Any thoughts on Trump’s hiring of former DeSantis political operative Christopher Kise onto the Mar-a-Lago document fiasco legal team? Is Donald so desperate for legal help that he opened the henhouse door to let the fox come waltzing right in?
There's a reason why the FBI didn't search Mike Pence's home: He complied with the law when he left office. Something to ponder. I can't imagine what the MAGA answer would be to this.
Just read an article about a FL state candidate who's been banned for life from Twitter for telling people "“Under my plan, all Floridians will have permission to shoot FBI, IRS, ATF and all other feds on sight! Let freedom ring!”. He's running for the state legislature. Is the GOP disavowing him?
Got a chuckle out of Mitch McConnell saying "candidate quality has a lot to do with the outcome" of Senate races, because "they're statewide"--pretty much saying out loud that the quality of the Republican Senate candidates is pretty awful, so dang it, the Dems might not lose control of his Senate.
He's also saying that apparently quality doesn't matter as much in House candidates, because those poor quality candidates are running in smaller House districts where it's easier to get a bunch of like-minded fanatics to vote them in despite how wacky they are.
He sounds kind of teed off that he's in the Senate rather than in the House, where he thinks it more likely he'd be in charge after the 2022 election.
I would be surprised if Death Sentence* is able to mount a national campaign against Trump or even alongside Trump. He’s a dull bully who attracts other dull bullies, but not much else.
My feeling is the reason they are going after public school is that they hate the idea of public school. They want the students their parents and their teachers to hate it and leave. The fewer students the less money they have to pay and the more ignorant these students will become. These would be dictators can only stay in power if their constituents are unable to think and reason clearly and are unable to read critically.
Charlie, I thank you and your entire team of writers, pundits, scholars for continuing to sound the alarm about where we are, related to potential civil unrest. I am an Army wife, and a pretty sturdy one at that. From 1995-1999 I worked for Congressman JC Watts as his regional field director. As much as I loved the job, it too was the most dangerous job I have ever held. The explosion of the Murrah Building is an ever present memory for me along with the many former members of the military who came into our office to let me know that militias were building and training all around us. I think we have forgotten the key factors that ushered in that era of domestic violence. Before the republicans took over congress the first time in 40 years, the democrats voted in the assault weapons ban. That was a-okay with me. Then the wave of republicans were voted in - out went a demonized Dave McCurdy in came Inhofe on a platform of Guns, God, and Gays….followed by a cunning Newt Gingrich. Remember Ruby Ridge, Waco, and the insane claims against the Clinton and how they were running drugs and murdering people out of an Arkansas small airport? With JC being the only African American Republican , we did not come into office as the newest jr back bencher from a rural state. We were given an opportunity to shine, to be upfront and to be known, to deliver the response to the President’s SOTU address. We too received in the district countless death threats against JC. Race mattered then - and it still matters now . In the end no one cared he was a former Champion QB and Oklahoma Football star…he is black and that placed him and his family at risk. The memory of some calls against JC still send a chill down my spine because these calls came into the district office with specific knowledge of our schedules. We had no protection and were left vulnerable and open game. I lost a great staff associate due to the fear, quantity, and impact of the threats. We did not have the protections that the offices in DC had. Remember …. the command of Newt - all
Members travel home every weekend - make no friends with the opposing party. Be out in the district - which meant vulnerability. In my file cabinet here in northern VA I’m pretty sure I can still find some of the micro tapes with recordings of threatening calls that were left on our office answering machine. I still get a horrific sickness in the pit of my stomach when I recall receiving a call from the local FBI and federal Marshall’s office telling me to go to my thermo fax machine, (the most advanced piece of technology I had at the time) where a composite sketch of the alleged OKC bombers were being faxed to me. I recall standing there watching each line burn across the curling page of thermo fax paper to reveal someone who looked like any of the new recruits training at Ft Sill. At the time we too were recovering from the multitude of very angry and deeply suffering Gulf War vets who returned home from Gulf War One w/something that was skeptically named Gulf War