Mike Johnson suddenly got it.
Thus the Democrats and the non-MAGA Republican wing have formed a coalition government in the House of Representatives.
And the problem is not Mike Johnson.
A weblog from Steven Maginnis offering opinions and thoughts on just about anything
Mike Johnson suddenly got it.
Thus the Democrats and the non-MAGA Republican wing have formed a coalition government in the House of Representatives.
And the problem is not Mike Johnson.
Well, that was fast!
Donald Trump's trial on election interference in the 2016 election to buy the silence of a porn star (I believe her name is Stephanie) and a Playboy model is set to begin tomorrow, thanks to a jury selection - including alternates - uch swifter than was expected. The federal 2020 election interference trial is likely not going to happen before the election, but who cares when Manhattan District Attorney has such a strong case that will likely get a conviction and get Trump put under house arrest in Trump Tower (alas, he won't end up in a state prison and become somebody's bitch!).
Don't get out the popcorn, though, as the trial won't be televised. But the commentary will, so if you want to watch that go ahead. If you still want to get out the popcorn, go ahead, knock yourself out. And don't worry about Trump, he'll be fine. He'll mostly sleep through it, just as he already did during the jury selection process. 😁After Israel attacked an consulate annex of the Iranian embassy in Damascus, Syria, claiming it was a building used by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard that was not part of the actual embassy, Iran attacked Israel with at least three hundred drones. The Israelis, with help from the British, the Americans and the Jordanians, shot down all but a handful of the drones with the few that got through doing little damage.
President Biden asked Prime Minister Netanyahu to "take the win" and let the Iranians call it even, but Netanyahu has said that Israel will do anything it considers necessary to defend itself.The mullahs who run Iran and the nation's Supreme Leader, the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, have regarded Israel as an enemy and as a country with no right to exist since the Islamic Republic took over in 1979 after overthrowing the Shah. Just one more example of how American efforts to contain Soviet influence in the Cold War affect us to this very day. If we hadn't put the Shah back on the Iranian throne in 1953 after ousting the socialist prime minister Mossadegh to appease British oil interests, we wouldn't have the Islamic Republic of Iran threatening Israel with annihilation. And we're obliged to help protect and support the Jewish state, even as the Iranians are possibly making a nuclear bomb. Oh, that's better. 😠
The first criminal trial of Donald Trump (and likely the only one that we'll have before the election) finally gets underway tomorrow, with selection of the jury . . . which will likely be as exciting as watching paint dry.
This is as much election interference as the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol.
Trump is afraid of this trial because it will likely uncover more sordid information like removing a rock uncovers all of those nasty beetles you find in your garden. And you can bet that jury selection is going to go very slowly because of his defense ding wit hTrump's lawyers do best - stalling for time.
"Call Me the Breeze" by Lynyrd Skynyrd (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.)
As with so many things, Donald Trump tried to have it both ways on the abortion issue.
Until it wasn't.
Right after Trump made that statement, the Arizona Supreme Court ruled that an extremely restrictive abortion law passed in the state in 1864 - when Arizona was still a territory and before women could vote - is enforceable. As soon as the decision was handed down, Trump said that Arizona had gone too far and urged the state legislature to repeal it. Which isn't possible, as Republicans in the Arizona legislature blocked an effort to do so. So much for popular sovereignty.
Trump had no problem with the right so the states to decide on abortion until Arizona made a decision he didn't like. When Stephen Douglas said that the people in the territories had a right to decide whether to enter the Union as free states or slave states and Kansas voted to become a free state, did Douglas object to the decision? No. Even though he curried support from Southerners for his presidential ambitions and even though he and his Southern wife owned a plantation in Mississippi, he stood by Kansas' decision to enter the Union as a free state - and it cost him Southern support, support from President James Buchanan and, ultimately, the Presidency. Say what you will about Stephen Douglas - racist, craven politician, bad senator - no one ever said he was inconsistent, which is what Donald Trump has been for all of his political life.
There's another difference between Trump and Douglas. When there was an insurrection shortly after Abraham Lincoln became President, Douglas famously called for all patriotic Americans to "rally 'round the flag." And Trump . . . you know the rest.
I just quit Tribel.
