The Supreme Court Fails to Defend the Constitution

And so the Supreme Court fails its moment and its purpose.  They accept the robes and privileges and want to be treated with respect but no one in law school told them that this sometimes requires that they do more than show up and scratch their balls.  The Geheim Staatzpolizie in  unmarked vans attack and round up those who have been cast out but labor in our fields.  The head of a Special Unit has informed the elected mayor of Los Angeles that she should "Just get used to it, honey".  And our Supreme Court acts all innocent and unawares.  

It is said that even the most perverted and depraved of liars and hypocrites can find redemption but I dont believe it.  The Supreme Court had their chance, the issues were not subtle and their duty clear.  But the court failed us.  Worse is to come.  The Supreme Court is letting the rapist - pig and his cult destroy the government and purge the security forces of anyone who does not swear loyalty to der Fuhrer.  Congress has failed to honor its oath and now so has the Supreme Court.

People keep hoping that the situation is not as bad as some of us say.  But it is bad, it is very bad, and if history is a guide, it will get much worse.

Russia has a tradition of elite units disobeying orders and supporting the people.  Americans seem to have the belief that the constitution is some magical force of good and that somehow people and institutions that have already failed are going to "repent" and defend the people.  

I have got bad news for you.  I am going to predict the future.  As it is at the beginning, so it is at the end.  Those who are hypocritical swine and liars will continue to be so, and nothing such as the constitution or their oath matters to them.  We are fucked.  

Trump and Judge Cannon Celebrate Courtesy of MidJourney and AI

 
Trump & Judge Cannon celebrate their great victory over justice and the hoax they have played on the American Public.    So much of the detail here seems to be "out of nowhere". 

The prompt was probably something like: "A room of corrupt politicians and a woman judge celebrate their victory over justice at a dinner party where a pig has been slaughtered and roasted with an apple in its mouth.  The politicians are dressed as clowns.  --ar 16:9"

Alternates:

From the Special Counsel

Although the US Government has consistently failed to bring Trump to justice for his crimes, there is evidence that some people or groups are at least trying.  Here the Special Counsel replies to Trump's insistence that he was only doing what Joe Biden and others have done with classified documents: 


[T]here has never been a case in American history in which a former official has engaged in conduct remotely similar to Trump’s. He intentionally took possession of a vast trove of some of the nation’s most sensitive documents—documents so sensitive that they were presented to the President—and stored them in unsecured locations at his heavily trafficked social club. When the National Archives and Records Administration (“NARA”) initially sought their return (before learning that they contained classified national defense information), Trump delayed, obfuscated, and dissembled. Faced with the possibility of legal action, he ostensibly agreed to comply with NARA’s requests but in fact engaged in additional deception, returning only a fraction of the documents in his possession while claiming that his production was complete. Then, when presented with a grand jury subpoena demanding the return of the remaining documents bearing classification markings, Trump attempted to enlist his own attorney in the corrupt endeavor, suggesting that he falsely tell the FBI and grand jury that Trump did not have any documents, and suggesting that his attorney hide or destroy documents rather than produce them to the government. Failing in his effort to corrupt the attorney, Trump enlisted his trusted body man, codefendant Waltine Nauta, in a scheme to deceive the attorney by moving boxes to conceal his (Trump’s) continued possession of classified documents. As a result, Trump, through his attorney, again returned only a portion of the classified documents in his possession while falsely claiming that his production was complete. The obstructive conduct even persisted from there. In June 2022, knowing that he had arranged for Nauta to move boxes to conceal them from Trump’s attorney, and knowing that the government had subpoenaed the security video footage that would reveal that surreptitious box movement, Trump, now joined by not only Nauta but also codefendant Carlos De Oliveira, attempted to have the information-technology manager at Mar-aLago delete the video footage that would show the movement of boxes.


Let there be no doubt in your mind, if you or I had done even 10 % of the crimes for which Trump is being prosecuted, we would be spending 20 years to life in solitary confinement.  

Appeals Justices with a Pop Culture Spin

 

Using Midjourney to visualize three appeals court justices as the Joker.  Not exactly what I wanted but not bad for 5 minutes work, either.

