Ocelot II
Ocelot II's JournalAssuming Garland had acted sooner, would the outcome really have been different?
I'm asking this not in defense of Garland, but because I am wondering whether the eventual result - the Supreme Court's immunity decision - wouldn't have just come sooner as well, and would still have prevented a trial before the election? Say the Trump indictments had come out a year earlier, starting in August of 2022 instead of August of 2023. Presumably Trump would have moved to dismiss the indictment in December of 2022, and the case would have made its way to SCOTUS on about the same timeline, but a year sooner, at the end of the 2023 term. At this point the case would have gone back to the district court for Judge Chutkan to decide which counts of the indictment should be dismissed according to SCOTUS' decision. Smith (if he had been handling the case, or another team if no special prosecutor had been appointed) would likely have filed a superseding indictment, just as he did in 2024. And that new indictment would have been challenged as well, and appealed for as long as possible - maybe all the way back to SCOTUS, and maybe long enough to prevent a trial from occurring before November of 2024. Smith didn't get much farther than the superseding indictment, dated July 27, 2024, which gave him only about 4 months to get the case prepared and tried - an impossible task. If he could have started over a year sooner, would there have been a trial, or would he still be stuck in the appellate process by November of 2024?
Maybe if Garland had started the process a year earlier (I'm not sure the investigation could have been completed much before then), Trump could have been tried and possibly, though not certainly, convicted before the election, although appeals would continue and it's doubtful he'd have ever gone to prison, regardless. We might never know why Garland didn't move more expeditiously. But given the glacial pace of the appellate process I'm not sure the eventual outcome would have been different. So I would agree that at least some of the blame can be laid at Roberts' feet. SCOTUS' decision might prove to be their most democracy-destroying act since Citizens United.
Icarus is flying awfully close to the Sun.
All this shit-talking is classic hubris as in the old Greek dramas, or, to cite some other ancient wisdom, "Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall." (Proverbs 16:18)
It might take awhile, and the chaos they create in the meantime will be epic, but so will be their downfall. Hitler in the bunker.
They damned the "acceptable" ones with faint praise, but
they still deemed them acceptable. Burgum was acceptable for Interior because he was the governor of ND and started a software company. Huh? Lutnik is OK for Commerce because "it's a natural fit for a job traditionally held by a presidential friend." Pam Bondi is fine for AG because she's "serious." Scott Turner gets the OK for HUD because although "the former motivational speaker has never run a big organization ... that is not disqualifying." Hint to WaPo: HUD is a "Black job" because it has the word "urban" in it; qualifications are irrelevant (see also Ben Carson). Noem qualifies for DHS because she's been a governor and served in Congress. Alrighty, then. Oil and gas exec Wright qualifies for Energy because he acknowledges that climate change is real. Hello, shouldn't that be a minimum requirement for any Cabinet position, like admitting that gravity is real? Raving lunatic Collins' "heart is in the right place." Reality TV star Duffy "will need to study" for Transportation but he's qualified.
I'm still glad I canceled my subscription, and now I think they should give me my money back from when I did subscribe.
It's what's been called performative imperialism.
He's a bully, and this is the way he always operates. He's not going to invade Greenland or Panama or Canada; he just wants to force their leaders to capitulate in some way so as to remind them of his power. And renaming the Gulf of Mexico, which wouldn't actually benefit the US in any way, is just a performance for his MAGA base, like promising to build the border wall that never got built. MAGA didn't even care that the wall never got built; they just liked it that he talked about it. Bleach-blond bad body MAGA hag MTG is loving it.
I have become cynical in my old age, having realized over time
that America is not, and never was, Reagan's "shining city on a hill." We are not exceptional. We are not special. We are just a very large collection of humans who happen to live on a very large tract of land and have had to figure out how to live together on it and not kill each other. That's how countries work - some better than others. And humans, no matter where they live, can be really nasty creatures, something history should have taught us. We aren't exempt from history. We are just as capable of atrocity and oppression as anyone else. We pat ourselves on the back for America's "greatness," really meaning its prosperity, but the reality is that our prosperity depended in the first instance on stolen labor and stolen land - a fact that is conveniently forgotten when politicians bloviate about American exceptionalism.
So as I have become old and watched the successive American shitstorms of Vietnam, Watergate, gun violence, Iraq, and the Trump cult, my assumptions and my expectations have changed considerably. It does not surprise me all that much that almost half of us think it's OK to have a leader as degenerate and despicable as Trump, who in his dotage is now effectively controlled by a similarly despicable billionaire and a Russian despot. We are in for some strange and bad times. But the cool thing about being a cynic is that you are rarely disappointed. So while I wait for the excrement to impact the airfoils I will continue to enjoy the things I've always enjoyed: Music, art, all the beautiful things that people create even though people also suck; my friends, lakes and trees and birds and sunrises and sunsets, the fact that I'm still alive and kicking and still capable of hope. Cynicism isn't the same as despair.
Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul
And sings the tune without the words
And never stops at all.