Enough young people are appalled at Biden's unwavering support for Israel in the war against Hamas in Gaza, as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu continues to go after Hamas with the sort of force comparable to the use of a thermonuclear device, to deny Biden a victory in the election by going third party or staying home. Nothing Netanyahu has done in prosecuting the fight against Hamas has persuaded the Biden White House to change their policy toward Israel because of Biden's interest in ensuring Israel's right to self-defense.
Except that Israel is gong way too much on the offensive. This past week, members of Jose Andres' World Central Kitchen were killed by a precision missile fired by the Israeli "Defense" Force, leading many to suspect that part of Israel's strategy is denying relief workers the freedom to feed the hundreds of thousands of Palestinian civilians who have been turned into refugees and are barely scrounging to get by. President Biden angrily demanded that Netanyahu open a route to food relief for charities to get through, threatening to condition further aid to the IDF, and Netanyahu acquiesced to the demand as the IDF punished those responsible for the firing of the missile . This will help, but not much. What Biden really needs to do is reduce aid to Israel to purely defensive weapons and get that damn temporary pier along the sea built to accelerate aid to the Palestinians.
Biden has to make more of a tilt to trying to get a cease-fire arranged and get as much aid to Gaza as possible before he loses young people and Arab-Americans on such a widespread basis that it's impossible to win Michigan, a state with large Arab-American and Islamic populations as well as many politically active youth (particular among college kids) and a state he absolutely needs to win in November. Alas, it may already be too late.
No Labels, the political non-movement aimed at running a presidential ticket to appeal to centrist voters (because nominating Hillary Clinton to appeal to centrists worked out so well for the Democrats), gave up the ghost and announced it would not field a ticket for 2024.
No Labels had made a sincere effort at finding a presidential candidate who could win enough states to reach the minimum majority of 270 electoral votes and offer a more palatable platform than what the Democrats and the Republicans have espoused, but it was not only sincere, it was stupid. Those of us who would have rather stuck our fingers in an automatic garbage disposal than vote for either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump in 2016 and looked toward building a new party to replace one of the existing major parties could have told the No Labels nobodies that long ago. Third-party movements meant to create a new major party to replace one of the existing ones are doomed to fail because the major parties rig the system to prevent it from happening. And when there is a window for a minor party to displace a major party, as there was in early 2017 when the Democrats were declining and falling faster the the Roman Empire in the late fifth century, the potential organizers of such a party miss the opportunity.
"The Golden Age of Rock 'n' Roll" by Mott the Hoople (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.)
I'd like to say that this is the political equivalent of Madonna covering Don McLean's "American Pie" -doing something spectacularly outrageous that endears oneself to one's followers even more while offending detractors to the point of tearing their own hair out and realizing that nothing can be done about it. But it's far worse than that.
Donald Trump, having put his name through licensing to so many unrelated products - steak, spring water, vodka - in a effort to make his name a brand like Henry Ford or Willis Carrier made theirs, is now putting his name on the Holy Bible. He's also putting his name in the Bible, along with the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and Pledge of Allegiance (originally written by a socialist in 1892, the words "under God" added in 1954), in an undertaking with country and western hack Lee Greenwood, known for his beer-commercial-jingle-influenced song "God Bless the U.S.A."
And this limited-edition version of the King James Bible can be yours for sixty bucks!
Trump has done it. He's done the most disgusting thing anyone can ever possibly done short of committing a mass shooting, though he could stage a mass shooting ono Fifth Avenue in Manhattan and still not lose any votes. He's committed the ultimate blasphemy, exploiting the religious faith of his supporters to make a quick infusion of cash to pay his legal bills - including his legal bills to the lawyers defending him over the case of paying hush money to a porn star to cover up an affair with her. But his supporters are hardly innocents in this deal. They've committed to Trump so vehemently that they see him as a messiah of sorts, someone who will stand and fight for their Christian nationalist views that regard American civilization as a bulwark of Christian values.
Christian nationalism has been around for decades, mainly a by-product of the Cold War against the atheistic Soviet Union. The values of Christian nationalism involve a rabid self-righteousness and an intolerant attitude toward people of different views and different cultures (the latter extending to people of different races), as well as control of the weak and punishment for opponents with no love or charity. Even Barry Goldwater, who coined the phrase that a good doer is preferable to a do-gooder, was appalled by Christian nationalists.
