to almost the entire Republican-fascist caucus in the Congress protecting the billionaire Pedophiles in the Executive (and beyond) and the Supreme Court's Republican-fascist majority enabling Trump at almost every turn
THE REPUBLICAN PARTY IS THE
NEW NAMBLA OF 2025.
IT IS SATISFYING to at least imagine that Trump feels something like we imagined Jonny Rocco as played in Key Largo by Edward G. Robinson trapped below deck by Frank McCloud (Bogart) only Trump wouldn't be as skilled at saving his own ass with a gun as Rocco was. I hope Trump's dementia hasn't gotten so far that he doesn't appreciate how close he is to total exposure and ruin but I think even the demented Trump must realize one thing, he very likely made a mistake in putting his needed pardon in the hands of J. D. Vance.
Vance, on his part, is probably at least a good enough student of history to realize that the pardon that Gerald Ford certainly promised Nixon was what led to his inability to ride the absurdly favorable press he got to electoral victory in 1976. If Vance isn't that smart, the man whose bitch he is, Peter Thiel is certainly smart enough to realize his chief asset in government would diminish his value to him enormously by giving Trump the pardon he needs. The story that Donny jr. was the one who sold his idiot father on choosing Vance might figure into this, and it makes the folly of it more satisfying. Anyone who was in any doubt that Vance would fail to fulfill a promised pardon should recall how he sold out those he claimed as "his people" the white working class of Appalachia. And if they forget that as an example of how he would sell out anyone is certainly watching him throw his own wife under the bus as he publicly kissed and handled the widder' Kirk, who he certainly must have expected would be considered a goddess by the white supremacists he threw his wife and, certainly by implication, his own children under the bus of his ambition. Little did he know that she would have undercut her own status so fast by her own behavior.
I think if Trump is driven from office the matter of Vance pardoning him or any of those who Trump has not pardoned, whether it be Bondi and Blanche or Patel or any of a list of obvious criminals in his regime is certainly something none of them would bet their lives on if they thought that far ahead. Any pardons Vance considers would be granted only if his and Thiel's calculations were that the cost of those outweighed the benefits to them, or rather
TO THEM
made that worth the cost. Frankly, I wouldn't bet on them even noticing those who it wouldn't cost them a thing to pardon getting one unless there was a benefit to Thiel and his bitch. Which is how a "President Vance" should be thought of as Trump should certainly be thought of as Putin's bitch
Trump must certainly have a vestigial sense that that's exactly how he'd deal with it. I mean, they say that dementia only exposes the person who was there all along.
If Elon Musk and his incel-boy army don't have pardons, already, I can imagine Vance ordering the AG he appoints to go after them so that Thiel and his cronies can pick through the pieces of Elon's empire as he goes to prison or worse.
These are just the ruminations of someone who isn't entirely sold on a lot more of the Epstein files getting made public as a given. Though I will say that the Democrats who have the stuff that they subpoenaed from the Epstein estate have been playing a remarkably cool hand in judicious releases of what they have. I think it's certain that if there is to be a next shoe to drop, it's going to be even more damning than what got released the other day. I think Thiel must be confident of one thing, there is nothing that ties him to the rape of young girls. I wouldn't bet on any of the other billionaires in and around the Trump orbit other than Bessent knowing that their names don't appear in the files and that's only because, like Thiel, he's not interested in raping young girls. While it would be hard for any gay Republican asshole to replace Lindsay Graham and a sitting member of the Republican faction of the Supreme Court as most loathsome living gay man, Bessent is close to being a contender of that if the other two die before he does.
I DON'T KNOW, maybe what he managed to do was the best that a Democratic Leader in this Republican fascist dominated Senate could get. Listening to Sheldon Whitehouse with Lawrence O'Donnel last night what he said made good sense. Sheldon Whitehouse always makes good sense. If I were posing the question it would be maybe we should do what should have been done and scrap the entire Senate. The Senate has been the killing floor of democracy only second in that position to the entirely anti-democratically chosen and staffed Supreme Court.
I agree with one thing he said above all WE HAVE TO MAKE THE PROMISED VOTE ON THE ACA PREMIUMS AS HARD AND COSTLY TO REPUBLICAN-FASCISTS AS POSSIBLE. I will be doing everything I can to put the heat on the eternally concerned but never responsible Susan Collins and not on the retiring Angus King. That skank is running for reelection in a state in which there are many Republicans and independents who are on subsidized ACA. If I were in his district I'd be putting pressure on Jared Golden who, now that he has announced he will not seek reelection can be the Republican- he has been suspected of being. If he'll vote to extend the subsidies is not something I'd bet on with any confidence.
I think there is a case that Schumer should consider retiring to make room for a younger politician, of course I'd like someone with AOC's politics in that seat though if she could win the seat is far from clear. I agree with those who point out that there are too may octogenarians who haven't done enough to bring along their successors in the party. I think one of our problems in Maine is that the adoption of term limits in the legislature and state Senate (and why we need to have one of those in the state government is a good question, too) has left us with some pretty sparse choices for higher office. You don't develop enough tested and experienced politicians with term limits, it's absurd that the alternative to Graham Platner, the troubled neophyte against Susan Collins is our 78-year-old incumbent governor. I say that acknowledging both that Janet Mills has been one of our better governors of my lifetime (though she was no Ken Curtis and who knows how he'd fare half a century later) and that I have had some large areas of disagreement with her. But it's far from optimal to have someone who will be 78 when the election is held running against the aged Susan Collins.* But there should be at least a handful of more obvious and younger choices. It doesn't matter much in Republican politics because all Republicans stand for is the further enrichment of the rich and throwing bones to the white supremacist-fascists. Any Republican is pretty much replaceable with any other one. Democratic politics is far more complicated. Also simplifying things for Republican-fascists is that the media everywhere, especially in Maine, will support the worst of them as a totally reliable practice, including that of "Maine Public" the alleged public broadcaster of both radio and TV the only state-wide media here.
But, on the other hand, if I lived in Massachusetts I'd be supporting the veteran Ed Markey over Seth Moulton (from the Jared Golden-Rahm Emanuel wing of the party) who is doing what a self-entitled Kennedy tried to do before him. I don't know if Markey has been cultivating younger politicians who would be as good as he has been in the Senate but I'm pretty confident that Moulton wouldn't do that, he'd be one of the three like Fetterman who voted with the Republicans to start with on the shutdown.
I do think Schumer owes the party a full and honest discussion of what happened. Keeping that quiet serves no one but the gossipers and off the handles fliers.
* If Mills is the nominee, she should pledge that this will be her last political office sought, reminding Mainers that Susan Collins lied through her teeth when she originally promised Maine voters she would not run for more than two Senate terms. Collins has been a liar from the start.
and at this time I don't care if they are or not, what ails me isn't exactly life threatening, that is unless longing for death in the midst of a spasm is in any danger of overriding my nearly congenital Catholicism.
Like many a geezer my age I've got a flare up of my sciatica. Oddly, it didn't come from the wood stacking I did, it was just bending the wrong way to sit down. One wrong move and you trade a moment of convenience for a month or more of pain and debility.
I won't say its getting better because my experience is that's jinxing myself.
PRACTICALLY EVERYTHING I've been saying for the past fifty years!
How Bribery Was Legalized In America
