• 11 Posts
  • 128 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 30th, 2023

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  • The important question is this: How effective has this been?

    How many judges, whether or not they’ve been targeted by this tactic, have made rulings in favor of Trump that they would not have made otherwise, out of fear of retaliation by one of Trump’s followers? How many judges going forward are going to rule in Trump’s favor out of fear that they’ll be targeted?

    People have historically used these tactics because they fucking work. And we already know that senators have voted in Trump’s favor on numerous issues up to and including his removal from office based on fear of retaliation from Trump’s followers. We have seen officials ranging from local school boards right up to state officials either drop from races or resign from their positions due to intimidation and harassment tactics from hardline opponents.

    We’ll never be able to answer the question of how effective this has been since no judge will ever admit to ruling in Trump’s favor because of these tactics. But the chances that this has happened, and possibly even happened quite often, is very, very real. How many laws are still on the books because the judge that was assigned the case was intimidated by Trump supporters? How many things has Trump gotten away with because prosecutors and judges feared retaliation or even civil unrest?

    And since it’s what will be viewed as “Democrat” judges that are targeted, I’d be willing to bet that the Senate isn’t exactly going to put too much faith into investigating this until Aileen Cannon starts getting orders from Domino’s.


  • Honestly, at this point I’d be willing to bet that those officials who actually still give half a shit about national security don’t give Trump anything that isn’t essentially public information already. Or at the very least, largely harmless if it does become public. It’s not like Trump would know or care about the difference.

    Remember that multiple sources have said that during his first term, the Presidential Daily Briefings were largely little more than fluff pieces with pretty pictures, easy to understand words, and random references to him just to keep his attention, much like trying to keep a 3 year old occupied with a coloring book and a handful of crayons.



  • To be fair, this is a problem that has always existed with our Constitution. The Constitution gave us a framework for government and rules to abide by, but its fatal flaw is that it said exactly nothing about what to do when someone breaks those laws. The entire document is basically little more than a glorified gentleman’s agreement. There’s nothing in the document that says what to do if those elected to support and defend the Constitution instead decide to take a shit on it.

    If anything, we should consider ourselves lucky for a couple of things. One is the fact that it took 250 years for someone to realize that our Constitution has absolutely no teeth to it and the answer to the question of “What are you going to do about it?” is effectively “Nothing.” The other is that the first person to go down that path is an inept moron. Now granted, the man has still done permanent and irreparable harm to our country and our standing in the rest of the world. But imagine the damage the man would be able to do if he were competent. Imagine if Trump had the political savvy and intelligence of Mitch McConnell. We’d be in a fuck of a lot more trouble.


  • He’s not “trying to undo” it. He’s largely already undone it.

    He has done permanent and irreversable damage to our relationships with our allies around the world. Countries like Denmark and Canada now have to look at us as potential adversaries as we repeatedly threaten to use military force to annex their territories.

    He has obliterated our ability to maintain strong political and economic ties. Sure, with every administration comes tweaks to various foreign and economic policies, but American policies in general have been considered stable and reliable over the long term. Countries now believe, and have every right to believe, anything the US says only has a shelf life of 4 years before the next administration comes in and flips the table on a whim, and that anything Trump says only has a shelf life of until he has a conversation with someone else and randomly changes his mind. Businesses and governments can’t be expected to function under those conditions, and it is going to take us decades at best to show the rest of the world that Trump and MAGA were just short blips on the radar and that the US can once again be trusted in the long term. That’s assuming we ever get that trust back.

    Even domestically, how many collective centuries of experience has been purged from federal government operations as a result of Trump’s mass firings? Even if these agencies were re-opened and fully re-staffed tomorrow, how long would it take them to wind things back up and get back up to full strength? If they’re re-instated after the Trump administration, how much damage would be caused in the interim, and how many years or even decades will it take to fix it? How much data that these agencies relied on has already been permanently lost?

    How many years of scientific research has already been destroyed as time-sensitive experiments and studies get cancelled due to de-funding? Again, even if these institutions would be able to restart work tomorrow, how many experiments have already been invalidated in the interim? How many years are we now going to be behind in scientific research?

    Same goes with vaccinations. Environmental damage. Race relations. The list goes on and on and on. What he has already destroyed in four months will likely take four decades to repair.









  • But you know why I blame the “progressive” Democrats and “independents” more?

    Everybody knew that the MAGA crowd was going to MAGA.
    Everybody knew that the strategists were going to stick to the same old playbook.

    And you know what else everybody knew?

    Everybody knew that in this election, not voting for Harris was a de-facto vote for Trump. Everybody knew that whatever your position was on any given topic, Trump’s position was an exponentially worse option.
    Everybody knew that even under the best of circumstances, this was going to come down to the wire.

    These people knew it. They knew how important their vote was, and they stayed home anyway. And they still infect this very community with their constant excuses for blaming everybody else for their own choices because Kamala Harris wasn’t the perfect candidate.

    “She wasn’t a supporter of Gaza.” First, let’s remember the fact that the Jewish voters in this country exponentially outnumber Palestinians multiple times over, and if she had spoke out against Israel and it cost her even 10% of the Jewish vote, she’d still have lost even more votes than she would have gained from Gaza supporters. And second, if the people of Gaza are supposed to be your primary concern, how is allowing a man who was openly campaigning on amping up the genocide, annexing the land, and turning it into beachfront property any better for them? Or the university students in this country who are now being deported for supporting them?

    “She campaigned with Liz Cheney one time.” So fucking what? Liz Cheney wasn’t running for re-election. None of Liz Cheney’s policies were on any ballots. This was a woman who, much as I disagree with her on 99.99999999% of policy issues, still sacrificed her career to try to hold Trump to account. Conveniently, of all the dozens of Republicans who endorsed and even campaigned with Harris, she is the one everybody gets all up in arms about. Gee, I wonder what separates her from all of the Republican guys that also endorsed Harris? And even without that…everybody gets mad because Harris campaigned with someone who formerly supported Trump. But how in the name of holy fuck does it make sense to retaliate by allowing Trump to return to power? “I’m so fucking mad that a former Trump supporter endorsed her that I’m going to let Trump return to power! That’ll show 'em!”.

    “She wasn’t far enough to the left on <whatever issue>”. Ok. Again, so fucking what? How does allowing our government to be controlled by a far-right trifecta that is campaigning on dismantling the very progressive programs you’re supposed to support help that in any way, shape, or form?

    The lot of them decided that the remedy to not shooting themselves in the foot was to point the gun at their own head instead.

    And I’ve said it before and I still believe it: The people who fall into this category I believe are closeted racists who either low-key support Trump’s immigration policies, didn’t want to vote for a black woman, or both, and are just using one of the above flimsy arguments to justify their choice rather than admit it.