Notes on Civil Justice and CNN

Obviously there is nothing in civil justice that has the slightest impact on Trump's criminal and psychopathic behavior. He turned around from being convicted for "sexual abuse", but we know that really means rape without overt penetration by his slimy little penis, and on public television attacked and demeaned this rape victim again. He will deflect, delay, and deny as always. The worse that happens is that he pays $5M. Which he can easily steal from his supporters by lying to them, as he has so often over the last 5-7 years.  Not quite a complete waste of time, but not sufficient to affect the maniac's attempt to seize power and destroy the country.  The lesson is that it has to be a criminal indictment and he has to go to jail. 

CNN knew exactly what they were doing when they put Trump on air for their so-called "town hall" with nothing but his supporters in the audience. They knew what he would say and he said them. He verbally abused the woman he had sexually attacked, he all but confessed other crimes, he repeated his lies, he was given an hour of air time in a major national market. CNN is culpable in his obstruction of justice and his attempt to destroy this country and install a fascist government. There are no principles of free speech at stake here. Nothing keeps him from buying an hour of airtime. (Good luck calculating what that would cost).

The supreme court and various appeals courts are a joke having been destroyed by the Republicans. Term limits or some other remedy are required.  God knows Thomas won't resign without being forced. The Dems should have raised the debt limit when they had the ability to do so. This situation is essentially their fault as they allowed the Republicans to hold the country hostage. I guess they were trying to be bipartisan. Sorry, sarcasm.

Its too late to put him in jail, I doubt the feds will even try.

I certainly am not a fan of CNN.

I realize that nothing I say here is the least bit original, nor will it have the slightest impact.  I write these posts to blow off steam and because it helps me remember what I thought at the time the post was written.

On the Road to Fascism 05/09/2023

I write about the things in this post not because I think I can solve any of the problems, or say anything the least bit interesting that hasnt been said before on these topics.  I write these posts to help me remember some of the outrages we are exposed to because it is so easy to forget, being bombarded as we are by injustice and stupidity on a near-daily basis.

 

Here is just a sample of what has been happening recently.

 

1. Jordan Neely is murdered for the crime of talking to himself on a subway.  I talk to myself, and if I was in NY where there is a subway, I might talk to myself there too.  Would I be murdered?  Daniel Penny, the white man who murdered Jordan, is free and walking around. 

 

2. The Supreme Court is so deeply fucked up and illegitimate that it almost seems cruel to even mention it.  But yes, the corruption of Clarence Thomas has gone on long enough.  Roberts or someone needs to act.

 

3. The Republicans, who dont want to actually support the constitution which created a method for controlling appropriations, are dead set on destroying this country through the debt limit nonsense.  On the one hand, Biden is right to  stand firm, but wait.  Why didnt the Democrats change the debt limit when they controlled both houses of congress and the White House?  Maybe the Democrats are incompetent. At least they are not consciously evil, but that is about all I can say in their favor.

Would any other country be better?  Well, maybe, I dont know.  But I do know that if I were living in another country and bad things like this happened I would not feel betrayed because I would not have had to listen to the self-servicing, self-congratulatory, BS that I was exposed to here, in America, where people think they are the only country with a legitimate government.

I wonder if this is one of the posts that the Internet censors will use to block this blog?

The supreme court back in the day when it had legitimacy.

 

Why this Indictment of Donald Trump is the Right Indictment

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Against all expectations, one of the many grand juries that have been convened to review the evidence of the crimes of Donald Trump have voted to indict and to our amazement an actual district attorney did so.  The Republicans are going nuts and many Democrats are too. "Oh how awful, if only they had indicted him for homicide or attempting to overthrow the government of the united states.  Now we are doomed!" 

Actually I think this is exactly the right crime to indict Donald for because it is somewhat banal.  Yes instead of our failed justice system getting him for something huge, like killing American citizens, they are getting him for misrepresenting the accounting records of his hush payments to a former mistress.  Trump is banal and so is this.  Symmetry is preserved.

There is no dignity in the US government justice system and you shouldn't expect any.  We should be grateful for what we get.

 

 

Legitmacy and the Supreme Court

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We started our discussion on the legitimacy of the US government here.

