“It was miraculous. It was almost no trick at all, he saw, to turn vice into virtue and slander into truth, impotence into abstinence, arrogance into humility, plunder into philanthropy, thievery into honor, blasphemy into wisdom, brutality into patriotism, and sadism into justice. Anybody could do it; it required no brains at all. It merely required no character.” --Joseph Heller, Catch-22
21 comments:
Indeed.
The pain, emotional, spiritual, intellectual, and otherwise that Trump must be experiencing. It must be immense and all consuming.
Trump, being incapable of viewing life through any lense other than the very dark and deluded view of his gigantic ego will die a broken and miserable being.
An ultimate fate he brought entirely upon himself.
The rule OF Law transformed...
...into the rule BY Law.
As the ignorance of the MAGAverse and it's fake conservatism continues it frantic attempt to convince everyone to believe that what is true and before there very eyes and in their ears is really false.
As -fj believes down is up, right is wrong, and truth and integrity matters not.
Go ahead -fj, double down. Since that seems be your contribution to the ignorance and insanity of MAGA.
pShaw didn't print the companion comment, so I guess you'll never know the true degree of insanity, Les.
Only the magat crowd of which the many faces of JoeC could interpret his latest comment as anything but pure drivel. Indeed it would take a deluded and willfully ignorant mind to take that as anything but nonsense.
On Wednesday, the Biden administration announced an additional $7.7 billion in loan debt relief was approved for 160,500 borrowers. This will bring the total amount of debt forgiveness up to $167 billion for 4.75 million student loan borrowers, or 1 in 10 debt holders.
Leslie, I hope your neighbors kids appreciate all you are doing for them. Although I like my neighbors kids I paid for my education and my kids. Now I have to pay for those kids I never met. Talk about ignorance and insanity this is it.
tRUMP has a plethora of no character.
I share Joe Con's concern.
Weaponizing the law is fascism, but Trump did it, not Biden.
Former White House Chief of Staff John Kelly revealed that Trump repeatedly asked him to use the IRS and Justice Department to target political opponents. This is illegal and goes against the core principles of democracy.
Trump turns the full force of the government on perceived political enemies
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/trump-turns-full-force-government-perceived-political-enemies-n1010096
May 24, 2019
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump found four former federal officials guilty of "treason" Thursday — and then commissioned his intelligence agencies to help the Department of Justice prove it…On Thursday, Trump gave the names of four people — James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Peter Stzrok and Lisa Page — when he was asked about his past formulation that former federal officials who were involved in investigations dealing with his campaign and that of rival Hillary Clinton were guilty of treason, and reminded that the crime is punishable by death.
“I will appoint a real special prosecutor to go after the most corrupt president in the history of the United States of America, Joe Biden, and the entire Biden crime family,” the former president said in June after his arraignment in Florida.
Thanks for bringing this up, Joe. There's more.
MORE of Trump weaponizing law enforcement, aka "lawfare".
We recall when Trump pressured acting DOJ officials like acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen on December 27 to "Just say that the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the Republican Congressmen," according to the notes of acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue's notes, shared with House investigators.
A day later, on December 28, at least one acting DOJ official, Jeffrey Clark, who was in charge of the civil division, apparently bought into Trump's lies, or wanted to assuage him, and drafted a letter suggesting there were election irregularities in the election (there weren't), but it was rebuffed by other top acting officials.
Officials like Rosen's chief of staff Patrick Hovakimian drafted letters of resignation in case his boss was pushed out in favor of Clark.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/07/10/all-ways-trump-not-his-foes-sought-weaponize-government/?utm_campaign=wp_politics_am&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_politics
All the ways Trump, not his foes, sought to ‘weaponize’ the government
Trump also wanted the IRS to investigate former FBI director James B. Comey and former deputy director Andrew McCabe, along with Hillary Clinton, former secretary of state and Trump’s presidential challenger, and other perceived foes, Kelly said last year. Comey and McCabe were audited, the odds of which happening randomly is infinitesimal. (An inspector general report last year found no connection between Trump and the audits, but raised concerns that warranted further investigation.)
