Trump Crime, Code, Why, Arraignment, Falling Down the Stares, White Angst

Before we dive too deep, we must ponder the solemn challenge of an unprecedented arraignment:


Okay. Now the deep:

  • YellowDog Granny has a few post-it notes on BathroomGate.
     
  • Dave Dubya goes to legal detail – including criminal code citations – in explaining the actual indictment content.
    Dave does research ordinary mortals don’t do but want done, and makes it understandable.
     
    Key clever snark/explanation combo – – –
    (on 18 U.S. Code § 2071 – Concealment, removal, or mutilation generally):
    My theory on why this charge isn’t included is the penalty would apply to an election. Supposedly the FBI is loath to “interfere” in elections, right, James Comey?
     
  • Hackwhackers joins the online question. Why did mr Trump keep, shuffle, and hide so many documents?
     
    We have visual evidence of one possibility.
     
  • CalicoJack, in The Psy of Life, takes a detailed look at Donald’s known loopy impulses, asking whether Trump sold national secrets.
     
    Answer: Possible, not probable.
    Not to be excessively unkind, but a sale would require an organizational skill way above his level of executive ability.
     
    Key conclusion:
    He may have taken them thinking he could sell them during desperate financial moments or use them to blackmail someone, but it wasn’t his primary purpose in taking them.
     
    So why? There are likely answers.
     
  • Iron Knee at Political Irony speculates about whether mr Trump’s middle-of-the-indictment lawyer switch may be part of something deeper.
     
    Key snark about what attorneys will come next:
    Maybe it will be Four Seasons Law, Landscaping and Lies, headed by Rudy Giuliani?
     
  • The violence Donald Trump promised would happen at his arraignment pretty much fizzled out. Supporters evaporated and floated off in the wind.
     
    But Vixen Strangely at Strangely Blogged notes that Republicans are resorting to another form of violence.
     
    Key assault on truth:
    But the lie that Biden had anything to do with Trump’s predicament will persist because of the liars who support Trump.
     
  • Some side drama in the courthouse:
     
    Donald Trump has been energetically attacking President Joe Biden, Attorney General Merrick Garland, and the Department of Justice.
     
    But his most vitriolic attacks have been directed at Special Prosecutor Jack Smith and his wife.
    His wife? Yeah, his wife.
     
    At the Tuesday arraignment, there were some glaring contests. The Palmer Report paints the picture. As he marched out of the courtroom, Donald Trump made a show of glowering at reporters.
     
    Then the bellicose exhibition was dropped as mr Trump suddenly stared at the floor, studiously avoiding the unwavering gaze of special prosecutor Jack Smith.
     
  • In the Borowitz Report, a satiric new documents mystery: sensitive files and papers are now missing from the Miami Courthouse.
     
    Key bewilderment:
    The head of security for the federal courthouse acknowledged that he and his team have “no leads whatsoever” as to who took the documents.
     
  • Our favorite Earth-Bound Misfit examines the notion that if they can get Trump, they can get you.
     
    Key What About:
    Neither Biden or Pence talked with aides and lawyers about hiding them, lying to the Feds and discussed schemes to avoid complying with the return demands.
     
    I happen to have a thought:
  • Dave Columbo goes Republican and articulates the MAGA case for Trump:
     

  • This is worth reading through: Cato Institute’s Julian Sanchez takes apart the main defense of Trump document theft:
     

  • Rant-master Max’s Dad sees the indictment as Karma fulfilled.
     
  • Ted McLaughlin at jobsanger has the latest polls, translated into understandable bar graphs, on the indictment and Trump. Shows in graphic form the difference between Republicans and normal people.
     
  • tengrain at Mock Paper Scissors presents more than a dozen bright reasons to love Scotland. All having to do with our once-upon-a-president.
     
  • Ant Farmer’s Almanac has a new headline about a new product introduced by Mike Lindell and the Trump Organization.
     
    Key advertised benefit:
    Everybody’s got secrets — whether your own or someone else’s — and you need someplace to hide them
     
  • Green Eagle does not go along with the national narrative about the differences between parties. No, Republicans do not think Trump is innocent.
     
    Key MAGA motive:
    That is the fact that White people are on the edge of no longer being a majority in this country; in fact in many parts of it, they already do not have the votes to win elections without gerrymandering, cheating, violent intimidation and every other tactic of dictators.
     
