bigtree
bigtree's Journal
So it's a deliberate ploy to garner sympathy and support
Kyle Cheney @kyledcheney 10mTrump says on Truth Social that it would me “my great honor” to go to jail for violating Judge Merchan’s gag order and that it will make him a “modern day Nelson Mandela.”
...he'd be more like Lyndon LaRouche who served five years in prison for fraud.
Nelson Mandela was in prison for 27 years. Let's make this wish come true for Trump.
Trump is such a simp to Putin that he can't denounce his endorsement of Joe Biden
...Trump elevated Putin's clumsy lie about supporting Pres. Biden to a question he should have known he couldn't respond to.
Putin's endorsement wasn't necessarily a reflection of Trump's thinking until he got the idea he was clever enough to use the cynical ravings of a murderous dictator against his Democratic rival.
So now there isn't any shield of indifference to what Putin said for Trump to hide behind. He's committed himself to confirming whether he agrees with Putin's supporting the president's reelection, as he did in that now viral clip where he said ”I agree with him, I agree.”
There's no wiggle room here. Trump didn't just misspeak. He's placed himself in controversy over not only what he believes, but what he thinks Putin believes and wants - and we all know Putin wants a Trump presidency willing to surrender not only Ukraine , but the entire NATO protectorate defending a free and democratic Europe from Russian aggression.
This isn't just the silly, but admittedly, tragically funny joke that Trump is too mentally addled to recognize what he's saying. His gaffe was about his duped or compromised determination to align U.S. interests with Russia's, at whatever cost Putin merely suggests.
https://news.yahoo.com/trump-agrees-putin-biden-president-203052899.html
My guess about why Trump and other republicans are carrying Putin's water
...I'd guess the select few who visited Moscow, including the seven Republican senators and one House member who took a surprise trip there on July 4, 2018, as well as the leading republican candidate for president meeting privately with Putin five times in office, were all summoned by Putin to review their individual kompromat files complete with videos and audio and other incriminating evidence against them.
Putin likely gathered them together in a room where he was recording them and displayed each member's compromising material in turn, then gave each a packet with everything in it, including their marching orders, then told them to gtfo.
We saw visible evidence of that blackmailing when Trump had that private session in Helsinki with Putin after the summit on July 16, 2018 in Helsinki, Finland, just weeks after the republican senators visited Moscow, and he came out looking like he'd been bludgeoned.
Trump and Putin Have Met Five Times. What Was Said Is a Mystery.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/15/us/politics/trump-putin-meetings.html
TPM:
The two world leaders have interacted face-to-face in five different locations since Trump took office in January 2017. Sometimes they’ve sat down for extensive private conversations; other times they’ve just exchanged words in full view of press cameras. More than one of those meetings have coincided with fraught moments in the federal investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election. Per the Post, no substantial record of any of them exists.
Foreign policy experts say that these off-the-record encounters leave the rest of the U.S. national security apparatus in the dark about how to navigate the country’s relationship with Russia, allow Russia to control public perceptions of the talks, and leave Trump more vulnerable to manipulation from Putin.
Donald Trump is a Russian agent
....it's incontrovertible and voters need to be made more aware.
Another excellent video from Ben Meiselas at MeidasTouch
Fani Willis has means and right to have large sums of cash
..she said the largest amount she had at one time was about 15k.
Trump's lawyer is trying to say Fani Willis would not be expected to have her own money.
It's just so offensive that it's infuriating and triggering.
So many times in my life I've been reminded how so many of our countryfolk have such a low opinion of black people as to assume they don't live the same way as their white counterparts, or better.
Older black folks in my family had traditionally distrusted banks and often keep larges sums of cash, on their person and in their home, and that habit is often passed down to their children.
The problem in this questioning is as much about the inferences, as they are about the seemingly innocuous prying into details of Fani Willis' personal habits.
FFs, the attorney just tried to call Wade an employee.
Most close relationships aren't transactional, but this questioning assumes every meeting or outing they had was some quid pro quo, instead of people friendly with each other and enjoying each others' company.
