 

HOW CAN DOJ POSSIBLY CHARGE ME, WHO DID NOTHING WRONG, WHEN NO OTHER PRESIDENT’S WERE CHARGED, WHEN JOE BIDEN WON’T BE CHARGED FOR ANYTHING, INCLUDING THE FACT THAT HE HAS 1,850 BOXES, MUCH OF IT CLASSIFIED, AND SOME DATING BACK TO HIS SENATE DAY WHEN EVEN DEMOCRAT SENATORS ARE SHOCKED. ALSO, PRESIDENT CLINTON HAD DOCUMENTS, AND WON IN COURT. CROOKED HILLARY DELETED 33,000 EMAILS, MANY CLASSIFIED, AND WASN’T EVEN CLOSE TO BEING CHARGED! ONLY TRUMP – THE GREATEST WITCH HUNT OF ALL TIME!

 

Speaking of “witch hunts,” we will need to see what DOJ does, regarding this newest investigation. 

“Innocent until proven guilty,” is always the rule at this blog. No yelping, “Lock him up” until the fat lady sings, the chickens come home to roost, and the gavel bangs down. 

We would do well, however, to remember that Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller uncovered a coven of witches. During that investigation, it was revealed that the following Trump relatives, in-laws, and aides did have secret contacts with Russians during the 2016 campaign and after: Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, General Michael T. Flynn, Paul Manafort, Roger Stone, George Papadopoulos, Rick Gates, and Michael Cohen.

The last six were convicted of assorted felonies. Gates and Cohen did not get pardons (because they cooperated with investigators). Manafort, Flynn, Stone, and Papadopoulos did, because they clammed up.

Even better, when the free press dug up proof that Don Jr., Jared, and Paul met with Russians at Trump Tower in June 2017, Don Jr. and Don Sr. lied about the purpose of the meeting. Which took place in June 2016! They insisted the meeting, which they had never revealed, despite dozens of chances to come clean to, was about adoptions. It was meant to help needy Russian children finding good homes in the USA. 

Don Jr. and Don Sr. were quickly shown to be lying. Emails from a friend of Don Jr. showed the Russians wanted to see Trump elected – and they were there coming to the Big Apple to discuss how they might help. 

Natalia Veselnitskaya, the Russian lawyer, who had been living in the U.S., and who attended that conclave, was later indicted. Crimes included obstruction of justice, and money-laundering. 

She decided to flee the country ahead of arrest. 

Mueller also indicted thirteen Russian nationals, and three Russian companies, who had also interfered in the election; but, save for sanctions against them, they remained beyond the reach of American justice. 

Paul Manafort’s Russian business partner, Konstantin Kilimnik, was also later indicted. Mueller reported that Kilimnik had ties to Russian intelligence. He found that Manafort had handed over sensitive polling data regarding the 2016 election to the Russian. And Kilimnik – who had been living in the USA – was charged with obstructing justice. Packing his bags in a bit of a rush, he just managed to hop a flight to Russia one step ahead of arrest. 

 

A parade of witnesses said there was a “quid pro quo.” 

As for the first impeachment, the issue came down to whether or not there was a “quid pro quo.” Did President Trump hold up military aid to Ukraine – well, yeah, he did. But did he do it to force Ukraine to investigate the Biden family? 

The following witnesses, all of whom worked in the Trump administration, came forward to say that they believed he did. That hundreds of millions in military aid, already earmarked by Congress, were withheld. First, the whistleblower, Col. Alexander Vindman said that was the deal. No investigation. No military aid. U.S. envoy William Taylor also agreed. What Trump was doing was a quid pro quo. (Vindman, Taylor, and Robert Mueller, himself, were all decorated combat veterans in the U.S. Army.) 

Dr. Fiona Hill, a top official with the White House National Security team, said, yes. She too believed there was a quid pro quo. 

She later famously described her reaction when she watched President Trump say he believed Vladimir Putin, over U.S. intelligence reports, when Putin said the Russians didn’t interfere in the 2016 election. This occurred at a meeting in Helsinki, Finland in July 2018. Trump’ performance, Dr. Hill said, was so awful she considered pulling a fire alarm, but couldn’t see any device nearby that she might pull. Her second thought: “I literally did have in my mind the idea of faking some kind of medical emergency and throwing myself backward with a loud blood curdling scream into the media.” 