Syndrome as well as something we now identify as PTSD. We are whistling past the grave yard to believe it could not happen again… it IS happening again. The warning signs are there - the activities of the militias have been fired up since Obama was elected. In 1999 my husband was notified we were being transferred from Ft Sill to The Pentagon where he would work in the office of Congressional Legislative liaison. In may of 2001 I started a new job working as an executive with the Red Cross and serving on the national disaster response team. I foolishly believed we were done with the stress of the Murrah Building explosion and a Congressional District Office. We were in Washington DC the safest American city to live and work in… until 9/11. As I watched smoke rise above the tree line from the Pentagon as I tried to make my way into my office, I believed I had certainly lost my Michael-my beloved best friend & husband - father to our two teenagers. Me and our two children would wait alone and away from each other for more than 6 hours to learn if Mike would return to us. All I could think of was the victims of the OKC bombing and their lives a few years later…they were still ripped a part. Fortunately Mike was able to get out of the building and when I returned home that night at 11:30 pm there was my family - my two kids with theirs arms and legs all wrapped around my husband while all three had fallen asleep on the sofa watching the 9/11 coverage on TV. My family was in tact … but a new danger had emerged - one more akin to the danger I had felt living in West Germany on a Pershing Missile Installation and targeted by the first threat to my family’s lives…the Bader-Meinhof Gang. The point is, domestic terrorism remains a clear and present danger. Our country is in distress and I’m not sure I have ever not felt a respectable measure of distress since 1971, then 1995, then 2001, then 2021. I have no more answers for my kids other than what I had then on April 19, and Sept 11…yes it will happen again and we will get through. However as I watched the violence taking place at the Capitol on 1/6 with great horror I saw right up front someone waving an Oklahoma State flag as though his life depended upon it. There was nothing more to ask myself than “how can Oklahomans he be here - how can they forget 4/19 “ then I recall that Donald J Trump, the fire starter in chief -the most dangerous inciter of violence won all 77 Oklahoma Counties, the same place where both current top primary candidates campaigning to carry the torch for Inhofe no longer scream just Guns, God, and Gays, they have added an additional weaponized mantra to their rhetorical arsenal and it’s”The Election Was Stolen - Biden is not the real President!”. I try to allow my brain and heart go to a place where I can move past this insanity and disappointment without losing the understanding of the crisis. I too try to live and act presently and with strength and determination to do something about it, as much as a person can. The memory that saves me seems to be that scene in Ghost where Whoopi Goldberg tells Demi Moore, “You in danger girl.”
Fact it, we are all in danger and the enemy is more than just human - it’s the technology that allows rapid dissemination of disinformation and the folks who believe it’s the Gospel and they are being called to fight a holy war right here in America. Yesterday I watched Mitch McConnell whine about the fact that the Republicans may not take the Senate …translation: he’s not getting his plush throne and cool office back. Fact is when he failed to hold Trump accountable twice, and when he allowed the Grifter in a chief no continue the election denial deep into Dec, HE sold the country down the river and HE is the one and only person responsible for giving Schumer his precious office. McConnell may deserve the results of his own failure of vision and leadership however the country does not. We need both a tactical and strategic plan. We need all of those former reasonable republicans to get off their asses and get involved. Where is Tom Ridge, Steve Largent, Young Sununu, members of The Bush Admin, JC Watts? We need you again but this time reach across the aisle and help us make this a better America. To do nothing but clutch our pearls and doom scroll is surrender. We were not created to surrender to fascist authoritarianism, just ask David McCullough … oh yeah right …never mind last week we lost David McCullough. We must remember what got us here. We must act to change the present . Time is our only non-negotiable…..it’s tick tick tick tick tick, NOT tik tok.
Many people are fearful that the Dems will be less than balls-out in the upcoming mid-terms
Just heard a Democratic Consultant who said that in all the Dems ads, the opposition will tagged with not just being Republicans, they will be framed as "MAGA-Republican" [insert name].
How is diversity our strength? Since they asked, and since we are a multi-cultural country (like it or not) I'll take an amateur stab at an answer, and point out a few things I've noticed.