Trump publicly and repeatedly pushed for McCabe’s firing before McCabe was due to receive full retirement benefits, ultimately succeeding mere hours before that would have taken place.
Trump told his White House counsel that he wanted to order probes of Clinton and Comey, per the Times. (His press secretary in late 2017 also said prosecuting Comey was “something that certainly should be looked at” at the Justice Department.)
Trump said publicly in late 2020 that former president Barack Obama and former vice president Joe Biden should be indicted and indicated he had made such a case to his attorney general, William P. Barr.
He said in 2019 that it would be “appropriate” for him to ask for an investigation of Biden.
He withheld security assistance from Ukraine while seeking to have the country say it was opening an investigation involving Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, releasing the aid only when the situation became public. Acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney effectively confirmed this was the arrangement before backing off those comments. Trump was impeached for this, and many Republicans acknowledged it was at least improper. A key figure — European Union Ambassador Gordon Sondland — indicated it was probably illegal.
•
A Justice Department office was tasked with investigating former secretary of state John F. Kerry in 2018, two days after Trump tweeted about Kerry’s “possibly illegal” activities and the same day Trump said Kerry “should be prosecuted,” according to former U.S. attorney Geoffrey Berman’s book.
A Trump political appointee in 2018 asked Berman to prosecute a prominent Democratic lawyer, Gregory Craig, and to do so before the midterms, Berman also said. (When Berman declined, it was prosecuted in Washington, where the jury acquitted Craig of lying to the Justice Department.)
Berman recalled several other examples of political influence seeping into the Justice Department. “Throughout my tenure as U.S. attorney,” Berman wrote, “Trump’s Justice Department kept demanding that I use my office to aid them politically, and I kept declining — in ways just tactful enough to keep me from being fired.”
Trump repeatedly applied public pressure on the Justice Department to take it easy on his allies, prompting Barr to remark that Trump’s comments “make it impossible for me to do my job.”
I wanted to say a few words about Trump Derangement Syndrome.
Years ago, Trump's fraudulent charity was banned, and his fraudulent university was shut down. More recently, he was found liable for defaming a woman he sexually assaulted, his decades-long enterprise was adjudged fraudulent and disgorged (his CEO sits in Rikers), and presently, he's being tried criminally for election fraud.
AND YET ... his MAGA enablers, and his chief amplifier Fox News, incessantly yell defiant sound bites that are false, lie about crowd size, and issue panicky denials.
THAT is Trump Derangement Syndrome.
Here's our Memorial Day Moment of Zen...
What if Trump is right about America... from The Bulwark
Keep on believing the illusions you cherish skudsy. It's okay. You're not alone.
What our fine President Biden is doing is demolishing your cherished beliefs and i realize it is difficult to unlock that mind vault of cherished beliefs and acknowledge the positive effects for ALL thar his leadership has resulted in.
It's okay. You like what you like. You are attached to it at your hips. Your fear of change, even with the benefits that have already accrued from them causes your dissatisfaction and grasping. Grasping won't help. Only causes suffering.
But as always, it's your call. We all know, many times over, what that will be. In advance.
Now, time to reflect on our fallen heroes and understand the great sacrifices they made and how intricately interconnected their lives were with so many others. And how their loss changed so many lives.
If only humans would focus on their great many similarities rather than their relatively few minor differences. Starting with loving your brothers and sisters (all of them) as you love yourself.
Skud... I hate deficit spending as much as the next guy, like you do I think.
But if DC is going to live on the people's credit cards, what's the prob?
The GOP steals my money and gives it to rich corporate types in tax cuts or the Dems steal your money and give it to poorer people by paying off their student loans.
Either way, the deficit grows while Dems decry GOP giveaways and the GOP decries Dem giveaways. All day long.
At least on the Dem side, an argument can be made that it is generally not the multimillionaires and billionaires who are getting the handouts.
Some interesting observations Dave. There is some food for thought there.
At the same time i find some a bit convoluted. Maybe it's just me.
