"Would You Click This Link?" - Bob Rankin

Click here for a useful article at Bob Rankin entitled "Would You Click This Link?" It has some useful information about email scams.

True Trump Believers Are A Lost Cause

Click here for an article by John Pavlovitz, at johnpavlovitz.com, entitled "The Indictments of Trump are Indictments of His Supporters."

The article begins:

He’s been indicted again, this time for trying to override the voices and votes of the American people in order to steal an election and permanently install himself as a dictator.

These are offenses of the presidency more traitorous and sobering than anything we’ve witnessed in our young nation’s turbulent lifetime.

Sadly, that isn’t the story here.

There were days when far less than these charges would have elicited repulsion from patriotic Americans.

There were days such things would been dealbreakers.

They aren’t anymore.

That is the story.

Pavlovitz presents a list of Trump's offenses, and says of his followers:

They have served to ratify with laser precision the the complete tribal sickness that a terrifying portion of this nation has found itself afflicted with. There is no bridge too far. There is no uncrossable line. There is no unpardonable sin. He is incapable of losing their steadfast adoration.

The cognitive dissonance were living around simply escapes comprehension:
10 Commandments-wielding Christians embracing a profane and predatory pathological liar proven to have sexually abused at least one woman. “Don’t Tread on Me” patriots continually falling prostrate before the very one with his foot upon their collective necks. Self-identified morality police celebrating a prolific purveyor of every kind of wickedness.

The article concludes:

Many of us have wasted countless hours trying to figure out the whys of this recent mass exodus from decency: these denials of Science, celebrations of discrimination, defenses of fascism, embraces of cruelty. This is a natural but fruitless pursuit at this point.

It may be that a cocktail of indoctrination and manipulation have rendered people unable to diverge from Donald Trump.

It may be that political self-preservation keeps them tethered to the Republican Party no matter how low the bottom runs.

It may be that pride prevents them from simply admitting that they once made a terrible mistake, and to avoid such a confession they will continue to make it.

Either way, we are left with the same sobering, infuriating, terrifying truth: to a large swath of the people we share this place and time with, it doesn’t matter what he does or how many people are irreparably harmed by his growing legacy of documented crimes and moral offenses—they are riding him into the abyss.

The rest of us cannot be pulled in with them.

We who remember what this nation aspires to and who believe simple goodness is a still hill worth defending (regardless of their past political affiliations), need to make sure that power is not placed in hands of someone like Donald Trump or those whose hearts provide safe harbor to his hatred.

In the coming days we need to find our collective influence and use it to declare unequivocally that this nation will not allow its legacy to be decided by this man and his movement.

 

 

"This is extremely dangerous to our democracy."

Showed this classic video to my pops last night and he was blown away, which made me realize how effective this compilation is for waking folks up to just how fake the Fake News Media really is.

Please download it and text it to your friends & family who are still asleep 🙏🏼🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/CQ7xhPwUvW

— TheStormHasArrived (@TheStormRedux) December 22, 2023

A generous gift from Donald Trump

A generous gift? From Donald Trump?? Yeah, right.

Since it’s Christmas time, let’s revisit Trump’s generous gift to Charlie Sheen. pic.twitter.com/LiXavvsFBJ

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) December 24, 2023

Carol of the Bells

"Pray for peace in Ukraine and around the world."

🇺🇦 💕 Carol of the Bells (Schedryk) performed by Angelina Usanova. We keep Ukraine in our minds during this Christmas season for the 2nd year in a row, as the nation bravely continues to fight for her survival. pic.twitter.com/LjfTlXpHKB

— Igor Sushko (@igorsushko) December 23, 2023

Your mind plays tricks.

Incredible https://t.co/cSksArovW1

— Kathy Jones-Hospod (@JonesHospodTX) December 23, 2023

This is what the country is up against.

 <blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-media-max-width="560"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Are they all going to be orange now? 🧐🧐 <a href="https://t.co/RYgnHMSEiI">https://t.co/RYgnHMSEiI</a></p>&mdash; MsMariaBlack Covid Cave Dweller (@Msmariablack) <a href="https://twitter.com/Msmariablack/status/1738396094688612830?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 23, 2023</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

Long Live the Gävle Goat!