First, our GDP is the world's largest. Some of the things that contribute to this:
American music, rock n roll to hip hop seems to be popular throughout the world. Beatles, Rolling Stones et al happily credited Black American music as their inspiration. I've seen clips of Russian, African, Brazilian, French , Mexican and more hip hop artists.
Silicon Valley brought computers into lives throughout the world.
When the Ukraine War began, I was struck by the similarity of clothing styles between Americans and Ukranians. You'd be hard-pressed to identify a nationality by clothing. The Patagonia (and similar) look. American in origin.
Our constitution (minus the electoral college) used worldwide as a template.
Hollywood. MacDonald's, KFC.
This list is very limited on account of my own limitations. And it leaves out the Beacon of Freedom thing, an IDEA that has stirred hearts and minds throughout the world since we began. We, and the world, are only better because of our diversity.
I agree—sort of—that Trump and DeSantis make the same kind of appeal to the fringe. But in my opinion, here's the difference: For DeSantis it's an act on some level. A dangerous and cynical act, but still just an act.
With Trump, I think this is baked into who he really is. The attraction to conspiracy theories. The willingness to say anything and tell any lie—probably without any real cognizance that it even IS a lie. He doesn't care. He'll say anything he thinks is to his benefit. The truth is irrelevant.
So, DeSantis would probably do some bad things as president. He'd probably still indulge in irresponsible stunts and rhetoric that the fringe enjoys. BUT... I do think that in critical moments he'd at least operate as a rational politician and human being. We already know that's beyond Trump. He isn't sane. He doesn't have a normal mind or conscience.
Re: Wisconsin. It seems to me that Gableman has defrauded the state. The money was meant to be for an audit and it was in fact used to press a hyper-partisan conspiracy theory, sans any audit
Any thoughts on Trump’s hiring of former DeSantis political operative Christopher Kise onto the Mar-a-Lago document fiasco legal team? Is Donald so desperate for legal help that he opened the henhouse door to let the fox come waltzing right in?
There's a reason why the FBI didn't search Mike Pence's home: He complied with the law when he left office. Something to ponder. I can't imagine what the MAGA answer would be to this.
Luis Miguel. I read it on an AOL news feed. But if you google him, he's on NBC News, Insider, and a whole bunch of others.
We need immigrants if we want to avoid what is happening in China.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/19/dangerous-china-demographic-decline/
Just read an article about a FL state candidate who's been banned for life from Twitter for telling people "“Under my plan, all Floridians will have permission to shoot FBI, IRS, ATF and all other feds on sight! Let freedom ring!”. He's running for the state legislature. Is the GOP disavowing him?
I gotta remember that supporting an execution is now classified as "facetious".
Got a chuckle out of Mitch McConnell saying "candidate quality has a lot to do with the outcome" of Senate races, because "they're statewide"--pretty much saying out loud that the quality of the Republican Senate candidates is pretty awful, so dang it, the Dems might not lose control of his Senate.
He's also saying that apparently quality doesn't matter as much in House candidates, because those poor quality candidates are running in smaller House districts where it's easier to get a bunch of like-minded fanatics to vote them in despite how wacky they are.
He sounds kind of teed off that he's in the Senate rather than in the House, where he thinks it more likely he'd be in charge after the 2022 election.
I would be surprised if Death Sentence* is able to mount a national campaign against Trump or even alongside Trump. He’s a dull bully who attracts other dull bullies, but not much else.
*DeSantis
Alex Jones looked into DeSantis’s eyes…reminds me when GWB looked into Putin’s eyes and something to admire.
My feeling is the reason they are going after public school is that they hate the idea of public school. They want the students their parents and their teachers to hate it and leave. The fewer students the less money they have to pay and the more ignorant these students will become. These would be dictators can only stay in power if their constituents are unable to think and reason clearly and are unable to read critically.