More recently, calls for maintaining America as a "Christian nation" has gone beyond maintaining "In God We Trust" as the national motto. There was always an exclusionary element in Christian fundamentalism, including a belief that federally mandated racial integration was a Communist plot, but once Communism was defeated, the Christian right focused more on using their influence to suppress secularist values they didn't like, using public figures like President Bill Clinton as dangerous avatars of immortality, and also pushing Christianity as a foundation of America in the face of one of the fastest-growing religions in the United States - Islam. I find it interesting that throughout the 1990s, the Christian right never came out and said their emphasis of America's "Christian foundations" was meant to be a talisman against Islam. Then came 9/11, then the rise of the Tea Party, culminating with the rise of Donald Trump, who gave Christian nationalists carte blanche to demonize Muslims as un-American and a threat to the exclusive influence Christians had once enjoyed in the U.S.
This has led to Trump pushing these "patriotic" Bibles, reinforcing America as a citadel of Christian values and casting himself as the leader of a modern Christian restoration and as a defender of the faith. The irony of placing the Constitution in this Bible edition to Americanize a holy book written long before Christopher Columbus or even Leif Ericsson were born is most evident in the inclusion of the First Amendment guarantee of freedom of religion.
It makes sense that I'm talking about all this on Holy Saturday, because it feels like the nation has descended into hell.
And we've been taken there by a man who has zero understanding of Judeo-Christian tradition.
"Touch Me In the Morning" by Diana Ross (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.)
I've heard all of the explanations for how Trump didn't really get away with paying a lower amount on his bond to the state of New York and how, should he lose his appeal, he may end up still having to pay $454 million, and he may still lose some of his properties, but the fact is, he got away with getting off with a 68 percent discount on his bond payment and he's already coming up with creative ways to pay it by the deadline a week from today.
Ahh, well, at least Trump is still going to trial for the election-interference hush money case.
Hey, guys, how about an Italian-American third-party candidate named Maronne? 😃
You know, all of this news about the election is wearing me down . . .
It looks like Monday (March 25) will be a red-letter day for the American justice system as far as Donald Trump is concerned. New York State Attorney General Letitia James has demanded that pay a bond penalty totalling the nearly half a billion dollars that he owes the state and he had until Monday to pay it. Trump has indicated that he has the cash, even though there's no evidence that he has that sort of cash available to him. While it won't happen overnight, James could start the process as early as then to seize some of Trump's properties.
"Already Gone" by the Eagles (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.)
Until this past Saturday, Vandalia. Ohio was best known, if known at all, as a suburb of Dayton and the location of the junction between Interstates 70 and 75.
Now it will be forever known as the town where Donald Trump, in a rally there, laid out his doctrine for a reign of brutality not only in the event that he wins back the White House but also in the event that he doesn't win the White House.
So, there will be bloodshed and violence from Election Day through the holidays all the way to Inauguration Day. In other words, they guy who wants to make America great again will make America like Newark.
Oh yeah, a few takeaways from the Vandalia rally:
Trump wants to impose a 100 percent tariff on imported automobiles. So that Golf GTI that now costs thirty thousand dollars will coast . . . sixty thousand dollars. You think VWs are too expensive now . . .
He also said that some migrants "are not people." So, that means that some migrants are illegally transported pets? What's wrong with bringing cats and dogs into this country, Trump? Not that you'd ever adopt one . . .
Oh, and by the way, one of Trump's supporters standing behind him held up a sign that turned President Biden's surname into an acronym: "Biggest Idiot Democrat Ever Nominated." All right, Democrats, here's your homework: Come up with an unflattering acronym of Trump's surname - "tRump" or calling Trump by his ancestral German name ("Drumpf") won't cut it.
And if Trump supporters are out for blood after Election Day, perhaps Americans should consider anew the Second Amendment right to self-defense.
Remember that old episode of "The Brady Bunch" where Bobby enters an ice cream-eating contest on a local children's TV show and he and the other kids are about to start - but then the kiddie-show host stops everything to take away their spoons because spoons would make it too easy? And then they're about to start again but the host stops them and has them put their hands behind their backs not only to make it harder to eat the ice cream but make it messier? And then they're about to start again but the host stops them because . . . he forgot the whipped cream? And he takes his time adding whipped cream to the ice cream bowls? And then they finally start and there's a big mess?
