Charged, Mugged, Debates, Flight Risk, Polls, Wagner, Vlad, Vivek, DeSantis

  • Nojo neatly summarizes the legal week with one photo and a three word headline.
     
  • Legal expert Imani Gandy of Rewire News Group explains, in very simple terms, this week’s Trump related drama in Georgia.
     

    And I react:

  • One oft heard defense of Trump and Associates is that prosecutors can’t prove he knew he had lost and believed he had lost.
     
    Wisconsin conservative James Wigderson isn’t picking up what they’re laying down:

  • The Senior Senator from Florida has a warning about prosecuting a political figure:


    Cato Institute’s Julian Sanchez has a bit of fun with it before making a more serious point:

  • At his booking, mr Trump was not weighed. He simply assured police that, at 215 pounds and 6’3″, they could take his word. We non-members of the party have had some fun with that exhibition of prime fitness.
     


    One or two humorless MAGA members tried to defend the stats. Poor souls.
     

  • As Republicans accuse the Biden administration of politicizing law enforcement. President Biden responds by not responding, insisting on a hands off approach.
     
    Trump, during his term, seemed exempt from Republican accusations of politicizing law enforcement. Sarah Cooper fondly recalls
    those halcyon days when Donald Trump was in charge.
     
  • Today, the Texas Attorney General could give lessons on selling law enforcement to his pals, but enjoys a similar indulgence:
     
  • The Republican base does seem convinced that mr Trump is innocent of any wrongdoing. Not everyone is buying it.
     
    News Corpse has the numbers.
     
    Most Americans tell pollsters they are convinced mr Trump is guilty.

  • Dave Dubya makes the case that mr Trump’s guilt goes beyond, and farther back than, current indictments. Dave starts with Donald insisting in 2022 that, since he really, really, really and truly won the election he lost and the Constitution prevents him from staying in office, it’s time to toss out the Constitution.
     

    Dave hits him with the 14th Amendment, explains why it applies, then goes a bit before World War II to explain why it should apply
     
  • In an interview with Larry Kudlow, mr Trump bragged about his special relationship with Vlad Putin.
    The internet has been having fun with his self description,
    I was the apple of his eye…


    Apple.
    Of Putin’s Eye.
     
    Then he veered unexpectedly into whether he is a flight risk. After all, he does own his own jet.
     
    Vixen Strangely at Strangely Blogged notes the Apple’s reaction to his $200,000 bond in Georgia. He would never, ever, skip out and flee to Russia.
    Never.
    He’s much too tough.
     
    Too tough.
     
    Even though he is contemplating what it would be like.
     

  • His supporters insist he is only joking about flying to Russia and into Putin’s welcoming arms.
     
    If Tommy Christopher is giggling at the humor, his writing doesn’t reflect it, as mr Trump speculates what the trip to Russia might be like.
     
    Must be my advanced years. I had forgotten that mr Trump is hilarious.
    Or that Vlad Putin is a subject for chuckles.
     
  • Hackwhackers goes into the assassination of Yevgeniy Prigozhin and speculates reasonably on why it took Putin so long.
     
  • My thought, such as it is:
     
  • CalicoJack in The Psy of Life uses social and economic trends combined with the science of Cliodynamics to take a best guess at what happens when Trump is no longer part of politics.
     
  • In Letters from an American, noted historian Heather Cox Richardson reviews all the legal drama in Trumpville and how it fits Republican history going back for generations.
     
    Key origin story:
    In the 1960s, Republicans made a devil’s bargain, courting the racists and social traditionalists who began to turn from the Democratic Party when President Franklin Delano Roosevelt began to make inroads on racial discrimination.
     
    Key rupture:
    The 1965 Voting Rights Act was the final straw for many of those reactionaries, and they began to move to the Republicans as a group when Richard Nixon promised not to use the federal government to enforce civil rights in the states. This so-called southern strategy pulled the Republican Party rightward.
     
  • The Propaganda Professor goes to America’s past to find phrases Illegal Immigration and America First, discovering a sordid history.
     
    Key Summary of America First – 1941:
     
    Dr. Seuss (yes that Dr. Seuss) attacks US policy denying safe haven to Jews during the Holocaust (1941)

  • With Margaret and Helen, the ever-wonderful Helen Philpot sees Trump eventually fade, leaving the toxic danger of Fox.
     