The Trump addiction of the Republican Party. Who ever thought addiction to anything was a good thing. Lol
Charlie, I thank you and your entire team of writers, pundits, scholars for continuing to sound the alarm about where we are, related to potential civil unrest. I am an Army wife, and a pretty sturdy one at that. From 1995-1999 I worked for Congressman JC Watts as his regional field director. As much as I loved the job, it too was the most dangerous job I have ever held. The explosion of the Murrah Building is an ever present memory for me along with the many former members of the military who came into our office to let me know that militias were building and training all around us. I think we have forgotten the key factors that ushered in that era of domestic violence. Before the republicans took over congress the first time in 40 years, the democrats voted in the assault weapons ban. That was a-okay with me. Then the wave of republicans were voted in - out went a demonized Dave McCurdy in came Inhofe on a platform of Guns, God, and Gays….followed by a cunning Newt Gingrich. Remember Ruby Ridge, Waco, and the insane claims against the Clinton and how they were running drugs and murdering people out of an Arkansas small airport? With JC being the only African American Republican , we did not come into office as the newest jr back bencher from a rural state. We were given an opportunity to shine, to be upfront and to be known, to deliver the response to the President’s SOTU address. We too received in the district countless death threats against JC. Race mattered then - and it still matters now . In the end no one cared he was a former Champion QB and Oklahoma Football star…he is black and that placed him and his family at risk. The memory of some calls against JC still send a chill down my spine because these calls came into the district office with specific knowledge of our schedules. We had no protection and were left vulnerable and open game. I lost a great staff associate due to the fear, quantity, and impact of the threats. We did not have the protections that the offices in DC had. Remember …. the command of Newt - all
Members travel home every weekend - make no friends with the opposing party. Be out in the district - which meant vulnerability. In my file cabinet here in northern VA I’m pretty sure I can still find some of the micro tapes with recordings of threatening calls that were left on our office answering machine. I still get a horrific sickness in the pit of my stomach when I recall receiving a call from the local FBI and federal Marshall’s office telling me to go to my thermo fax machine, (the most advanced piece of technology I had at the time) where a composite sketch of the alleged OKC bombers were being faxed to me. I recall standing there watching each line burn across the curling page of thermo fax paper to reveal someone who looked like any of the new recruits training at Ft Sill. At the time we too were recovering from the multitude of very angry and deeply suffering Gulf War vets who returned home from Gulf War One w/something that was skeptically named Gulf War Syndrome as well as something we now identify as PTSD. We are whistling past the grave yard to believe it could not happen again… it IS happening again. The warning signs are there - the activities of the militias have been fired up since Obama was elected. In 1999 my husband was notified we were being transferred from Ft Sill to The Pentagon where he would work in the office of Congressional Legislative liaison. In may of 2001 I started a new job working as an executive with the Red Cross and serving on the national disaster response team. I foolishly believed we were done with the stress of the Murrah Building explosion and a Congressional District Office. We were in Washington DC the safest American city to live and work in… until 9/11. As I watched smoke rise above the tree line from the Pentagon as I tried to make my way into my office, I believed I had certainly lost my Michael-my beloved best friend & husband - father to our two teenagers. Me and our two children would wait alone and away from each other for more than 6 hours to learn if Mike would return to us. All I could think of was the victims of the OKC bombing and their lives a few years later…they were still ripped a part. Fortunately Mike was able to get out of the building and when I returned home that night at 11:30 pm there was my family - my two kids with theirs arms and legs all wrapped around my husband while all three had fallen asleep on the sofa watching the 9/11 coverage on TV. My family was in tact … but a new danger had emerged - one more akin to the danger I had felt living in West Germany on a Pershing Missile Installation and targeted by the first threat to my family’s lives…the Bader-Meinhof Gang. The point is, domestic terrorism remains a clear and present danger. Our country is in distress and I’m not sure I have ever not felt a respectable measure of distress since 1971, then 1995, then 2001, then 2021. I have no more answers for my kids other than what I had then on April 19, and Sept 11…yes it will happen again and we will get through. However as I watched the violence taking place at the Capitol on 1/6 with great horror I saw right up front someone waving an Oklahoma State flag as though his life depended upon it. There was nothing more to ask myself than “how can Oklahomans he be here - how can they forget 4/19 “ then I recall that Donald J Trump, the fire starter in chief -the most dangerous inciter of violence won all 77 Oklahoma Counties, the same place where both current top primary candidates campaigning to carry the torch for Inhofe no longer scream just Guns, God, and Gays, they have added an additional weaponized mantra to their rhetorical arsenal and it’s”The Election Was Stolen - Biden is not the real President!”. I try to allow my brain and heart go to a place where I can move past this insanity and disappointment without losing the understanding of the crisis. I too try to live and act presently and with strength and determination to do something about it, as much as a person can. The memory that saves me seems to be that scene in Ghost where Whoopi Goldberg tells Demi Moore, “You in danger girl.”