If we look at the way the DOJ since 1970, until recently, treated cannabis (a safe and useful plant medicine yet it was listed as dangerous as heroine) specifically to control the darker population amongst us, it is not hard to see how Nixon, a republican, weaponized the DOJ against people of color. That is true. It can happen again in any way for anything .
But THAT is not what the now democratically controlled DOJ is doing to Trump. There is CREDIBLE evidence on many fronts of his criminality.
Dave M.
Trump is right about ignorant and bigoted white Americans at least.
An authoritarian leader like Trump does indeed have the instinct, if not understanding, of how fellow authoritarians crave a leader who hates the same people they hate.
America has never had a shortage or racist white supremacists, Nazis, and now neo-Nazis.
Recall the massive Nazi rallies at Madison Square Garden in the 1930's.
Trump is right about how to manipulate white Americans with lies, bigotry and hate. They were already there for him, primed and eager for his leadership.
Rev,
"The GOP steals my money and gives it to rich corporate types in tax cuts or the Dems steal your money and give it to poorer people by paying off their student loans"
Give tax breaks to rich corporate types, really. Who are you going to give tax breaks to if it is not people with money. Maybe go to The Fair Tax because then those rich corporate types will pay their Fair share as will everyone instead of 51% who pay FIT now.
Skud,
What is "fair"?
Do you really think what the Republicans call a "fair tax" is really fair for most of us? If so, I have a nice bridge to sell you. It would benefit only the rich and screw the rest of us.
Their "fair tax" would hit the poorest people with a high tax on the necessities of life that would have next to zero impact on the wealthy.
An actual fair tax would be taxing the rich the same rate of FICA tax as the rest of us. A fair tax would impose taxes on politically active churches. These are the LAST thing Republicans would want.
https://mac.ncsu.edu/news/2023/02/09/the-pros-and-cons-of-the-proposed-fair-tax-act-of-2023/
"Many analysts already predict this would overwhelmingly benefit wealthy individuals and corporations at a cost to lower and middle-class taxpayers. Our current tax system employs a progressive income tax rate, which follows the vertical equity principle – people with more income pay more in taxes than people with less income. By imposing a flat rate on purchases, lower and middle-class individuals will bear a far greater burden of taxation than under the current system."
Skud... I'm not a fan of tax cuts to anyone making more the 250K a year. If you can't live on that, a great salary in the greatest country in the world, you've got bigger problems.
I'm with Ike... pick a wage, let's say a million a year. Then the US should tax those folks at about 75% on every dollar they make over that 1 million.
And rebuild our roads, take care of social security, give every American access to single payer health care and figure out a way to public, rather than private funding of political campaigns.
Dave... your links are useless to Skud. Based on his comments over the years, he never reads them, never refutes them, in fact, never bothers with them.
He's like the people who swear America is in a recession and has the highest unemployment we've ever seen. Facts do not matter. Evidence does not matter to this crowd. Just their perceptions and "secret knowledge" of a reality that none of us can see...
Think I'm wrong? Read on...
Nearly everything Americans believe about the economy is wrong
Or how about Speaker Johnson's comments about some evidence of voter fraud? Here's what he said...
“We all know intuitively that a lot of illegals are voting in federal elections, but it’s not been something that is easily provable... We don’t have that number [of voter fraud].” Is it any wonder libs call this fantasy the "Big Lie"?
Do you see the trend?
Conservatives, MAGA folks and the GOP, deny reality and rely on evidence that is "intuitive" yet, without evidence.
How can we argue with that? How can we find common ground? How can America come together when one sizable group, believes fiction to be truth, relies on alternative and "false facts"?
Nearly everything Americans believe about the economy is wrong
Also, nearly everything the MAGAverse believes about reality is flawed.
Dave M.
The Right has always been anti-intellectual and anti-education. Too many facts, too much reality.
They are guided by FEELINGS over FACTS.
It's no wonder Hitler said, “I use emotion for the many and reserve reason for the few.”
The original Fuhrer is Trump's role model and mentor.
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