The January 6 trial has been indefinitely postponed so the Supreme Court can hear an argument about presidential immunity that they hadn't wanted to hear when Jack Smith first brought it to them, and that doesn't happen until April 25 . . . and who knows when the decision will be handed down. The documents case, which would be the easier case for Smith to win because the evidence is so overwhelming, is in neutral because Trump's lawyers have been stonewalling the prosecution repeatedly with a judge that seem to sympathize with the defense.
Meanwhile, Fani Willis has been allowed to continue with the election interference case in Georgia in spite of her dalliance with fellow prosecutor Nathan Wade, and Wade has stepped down. Hower, Judge Scott McAfee has chastened Willis for the "odor of mendacity" with regard to her relationship with Wade, and that's a smell worse than Tea Rose perfume. Willis might have to give up the case and hand it over someone else to appease those who doubt her own integrity. And just when you thought that at least - at least - the hush money case in New York City would start on time, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, in light of the surfacing of documents from the Southern District of New York, has asked for a delay for a few weeks for the opportunity to go through those documents - documents that could have been made available earlier. And when there's a hearing on March 25 - the day the trial was supposed to start - it could uncover a complication that could derail, not delay, the trial.
It has become apparent that the judicial system in These States cannot handle in a timely matter a criminally indicted former President vying for a comeback. Trump has taken advantage of the kinks in the justice system that affords so many rights to the defendant to delay the start of his trials, while all the prosecutors can do is grin and bear it while doing what they can to speed things up. And even in the unlikely event that Trump is convicted before the election, he'll appeal his conviction(s) and delay things even further.
On the other hand, if he's President again, he ensure a speedy trial for Hillary Clinton when his Justice Department indicts Hillary Clinton for her e-mails. He'll have her found guilty, then he can lock her up. And he'll ensure a speedy trial for Joe Biden for the treasonous act of stealing the 2020 election. He'll have him found guilty, then he can . . . string him up.
In which case, Biden's last meal will include ice cream.
With whipped cream on top.
President Biden's re-election campaign broke a fundraising record for one-hour periods during the first hour of his State of the Union address - and broke that record in the second hour with Katie Ledecky-style speed. The campaign then set a record for a one-day fundraising period - $10 million. He then began a campaign tour of swing states, hitting the ground running.
Then he did something that may one day cause his campaign to hit the ground.
During his speech, President Biden referred to the migrant who killed Georgia nursing student Laken Riley as an "illegal" immigrant but a couple of days later apologized for calling the killer "illegal," saying he should have called him "undocumented" and that migrants deserve to be treated with dignity.
Excuse me?
This migrant who committed murder doesn't deserve dignity. He deserves punishment. I don't believe in capital punishment, but I hope this migrant gets thrown into jail for life and the key gets thrown away. And yes, he should be called "illegal," because he entered the country illegally. And the last time I checked, homicide is also illegal.
The President apologized - in an interview with MSNBC's Jonathan Capehart, who brought up the moment in his speech with a tone of disappointment and disapproval - for his choice of words primarily to mend fences with the progressive base of the Democratic Party that disapproves of the use of the word "illegal" to describe a foreigner who enters this country without permission from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement office, an office that progressives want to shut down. But he also needs swing voters who don't identify with either base of the two major parties and who take a pretty dim view of anyone who dictates to them how to talk. And these swing voters see immigrants coming into the country without permission or without papers as illegal because they entered . . . illegally! And I speak as the grandson of an Italian immigrant who came to this country illegally a hundred years ago. He worked on an Italian ship that docked in Texas and jumped ship at about the same time Congress passed a law restricting immigration to the Anglo-Saxon and Nordic countries. My maternal grandfather was a decent and law-abiding man, and he did become a citizen eventually, but he was still an illegal immigrant.
