Trump PsyOps, Threats, Free Speech, Ohio, Biden Bugged, Thomas for Sale

  • The recorded quote is:
    I just want 11,780 votes
     
    Trump lawyers try to make the case that mr Trump never actually demanded anyone overturn the election. He was only expressing a hope. You know: Free speech.
     
    Gosh, I sure do hope 11,780 more votes somehow turn up.
     

    Well, after that, President Trump did suggest that a State official might just find himself prosecuted if he didn’t somehow find those extra votes for Trump:
     
    It’s more illegal for you than it is for them because you know what they did and you’re not reporting it — that’s the — you know, that’s a criminal, that’s a criminal offense. And, you know you can’t let that happen. That’s — that’s a big risk to you…
    So there is that:
     

     
    I can think of other examples of aspirational free speech:
     
    Dutch Schultz: I do hope District Attorney Dewey dies tonight.
    OR
    Henry II: Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?
    OR
    Frank Nitti: Nice to have a family. Man should take care. See that nothing happens to them.
     

    Sarah Cooper explains how mr Trump’s hopeful anticipation fits in:

  • Republican politicians (okay, not all) are indignant that Donald Trump is being prosecuted for speaking his mind.
     
    CalicoJack in The Psy of Life carefully takes the argument apart, brick by brick.

     

  • While Rudy Giuliani is discovering other limits on free speech ‑ defamation of random poll workers for one ‑ PZ Myers goes to transcripts and directly quotes Rudy, who was unaware he was being recorded, going full throttle bigot with a lot of sexual harassment added. So more limits.

  • Conservative radio talk show host Dan O’Donnell suggests that Donald Trump is no more guilty than was Al Gore in 2000. Both contested the outcome of the elections they lost.
     
    Wisconsin conservative James Wigderson isn’t having it, and responds by quoting Gore

  • One huge indictment concerns stealing gov’t documents, the sort that can endanger US security and get overseas US covert operatives killed.
    • Then lying about having them
    • Then refusing to return them
    • Then returning a few but hiding the rest
    • Then lying about having those remaining documents
    • Then trying to destroy video evidence that he had them hidden

     
    Now a lot of the documents he hid and lied about are back in government secure facilities.
    In fact, they are evidence in court. That is why he and his lawyers are allowed to see and review them.
     
    tengrain at Mock Paper Scissors doesn’t actually use the word chutzpah.
     
    But mr Trump is asking the judge to have a special secure room built at taxpayer expense at his Mar‑a‑Lago residence.
     
    Rather than go to a government facility, he wants the documents, those he stole and the FBI recovered, back in his possession for review at his leisure.
     
    He’ll return them.
    Honest he will.
     
    The judge is Her Honor Aileen Cannon, who has already been overruled and slapped around once by an appeals court for twisting herself into a pretzel to help mr Trump.
     
    Key apt tengrain summary of the Trump petition:
    This mother eff’er wants to return the evidence to the scene of the crime!

  • Green Eagle goes all Inigo Montoya about the competence of mr Trump’s lawyers as they file an accidental request for time to file an effusive, excessive, insincere motion.
     
    Key Trump request:
    …adequate time to prepare a fulsome response
    Fulsome
     
  • The Palmer Report notes that Trump is losing on the law, losing on the evidence, losing on legal procedures. So he’s resorting to public attacks on witnesses, judges, prosecutors, Jack Smith, and Jack Smith’s family: all as a form of psychological warfare.
     
    Problem is that, so far, Jack Smith seems a whole lot better at that game.
     
  • Ted McLaughlin at jobsanger takes a rational guess at a rational reason for what otherwise seems to be the irrational Trump court strategy of attacking prosecutors, witnesses, and judges.
     
  • Vixen Strangely at Strangely Blogged sees Trump and MAGA dog whistles as rapidly adding up to sirens, often with tragic results.
     
    Key hope for judges in the justice system:
    I, the militant agnostic, pray for them a little. Because it takes courage to make a determination of right and wrong with the entire country on the line, let alone with facing personal threats as a side course.
     
  • So mr. Trump has responded to this latest indictment by attacking everyone connected with the proceeding and issuing this:
     

    News Corpse summarizes the judicial response, as Judge Tanya Chutkan directs a warning.
     
    Key directive:
    I caution you and your client to take special care in your public statements about this case. I will take whatever measures are necessary to safeguard the integrity of these proceedings.
     
    Key meaning:
    The fact that he’s running a political campaign has to yield to the orderly administration of justice. If that means he can’t say exactly what he wants to say about witnesses in this case, that’s how it has to be.
     