Relationships that aren't between married couples can be uncertain, but this questioning assumes something nefariously binding about the association that's not apparent anywhere but in the insinuations.
I'm going to hope here that these exchanges are viewed though the context of not only the outrageousness of the questioning about sexual behavior in a courtroom trying Donald Trump and associates, but with the understanding that black folks, especially women, have not only always been made to openly justify their sexual and other relationships, but have had those relationships tied to any public assistance they might receive to the degree that black women had to remain unmarried and even hide their male companions from social workers.
Fani Willis would have heard these stories from her parents. That's how recent all of that was, and it looks like people want to bring it all back.
I'm listening to the questioning of Willis and Wade and for the life of me I can't see why their sexual relationship was ever allowed to be raised in open court.
I also don't know how anyone can determine when their relationship was a romantic one; certainly not just because they had intercourse. It was obviously brought up to provide salacious video for ignorant people to grunt at, with no context that the people directly involved get to decide when they are in a romantic relationship, not someone looking on from the outside judging them by their own peculiarities.
Where will our defenses come from today since the substance of these indignities are contained mostly in black folks' fears; and also in their detractors' antipathies; attitudes and perceptions which took generations to alter?
Wife and I were talking about how we felt at this moment
...when Kate McKinnon performed Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" a couple days after Trump was elected:
I couldn’t feel, so I learned to touch.
I told the truth, I didn’t come to fool you And even though it all went wrong,
I’ll stand before the Lord of song
With nothing on my lips but Hallelujah!"
It's incredibly triggering, but it reminds us of just how far we've come since that awful moment, and how important and vital it is that we have the same resolve today that we mustered back then to push through to the next election and put Trump on his ass.
We were both rallied by the performance. It was a moment of unity. A few days later the Women's March on Washington was announced for the day after Trump's inauguration - which my son and I attended even though I had the flu and had to work that night. I still look back to this performance as the moment we looked up from that devastating defeat and began to fight again.
Funny sweet story. That night when the networks announced he'd won I had to immediately go to work stocking shelves on the grocery night crew. We were a 24-hour store, and I saw an elderly lady come in to shop looking much the same way I felt.
She said she was in to find some comfort food. We commiserated with each other about the election, and I suggested, as I always do, that she get something familiar that she likes instead of something new.
On the way out she stopped by where I was working and gave me a candy bar she'd bought. Said she didn't eat candy but she thought it would make me feel better.
I thanked her, stopped working and ate it, and I did feel better.
Hur's politicking in his report is backfiring today, and predictably so
...I've watched more than a few influential pols and pundits calling this smear job by Robert Hur out-of-bounds and provably untrue.
The top assistant to Trump deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein, clerk for Justice William Rehnquist, chosen by Trump AG Jeff Sessions to be U.S. Atty. of Md., thought he was doing yeoman's work for MAGA when he included his sophomoric fiction about the president alongside what amounts to a solid exoneration.
Ironically (right word?), incredibly, Hur ratf**ked his own political hit job by revealing himself as a clear anti-Biden partisan. Nothing could make his decision to decline charges against Joe Biden more convincing than his own visible antipathy to the president contained IN HIS OWN REPORT.
Hur made a clumsy political stab at the president which was rendered fiction mere hours after the report's release when Pres. Biden stepped before the cameras, in an appearance many stations carried live to see if he was indeed in a stupor which would rival Mitch McConnell's drooling deer-in-the-headlights presser, and sharply acknowledged the win with his usual clarity and forcefulness as he angrily devastated the SC's salacious accusations.
It was a rookie move by Hur. Most GOP operatives know well that not only is Pres. Biden not hampered in any significant way because of his age, it's foolishness to put themselves in a position where they're directly challenging him.
Joe Biden isn't shy or lost for words, and he's known many of these pols and pundits before they put on their big kid pants. Nor is the press corp who is with him daily engaging in some sort of coverup, propping up the octogenarian like FDR's waist high photo ops.
More obvious is this successful presidency so far, complete with historic progress and accomplishments led by this old guy.
I've seen many campaigns where the opponent overreaches, as Hur has, and casts his rival in an unbelievable light, obvious to everyone looking on to be far from the truth. It's a classic blunder, and this amateur political operative stepped right in it.