I may be liberal on a lot of issues, but I happen to be pretty conservative when it comes to other things. I am musically conservative, obviously, as my idea of music doesn't include hip-hop or electronica. But I am also linguistically conservative, as I have became hostile to efforts to make the American English lexicon more sensitive and less offensive, as if words hurt even worse than sticks and stones. And so Hispanics become Latinos and Latinos became Latinx (pronounced "Lat-tin-ex") in the interest of gender neutrality (except that the Spanish language is highly gender-sensitive, applying gender to inanimate objects), the poor become economically disadvantaged, the handicapped become physically challenged, the ghetto becomes the inner city (which doesn't make sense when you consider that some of the worst ghettoes in America are on the edges of city limits, like the Austin section of Chicago or the Vailsburg section of Newark, both bordering upper-middle-income suburbs), and blacks become African-Americans (or "black" must be capitalized, as in "Black," suggesting, as John Judis and Ruy Teixeira wrote, that "blacks were a national group similar to the 'French' and the 'Chinese'"). And, of course, "urban" is a synonym for "black" because it's accepted that white people don't live in cities anymore (not true, of course; majority-black Detroit even has a white mayor).
Look, I understand that non-heteosexuals need an all-encompassing term to define what they are, as opposed to a term like "non-heterosexuals," which defines what they're not. But until the PC Language Police comes up with an acronym I can actually pronounce, I am going to keep referring to "non-heterosexuals."
Thomas Jefferson, the third U.S. President, was known to be afflicted with a stammer and so feared public speaking that he became the first of 24 consecutive U.S. Presidents to deliver the annual presidential message to Congress - now known as the State of the Union address - as a printed text to the Capitol for a clerk to read. Given Joe Biden's own stammer - and given his lifelong ability to say the wrong thing at the wrong time - he could have easily revived the tradition that Jefferson began. In fact, many Democrats might have been more than happy with such a decision.
"Piano Man" by Billy Joel (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.)
As I type this, it is Super Tuesday, March 5, eight months to the day before the 2024 general election - and my 59th birthday. And if the polls and the media analysis bear any weight, I have concluded that it is a better-than-even bet that Donald J. Trump will be elected to a second non-consecutive term as President of the United States.
Once Trump is backing power on January 20, 2025 - Martin Luther King Day, ironically enough - he will invoke the Insurrection Act to crack down on protesters against him, declare martial law, terminate the Constitution, and have the Democratic Party closed down. All fifty states will have Republican governors who will be even less answerable to their constituents than Pontius Pilate was to the people of Judea, and Congress and the state legislatures will be rubber-stamp assemblies in the style of the Supreme Soviet of the U.S.S.R. We will still have elections, but they will have only one candidate per office. The press will obey the government, and anti-Trump media outlets will be shut down. Anyone accused of a crime will likely go to jail without a fair trial.
And while I've said this before, I will say it again with as much clarity as possible: Trump will make opposition to his regime a capital offense. Those who cross Trump with lesser offenses will be sent to labor camps., though those who voice opposition will likely also be worked to exhaustion in said camps, and then, when they are all worked to exhaustion, they will be executed. And I, as a blogger who has been speaking out against Trump for the past nine years, will not be immune to such punishment. The Justice Department will find me and other bloggers by simply finding our IP addresses, and they will use the United States Secret Police - currently known as the Oath Keepers, and who will likely be known colloquially as the "Gestrumpo" - to arrest us once they track us down.
And once again - I cannot repeat this warning enough! - don't make plans to leave the country once Trump is back in power . Anyone who plans to leave the U.S. will learn that Trump will not allow anyone to leave to avoid losing human capital and to avoid the humiliation of anyone leaving a country he claims to have made great again. The border patrol, who will likely be under the control of Stephen Miller, will "shoot to kill" anyone who tries to cross the border. And if you're caught alive. . . .you'll wish you had been shot to death first.
While I turn 59 on Election Day, I do not, at this moment, expect to live to see my sixtieth birthday. If I do, I will likely be in a labor camp with my execution scheduled shortly thereafter, likely by hanging, although Trump has suggested using guillotines for executing capital offenders.
But I think this song from Led Zeppelin - a band Karen Hunter ridiculed Paul Ryan for still listening to in 2012 - better illustrates what we can expect a year hence.
So let me see if I follow this correctly . . .
The Alabama Supreme Court ruled that a frozen embryo, having been stored in the deep freeze for future intentions to fertilize for impregnation, is a child. Therefore, if you take a test tube and try to produce a child through in-vitro fertilization, and if something goes wrong in the process and the embryo does not survive, the parents can be . . . held liable for murder?
Wha?
So, if this ruling means that eggs are people . . .