    Key specific:
    Even arguably ambiguous statements from parties or their counsel, if they can be reasonably interpreted to intimidate witnesses or to prejudice potential jurors, can threaten the process.
     
  • So mr Trump has adopted the apparent strategy of going after pretty much everyone involved in the legal actions against him. It is hard to see how that helps his legal position.
     
    Assuming some degree of Trump sanity, he pretty much has to be putting all his eggs in an extra‑legal basket of pardons.

    1. If he wins next year: Pardon me!
    2. If some other Republican wins: I beg your pardon!

     
    In MadMikesAmerica, Michael John Scott sees even the abortion rights result in Ohio as a harbinger of Trump doom.
     

  • Dave Columbo has a serious thought for Republicans about the legitimacy of multiple Trump indictments.
     
  • North Carolina pastor John Pavlovitz points to the attempts by mr Trump to overrule the voters, cancel the election, and seize the office he had legitimately lost. But the real story concerns those followers willing and eager to accept that performance.
     
  • Margaret and Helen are back Yay-y-y-y-y! after a brief hiatus (30 MONTHS) with a logical question: What the hell is wrong with the Republican Party?
     
    Key beginning:
    I mean, fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me for three indictments and 78 felony counts… and we haven’t even heard from the Georgia DA yet. Surely I am not the only fat lady dying to sing.
     
  • Amid all the Trump drama, with criminal charges, attacks, and threats, it’s easy to forget the infiltration of the DeSantis campaign by a speechwriter with unfortunate views. Nate Hochman secretly produces a pro-DeSantis, anti-Trump video that ends with the state seal of Florida morphing into a Nazi symbol.
     
    Then he gets sneaky. He gets a friend to post the video on-line on Twitter, and retweets as if he had accidentally discovered it.
     
    But some diligent co-worker on the campaign notices the Nazi reference and the Hochman retweet gets deleted. The campaign investigates, uncovers Hochman’s authorship, and discovers more videos of Hochman hanging out with, and gushing over, a well-known Nazi.
     
    So they quickly fired him.
     
    Can’t have Nazi symbols and sympathizers floating around the candidate, right?
     
    Everybody – media, pundits, reporters, even other candidates – pretty much sympathizes. Could have happened to anyone.
     
    Well-l-l-l, not so fast, guys.
     
    Scotties Playtime links to multiple sources for an alternate story. Mainly it involves a video of the video being watched by a room full of DeSantis staffers all previewing the video, seemingly praising the nazi symbolism.
     
    So maybe, just maybe, Hochman was just a convenient scapegoat, fired once the video was noticed by mainstream media.
     
    Key recorded praise by DeSantis staff:
    This belongs in the Smithsonian.
     
  • Iron Knee at Political Irony takes a brief look at how news media outlets cover the new American political divide.
     
    Republicans will not admit to any electoral loss.
    Democrats fear, with some reason, political violence when conservatives lose.
     
    Both-sides coverage often gets interrupts as there is some blame that goes to right‑wing media.
     
    Iron Knee sees a more basic possibility that media analysts miss.
     
  • This looks to me like a weirdly desperate attempt to tan-suit President Biden.
     
    Tommy Christopher watches a Republican attack ad featuring a Biden interview on his approach to climate. The Republican commercial has Biden noticing an insect on the interviewer, which demonstrates … something.
     
  • Our conservative friends, and the media outlets they frequent, insist institutions of higher learning are indoctrinating students with Marxist oriented CRT propaganda.
     
    Cato Institute’s Julian Sanchez speculates on their chronic inability to accept a simpler explanation:

  • As Republicans rail against weaponized government, Grung_e_Gene at Disaffected and it Feels So Good brings us the ongoing story of a little brewery in Minocque, Wisconsin.
     
    Republicans in Oneida County are going through an absurd amount of trouble to shut the little place down.
     
    Grung_e_Gene suggests a plausible reason:
     
    Biden Beer
  • Republican anti-abortion fanatics tried a host of tricks in Ohio on a state Constitutional referendum to make it harder to legalize abortion rights:
    • Scheduling it in August, when voters seldom show up to vote.
    • Switching several polling locations at the last minute.
    • Eliminating voting drop boxes.
       

    Hackwhackers has details as tricksterism fails and the Republican anti‑abortion initiative goes down to spectacular defeat.

  • In Ohio, tactics making it harder to vote were not the end of dirty tricks.
     
    In The Life and Times of Bruce Gerencser, a noted conservative encouraged conservatives to distort liberal positions.
     