 

Click here for an article at Forking Paths by Brian Klaas entitled "Will the Gävle Goat survive this Christmas?" According to the article, the struggle over the Goat represents

the eternal battle between goat-erectors and goat-burners; between the forces of cozy commercialization, eager to smother the season in ribbons, presents, and sparkly lights, and the contrasting, primeval urge to set something huge on fire because the sun has disappeared and who knows when it’s coming back.

 

Cats -- what would we do without them?

...and that's how nuclear fission works. https://t.co/YYyrOvP3XH

— Driftglass, Guardian of Inconvenient History (@Mr_Electrico) December 22, 2023

Shamelessness is their superpower.

Joe Rogan has the most popular podcast, with tens of millions of listners.

You can hear the cognitive dissonance gears grinding in Rogan's big, dumb melon.

But it'll pass.

Because with these meatbags, it always passes. https://t.co/8cLAjL9Nwn

— Driftglass, Guardian of Inconvenient History (@Mr_Electrico) December 22, 2023

John Oliver v. Elon Musk

John Oliver uses his final show of 2023 to skewer Elon Musk for half an hour.

 

J

St. Ronald of Reagan

Click here for an article in Salon from February 16, 2016, by Brady Carlson, entitled "They're trying to deify Ronald Reagan: Inside the right-wing plot to turn the Gipper into a modern-day God." It describes Grover Norquist's Ronald Reagan Legacy Project.

Norquist, of course, famously said ""I'm not in favor of abolishing the government. I just want to shrink it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub." I used to consider Norquist to be the most influential non-elected Republican; he's faded from the limelight in recent years, even though he's a mere 67 years old. I guess his poisonous conservative views are considered to be too moderate for the MAGA crowd.

Carlson says: "If the public thought of Reagan, as Norquist did, as a top-tier historic figure, there would be a Reagan mantle for modern conservatives to claim as their own."

Not everyone is enamored of Norquist's project:

Even some staunch Reaganites joined in the criticism; commentator George Will wrote there was “something un-Reaganesque about trying to plaster his name all over the country the way Lenin was plastered over Eastern Europe, Mao over China and Saddam Hussein all over Iraq.”

The project has indisputably been successful:

In 2000, when the Legacy Project was just a few years old, Gallup Poll respondents ranked Reagan as a better-than-average US president; today, he usually ranks near the top, with John F. Kennedy and Abraham Lincoln.

Sigh.

Rick Perlstein on presidential pardons, January 14, 2021

Click here  for an article in The New Yorker by Isaac Chotiner entitled "The Lessons of the Nixon Pardon," dated January 14, 2021 (after the insurrection and a week before Biden's inauguration) in which Chotiner interviews historian Rick Perlstein.

After Ford's pardon of Nixon, Carl Bernstein called Bob Woodward and said, “The son of a bitch pardoned the son of a bitch.” That really seemed to express a pretty widespread national sentiment, as Ford’s approval rating dropped from seventy-one per cent to forty-nine per cent.

Ford's opinion was that if Nixon went to trial, it would be so disruptive and divisive to the operation of the country that it wasn't worth it. In relation to a possible trial of Trump, Perlstein says "any kind of accountability for Trump will require a big chunk of the Senate calendar. In order to be President and govern the country, Joe Biden needs to nominate and have confirmed all sorts of key officials, and that’s going to be difficult work in any event. He’s talking about taking up half the Senate calendar with impeachment."

Asked about the damage to the country resulting from allowing Nixon to go unpunished, Perlstein said; 

I think the cost to the country was colossal. I think it caused a cascade of élite wrongdoing that was specifically enabled by this single act of determining that the Presidency was “too big to fail."

Perlstein goes on to say:

And of course, quite often, justice is destabilizing. Achieving African-American civil rights was destabilizing. Achieving the vote for women was destabilizing, and I’m sure investigating the bribery at Teapot Dome in the nineteen-twenties was divisive. But doing the work of reckoning does all kinds of other important things. It sends a signal that lawbreaking won’t be tolerated."

And of course, if you don't send that signal, wrongdoers are encouraged to act. Had Nixon been tried, convicted, and punished, would Poppy Bush have been more reluctant to get into the Iran-Contra affair, as a result of which several administration officials were indicted and convicted, including Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger? So the wrongdoers were indicted, convicted, and punished, and all is well in Voltaire's "best of all possible worlds"? Sorry, no: They were pardoned by Poppy Bush.

When Obama was elected in 2008, there was a strong push to indict W, Cheney, and Rumsfeld for war crimes (and possibly other administration figures as well), but Obama's famous response was “We need to look forward and not backward.” Yet again, wrongdoing is not punished.