Fact it, we are all in danger and the enemy is more than just human - it’s the technology that allows rapid dissemination of disinformation and the folks who believe it’s the Gospel and they are being called to fight a holy war right here in America. Yesterday I watched Mitch McConnell whine about the fact that the Republicans may not take the Senate …translation: he’s not getting his plush throne and cool office back. Fact is when he failed to hold Trump accountable twice, and when he allowed the Grifter in a chief no continue the election denial deep into Dec, HE sold the country down the river and HE is the one and only person responsible for giving Schumer his precious office. McConnell may deserve the results of his own failure of vision and leadership however the country does not. We need both a tactical and strategic plan. We need all of those former reasonable republicans to get off their asses and get involved. Where is Tom Ridge, Steve Largent, Young Sununu, members of The Bush Admin, JC Watts? We need you again but this time reach across the aisle and help us make this a better America. To do nothing but clutch our pearls and doom scroll is surrender. We were not created to surrender to fascist authoritarianism, just ask David McCullough … oh yeah right …never mind last week we lost David McCullough. We must remember what got us here. We must act to change the present . Time is our only non-negotiable…..it’s tick tick tick tick tick, NOT tik tok.
Many people are fearful that the Dems will be less than balls-out in the upcoming mid-terms
Just heard a Democratic Consultant who said that in all the Dems ads, the opposition will tagged with not just being Republicans, they will be framed as "MAGA-Republican" [insert name].
We can only pray this will be a national wave.
How is diversity our strength? Since they asked, and since we are a multi-cultural country (like it or not) I'll take an amateur stab at an answer, and point out a few things I've noticed.
First, our GDP is the world's largest. Some of the things that contribute to this:
American music, rock n roll to hip hop seems to be popular throughout the world. Beatles, Rolling Stones et al happily credited Black American music as their inspiration. I've seen clips of Russian, African, Brazilian, French , Mexican and more hip hop artists.
Silicon Valley brought computers into lives throughout the world.
When the Ukraine War began, I was struck by the similarity of clothing styles between Americans and Ukranians. You'd be hard-pressed to identify a nationality by clothing. The Patagonia (and similar) look. American in origin.
Our constitution (minus the electoral college) used worldwide as a template.
Hollywood. MacDonald's, KFC.
This list is very limited on account of my own limitations. And it leaves out the Beacon of Freedom thing, an IDEA that has stirred hearts and minds throughout the world since we began. We, and the world, are only better because of our diversity.
I agree—sort of—that Trump and DeSantis make the same kind of appeal to the fringe. But in my opinion, here's the difference: For DeSantis it's an act on some level. A dangerous and cynical act, but still just an act.
With Trump, I think this is baked into who he really is. The attraction to conspiracy theories. The willingness to say anything and tell any lie—probably without any real cognizance that it even IS a lie. He doesn't care. He'll say anything he thinks is to his benefit. The truth is irrelevant.
So, DeSantis would probably do some bad things as president. He'd probably still indulge in irresponsible stunts and rhetoric that the fringe enjoys. BUT... I do think that in critical moments he'd at least operate as a rational politician and human being. We already know that's beyond Trump. He isn't sane. He doesn't have a normal mind or conscience.
In short: DeSantis=bad. Trump=much, much worse.
Re: Wisconsin. It seems to me that Gableman has defrauded the state. The money was meant to be for an audit and it was in fact used to press a hyper-partisan conspiracy theory, sans any audit