The basic argument is that a country or system can survive all sorts of attacks, mistakes, compromises and failures and still exist and move on.  But the elites of this or any country should not assume that they can just fail endlessly and cynically ignore the values on which that country was based. They should not think they are above the "judgment of heaven".  History is filled with examples where such a decadent system hollows out and experiences just one more shock and, to everyone's surprise, collapses into a puddle.  See the Ancien Regime of France in 1799 and Imperial Russia in 1917 for example but there are many others.

It is pride that comes before the fall.

 

The Republicans have accused the Democrats of legislating through the judiciary but of course what that really means is that it is the Republicans that plan to legislate through the judiciary.  Once their partisan justice drones were put on the bench then the Republicans knew that they didnt have to care about majority rule or democracy anymore.  They could count on their "originalists" to wildly violate jurisprudence and legislate away.

But if you are going to do this kind of stuff, then you had better be sure that your court is above reproach, and has been put in place with impeccable process. Its not just who is on the court, it is how they got there that matters, not to mention their arguments. The American People, had better believe in your integrity, boys and girls, because if they dont you are asking for trouble.  What is a justice system whose Supreme Court is seen as corrupt and partisan?  

So lets see what we have here and in no particular order.  First we have the court overthrowing the rightful winner of the 2000 election to put their right wing stooge in power even though we all know that had we kept counting the votes in Florida that Al Gore would have won the electoral vote as well as the popular vote.  Now, with George W in power, we get none other than Roberts and Alito on the court.  Then we get McConnell to refuse to evaluate and confirm Merrick Garland.  Then we have Trump, a known criminal, nominate not one, not two, but three right wing nuts to the Supreme Court.

Sorry guys, but you screwed it up.  The court is far from legitimate and now you have a failed justice system.  Well good luck with that, but it doesnt work for me.

The SDNY Did Not Fail to Indict Trump

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When the SDNY did not indict Donald Trump and his obviously corrupt Trump Organization, it was not a failure of "justice".  This is the way our system is intended to work.

 

Its not that the justice system failed, its that the American people, by which I mean progressives (possibly progressive democrats), are stupid and unrealistic to believe that it ever would happen based on what they should have learned about our system by now. A few of these "lessons" include, the SDNY is no more capable of taking on a corrupt crime organization like Trump than they are to take on the Genovese family. The job of the SDNY is to get convictions based on the laws that the corrupt legislature has put in place to victimize the small fish and protect their friends. Also, the job of the SDNY is not to take any risks involving high profile cases and by definition all high profile cases are therefore excluded.  The Department of Justice is no more about "justice" than the Department of Defense is about "defense" or Homeland Security is about "security". There is no justice in the USA except more or less by accident. 

 

It is well understood by political scientists (or at least some political scientists) that when a political system fails to provide such "public goods" as a functioning and legitimate justice system, a practical way to change the constitution, and a peaceful and legitimate way to choose one's representatives, that the system is very likely to experience a revolution and that assassination is seen as a legitimate tool of political change.  But America has always used assassination for political purposes. See, for example, Huey Long, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, JFK and RFK.  Under the circumstances, some would say that the only way to achieve minimum justice and the will of the majority in this country would be to assassinate Trump.

 

This is the lesson of history.  This is the American Way.

 

 

 

 

https://www.nysd.uscourts.gov/

Where is Wilford Brimley When We Need Him?

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Dear REDACTED,

How did we get here? That you would suggest that I was overly simplistic about matters of principle? Me? I merely want to remind my friends what is at stake here. This is not your everyday serial rape of children by rich people in public flying their powerful friends, like Trump or Clinton, around to do so, and then making a deal with the Florida DA to avoid any semblance of justice or compensation for the victims. As if the law were a joke to be flouted unless you were black or poor. This is nothing trivial like that. This is a series of crimes against the republic, not one crime (and I mean that in some sort of literal, legalistic sense) but a whole series of them. You say its more complicated than I realize, but I am trying to communicate, and failing, that I think that I know very well what a clusterfuck this is, even if I may indeed be ignorant of the details of what the SDNY or the DOJ may face. My response is that this is why they get paid the big bucks. And now, having been paid, many of us wish them to do their goddamn job. I am certainly not right about everything. I never thought in a million years that Trump would, again in plain sight, try to overturn the election in which Gore, excuse me, I meant to say Biden, obviously won. That he would on network television incite his followers to overthrow the constitution, attack the Congress and attempt to murder the leading Democrats in the House, defecate in the halls of congress, both literally and figuratively, and then people would say, "we must not overreact". You have got to be kidding me. I want my money back.