Persltein finds it poetic that the Republican opposition to Trump is led by Liz Cheney, and says:

"If Trump becomes the Herbert Hoover of the twenty-first century, that kind of one-word summary of all that was failed and illegitimate, then what we’re left with as the operational ideology of the Republican Party is Cheneyism. Not only does that revive the family name but it moves the Overton window to the right. The amount of executive malfeasance that is acceptable to official Washington is what Cheney did because it sure is better than what Trump did. It’s a fascinating multigenerational thing going on here."

Witch Hunt

Click here for an article at Substack by Robert Reich entitled "Who's really behind the drive to impeach Joe Biden?" He answers his own question with the article's subtitle: "The same person who sought Zelensky's help in digging up dirt on Hunter and Joe."

It's a witch hunt, of course. Hunter has done some wrong and possibly criminal things -- but Hunter's not running for office. The Republicans have been unable to tie any of Hunter's wrongdoings  to his father, but that's irrelevant to Republicans if they can smear and tarnish the president with an investigation.

Yeah, Darth Vader is one scary dude

A post by Mark Hamill (aka Luke Skywalker):

This one never fails to amuse me. 😆#DogVader https://t.co/qEi9U3XSFG

— Mark Hamill (@MarkHamill) December 12, 2023

Robert Reich video on monopolism in agriculture

Why's meat so expensive? Could it be corporate price-fixing?

The price of Tyson chicken went up 20% in 2021, which helped the company double its profits.

But over the past three years, Tyson has had to pay ~$220 million over price-fixing allegations.

Hello? pic.twitter.com/d6GsCAdQTX

— Robert Reich (@RBReich) December 10, 2023

Surprise!

This a 6-part series of tweets; click to open, and follow for much more.

This is so striking. I bet 0.000001% of the population knows this, and that includes highly engaged politically minded people. https://t.co/OdqGpn9JgI

— David Roberts (@drvolts) December 8, 2023

Be afraid ... be very afraid ...

#Shenanigans 😂 pic.twitter.com/RbKVDmHVrO

— 🍸ⓁⒶⓃⒺ🍸 (@lanechanged) December 8, 2023

I want one of these!

This is just good therapy. pic.twitter.com/5ByIrQlrsJ

— Paul Ahticks (@PaulAhticks) December 7, 2023

Yes, there's something familiar about this.

Sound familiar??? pic.twitter.com/JjAacV3SYg

— Kaylan_TX (@Kaylan_TX) December 7, 2023

Republicans Block Ukraine Funding -- Russians Rejoice

Click here for an article at The Daily Beast by Julia Davis, entitled "Putin's Pals Think the GOP Just Won Them the War in Ukraine." Subtitle, "Kremlin propagandists celebrate the Republican move to block funding and predict President Trump will totally cut off Ukraine and Israel."

This is a roundup of programs and articles in Russian TV and print media celebrating Republicans' efforts to cut off funding for Ukraine: 

“This will be a great revelation to other countries. It is even more dangerous to be a friend of the United States than its enemy. In the end, they will abandon you, leaving nothing but the scorched earth on your territory.”

Commentators throughout the war have been saying that Russia's plan was to outlast Western support, which they predicted would crumble when the United States lost interest and decided the price was too high. Unfortunately, that may be happening.

And the Russians are big Trump supporters:

While the Russians are pleased with Republicans, they believe that Donald Trump could do even better. The Kremlin’s mouthpieces make no secret of their desire to see Trump return to the White House and now they have yet another incentive. Appearing on The Evening With Vladimir Solovyov Tuesday night, Dmitry Drobnitsky predicted that if Trump wins the presidency, he will ditch not only Ukraine but also Israel. He explained that he no longer has to demonstrate being a pro-Israel president to his evangelical base. Drobnitsky said, “Trump already gave them all that he could: the Golan Heights, Jerusalem, and everything else. He already paid them in full. Now, after the empire of Sheldon Adelson has turned away from him, he owes them nothing.”

They're not big Biden fans:

America analyst Dmitry Drobnitsky noted, “The downfall of Ukraine means the downfall of Biden! Two birds with one stone!”

