Trump Bonding, Loose Judge Cannon, Poison Our Bloodbath, Social Security

  • Dave Columbo reports, as only he can, on mr Trump’s financial travails:
     
  • Vixen Strangely at Strangely Blogged has questions about Trump money. Like Where did it all go? Where will it come from now?
     
    Key talent:
    He’s a magician–he makes money disappear. It’s like making money go POOF was his whole ass job.
     
    Key worry about bringing on already convicted Russian asset Manafort:
    Does that mean he’s opening the window to Russian influence again?
     
  • Andy Borowitz has one possibility:
     

     
  • So mr Trump’s attorneys argue that the legal requirement of a bond in order to appeal his convictions should be waived, since he can’t afford to post it.
     
    Our favorite Earth-Bound Misfit finds it of interest that mr Trump’s argument is taken seriously by anyone.
     
    Key equivalence:
    I’d like to know whether or not non-rich folks who can’t afford an appeal bond in civil cases get to have the bond waived. I’ll hazard a guess that the answer is “no”.
     
    Also, shamelessly stolen from Comrade Misfit:
     

     
  • M. Bouffant at Web of Evil does a ton of homework with links to every side, all of them wondering how Trump can get a half a billion dollar bond.
     
  • Iron Knee at Political Irony points to the former president’s intense financial problems as an obvious national security risk.
     
  • A writer for The Bulwark asks us to imagine how much Trump would owe in defamation damages if his routine defamations were held to the strict legal standards he applies to others
     
    Julian Sanchez finds it an easy task:

    Post by @normative
    View on Threads

  • Green Eagle watches US District Judge Aileen Cannon stun a cross section of the legal community by weirdly agreeing to listen to strange document/theft arguments by Trump lawyers on whether the Presidential Records Act means the opposite of what it says it means.
     
    Basic fact:
    You do not have to be a lawyer to see that this claim is utter rubbish
     
    My thought:
     
  • In Hackwhackers Donald Trump got weirdly creative during many years of tax fraud.
     
    Key pattern:
    …one of the things we know from the Donald Trump returns we finally got, is he created 60 fictitious businesses, took tax deductions for a number of them that reduced his overall tax bill, even though they had no revenue, and in other cases the revenue and expense matched to the dollar…
     
  • News Corpse thinks it pointless for mr Trump to sue ABC News and George Stephanoloulos for defamation over the question of whether he is, for real, a rapist or just a creepy sexual predator.
     
    I have to agree:
  • In Happiness Between Tails da-AL writes a bit about experiencing cultural differences while growing up. She celebrates love that finds its way beyond, around, and through political, national, and ethnic borders. She suggests intermarriage is becoming more common.
     
    Which is pretty much what poison our blood is about, isn’t it?

  • Was he taken out of context? Was he speaking in dog whistle MAGA language? Did he really mean what he said? What the hell did he actually say?
     
    The Onion finally reveals what mr Trump really meant when he threatened a bloodbath if he loses.
     
  • From Tommy Christopher:
     
    Activist Michele Morrow just won the North Carolina GOP primary to be Superintendent of Public Instruction.
     
    Tommy provides video and transcript as reporters confront her in a parking lot interview on her calls for the assassination of former President Barack Obama, President Joe Biden, and other Democrats.
     
    Key time saver:
    It might be quicker to list the Democrats she hasn’t suggested executing.
     
  • tengrain at Mock Paper Scissors has the details as a majority of Congressional Republicans sign on in writing to an agenda that includes slashes in Social Security, a ban on abortion, and an attack on IVF.
     
    Key purpose:
    The proposals, which are unlikely to become law this year, reflect how many Republicans will seek to govern if they win the 2024 elections.
     
  • In Letters from an American, historian Heather Cox Richardson parallels today’s goals and arguments of Christian nationalists with those of pre‑Civil War slaveowners who banned books and opinions that challenged their positions of privilege.
     
    Key parallel:
    Just as it was in the 1850s, the right-wing emphasis on religion and opposition to a modern multicultural America today is deeply entwined with preserving an economic power structure that has benefited a small minority.
     
    Her cogent analysis is now available in audio format, as Richardson narrates in podcast.
     
  • Oh my.

  • North Carolina pastor John Pavlovitz gets blunt, explaining the current state of contemporary conservatism:

  • Frances Langum brings a clip of an ABC panel as Susan Glasser takes a blowtorch to media timidity over Trump’s anti-democracy rhetoric. She does not spare those present.
     
    Key appeal:
    That’s what he’s peddling to the American people. Not tariff policy. He’s peddling an alternate reality vision of America that is built on lies. Let’s be honest about that.
     
  • driftglass is irritated by ever so polite mainstream pundits as they ever so slowly realize that Republicans have ever so long been okay with racism, back when driftglass was shouting that warning ever so long ago.
     
    Key bitter memory:
    It was 2010. August. Y’know, during the Before Time which, for the sake of all our new, recently-former Republican “allies”, we are now apparently obligated to pretend was a golden age of politeness, civility and bipartisanship.
     
    Until, of course, you take the trouble to remember what that time was actually like. Remember the graphics and the posters.
     
