hay rick
hay rick's JournalThey are fishing for ways to nullify election results.
There is no legitimate difference of opinion on the chain of custody of ballots, only a difference in goals. Breaking the chain of custody of ballots, like in Puerto Rico and Fulton County, creates the opportunity to forge counterfeit claims. Breaking the chain of custody or routing it through a criminal enterprise is the exact opposite of the usual prosecutorial burden of demonstrating a legitimate chain of custody of evidence.
This is not partisan disagreement. This is an attack on American democracy by its enemies.
The fact that he is still roaming the grounds freely suggests he is still useful to the powerful.
Trump's reign continues despite the obvious mental decline that exacerbates his lifelong sociopathic behavior. Trump is useful because he breaks things that others want to see broken. He has demonstrated many times over that he can get away with destructive behavior that would lead to an immediate downfall for others.
One thing that I think helps keeps him in place is the belief that his designated replacement, J. D. Vance, lacks both MAGA cred and the ability to lie to peoples' faces like he believes a word he is saying. Vance is equally repulsive in his own way but he is no Donald Trump.
Another difficulty for those using him is that I think he is kept in place by an informal coalition of oligarchs who have overlapping but different agendas. He continues to be useful to some while his increasingly reckless behavior is viewed as a threat by others. I doubt that there is a single faction that can unilaterally remove him and inertia will keep him in place until there is some kind of consensus among the looting elite.
Winner, winner, bonespurs dinner!
Did somebody say the White House? Ding! Ding! Ding!!!
Murder.gov
In the 1930s, Murder, Inc. was part of a crime syndicate that offered murder-for-hire services and was reputed to have killed over 1,000 people (mostly other gangsters) in a little over a decade. A movie of that name was made in 1960. A young Peter Falk played "Kid Twist", a psychopathic killer. A Kid Twist speech from the movie:
Don't ask questions- Take!
What you want- Take!
What I want I take!
Stealing Lunch Money- Venezuela.
Only Donald Trump could make a person root for Nicolas Maduro. Maduro stole Venezuela's presidential election in 2024, which he appears to have lost by a wide margin. Maduro won a close and disputed election in 2013 and has ruled as an authoritarian leader since. In addition to electoral fraud, his rule has been marked by corruption, censorship, and human rights abuses including extrajudicial killings. His leadership has also resulted in severe economic hardship. Venezuela's GDP shrunk by an astonishing 80% (approximately $380 billion in 2013 to $120 billion in 2024). More than 7,000,000 people fled Venezuela- almost a quarter of the population. The majority of those who remain live in poverty.
Trump has no plan to address the misery of the Venezuelan people. He has ruled out installing the actual winners of the last election in power. There is no remotely credible plan to repair Venezuela's deteriorating petroleum industry, the greatest source of the country's wealth. Impoverished as the Venezuelan people may be, they are likely to become even poorer as the only clearly articulated administration plan is to extort many millions of barrels of oil by blockading and impounding oil tankers.
Paul Krugman sheds light on one part of Trump's actual "foreign relations" model:
Singer has made huge political donations to Trump, raising questions about how much he has influenced policy. His purchase of Citgo was also remarkably well-timed. What did he know?
How many others in Trump's inner circle of billionaires, family, and business associates are serendipitously positioned to share the loot?
I believe election suppression will be selective.
They do not need to cancel every election or even most elections. They can target a handful of elections and assure that they keep a majority in the house, which is their primary vulnerability. The competent people- graduates of the 2025 project and people funded by Thiel with all of Palantir's hijacked data, are surely war-gaming this. Different strategies can be pursued in different districts.
The shaky premise that American democracy will be saved by fair elections in 2026 encourages people to take the path of least resistance- tolerating the current, escalating abuse and waiting to be rescued by the ballot box.
CBS News new show: 47 Minutes.
The idea for the graphic came from a comment on DU yesterday. I thought the show could use a trailer.
Another new font for Marco Rubio!
Q: Why did Marco Rubio cross the road?
A: Like most squirrels he has no idea where he left his nuts.
The other day Marco announced that all official State Department documents must use a14-point Times New Roman font. I humbly suggest that an even more appropriate font is available: Times New Swastika (see below).
Rubio decided it was important to replace the sans serif Calibri font because it was part of a "wasteful DEIA program." While the DEI bogeyman is familiar to most of us, it turns out that if you add A to the acronym you can also include "Accessibility" in the woke target list. Watch out wheelchair ramps, MAGA is coming after you!
About the font: by happy coincidence, the real name of the font is Fette Trump-Deutsch. It's a widely available free font created by Professor Georg Trump in 1936.
2
Wordle 1,632 2/6
⬜🟨🟨⬜🟨 STEAL
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 FLUTE
I guessed FLUTE because it was relevant to an old story I shared in a text chain yesterday. The text chain was started by a suggestion that the local Democratic Party should thank the sheriff's office for detaining a person who was carrying a gun and wearing body armor at the local Christmas parade- we were participants and had a float. The sheriff's office and local paper noted that they were concerned because our local MAGA congressman was also in the parade. Language for a press release thanking law enforcement was discussed.
I told the story of an incident from 2017- before many of the people in current leadership were involved. In that incident, one of our volunteers was arrested and held in custody for months on a charge of threatening the same congressman and his family. What actually happened was he called the congressman's Washington office to complain about kids in cages- I think as part of the 5 Calls or a similar program. In his call he asked rhetorically how the congressman would like it if it was his family in cages. The call was handled by an intern who misrepresented the conversation and the congressman's office got the FBI involved. Larry was arrested that night by a local FBI agent and a detective from the sheriff's department.
The misrepresented story was carried in local media. Larry was doxxed by the paper! We had threatening incidents at our office and had to adopt security measures. The venue for the trial was moved to Miami where the charge was dismissed with prejudice.
The flute in the story- Larry was a retired professional flute player. Coda: the young man who was detained at the Christmas parade was let go with no charges.
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