There were other witnesses who also described what they observed over the course of several months as Trump holding up aid to pressure Ukraine. Republican members of the congressional investigation consistently asked, “Did you ever hear Trump say there was a quid pro quo?” 

None of the witnesses could say they had heard him say those words. 

So, what would his National Security Advisor John Bolton say? He talked repeatedly to Trump about the situation involving the aid. Bolton was blocked from testifying, which was fine with GOP lawmakers at the time. Later Bolton said, in effect, “Yeah, there WAS a witch – and his name was Donald.” Bolton said there was a quid pro quo and he had talked to Trump about it, and tried to change his mind. 

Trump, he added, put U.S. national security at risk for personal gain. 

Finally, we should add for fun, that Team Trump sent a crew of crack investigators to Ukraine to dig up dirt on the Biden family. The three stooges of that effort were Rudy Giuliani, Igor Fruman, and Lev Parnas, and they did a good deal of digging for dirt in foreign lands. If you’re not paying attention (and if you still think Trump should be president, you’re clearly not), Fruman and Parnas have since been convicted of felonies too. 

Rudy has been notified that he is a “target” of the investigation in Georgia, into election fraud in 2020, and is almost certainly going to get charged with an assortment of felonies as early as August.

___ 

 

6/6/23: Donald Trump’s bad start to June isn’t getting any better. He’s just getting madder. Now he’s mad at another Republican, Governor Chris Sununu of New Hampshire. 

 

Noah 2.0. 

Yesterday, Sununu wrote in an editorial in the Washington Post that he was not going to run for president in 2024, because the most important task of all was making sure Trump didn’t get the party nomination. “If he is the nominee, Republicans will lose again,” Sununu wrote. “Just as we did in 2018, 2020 and 2022. This is indisputable, and I am not willing to let it happen without a fight.” 

Mr. Maturity, Fat Donald, responded, as always, by trying to flay his enemy. 

As the Daily Beast explains, Trump erupted: 

“RINO Chris Sununu stated in his Fake Opinion published in The Washington Compost, ‘I’m not running for president in 2024. Beating Trump is more important.’” Trump wrote. “No, he’s not running for President because he’s polling at Zero, and has no chance of winning.” Trump added that New Hampshirites have “gotten wise to Chris Sununu” and “they no longer like or respect him.” “I never liked him,” Trump added, “But always did whatever he asked for the State, because I wanted to help New Hampshire, and I did!”

 

Meanwhile, Donald has to be worrying about increasing signs his lard butt is going to get indicted. At issue is the matter of keeping highly classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, lying about having them, and then obstructing justice when federal agents came to retrieve them from a storage room in June 2022. The latest detail to come out in this ongoing story involves a pool boy and an errant use of a hose. 

In some mysterious mix-up, last October, two months after the F.B.I. had to actually raid the Trump abode to get back hundreds of highly classified documents, the pool boy drained a pool into the room where security camera footage was stored. That security footage was said to have shown members of Team Trump moving boxes of documents out of the storage area the day before federal agents came looking in June. 

Like, what are the chances of such a flood? 

Noah 2.0? 

We should also note that after the August raid, it was revealed that investigators for the Department of Justice  had evidence that government records were “likely concealed and removed from the Storage Room and that efforts were likely taken to obstruct the government’s investigation.” 

In Trumpistan, this is all bad news.

___

 

6/7/23: Did we mention yesterday that in Trumpistan there had been a great deal of bad news to start the month? 

 

A putative defendant. 

With just one week to go before Fat Donald celebrates his 77^th birthday, the Department of Justice has notified him that he is a target in an ongoing investigation. 

And we know he’s going to take that with the same maturity any soon-to-be-77-year-old man would. 

As Politico explains, “Prosecutors consider a target a person for whom there is ‘substantial evidence linking him or her to the commission of a crime and who, in the judgment of the prosecutor, is a putative defendant.’” 

The blogger has to look it up: “putative” means “generally considered or reputed to be.” 

 

“Utter disdain for the rule of law.” 

This simple blogger is not the only American to think Donald Trump should never see the  inside of the Oval Office again. 

Trump’s own running mate, former Vice President Mike Pence said today of his old boss: “Anyone who puts themselves over the Constitution should never be president of the United States. And anyone who asks someone else to put them over the Constitution should never be president again.” 

Pence wasn’t the only person who previously worked for Trump to see him as a threat to democracy. After his former lawyer, Ty Cobb, said he thought Fat D would go to jail if indicted in the classified documents case, Donald pitched another fit. “His words are angry, nasty, and libelous,” fumed Trump, “only because I did not continue using him (and paying him), and for good reason. He will be held legally responsible for his false statements!” 