At the end of "No Sudden Moves" by Soderbergh, the Aldrick character says "They have eyes but they just cant see".

Hollywood is at fault. Yes, the glamourous and rewarding motion picture industry lied to me. Well, some of them did. I guess we all see what we want to see. I am a goofy idealist who ignored Hammett and Chandler and without realizing it, believed that it wasnt that bleak, that justice would be done. I am a fool. A naive idiot. Instead I believed Brimley in that fabulous courtroom drama, Absence of Malice (1981), that completely goofy Paul Newman and Sally Fields melodrama nominally about the freedom of the press in the form of Sally Fields as she attempts to increase newspaper readership and bring down Paul Newman with the help of an ambitious "jew lawyer" from the DOJ.   Then in a nearly perfect justice ex machina, Wilford Brimley, cast as the aw shucks US assistant attorney general, sweeps in like an "Old Testament" Angel of the LORD and smites the wicked.  

 

Brimley in Absence of Malice (1981)

Brimley starts off the show here (in low quality youtube video)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btqBJJF2yvE

And Newman and Brimley finish it off here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMj3uqFKG84

What a fool I have been. There is no Brimley and there is no Justice. I have been lied to and those of us who pinned our hopes on elections and the justice system have been betrayed. 

Error Checking Is Now Mandatory

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It is a fact of our lives here in the USA that we all, right or left, have to be more careful about our news sources if we care about truth and reality.  There are a variety of reasons why this has become critical but a few of them are:

1. Deliberate manipulation on the part of the right has destroyed the few mechanisms in place to keep the press honest.

2. Important elements of the press are deliberately and explicitly dishonest (Fox News, the WSJ, etc).

3. The internet makes it very easy to create false news and spread it.  It may be impossible to remove deliberate errors.

4. Foreign actors and their intelligence services are manipulating the news to their advantage.

5. Various political leaders, particularly on the right, are colluding with these foreign actors for their own political purposes.

But whether you agree with this or not, and no matter where you stand on the political divide, if you want to know what is going on and perhaps set some limits on any discussion, there are some straightforward if sometimes annoying things you can do.

Here is one suggested list.

1. When you are making an argument about something, try to keep a particular source for your point at your fingertips.  This source should be as much as possible a credible and undeniable point that can be verified.  For example, whether or not you agree or disagree with Trump's immigration policy, the NPR reported

The ruling by a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected a Trump administration challenge of a lower court decision finding that the government failed to offer detained minors safe and sanitary conditions as required by the 1997 Flores settlement.

 In 2017, U.S. District Judge Dolly Gee found that the government was violating that settlement by not providing safe and sanitary conditions when it held minors in conditions that deprived them of sleep — cold and over-crowded cells – and denied them access to food, water and basic hygiene.

https://www.npr.org/2019/08/15/751634918/appeals-court-rules-detained-migrant-children-should-get-soap-sleep-clean-water

At this point, its not too relevant whether this is their (the Trump Administration's) policy.  What we are discussing is what a court ruled.

2. Beyond keeping objective sources at your disposal, you can check yourself if that is what the 9th US Circuit Court ruled.  You can do so by looking up their ruling online, or by using one of the fact checking services (more of these below).

3. If you feel that you do not have the skill or resources to check whether a story is true, you can use one of the two fact checking services.  These two services are politifact.com and snopes.com.  Use them.

4. If something remarkable has been printed, or is circulating on the Internet, you should be able to get corroboration from another source.  If it is only on rawstory.com or breitbart.com, and none of the other major services are carrying it, then wait a bit before you assume its true.

5. If you read something that is too good to be true (or the reverse), then be sure to check the sources even harder.  Likely it is too good to be true.