    Key scary place:
    Is there any place angrier and whiter than Fox News? If not for the pancake makeup, it could broadcast in black and white. Fox is a god-awful place to visit, filled with Republicans who are mad at everyone and everything. And much of what they are angry about isn’t even based in reality.
     
  • tengrain at Mock Paper Scissors reports on the reporters as notable journalists are lavishly wined and dined by Team Trump just before they cover the debate at which he is absent and the Twitter Tucker Talk (Sorry, X boss Elon).
     
  • Dave Columbo covers this past week’s Republican debate with his very own hilarious deadpan snark/snide combo.
     
  • When Max’s Dad goes ranting, he becomes the funnest of fun reads (Funnest is too a word!). After watching the Republican debate, he rips into the evident star, Vivek Rammaslamy, whose “smile is so punchable.”
     
    Key success of the night:
    The “star” because because the mush brains whose attention spans have wandered off the Mar A Lago grounds are looking for yet another loudmouth kook who owns the libs.
     
    Key downer for said star:
    Nikki Haley had perhaps the most logical moment when she attacked Ramaswamy for being a naive little bitch on foreign policy. Vivek’s position to let Putin have Ukraine was an unfortunate position to have as yesterday was the day Putin murdered yet another guy who wronged him.
     
  • M. Bouffant at Web of Evil has reactions to MAGA, DeSantis, and Listless Empty Vessels, accompanied by Frank Zappa and Richard Hell. And, yeah, I am old enough to remember both.
     
  • Poor Ron, just can’t quite get it right.

  • At the Palmer Report, James Sullivan watches the debate and explains the most important revelation.
     
    Key observation:
    The biggest takeaway is largely that no Republican running for the job of president should even be dreaming about that office. Trump or no Trump, the party is dangerously unstable and corrupt and if they take the reins of power again, national security and the fate of the planet itself are at stake, two things that may have been irreversibly damaged in many ways under Donald Trump’s presidency.
     
  • The Borowitz Report reports (see that?) that millions watched the World Lying Championship between Tucker and Donald.
     
    Key buildup:
    A fifty-four-year-old upstart seeks to wrest the crown of mendacity from an aging but still dangerous seventy-seven-year-old
     
  • Green Eagle dives deep into the Sea of Conspiracy and survives to report, and reflect on, what the wingnuts are thinking.
     
  • Ted McLaughlin at jobsanger has the polling numbers. Support in the US for universal healthcare is extremely high.
     
    That’s among:

    • All adults
    • Both genders
    • All ages
    • All ethnicities

     
    Key exception:
    Anyone care to take a guess what shrinking partisan group doesn’t much like health care for everyone?
     
    (Let’s not always see the same hands)

  • We have yet another of out-of-control woke overreaction, at The Onion as a Dean of Students bans a campus fraternity for a hazing incident even though the pledge did not actually die.
     
    Key common sense point:
    “I don’t see what the big deal is—he’s out of the ICU and gets to miss school,” 21-year-old chapter president Billy Wright said of the comatose former pledge…
     
  • PZ Myers reviews a presentation by conservative activist Kelly Schenkoske at a Moms for Liberty summit in Philadelphia. As we might expect, it is startlingly awful.
     
    Key example:
    So, she opposes sex ed and the principle of consent because knowing that you have the power to refuse sex is a suggestion that you will obediently consent.
     
  • North Carolina pastor John Pavlovitz reacts to the murder of a shop owner assassinated for exhibiting a rainbow flag. Anti-LGBTQ conservatives should share the responsibilty.
     
    Key cause:
    As senseless and shocking as the assassination of Lauri Carleton is, it is not a surprise. It is the rotten, putrid fruit of MAGA America and all it stands for and aspires to.
     
  • Shocking as it seems, Republicans are attacking the usual suspects.
     
    President Biden, visiting Maui, is introduced by a recovery worker to a rescue dog.
     
    Frances Langum is surprised as Republicans attack him for petting the dog as he and the worker talk.
     
    Key Frances’ take:
    Going anti-dog is quite a flex. I mean, talk about winning strategies!
     
  • About those attacks:
     
  • At The Moderate Voice, retired U.S. Air Force Major Dorian de Wind reminds us of the critical role the US military is playing in rescue and recovery and more in Maui. Same as always during massive emergencies.
     