Trump clearly does not understand that stating an opinion, such as, “I think it may rain this evening,” or, “I think Joe Burrow is the best quarterback in the National Football League,” are not libelous statements. 

Because – I think – Donald is a fat doofus who should go to jail. And I also think Melania will be relieved if he does. 

Finally, in recent days, The Guardian has reported, Donald Ayer, a former deputy attorney general during the George H. W. Bush administration, has warned, “Of all the many reasons Donald Trump’s candidacy should be rejected out of hand, none is more important than his utter disdain for the rule of law – the idea that we are a society governed by rules and not by the will of one person.” 

Ayer said: “It’s hard to imagine what would become of our legal system if Trump became president again. 

“In his first term, aided by attorney general William Barr, who made a pretense of believing in even-handed justice, Trump was still able to grossly misuse the Department of Justice as a political campaign tool, to do favors for his friends, and to seriously undermine the separation of powers. 

“There would be no arguable adults in the room in a second Trump DoJ. Beyond pardons for the January 6 criminals and politically motivated prosecutions, one can expect a broader pattern of abuses aimed at securing his autocratic power.” 

Also adding warning, we had General John Kelly, Fat Donald’s longest-serving White House Chief of Staff. If Trump were reelected, Gen. Kelly warned, he would pardon the January 6 rioters. “All those people who tried to overturn the election,” Kelly explained, “that’s exactly what he wanted them to do. He can’t be turning his back on the people who tried to save him in the election.”  

Which election he lost by seven million votes.

___

6/8/23: Donald’s really bad month continues. In the early morning darkness, a sleepless ex-president tosses and turns. 

Frustrated, he decides to “truth” on Truth Social and vent a little steam. “SHOCKING!” he cries out, in all CAPS. 

ONE OF THE TOP PROSECUTORS AT THE DEPARMENT OF INJUSTICE WAS  REPORTEDLY SO OBESSESSED WITH “GETTING TRUMP” THAT HE TRIED TO BRIBE & INTIMIDATE A LAWYER REPRESENTIN SOMEONE BEING TARGETED & HARASSED TO FALSELY ACCUSE & FABRICATE A STORY ABOUT PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP & A CRIME THAT DOESN’T EXIST. THIS CRIMINAL & SALACIOUS ACT WITHIN THE DOJ HAS BROUGHT SHAME & EMBARRASSMENT TO THIS ONCE GREAT & RESPECTED INSTITUTION. BECAUSE OF THIS, THERE IS NOW EXTREME TURMOIL INSIDE THE DOJ.

 

Clearly, Donald had no proof to support his claims. Having been nailed for $5 million in damages in one defamation lawsuit, and having (through his lawyers) tried to block a second defamation suit for twice that much, he thinks better of naming names. 

So, for all we can tell, the lawyer involved was Ally McBeal, and the person offered the judgeship was Peter Pan. 

I also found it amusing that he referred to this as a “salacious act.” Freudian slip, I suspect. “Salacious” is defined as “having or conveying undue or inappropriate interest in sexual matters.”

Ms. Carroll, center, Miss Indiana University in 1962.

 

*

FINALLY, we have real voter fraud to announce! Today, the Federal Communications Commission announced a $5.1 million fine against conservative activists Jack Burkman and Jacob Wohl and J.M. Burkman & Associates. The two right-wingers schemed to depress the vote for Joe Biden and the Democrats in 2020, making 1,141 unlawful robocalls to dupe or scare black voters.  

The calls identified Burkman and Wohl, and they told potential voters that if they voted by mail, their “personal information will be part of a public database that will be used by police departments to track down old warrants and be used by credit card companies to collect outstanding debts.” 

 

The pair had previously pled guilty to one count each of telecommunications fraud, for which crime they had to perform community service.

___

 

6/9/23: Should we kick a poor, fat former President of the United States when he’s down? This is Donald J. Trump. You know, in similar circumstances, he would. 

 

Playing hide-and-seek with nuclear secrets. 

Considering the fact that in this country every person is innocent until proven guilty, can we all just enjoy the fact that Fat Donald has been indicted on thirty-seven felony counts? 

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahhahahahhahahahahahaha. 

Also indicted with him: Walt Nauta, his valet, who faces six felony counts for helping the former president play hide-and-seek with highly classified documents. 