    Key response to They All Do It:
    Fair enough, but does anyone think the left equally lies and distorts facts? Be honest. MSNBC can be partisan, but do you really think there is no difference between them and Fox News, ONN, and the Daily Wire?
     
  • Frances Langum brings us Ohio Republican Secretary of State Frank LaRose to make the best of anti‑abortion activism after Tuesday’s crushing loss.
     
  • John Scalzi at Whatever does a post‑mortem on the Ohio Issue 1 vote and counts the many reasons it lost.
     
    Key example (which would be Reason 2):
    And it might have worked, too, if the Ohio GOP hadn’t done what shitty people who want to take away rights always do, which was to almost comically overreach.
     
    Key advice:
    I would very much like these particular Democrats and liberals to stop voting to solve things. Nothing is solved if you go “well, my job here is done” and walk off while your political opponents are already planning to hamstring you as you step away. I would like them to start voting to push things, which means showing up to every single voting opportunity and casting their vote.
     
  • Inflation may be on a downward slope, but there are still problems for the ultra-wealthy.
     
    In the satiric Borowitz Report Clarence Thomas is keeping up with inflation by hiking the price of Supreme Court decisions.
     
    Key explanation in satire:
    “Sadly, the days of shredding civil rights in exchange for ten private‑jet flights are over,” the Justice told donors.
     
  • In Letters from an American, noted historian Heather Cox Richardson relates how newly discovered “gifts from good friends”, what we laypeople call bribes, were intended to guarantee Justice Thomas’ vote during the planned coup.
     
    Key newly discovered random acts of kindness:

    • 38 destination vacations
    • a previously unreported voyage on a yacht around the Bahamas
    • 26 private jet flights
    • an additional eight by helicopter
    • a dozen VIP passes to professional and college sporting events, typically perched in the skybox
    • two stays at luxury resorts in Florida and Jamaica
    • one standing invitation to an uber‑exclusive golf club overlooking the Atlantic coast


    Key evidence in notes between coup planners:
    Realistically, our only chance to get a favorable judicial opinion by Jan. 6, which might hold up the Georgia count in Congress, is from Thomas—do you agree, Prof. Eastman?

  • Our favorite Earth-Bound Misfit has about had it with Justice Thomas.
     
    Key extreme tier of justice:
    But, as we know, the rules are different for the Holy and Sacred Nine.
     
  • M. Bouffant at Web of Evil digs into Evangelical Christianity and discovers that at least some leaders and their congregations have a strange view of Jesus.
     
    Key Headline:
    Right-Wing Pastor Lucas Miles Says Critical Race Theory Robs God of the Glory of Christian Suffering
     
    Key Christian Crisis:
    MAGA Derides Teachings of Christ as ‘Liberal Talking Points’
     
  • Dave Dubya suggests that in politics, and in religion, the value of opinions largely depends on whether they are based on beliefs or facts.
     
  • Infidel753 has profound, challenging, thoughts on differences between closed and open minds, and how to evaluate what comes from each.
     
  • Legal expert Imani Gandy can’t resist listening to ever worsening sexual secrets:


    and offers her reaction:

  • Be glad our friend is safe! Nan’s Notebook took a few days to RV about her area, then was almost done in by a careless driver.
     
  • Vincent at A Wayfarer’s Notes is home from the hospital Yay! and has figured out how to take a safe stroll.
     
  • At The Moderate Voice cancer patient Jane Knox goes in for difficult treatment and witnesses the role kindness plays in healing.
     
  • In Happiness Between Tails da‑AL begins with an ode to those older folk (Yay!) who attain creative accomplishments late in life. One is her guest, author Lynne Klink, who advises aspiring writers on how to connect with readers in meaningful ways.
     
  • SilverAppleQueen goes back to 1961 as early beat poet Diane DiPrima writes about a tumultuous sister/brother relationship and a furious argument that ended before it could begin.
     
  • Mark Waulberg > No, not Mark Wahlberg, the other Mark, with wonderful little gadget guaranteed to keep your hot temper from getting you in hot water.
     

  • Clickbait satirist Reductress has helpful advice on how to get your mom to accept your ADHD diagnosis.
     
  • @whiskeywhistle98 describes her happy place
     
  • YellowDog Granny has feelings. Lots of feelings, many in cartoon form.
     
– Podcasts from the past-
Which have stood up over time?
 

3 thoughts on “Trump PsyOps, Threats, Free Speech, Ohio, Biden Bugged, Thomas for Sale”

  2. thanks always for making sense of all this craziness – the first clip really hit home for me, the fact that as individuals are usually more good than bad and that goodness is contagious

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