Tweety and the Morning Schmo say Haley can be a Black Swan
...the black swan events metaphor describes an event that comes as a surprise, has a major effect, and is rationalized after the fact with the benefit of hindsight. The term is based on an ancient saying that presumed black swans did not exist, until they were discovered in Australia in 1697.
The trio was lathering themselves up in anticipation of a Haley/Biden matchup in the end, comparing Nikki Haley to a 'black swan' like she has some universal, and more importantly 'moderate' appeal that will amaze and spark voters enough to transcend the Defendant as an actual competitor in this race.
Tweety, practically breathless as he realized he had room to make one of his goofy observations, lavished Haley with praise.
twitter.com/Morning_Joe/status/1750211886899929492
Joe chimed in as Mika nodded approvingly:
https://twitter.com/Morning_Joe/status/1750143365205622867
The new script they worked up on set has all the networks and news orgs Nikki Haley offering the woman who has about 20 delegates in her pocket an opportunity to do her faux-moderate, anti-Trump act through her home state's primary, hoping a Trump conviction will knock him out before the election and she'd be the last one standing.
I think most republicans in South Carolina moved past Haley when they hounded her out as governor after going all trumpy. Even if she has a good showing there she's likely to still lose to the cult favorite, and her money will dry up.
Right now, there's a palatable amount of schadenfreude watching Haley attack Trump and echo the Biden campaign's highlighting of Trump's addled and diseased mind. But it doesn't make her a moderate... on anything.
She's made that point, herself.
“Not one person can tell you how I wasn’t conservative,” she said, adding, “Show me where I’m moderate because I’m not. The difference is who is deciding who’s conservative and who’s moderate.”
“Is it because of what I say?” Haley added. “Is it how I talk?"
Vox:
All of that is more than likely fine and dandy with MAGA voters, but those aren't the voters showing up for Haley. A CNN exit poll showed some 70 percent of Haley voters in New Hampshire were not registered Republicans.
One of the question was, "Do you think Biden legitimately won in 2020?"
AMONG TRUMP VOTERS
Yes: 17%
No: 80%
AMONG HALEY VOTERS
Yes: 83%
No: 15%
Here's the rub for Haley with republicans. More than half of Iowa (of the 15% of registered Iowa Republicans that showed up to caucus) voted against TFG, and almost half of New Hampshire's.
More daunting for the GOP, an NBC News/Des Moines Register/Mediacom poll of voters in that state found that fully 43 percent of Nikki Haley supporters said they would back President Biden over Trump.
Most of Haley's republican voters so far are never-trumpers, and the rest aren't fired up at all to reinstate Trump into the WH, and amenable to a Biden presidency.
What should push them even further toward the Biden campaign is Haley's promise she would support Trump as their party's nominee for the 2024 race even if he was convicted of a felony, and even pardon Trump if found guilty of trying to overthrow democracy.
That should play out into a political landscape where our incumbent Democrat has all of the gravitas, just as voters are focusing in on election day in November. But, buckle up, because Trump's republican antagonist isn't done promoting herself, and she's as pernicious and despicable as the man she's busy railing against.
President Biden in S.C. today telling the truth about racism, 'and it matters.'
President Joe Biden delivered remarks at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, S.C., today, where nine worshippers were killed in a mass shooting by a white supremacist in 2015.
He spoke to the congregation about "the day word of God was pierced by bullets in hate and rage, propelled by not just gunpowder but by a poison —white supremacy."
It changed hearts. You did something that may not have happened but for your courage. You brought down the Confederate flag in South Carolina. You brought it down— you did.
And you helped the nation heal. You showed what America can overcome, what we can be when we want to be something."
Notwithstanding the dignity and grace which that congrgation and community demonstrated in the face of unspeakable horror and hatred, one of the things which disturbs me when tragic violence occurs which is clearly motivated by or associated with racial animus of a white individual toward black individuals is how some observers cast calls for reconciliation or togetherness as an ultimate and comprehensive solution.