    Key fact:
    Nearly 700 active-duty members from all Branches, Reserve, National Guard and DoD civilians alongside about 140 U.S. Coast Guardsmen, under the umbrella of a “Combined Joint Task Force,” are helping with the disaster response.
     
  • Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) is holding up needed advancement in pretty much all branches of the US military. He says it is because women serving in each branch are free to use their personal leave, which they have earned over time, as they wish. That means women might travel somewhere to get abortions. He wants that freedom taken away.
     
    Disaffected and it Feels So Good has figured out an otherwise hidden-in-plain-sight motive.
     
  • YellowDog Granny notices, and cartoons about, a hot, hot time.
     
  • It’s still book banning season among my more conservative Christian bethren. Scotties Playtime goes after the Columbia-Marion County Public Library in Mississippi where a small group of activist parents got a gay coming-of-age series of comic-book formatted novels off-limits to the teens for whom they were written.
     
    Key fact of life:
    As one parent claimed, “Gays use these books to recruit kids into the LGBTQ+ community”. By my dogs that love gravy it is 2023, and being gay is well understood not to work that way. You can not make a person gay. Full stop.
     
    Key true motive:
    What they want is to remove all LGBTQ+ representation from society, make gay kids ashamed that they feel different from the other kids around them, and to keep the society a nice forced Christian nation of the 1950s.
     
  • MadMikesAmerica notices more instances of Bad Jesus, the turning of the teachings of Christ into their opposite, and suggests it reflects an issue that transcends any one religion. In fact, it goes beyond all religions.
     
    Key insight:
    It’s not about the existence of a higher power but about the capacity within each of us to distort even the most sacred teachings to justify our actions.
     
  • A social media post attacks hypocritical Christians who seem enthused at endangering immigrants on our southern border. Thing is, he’s right about us.
     
  • driftglass holds onto sanity as former Ohio Governor John Kasick goes all both sides and hopes God will intervene and a spiritual awakening will make America into America again.
     
    Key Kasich thought on equally shared blame:
    Nobody’s listening to anybody else, and it’s all dominated by anger.
     
    Key Kasich prayer:
    I think we need some sort of a spiritual revival in this country. I don’t know what’s going to get people out of their silos and I don’t know what’s going to quell the anger, which is now turning into hatred. One side against the other.
     
  • In The Life and Times of Bruce Gerencser, Bruce remembers how theology is often used to terrify children.
     
    Key slippery slope:
    “No girl ever gets pregnant without holding the hand of a boy first.” “Pot is a gateway drug that leads to hard drug use.” “Masturbation leads to blindness.” “Listening to rock music will open you up to Satan’s influence and control.” The list of dangers and threats seemed endless to a full-of-life, rambunctious teen boy. Yet, I obeyed. Why? Because of the threats of judgment and Hell.
     
  • Infidel753 defines and explains viruses: those infecting our bodies, our computers, our minds (think religion), and what can be done to innoculate against each.
     
  • Our favorite Earth-Bound Misfit is somehow able to moderate her empathy and grief over the undersea death of Stockton Rush, co-founder of the aptly named OceanGate, which owned the imploded submersible.
     
  • The Journal of Improbable Research finds a study conducted by scholars at the University of Health Sciences in Istanbul, Turkey. They soaked dentures in coffee to determine whether hot or cold coffee would stain them more. Distilled water was a sort of control group.
     
  • Clickbait satirist Reductress interviews a prominent physician who suspects that female patients only complain about pain to get medical attention.
     
  • @whiskeywhistle98 reacts to namecalling.
     
  • Nan’s Notebook asks readers what kind of Movies and/or TV Series they like or loathe, and gets a few dozen interesting responses.
     
  • Mark Waulberg (No, not Mark Wahlberg, the other Mark) brings us wonderful Kung Fu Training.
     
  • Couple of beautiful pics as SilverAppleQueen can affirm that a new grandkid is even more fun than cats.
     
  • A batter hit by a pitch automatically gets to advance to first base. But it turns out there is also an opportunity missed, at least in the major leagues.
     
    The Savanna Bananas gives a watchable demonstration of how to handle baseball injuries.
     
I posted separately on my favorite libertarian, who tolerates socialists as long as they are private and voluntary and stay out of the way.

Even though they are doomed to become either failures or dictators.