They weren't simpletons at all; they were trying to construct a government
that could avoid or combat the problems Europe had experienced for centuries and with which they were very familiar, especially religious wars, autocratic monarchs, class structures and the effects of feudalism. England was still recovering from the civil wars of the 17th century and its revolving-door monarchy, which by 1776 was controlled by a king who was certifiably nuts. If you'd ever actually read the Federalist Papers you'd know that these were not stupid people. But they were dealing with issues pertinent to the times they knew of and were living in. If it were possible for the smartest among us to start from scratch now and design a new system that works for our time, it would certainly be different. But 250 years from now, would that system and its designers also be considered stupid if the system couldn't deal effectively with whatever had transpired since it was created?
Adaptability is also necessary.
While I agree that chronological age shouldn't be disqualifying just because some people think there's too much of it, and that experience is unquestionably important, it's also essential that our representatives be able to adapt to changing conditions, and flexible enough to reconsider the way they've always been doing things. It's not enough to say "We've always done it that way!" and then keep doing it that way, not noticing that the ground has shifted under their feet. They have to notice the changes, both political technological, and and adapt to them. It seems to me that some of the more senior members of the party are doing their work and managing their campaigns just as they've done since the '70s, but everything is different now. If you're 75 years old and you can get with the drastic evolution (devolution?) of political thought and strategy, great; but if you think you're still in Lyndon Johnson's Congress you'd better think again, or retire.
I'm old. I don't want to see anyone turfed out on account of the date on their driver's license, but some of these folks need to park their stick-shift cars, shitcan their Blackberries and their VCRs, and get with the program.
I'm afraid Trump's GOP will do everything it can to cut funding
for the arts and humanities. They've been trying to kill the NEA since the Reagan administration; Trump tried to kill it in 2017, and this time they might finally succeed. We need the arts and the humanities to maintain any semblance of a civilization - which seems already to be circling the drain. AI threatens to kill creativity, and the arts aren't valued by the tech bros or the plutocrats. Voltaire said, "Life is a shipwreck but we must not forget to sing in the lifeboats." Will we even know how to sing when the shipwreck comes?
Brian Thompson has become an avatar for the health insurance industry,
and his killing created a focus for the public's rage toward its predatory practices. Of course nobody should be murdered in cold blood, regardless of how harmful his business practices might be. However much a particular person might symbolize the excesses of a business, no one is entitled to appoint himself judge, jury and executioner of that person; Thompson's killer should be arrested and tried for murder. The real problem is that regardless of how immoral and harmful UHC's and other health insurers' practices are (and how immoral Thompson and other executives might be for implementing and supporting them), we have a health care payment system that preys on people's illnesses and injuries and it's perfectly legal.
The insurance industry, especially health insurance, is parasitic - and it's largely unregulated, and it has enough money and enough lobbyists to make sure it stays that way. The ACA improved the situation slightly but not nearly enough, because our Congress didn't want to derail the insurers' gravy train and had little incentive to do so. Killing off a few CEOs won't change a thing; they will be replaced by more CEOs with the same incentive to maximize profits at the expense of their captive customers by delaying claim reimbursements or denying coverage altogether. Maybe Thompson's murder will help focus the public's anger enough to get Congress to regulate these pirates, but I wouldn't count on it. Money doesn't just talk; it shouts more loudly than anything else.
Bingo. He realized that Trump's DoJ and FBI would never leave Hunter alone.
There was an op-ed in my morning paper, which I will not link to because it pissed me off so deeply, in which the author stated that Biden disregarded the Rule of Law (as to which concept, see my rant at https://www.democraticunderground.com/100219783695) by choosing his son over his country. WTF? How does pardoning Hunter hurt the country any more than Trump's pardons of all manner of miscreants, with more certainly to come? Like it or not, the Constitutional power of a president to pardon is absolute, and there have been many controversial pardons over the years (Clinton got a lot of blowback for pardoning Marc Rich, an act that seems almost comically inconsequential vs. Trump).
No president has ever pardoned an immediate family member before; but it's never even been an issue before, since no presidential family member has ever before faced ongoing punitive prosecution intended to harm the president himself. The country vs. the son is a false choice. There will be and already is political blowback, as was expected, but actual harm to the country? Any harm arising from inappropriate pardons has been done; that ship has sailed beyond the horizon. Did Joe weigh the very real, anticipated harm to his son against the illusory and largely imaginary harm to the country? Clearly he did, and he chose his son. Hunter wouldn't have been prosecuted as he was if Joe hadn't been president, and certainly Joe wasn't going to throw his son to the wolves so the wolves could have the pound of flesh they couldn't get from Joe himself. How could he have done anything other than what he did and live with himself? Fuck the blowback and fuck the self-righteous blowhards who suddenly believe in a rule of law they never cared about before.
Profile Information
Gender: Do not displayHometown: Minnesota
Member since: Sun Oct 26, 2003, 11:54 PM
Number of posts: 121,860