  • The Propaganda Professor reviews The Brainwashing of My Dad, a very personal documentary by filmmaker Jen Senko about the rise of right-wing media. The Professor discovers four important insights in the film.
     
    Key tragedy:
    Senko’s late father transformed from a kind, loving, compassionate soul to a bitter, angry, narrow-minded loon.
     
  • News Corpse sees MSNBC trouncing the Fox Network as a 2024 omen.
     
    Key denigration:
    James Comer on Maria Bartiromo’s show says MSNBC has “a low IQ audience”
     
  • The Supreme Court ruled that Alabama could not gerrymander Congressional districts to reduce Black representation. The court ordered the state to redo the Congressional map.
     
    Libertarian Michael A. LaFerrara does his best to discredit the decision.
     
    He suggests that a clear intent to discriminate can’t be supported simply by insisting the result happens to favor one race or another.
     
    Key argument:
    The idea that because black residents make up 1/4 of the state‘s population that 1/4 of elected representatives must be black (or supported by a black majority) is nowhere consistent with equality before the law. It is racist.
     
    Michael’s logical argument is supported by the current Supreme Court. But it is flawed.
     
    In the not too distant past (during my lifetime), black voters in many parts of the south were kept from voting by literacy rules that never mentioned race. Why would anyone argue against the merit of requiring a literate electorate?
     
    We all know, and knew then, that it was discriminatory because the test itself was often absurd. Can any of us recite from memory random sections of the Constitution?
     
    Previously eligible voters were exempted. So were new voters who had high recommendations from prominent citizens.
     
    Lawmakers in those days pointed out that the fact that exempted voters were White and the test was just given to Black applicants was an unfortunate coincidence of a fair requirement.
     
    Today, those literacy tests are gone, recognized as discriminatory. They are replaced by gerrymanders, closed voting locations, changed voting days, cancelled mail-in opportunities, eliminated drop off points, and selective ID requirements (hunters license are ok, student photo IDs and city photo permits are not).
     
    The fact that the net result is Black people having a harder time voting is just an unfortunate coincidence.
     
    Michael’s factual argument is more clearly flawed. It is based on Justice John Robert’s written opinion. Supreme Court opinions are seldom based on evidence. Facts are established and applied at a lower level. The Supreme Court deals with broad principles.
     
    Had Michael had the time to look, he might have found that the newer districts were largely based on previous boundaries which Alabama adjusted to keep an equal number of voters. In the 1990s, those previous boundaries had been openly race based (pdf), drawn specifically to deny Black voters equal representation. No secret about it.
     
    The new districts were the same as the old districts, with minor adjustments for size of population.
     
    That was enough to convince a couple of SCOTUS conservatives. The main outrage is that four justices and many casual commenters could not see the issue.
     
  • driftglass is unimpressed with the new fledgling No Labels party and never-trumpers who support them.
     
    Has to do with spoilers wanting to syphon off enough votes to allow trump-lite DeSantis to become President Trump-Lite.
     
  • Scotties Playtime does not think much of Nazis waving swastika flags and DeSantis flags outside Disney World.
     
    Key comment:
    What is it about the (R) Party that attracts Neo Nazis?
     
    Key comment inverted:
    Or the other way around???? What is it about the Nazi party that attracts republicans????
     
  • Disaffected and it Feels So Good has sound speculation on the DeSantis plan for democracy after he becomes President.
     
  • M. Bouffant at Web of Evil has many links to many sources as Republicans are embarrassed into stopping their traditional attack on Social Security but then pick it up again.
     
    Key document:
    And yet, the Republican Study Committee (of which some three quarters [sic] of House Republicans are members of [sic]) just released its desired 2024 budget in which the party seeks to, you guessed it, cut Social Security and Medicare.
     
  • In Letters from an American, historian Heather Cox Richardson has read through the new Republican Study Committee budget. To prevent what it calls a “march toward socialism” by “President Joe Biden and the left” it includes Republican plans for Social Security and Medicare.
     
    Key provisions:
    It calls for slashing the federal budget by raising the age at which retirees can start claiming Social Security benefits from 67 to 69, privatizing Medicare, and enacting dramatic tax cuts that will starve the federal government.
     
    Key actual reason for current deficits:
    Tax cuts under the George W. Bush and Trump administrations are responsible for 57% of the increase in the ratio of the debt to the economy, 90% if you exclude the emergency expenditures of the pandemic.
     