6. It is no longer enough to report something you heard that you believe is true, you have to have a source for it, a specific reference somewhere, that you can point to and can be refuted or confirmed.

7. Finally, it is not enough to point to a single piece of data without taking into account history and context.

This is just the start of what we have to do.  If someone is trying to make an argument and they dont have a source, and they dont understand the context, then you should tell them that you dont believe them as it is currently stated.  They wont like that but that doesnt matter anymore.

Due Process or System Failure?

The Supreme Court Crushes Freedom

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Any question you may have about whether or not the Supreme Court is just a right-wing tool of oppression should now have been answered.

1. Roberts has said that the Secretary of the Commerce does not have to answer questions about whether he lied to congress (perjured himself) during his nomination process.  

2. Gorsuch is planning to assist the destruction of the census.  The census feeds into everything else this country does when it comes to helping people.  It is far, far more than a census in a simple sense of that word.

3. Roberts has stayed the progress of the children's crusade on global warming.

4. The supreme court has refused to act to end the insanely illegal violation of voting rights in Georgia, N. Dakota and other states.  This means that the upcoming midterm elections will be invalid.

5. And of course, the right wing thug Kavanaugh lied to congress, is a complete shit, and was confirmed for the supreme court.

That is the end of the matter.  Do what you will with this information, this is not new, this is just overt.  There is no valid justice system in this country.

A Suggestion for the Justice System

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You see, here is the problem.  When you destroy the justice system with your right wing goons, like Kavanaugh, Gorsuch, Roberts, Thomas and a whole slew of nutty boys in the Federal system whose names we may not even know, then when a judgment happens that is obviously unjust, such as the one that just happened against Stormy Daniels, then we assume that the fix is in. We cant assume that justice was done because we dont trust the justice system.

You leave us no choice but to put as many of our partisans on the court as we can, as a countermeasure.  Yes, you fucked it up.

Dont complain when it comes back to bite you in the ass.

Footnote: The day after the defamation suit against Daniels is dismissed, Trump calls her "Horseface".  Dont you love justice in America?

Snowden Attempt to Get Pardon From Obama

The Guardian has an article on Snowden which you can read here.

The point of the article is that his lawyer is mounting a full-court press to get a pardon before the end of the Obama administration, possibly in the very short interval between the election of the new president and her [sic] inauguration.  Some questions were asked in the Comments section which I attempt to answer below. ¹

1. Could Obama pardon Snowden even though he has not been convicted?

Yes. Ford pardoned Nixon who was also not convicted, nor formally charged so far as I know.

2. Does the fact that Bush and Cheney have not been formally accused of crimes by the DOJ mean that they did not commit any crimes?

No, not at all. It just means that the US Government in the person of President Obama has been covering up for them. So far as I know, there is no statute of limitations on murder and torture.

3. Would Obama plausibly pardon Snowden?

Not in a billion years. Ladies and Gentlemen, Boys and Girls. Its time to wake up to the fact that absolutely no one who is cleared to know what happened (to the best of their knowledge) has anything good to say about Snowden beyond one comment by a senior military leader that it may be that Snowden was not consciously a tool of foreign intelligence to begin with. ²

No one, repeat no one, who knows anything about the case thinks that his motivations and actions have anything to do with NSA illegal spying on US citizens.

Neither Obama, Clinton or even Trump is likely to pardon Snowden. I also think it is interesting that the Obama administration does not seem to even be willing to discuss a plea bargain with him (e.g. you come home, plead guilty to one thing, serve some time, then be released). In other words, they think his crimes are completely egregious and the case against him airtight.

Anyone who is a Snowden partisan at this point is unlikely to find this blog post of much interest. You know, you just know, that Snowden is a hero and a patriot. Well, if so, why did you vote for Obama? Or did you? Do you think McCain would have been any more sympathetic? Or Hilary Clinton? A little naive, are we, perhaps?

The famous Mad Magazine "Spy vs Spy"

Notes:

1. I have too much time on my hands, clearly.

2. Do not remember who said this.  I believe it was a senior military official who served in a role in Intelligence and whose comments were recorded in the period immediately following the first Snowden releases.