    Key image shamelessly stolen from driftglass:

  • At The Moderate Voice Associate Editor Kathy Gill goes word-by-word to document outrageous smears by mainstream press in covering outrageous smears of Biden’s memory.
     
  • The oft heard conservative defense of undemocratic proposals:
    The US isn’t a democracy. It’s a republic.
     
    Dave Dubya Goes to definitions, illustrations, and simple logic, deconstructing the excuses.
     
    Key lesson:
    Definitions matter. The essential meanings of words are on the front line in our resistance to tyranny. Don’t let them weaponize language by destroying it.
     
  • CalicoJack in The Psy of Life isolates three main crises threatening American democracy.
     
    Key crises:

    1. Inability to distinguish fact from opinion
    2. Firehose of disinformation produced by the outrage industrial complex (largely spawn of Putin’s Russia)
    3. Trump dementia

  • MadMikesAmerica has random thoughts that include democracies that, unlike the United States, are somehow deprived of large movements devoted to declaring simple cells ‘babies,’ or imposing a theocracy.
     
  • Ted McLaughlin at jobsanger defines and explains the deep state. Turns out to be ordinary workers who obey the Constitution.
     
  • Infidel753 looks at examples of how the sovereign citizen theory (the law does not apply to believers) turns out when internet misinformation bumps into the real world. The real world, in this case, takes the form of police officers.
     
  • Senator Schumer has a reasonable demand for Speaker Johnson:

    A Representative famous for his participation in January 6 calls for a defense of a militarized democracy that cannot be bothered with an election.

    Wisconsin conservative James Wigderson isn’t having it, not from Derrick Van Orden.

  • The Strategic Studies Book Club reviews Hybrid Warfare by Curtis Fox – a study of how Russia fought Napoleon by integrating conventional warfare with what had been thought of as non-military operations, and how that strategy is echoed in their approach today.
     
    For those wishing to take a deep, deep dive, the review offers a 1½ hour video discussion on Putin’s war of aggression against Ukraine.
     
  • Disaffected and it Feels So Good has the story from TwitterLand (aka Xville).
     
    A neo-Nazi cartoonist becomes popular in racist circles for his humorous use of racial epithets. (The ‘N’ word? tee hee)
    He posts his creations on social media using pseudonyms.
     
    Typical so far.
     
    You also have Twitter (now in witness protection as X) run by a guy who insists that posting the real name of someone else is part of free speech.
    If you expose a real life identity, but not their private information, it’s okay by the head Twit.
     
    Seems clear so far.
     
    So enterprising souls find and expose the real name of the (ha-ha ‘N’ word) cartoonist.
     
    Surprise!! The head Twit guy intervenes, cancels their accounts, and bans them forever..
     
  • Scotties Playtime has photos and memes on the sad condition of Christianity in America
     
    and
     
    video clips from a Reverend to whom Scottie can really relate.
     
    I do too.
     
  • In The Life and Times of Bruce Gerencser, former pastor, current atheist, Bruce explores whether it is okay with Evangelicals for a member to marry a non-Christian.
     
  • Vagabond Scholar marks this past Sunday’s St. Patrick’s Day with three versions of The Parting Glass.
     
    Written by a Scottish composer, it is more associated with Irish folk tradition: A fond farewell and one for the road.
     
    Personal:
    It is often heard, as I hear it, as a heartfelt expression of gratitude to those touched by a single life well lived.
     
    Key first phrase:
    Of all the money that e’er I had. I spent it in good company. And all the harm I’ve ever done. Alas it was to none but me.
     
  • SilverAppleQueen celebrated the entire St. Patrick’s Weekend with cats, awake and asleep.
     
  • Legal expert Imani Gandy leaves the law aside to urge a better understanding of human limits and expresses gratitude when she sees it:
     

    then finds an example for which we all can be grateful:

  • Max’s Dad is not at all a Disney fan, so he is surprised to find that he LOVES a stage presentation of The Lion King.
     
    Key surrender:
    As a professional Disney cynic, they finally beat me. Beat me like a drum.
     
  • YellowDog Granny takes a moment from wonderfully caustic wit to share an even more awesome pictorial tribute to her relationship with a beloved grandkid on his fifth birthday.
     
  • @whiskeywhistle98 sometimes knows just how to deal with her kids:
     

    And sometimes just gets through it:
     
  • Tamra Brown introduces us to television comedies and what they tell us women are all about: weddings and babies and wine:
     
  • Clickbait satirist Reductress brings us the sad tale as autocorrect changes a nonchalant smiley face into an overly sexual emoji.
     
  • Mark Waulberg (No, not Mark Wahlberg, the other Mark) discovers it’s not only who you help that matters, it’s how much you help:
     
  • PZ Myers hosts linguistic comments from all over in answer to the ancient question of whether a hotdog is a sandwich.
     
    I did contribute my thought:
    Half a century ago, a speech professor instructed our college class that words have no meaning. Only people have meaning.
     
    So a hotdog is a sandwich only if served with a word salad.
     

2 thoughts on “Trump Bonding, Loose Judge Cannon, Poison Our Bloodbath, Social Security”

  2. it gives me hope that things are indeed changing in the right direction — it wasn’t that long ago that it was illegal for couples to intermarry in the US, after all. tx for including my site here – wishing you a good week

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