During his appearance on [the Russian program] 60 Minutes, Dmitry Abzalov, president of the Center for Strategic Communications, predicted that the fiasco with the funding for Ukraine will spell the political demise of Biden. Host Olga Skabeeva added, “We’ll have no pity for him! To the contrary, we’re ready to hammer those final nails right in!” With a happy grin, Skabeeva said, “Well done, Republicans! They’re standing firm! That’s good for us.”

Russia, Russia, Russia -- a hoax? Yeah, right.

 

Heather Cox Richardson interviews President Biden

Historian Heather Cox Richardson interviews President Biden on March 4, 2022. Try to imagine Trump in an interview situation like this one.

Click here for the half-hour interview.

Okay, This Is Scary As Hell.

Click here for an article in The New York Times by David French, entitled "It's Time to Fix America's Most Dangerous Law."

It concerns The Insurrection Act (1792), "a federal law that permits the president to deploy military troops in American communities to effectively act as a domestic police force under his direct command." French calls it a law "that Donald Trump, if re-elected president, could use to destroy our republic."

 French writes that one section of the Act "gives the president the ability to call out the National Guard or the regular army 'whenever the president considers that unlawful obstructions, combinations, or assemblages, or rebellion against the authority of the United States, make it impracticable to enforce the laws of the United States in any state by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings.' Note the key language: 'whenever the president considers.' That means deployment is up to him and to him alone."

Another section "grants the president the power to 'take such measures he considers necessary' to suppress 'any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination or conspiracy.' This broad grant of power makes the Insurrection Act far more immediately dangerous than many other threatened Trump actions, such as prosecuting political opponents and transforming the federal work force. Judicial review can blunt many of Trump’s worst initiatives, but there’s no such obvious check on the use of his power under the Act." 

What could happen? "An angry, vindictive president could send regular army troops straight into American cities at the first hint of protest. This would place both the American polity and the American military under immense strain. While the former consequence may be more obvious, the latter is also important. Many soldiers would be deeply unhappy to be deployed against their countrymen and would be rightly concerned that a reckless deployment would be accompanied by reckless orders. Dominating the streets of New York is not the mission they signed up for."

You might wonder why the Insurrection Act hasn’t presented much of a problem before now. It’s been used rarely, and when it has been used, it’s been used for legitimate purposes. For example, it was used repeatedly to suppress racist violence in the South during the Reconstruction era and the civil rights movement. Most recently, George H.W. Bush invoked it in 1992 — at the request of the governor of California — to assist in quelling the extreme violence of the Rodney King riots in Los Angeles.

That historical restraint has been dependent on a factor that is utterly absent from Trump: a basic commitment to the Constitution and democracy. Previous presidents, for all their many flaws, still largely upheld and respected the rule of law. Even in their most corrupt moments, there were lines they wouldn’t cross. Trump not only has no such lines but also has made his vengeful intentions abundantly clear.

The article concludes:

When you read misguided laws like the Insurrection Act, you realize that the long survival of the American republic is partly a result of good fortune. Congress, acting over decades, has gradually granted presidents far too much power, foolishly trusting them to act with at least a minimal level of integrity and decency.

Trump has demonstrated that trust is no longer a luxury we can afford. It’s time to take from presidents a power they never should have possessed. No man or woman should be able to unilaterally deploy the armed forces to control America’s streets.

 

 

Henry Kissinger: RIP?

Click here for an article by Robert Reich on Substack entitled "Henry Kissinger, 1923-2023. War criminal."

He discusses at some length Kissinger's malevolent involvement in Pinochet's violent overthrow of Salvador Allende's democratically elected government in Chile, a military coup with thousands tortured, murdered, and executed. Allende referred to his government policy as "the Chilean way to socialism," which of course was anathema to Nixon and his merry band, so they turned a blind eye to Pinochet's bloodsoaked regime from 1973 to 1990.

Reich focuses his article on Chile, but that was only one of a number of places where Kissinger could justifiably have been prosecuted for war crimes. Another was the bombing of Cambodia during the Vietnam War. Here's what Anthony Bourdain posted on Twitter about Kissinger and Cambodia in 2001:

"Once you've been to Cambodia, you'll never stop wanting to beat Henry Kissinger to death with your bare hands. You will never again be able to open a newspaper and read about that treacherous, prevaricating, murderous scumbag sitting down for a nice chat with Charlie Rose or attending some black-tie affair for a new glossy magazine without choking. Witness what Henry did in Cambodia -- the fruits of his genius for statesmanship -- and you will never understand why he's not sitting in the dock at The Hague next to Milosevic."