While good relationships between racial and ethnic groups are important and essential to the preservation of the fabric of our democracy and society, what's often involved isn't a case of some mutual animosity, prejudice, or discrimination. What's far too often involved is an attitude of bigotry and hatred directed primarily and almost exclusively from one side of the racial fence toward the other.
As we saw from news reports of the barbaric execution of black men and women in the S.C. church, the issue wasn't about whether the black community, represented by members who welcomed the white killer into their prayer circle without reservation before he gunned them down, was accomodating or welcoming enough to white individuals.
The gunman's grievance was his simmering hatred and fear of our nation's black minority which he reportedly felt was 'taking over' the country, which is being stoked and allowed to spread against anyone regarded as a potential threat to an increased number of individuals in our nation's evolving white majority.
One of the questions which needed answering is where the young white assailant got the notion that our black community was enough of a threat to him and his way of life that he felt a need to act out with violence against some of us.
There's been a resurgence in the past few decades of old racial divisiveness. It is a product of the same fear many in the white majority experienced at the birth of our Union of the potential of black Americans assuming positions of power over them - fear that blacks would act out the same prejudices which had been so arrogantly and wantonly perpetrated against them.
There has been a fear of black advancement throughout our American history - fear that blacks would rise up and dish out the same injustice & violence many in the white-dominated had perpetrated against the race of people since slavery and through the years of segregation and state-sanctioned discrimination. Yet, despite our tragic history, blacks have shown great forbearance and benignity in the face of it all.
In the immediate wake of Reconstruction and the election of a handful of black lawyers, ministers, teachers, college presidents to the national legislature, there was a concerted campaign of character assassination by their white counterparts and other detractors in a successful effort to challenge their seats and to construct discriminatory barriers to the election of other blacks which persisted for generations and generations.
President Biden spoke about these deliberate and devastating deceptions, today:
That was a lie, a lie that had — not just a lie but it had terrible consequences. It brought on Jim Crow.
So, let me be clear for those who don’t seem to know: Slavery was the cause of the Civil War. (Applause.) There is no negotiation about that.
Now — now we’re living in an era of a second lost cause. Once again, there are some in this country trying — trying to turn a loss into a lie — a lie, which if allowed to live, will once again bring terrible damage to this country. This time, the lie is about the 2020 election, the election which you made your voices heard and your power known."
Racism certainly isn't chic anymore; not like it was in the days where slurs, slights, and outright discrimination were allowed to flourish under the umbrella of segregation and Jim Crow. But, the fear and insecurities which underlie discrimination and prejudice still compel some to draw lines of distinction between black and white aspirations and potential for success.
There's also a dwindling white majority in the nation's workplaces, and a dwindling dominance in other institutions which is, ironically, producing a familiar insecurity in some. Overall, black Americans' reaction to a dominating majority has been remarkably gracious, patient, and forgiving over the decades. Some of these dominionists could learn from that as they reconsider their role in a more inclusive society.
I'm fortunate to have a long line of outstanding family members and friends of the family to recall with great pride in the recounting of their lives and the review of their accomplishments; many in the face of intense and personal racial adversity. In many ways, their stories are as heroic and inspiring as the ones we've heard of their more notable counterparts.
Their life struggles and triumphs provide valuable insights into how a people so oppressed and under siege from institutionalized and personalized racism and bigotry were, nonetheless, able to persevere and excel. Upon close examination of their lives we find a class of Americans who strove and struggled to stake a meaningful claim to their citizenship; not to merely prosper, but to make a determined and selfless contribution to the welfare and progress of their neighbors.
That's the beauty and the tragedy of the entire fight for equal rights, equal access, and for the acceptance among us which can't be legislated into being. It can make you cry to realize that the heart of what most black folks really wanted for themselves in the midst of the oppression they were subject to was to be an integral part of America; to stand, work, worship, fight, bleed, heal, build, repair, grow right alongside their non-black counterparts.
It can also floor you to see just how confident, capable, and determined many black folks were in that dark period in our history as they kept their heads well above the water; making leaps and bounds in their personal and professional lives, then, turning right around and giving it all back to their communities in the gift of their expertise and labor.