Including nuclear secrets. 

Meanwhile, Trump has responded exactly as expected, calling Special Prosecutor Jack Smith a “deranged lunatic.” On Truth Social today, he referred to Smith’s wife as a “Trump Hater,” just as Mr. Smith is “a Trump Hater – a deranged ‘psycho’ that shouldn’t be involved in any case that has to do with ‘Justice,’ other than to look at Biden as a criminal, which he is.” 

Might I note, as an aficionado of the English language and its usages, including proper punctuation, that Rejected-President Angry is misusing the quotation marks around the word “psycho” (in the original post) as if to indicate that the Special Prosecutor is not a psycho? 

Before he settles down for the night, Trump “truths” at least twenty times on Truth Social, including this kind of “it will be wild” January 6, kind of post. “SEE YOU IN MIAMI ON TUESDAY!!!” he writes.

___

6/10/23: Now that it appears likely that Donald Trump will be indicted, in regard to the mishandling of top secret documents at Mar-a-Lago, the woman who dreams of being anointed governor of Arizona (despite the fact that she lost a close election nine months ago) wants it to be clear. Ballots aren’t the only way to achieve victory. 

Warning against any indictment, Kari Lake fires up a pro-Trump crowd at a rally in Georgia. 

“If you want to get to President Trump,” she explains, “you’re going to have to go through me, and 75 million Americans just like me. And most of us are card-carrying members of the NRA. That’s not a threat, that’s a public service announcement.” 

It’s also crazy talk; but the crowd loves it.

___

6/13/23: Dawn: Former President Fat Donald is already up, slathering on orange toner so he can look good for his day in court. 

It will be the first of many this summer, and into fall – and possibly beyond. First, let’s not forget he’s almost surely going to be indicted in Georgia, in a state case, for his efforts to commit election fraud. 

Meanwhile, what have we learned in the last few days about the documents case, which has led Trump to this destination. We know Special Counsel Jack Smith has nailed him with thirty-seven separate charges. All felonies (I think). Trump has responded exactly as you would expect, calling the prosecutor a “deranged lunatic.” On Truth Social, last Friday, he referred to Smith’s wife as a “Trump Hater,” just as he is “a Trump Hater – a deranged ‘psycho’ that shouldn’t be involved in any case that has to do with ‘Justice,’ other than to look at Biden as a criminal, which he is.”

 

FUN FACT: Another judge allows E. Jean Carroll to amend another defamation suit against Donald, after he trashed her when she won her first defamation suit against him, which will cost him $5 million. 

During a CNN Town Hall, televised the day after Carroll won her first case, Trump ridiculed the jury’s decision, called Ms. Carroll a “whack job” and said her allegations that he sexually assaulted her in the dressing room of a luxury Manhattan department store in the mid-1990s were “fake” and “made up.” 

Since one jury has already said they were real and voted 9-0 in a civil case against Slow-Learner Donald, Ms. Carroll is now asking for $10 million more in damages.

We are covering Donald’s indictment and actual developments related to his arrest in a separate post.

___

6/14/23: Happy birthday, Rejected-President Donald J. Trump. You are 77, and now the subject of a 38-count federal indictment. 

Still, only 37 counts involve you.

Six candles for Donald - one for each felony count of obstruction of justice.

___ 

 

6/15/23: A judge has ruled that E. Jean Carroll’s second defamation suit against Fat Donald Trump can go forward. Trial is set for January 15, 2024. Trump got smoked, to the tune of $5 million, during the first civil trial.

___ 

 

6/19/23: I think we can all agree, it is unlikely that Mr. Trump could have enjoyed his Father’s Day weekend. He’s under indictment – on 37 counts, including half a dozen for obstruction of justice. 

There are growing rumblings from people at the top of the Republican Party and in a Fox News interview Monday night, Trump got fact-checked so often by Brett Baier that you expected his head to start spinning, like that girl in the movie, The Exorcist. 

 

“President in Perpetuity.” 

Meanwhile, Trump was back at it, blasting polls he didn’t like. That is: Any poll that failed to show him winning. Last week he was all a-flutter over a poll he loved, showing him with a 6-point lead over Joe Biden. 

That poll was perfect, and proved every patriotic voter loved Donald and wished he could be elected “President in Perpetuity.” 