    Key beneficiaries
    And those cuts have gone primarily to the wealthy and corporations.
     
    I do notice that we retired elderly are not the only targets:
     
  • Tommy Christopher links to the clip, transcribing the essential part, as actor Andy Garcia is interviewed by Chris Wallace about the “poisonous” way people talk about migrants.
     
  • A gun accident, and legal expert Imani Gandy says it well, in two words:
     

  • Wisconsin conservative James Wigderson is skeptical about the 1200s.
    That would be the 13th century:
     

  • Michael John Scott unravels, summarizes, and simplifies Hunter Biden’s laptop.
     
  • North Carolina pastor John Pavlovitz says conservatives owe Hillary an apology.
     
    Key principle:
    There’s an old saying, “when the horse is dead, dismount.”
     
  • At The Onion, prison officials find a beautiful present left for them in the Unabomber’s cell.
     
    Key excited anticipation:
    Oh boy, I can’t wait. Anyone mind if I give it a shake?
     
  • Nan’s Notebook supports equality, and reacts to a recent joint display of the American flag, the Vietnam War POW/MIA flag, and the Pride flag. She objects to it.
     
    Key reason:
    Since I personally believe that ALL veterans deserve to be given world-class care and help in a safe and caring environment, I question the need to segregate a particular community when carrying out this goal.
     
  • Stay with me, I promise this is going somewhere.
     
    When I was young (which is to say when I had hair) Nelson Rockefeller was Governor of New York. In those days he was known as a liberal, which is to say he was for racial equality. He was hated by those on the right because he kept outsmarting what we used to call racial conservatives.
     
    When Bobby Kennedy was killed, some conservatives were overjoyed. Their joy grew as Governor Rockefeller replaced Senator Kennedy with Charles Goodell. Congressional member Goodell had represented a rural area and got a reputation as a quiet conservative.
     
    But Goodell started meeting with his new constituents across New York State. He began questioning his old positions. He criticized the assumptions involved in our escalating mission in Vietnam. He split from the Nixon administration on key issues.
     
    And the attacks on Senator Goodell began. One involved a sex change operation decades before any of us knew the word transgender. Christine Jorgensen was a real person. She had started life as George and became Christine through sex reassignment surgery in 1951.
     
    Nixon’s Vice President, Spiro Agnew, called Charles Goodell the Christine Jorgensen of the Republican Party.
     
    Which brings us to PZ Myers, who looks past all that to the beginning and finds, in the bewildered 1951 reaction by Christine’s parents, a lesson we might consider in many personal areas of life.
     
  • At The Moderate Voice, David Robertson steps through major denominations and asks whether any theism is safe for the LGBTQ community.
     
  • In The Life and Times of Bruce Gerencser, Bruce remembers a church he attended back when he was a believer, and how it was blown up by a deranged attendee who died in the explosion.
     
    He relates how that same bomber almost did it again six years later.
     
  • Infidel753 has eclectic taste in music with unusual cultural combinations. He provides an example with a German duo, a performer of folk and patriotic songs joining with a bizarre punk rocker. The result: Wow!
     
    Key parenthetical comparison:
    (in Anglo-Saxon terms, this would be a bit like Lawrence Welk doing a duet with Johnny Rotten)
     
  • This is a cool way to introduce a new book.
     
    Science fiction writer John Scalzi has a new novel about an underworld war involving bank loans, venture capital, death, violence, and talking cats as the protagonist eventually becomes a supervillain.
     
    John promotes a free online look at the first chapter.
    Did I mention it’s a cool way to introduce a new book?
     
  • YIKES!! In all the world, @whiskeywhistle98 is only afraid of one person:
     
  • SilverAppleQueen takes what she learned from her mother about “doctoring up” food, and applies it to pizza.
     
    Key cuisine principle:
    Cooking is magic, whether you define magic as some supernatural ability to change the material world or skills gained from long hours of practice and dedication.
     
  • Clickbait satirist Reductress goes New Age, providing guidance on how to meditate even though someone could walk in.
     
  • Mark Waulberg (No, not Mark Wahlberg, the other Mark) brings us a new help group:
     
  • A very quick dazzling play from Georgia baseball with The Savanna Bananas:
     
  • The Journal of Improbable Research finds in research from Australia, a pleasingly-worded science headline about extinct and current skinks.
     

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