The attacks in this generation are not to be taken lightly, even though we may assume that the nation is past all of that. The attacks need to be openly and loudly defended against by Democrats and Republicans alike. They can't just be brushed aside as some sort of acceptable standard of discourse.
For the most part, they've been responded to with dispatch and sincerity. For the other, there's a glaring silence -- and even a rhetorical encouragement by some in the political arena who are leveraging age-old stereotypes to serve their cynical campaigns for office.
That's the backdrop for this resurgence of racial animosity toward black Americans; something which, for the most part, blacks have little control over. It remains for the white community to lead the way in setting the standard for discourse and relations in this nation.
It's that backdrop of acquiescence to the which appears to have fueled the tragedy in S.C.. There's a cottage industry, driven in great part by petty legislative politics, of divisiveness and racial hatred which has spilled out into the public consciousness and legitimized/encouraged the pitting of groups of Americans against others.
The republican political class, in particular, benefits directly from racial and ethnic hatred and resentment that they fuel with their rhetoric at every opportunity. It's an old game, adopted from our tragic beginnings as a nation, practiced by people who should know better but don't give a damn about our humanity, as long as it provides red meat to throw to their rabid constituency.
President Biden, again, today:
And yet, an extreme movement of America, the MAGA Republicans, led by a defeated President, is trying to steal history now. They tried to steal an election. Now they’re trying to steal history, telling us that violent mob was, and I quote, “a peaceful protest.”
That that insurrection — those insurrectionists were — these are his words — “patriots.” That there was, quote, “a lot of love that day.” In fact, the rest of the nation and the world saw a lot of hate and violence."
There is a revival of that racism and bigotry which is being encouraged by the cynical politics practiced by the present batch of republicans united behind the disgraced, twice-impeached ex-president. That attitude is certainly trickling down to folks in our communities who are encouraged by these pols to identify their own small feelings with these racist and bigoted appeals which have roots in our nation's tragic past.
In so many ways, I was a direct beneficiary of the civil rights movement which grew out of segregation; which grew out of Reconstruction; which grew from the Civil War and slavery.
My grandmother on my Mom's side's mother was a former slave who eventually became one of her slaveowner's many wives, she bearing him several mixed-race children in the final succession to his white families.
In 1968, I was living in D.C. and witness to the upheaval that the shooting of Martin Luther King produced in our middle-class neighborhood. D.C. was a smoldering mess of brick right after Dr. King was killed. It was chaos for everyone. Blacks there seemed to suffer the most from the violence. It was a fearful time for a young kid like me. Knives, not guns, were the weapons of choice. Really tough times. Lots of robbery. Mostly blacks were the victims as well as the perpetrators.
I remember in that same period, a kid strutting down our street singing 'I'm black and I'm proud' at the top of his lungs. I was pretty young and naive, and I imagined he was saying, 'I'm black and I'm brown'. I thought to myself, Yeah, that's me. Black and brown.
I'm not convinced that enough folks out here are truly familiar with all of the nonsense which has been resurrected from the past in an ignorant attempt to replicate the divisive attitudes and expressions which characterized a more confrontational age.
It's going to take some education from those of us whose life experiences aren't readily available in a google search which renders our experiences mostly invisible and mostly unbelievable to a new generation. I hope for understanding. I fear though we'll be fighting many of the old battles out in the open again.
President Biden:
That narrow view of America, a zero-sum view of America that says, “If you win, I lose. If you succeed, it must be I failed. If you get ahead, I fall behind.” And maybe worst of all, “If I hold you down, I lift myself up.”
That’s not new in America. Every stride forward has often been met with ferocious backlashes from those who fear the progress, from those who exploit that fear for their own personal gain, from those who traffic in lies told for profit and power.
But here in Charleston, you know the power of truth. Less than a mile from here was once a port where almost half of all enslaved Africans were trafficked to North America and forced on our shores.
And now you have a world-class museum there to tell the truth about the original sin. And it matters."
full speech: https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2024/01/08/remarks-by-president-biden-at-a-political-event-charleston-sc/
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Member since: Sun Aug 17, 2003, 11:39 PM
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