Now, a Quinnipiac and Fox News poll showed him trailing Biden by four. That meant the people who designed that poll were communists and “Trump haters,” and “RINOS” and hoped transgender individuals would start waltzing into our bathrooms and laugh at us while we peed. 

On Truth Social, Fat Don unloaded:  

The Quinnipiac Poll FoxNews keeps showing on “TRUMP” vs. Biden is not just an old Poll, it is a BAD Poll. It under samples Republicans by 10 points, which means, instead of being down 4 points, I am up 6 points. Other Polls show me much higher than that.

 

(That’s not how the polling math works; but it would be impossible to explain why to Trump – or his supporters – and they wouldn’t believe you if you did.) 

As reporters for The Hill noted, Donald all but condemned Fox of being a part of a grand “Fake News” conspiracy. Fox, he moaned, “will always attempt, as they did in 2016, to only show negatives on MAGA & TRUMP. We’re winning BIG, they don’t like it, the RINOS don’t like it, the Democrats don’t like it but, most of all, the Marxists & Communists don’t like it!” 

All in all, the week has started off badly for the Orange God of Mar-a-Lago, who, according to how I interpret polls, could very well be reelected. Polls vary. Taken in aggregate, as I have often explained, they are rarely wrong. 

See, for example, 2020 polls: Trump vs. Biden. 

Or the 2016 polls: Trump vs. Clinton (which failed to account for the vagaries of the Electoral College). 

But right now, I fear Donald could return to the Oval Office and ruin this great country once and for all.

___ 

 

6/21/23: Remember that time the Texas power grid collapsed in the winter of 2021, and conservatives blamed Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the “Leftists” for pushing for a Green New Deal? 

Windmills! It was those f**king windmills. 

The commie Democrats wanted us to use green power and the windmills in Texas froze solid and stopped turning. The Texas power grid failed, and it was Hunter Biden’s fault, or President Obama’s – who wasn’t even American – and, in addition, the commies wanted to take away all of our plastic straws and enslave us, making us drink straight from the cup or glass. 

Well f**k those liberals – and their belief in climate change. Texans weren’t going to fall for that Marxist BS. 

(By the way: farther north, that same winter, windmills were working fine, even in colder regions – like Iowa – and Canada – because windmill operators had prepared for freezing temperatures.) 

Now it’s summer in Texas. And the power grid has failed once more. Heat records are falling across the state, and this has nothing to do with liberals, and we have fresh evidence that climate change is real. 

This year is on pace to become the hottest ever – and, if so, that will make the last ten years the hottest ever recorded. 

(The year 2010, is now ranked #10, and will most likely be bumped off the list.)

 

In the meantime, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has acted decisively to address the problem by signing a bill which eliminates mandatory water breaks for construction workers in his broiling state.

___ 

 

6/22/23: You probably missed the story yesterday; but Team Trump took another swift kick to the gonads, as far as the tall tale of the 2020 “stolen election” was involved. That is: It wasn’t stolen. Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, two women repeatedly accused by Team Trump of stealing tens of thousands of votes in Georgia in 2020, were cleared of any wrongdoing after an investigation. The Georgia Elections Board ruled that allegations lodged against the two poll workers were “false and unsubstantiated.”

 

“Knowingly false allegations made against these election workers.” 

That’s an investigator’s way of calling charges against them bull****. Total votes stolen by the pair: Zero. 

Who leveled those charges most prominently? President Trump did, and his minion, “Melting Rudy” Giuliani. Both men talked repeatedly about a suspicious “suitcase” full of fake votes. The investigation found there was no suitcase, only an ordinary storage bin for ordinary ballots. During the vote counting, Mrs. Freeman supposedly handed a USB port to her daughter, Ms. Moss. Right-wing conspiracists latched onto the idea that it must have been filled with bogus votes. Turns out there was no USB port. Yet, Rudy had insisted in the weeks after the election that Ruby and Shaye were “quite obviously surreptitiously passing around USB ports” as if they were “vials of heroin or cocaine.” 

Trump piled on, too. He said the “suitcase” contained at least 18,000 fake ballots and claimed they were counted three times; but ballots were later recounted by hand, and no stolen ballots were found. Meanwhile, Freeman received so much harassment online, and heard so many racist messages on her phone that she went into hiding. Both women were targets of repeated death threats. In December 2020, the Georgian secretary of state investigated and found no proof of wrongdoing. You can easily read the four-page report. Since then, Jenna Ellis, a Team Trump lawyer who helped slander Freeman and Moss, has been sanctioned and forced to admit she told at least ten lies of her own. In June 2021, Rudy had his license to practice law suspended in New York. And, in an investigation into election fraud – involving Team Trump’s efforts to steal the “stolen” election in Georgia in 2020 – Rudy had no other legal option than to invoke the Fifth Amendment more than 400 times. 

(We also know, Melting Rudy has been told he is a “target” in that investigation.) 

 

Now we learn, according to ABC News, that as part of the most recent inquiry into the conduct of Freeman and Moss, Georgia Elections Board investigators interviewed a social media user who “admitted he created a fake account and confirmed the content that was posted on the account was fake.” 

Still, the fake content spread. Fox News, in particular, helped spread it. And Fox recently lost another defamation suit related to the dissemination of various falsehoods, and had to pay $787.5 million in damages. 

As for Freeman and Moss, “We are glad the State Election Board finally put this issue to rest,” Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, announced. 

“False claims and knowingly false allegations made against these election workers have done tremendous harm. Election workers deserve our praise for being on the front lines,” he added.

Finally, we should note that Freeman and Moss have filed defamation cases against “Melting Rudy,” and other enablers of Donald J. Trump. As of today, their chances of winning have been greatly enhanced.

 

One America News, which also attacked the pair, has already reached a settlement with them – but details of what the two won in damages have not been revealed. We only know that OAN lost.

 

A similar defamation case, against Gateway Pundit, a right-wing news outlet, is pending in federal court. 

___

6/27/23: The Washington Post now has a longer tape recording, related to Trump’s refusal to give up TOP SECRET and other classified documents. 

This fuller recording makes it even clearer: Trump was not guarding highly classified materials, including secret plans if we had to go to war against Iran, and knew he wasn’t. And he didn’t care. 

We have looked at the indictment in this case at greater length.

* 

IN A RELATED STORY, his co-defendant in the 38-count indictment, Walt Nauta, has for a second time failed to appear in court and enter a plea. 

Nauta was scheduled to be arraigned today, but can’t find a lawyer who wants to represent him at a reasonable price. 

(You’d think Trump might pay his legal bills, since his six alleged crimes were all carried out at the alleged request of Donald himself.)

 

FUN FACT: If you ever wonder how so many boneheads manage to get elected and reelected to Congress (or state legislatures) look no further than this gerrymandered Ohio map, showing the congressional “districts” laid out by Republicans. 

There are a few districts Democrats can win; but most are shaped simply to insure that fools like Rep. Jim Jordan (his district is in red) can’t possibly lose. 

The citizens of Ohio have twice voted to redraw the maps, with 70% in favor, but Republicans in the Ohio legislature have stalled us off for…seven bleepin’ years.

___

  

6/28/23: On Twitter, Coach Tommy Tuberville – as Senator Tommy Tuberville calls himself (complete with a picture of himself in suit, tossing a football in the air) – decides to celebrate good news with his constituents. 

Broadband is vital for the success of our rural communities and for our entire economy,” he tweets. “Great to see Alabama receive crucial funds to boost ongoing broadband effort,” he adds. The state will be getting $1.4 billion in federal funds, and Tuberville hopes voters will remember how he worked hard for them. 

The only problem is that Tuberville voted against the bill that provided the funds, because he’s against raising the debt ceiling. 

You can’t make this up.

___ 

 

6/30/23: The bad news, regarding an expanding investigation into the plot to steal the 2020 election – by Team Trump and then-President  Donald J. Trump continues to build. There are reports that Rudy Giuliani met with Special Prosecutor Jack Smith, and may be trying to cut a deal, in hopes of avoiding spending his golden years in prison. Another report says that Smith has an email in his possession, from top Trump aide Jason Miller, who worked for him while he was president and still works for him now. “The campaign’s legal team and data experts cannot verify the b…s… being beamed down from the mothership.” That is: the “Stolen Election” lies coming from the president in the wake of his 2020 defeat. Several Trump lawyers and allies in the plot to put forward alternate slates of electors in multiple states also find themselves in jeopardy.

Rudy is just one of many. 

Mike Roman, a top 2020 campaign official, had already had his phone seized by the F.B.I. Now he’s said to have signed a proffer agreement. Prosecutors will let a person who may well have legal exposure in an investigation avoid going before a grand jury. In return, they wave their Fifth Amendment rights and give testimony – under the understanding that nothing they say will be used against them – unless they lie. Roman was another cog in Trump’s Rube Goldberg machine, built to grab a second term in the same way he used to grab pussy without permission. 

As CNN reports, we also know Roman’s former top deputy, Gary Michael Brown, did testify before a grand jury last week. 

If Mr. Miller (like so many others) was telling the top people on Team Trump that they had no legal basis  for challenging the results of the election (which is what Trump’s top officials at the Department of Justice, including Attorney General Bill Barr, had been telling him all along), then efforts to overturn the election take on the character of a conspiracy. And people like Giuliani, Roman, and many others become accomplices, guided by the Orange God of Mar-a-Lago. 

Trump has slithered out of tight spots before. This time there may be too many witnesses to pay off, with no power to pardon, and no way to silence key accomplices under the umbrella of “executive privilege,” which kept him safe from a deluge or two while in office. It now appears highly likely that the former president will be indicted, along with a number of members of his sorry crew, for efforts to block the final counting of the electoral votes on January 6, 2021. 

Those rumored to be cooperating already include Owen Shroyer, who was part of a gathering on the night of January 5, in the Willard Hotel in D.C., to plan for the day ahead. Even Mark Meadows, Trump’s last White House Chief of Staff, could be talking to prosecutors – a man who would be in a position to tell where the bodies are buried, who dug the holes, and who filled the coffins. 

 

“Facts and legalities don’t matter.” 

And we’re still not done with the bad news for Team Trump. Two potential witnesses in Nevada are also said to be cooperating. The plan to create slates of fake electors in multiple states would appear to have too many working parts – which ultimately failed, of course – to keep secret. 

As Talking Points Memo explains, emails from one Trump attorney, Kenneth Chesebro, sent to a pair of fake electors in Nevada, open a new avenue for Special Prosecutor Jack Smith to pursue. Those “fakes,” Jim DeGraffenreid and Michael McDonald, were willing to participate in what Chesebro described as a plan to “keep alive the possibility that the [Nevada electoral] votes could be flipped to Trump and Biden.” 

(He would seem to mean: “to Trump, from Biden.”)

 

Confusing as that phrasing is, DeGraffenreid understood that the case for creating an entire fake slate of electors – and challenging the real slate before they cast their ballots on December 14, 2020, was almost impossible to justify. In communicating with another one of the “fakes,” DeGraffenreid admitted that “facts and legalities don’t matter – only what you can burn someone with.” 

Even Chesebro seemed to realize the plan in Nevada might be illegal. In an email to a Trump lawyer working on the same kind of scheme in Wisconsin, he described the Nevada effort as “extremely problematic,” because of the legal requirements imposed on electors by Nevada state laws. Still, that didn’t stop him. 

The next day, Chesebro made his pitch to the Nevada electors themselves. Introducing himself as an attorney who was contacting them at Giuliani’s direction, Chesebro explained over a series of messages how they would become “alternate electors,” and how he would ensure that it was legal.

 

Now we know he likely failed. As Talking Points explains: 

One GOP operative familiar with the fake electors effort told TPM that the electors themselves had been misled.

 

“These guys were innocent people just doing what folks they trusted had asked them to do,” the person said, telling TPM that senior Trump campaign officials in the state understood that The Donald had lost Nevada. “They knew they couldn’t win in Nevada.”

 

But with luck, perhaps they could steal the electoral votes, not get caught, and then get a pardon if Trump remained in office for a second term. 

Dennis Aftergut, a former federal prosecutor and … counsel to Lawyers Defending Democracy, told TPM that the Trump attorneys could lead investigators further upwards.

 

“Chesebro was working very closely with [John] Eastman and certainly [Boris] Epshteyn,” he said. “They are all one short step away from Trump.”

 

Finally, we know this. Nine hundred, sixty-eight days, and two hours have passed since the election on November 3, 2020. Depending on what time of day I post this, we could be talking 23,234 hours (since I’m typing at just before 2 a.m. on the last day of June in the year of Our Lord, 2023. 

As of this moment, 1,395,920 minutes have passed; and no evidence has ever been proven in court to show that significant voter fraud occurred in the last presidential election. Or, to put it more precisely, 83,635,200 seconds have flown past (including a couple of thousand while I worked on this post. 

Team Trump has proven nothing, and the subpoenas keep piling up. Special Prosecutor Smith is also rumored to be considering slapping former-President Blubber with up to 30 to 45 new charges, related to his various, allegedly illegal schemes.