The Best And Brightest Of The Ivy Law Schools Gave Us The Stupidest, Most Criminal, Most Vulgar, Most Clearly Demented Despot And Are Enabling Him Right Now

IN READING THE SEVERAL posts RMJ posted about just this weekends' manifestations of Trump's floridly senile and demented statements about him achieving percentages in the thousands of reductions in the price of drugs - an achievement which not only never happened but would mean that the drug companies would have to be paying patients back handsomely for buying their drugs - it makes me ask a question I have not heard asked at all.

ARE JOHN ROBERTS AND THE OTHER SUPREME COURT 'justices' WHO HAVE MADE THE UNITARY EXECUTIVE, FASCIST INTERPRETATION OF THE AMERICAN PRESIDENCY "LAW" PROUD OF WHAT THEY HAVE, BY A VOTE OF SIX SINGLE PEOPLE TO THREE BROUGHT THE UNITED STATES TO?

This,  this very real, very actual, entirely non-Ivy League Law faculty theoretical TRUMP is the embodiment of what they think is desirable for the United States of America to be governed by.  THIS follows on to the Bush II,  not even smart, though criminal, daddy Bush,  "H.W." BUT  the idiot son "W" Bush who was a cautionary example of what the unitary executive theory could bring in the very lifetimes of those six "justices" ALL OF THEM PRODUCTS OF ELITE LAW SCHOOL EDUCATIONS, ALL OF THEM MEMBERS OF THE LAWERLY (liarly) ELITES,  his diasterous presidency - I WILL REMIND YOU BROUGHT TO US BY REHNQUIST COURT FIAT -  to have cautioned them as to the very real life consequences of their elite-entirely anti-democratic, entirely financially self-interested legal, constitutional theory for those in real life who don't get to live "safe in their alabaster chambers, untouched by morning and untouched by noon."   

Though I doubt ol' Emily Dickinson realized she was describing late 20th century, early 21st century Ivy League law faculty and their spawn who would be put into that ultimate alabaster chamber,  the goddamned supreme Court.   Though, considering her lawyer politician-father's relationship with those who took a dim view of how Harvard (see the intentions of those who founded Amherst College)  was developing, even then, maybe she did have some such idea.   

Only Roberts' clique has no intention of their Doge surrendering, they really believe he is going to do everything from making their familiy's extraction industry fortune safe from environmental action (Coney-Barrett, among others)* to keeping "People Unlike Us" (People of Color, etc.) out of their alma maters and professions and clubs and out of the voting booth and out of Congress (all of them clearly have that goal.  John Roberts can stand as the Taney of this racist court, and I include that poison well of pathology,  Thomas in that).   They are well on their way to reinstituting de facto Jim Crow with all of its necessary violence of enforcement. 

They really have been prepared to not only intentionally pave the way for the stupidest, most criminal, most vulgar, most corrupt man to have ever held the presidency (even more so than the one who appointed Alito and Roberts) to rule as an absolute dictator,  they are doing their best to try to enable his idiocracy, his gangster governance even as they try, in the most modest of ways, to cover their own judicial asses as they do it. 

John Roberts et al are the most corrupt of the already very corrupt Courts since the one chiefed by John Marshall - a man who never found a slave to side for in the many cases that massive slave holder ruled in and who grabbed the unconstitutional Marbury power for the court.   John Roberts has gone farther than Taney or those who started destroying and distorting the 14th and other Civil War Amendments to work for the newly empowered successor of the slave-power allegedly defeated in the Civil War and against which those Amendments were adopted.  He is the most corrupt, most criminally intending Chief Justice in the history of the country and his fellow five are as worthy of removal and prosecution for their crimes against equality and democracy and even the inadequate and fatally flawed liberal democracy that was set up by the Constitution and the early revolutions of Jefferson and Jackson.   I have a theory of the history of my country that literally everything good about us has been in opposition to the Constitutional order as originally set up and as it has been distorted by the Supreme Court and the corrupt powers in the other branches.  The abolition movement, the Women's rights movement, the struggle for equality, the struggle against wage-slavery and oligarchy, etc. have all been struggles against the Constitution and the law as it was set up and as it developed in each and every case.    The Supreme Court, presented in amber-tinted, soft-focused sentimentality in the American media and academia is and always has been the primary engine of anti-equality, anti-democracy, pro-oligarcy in our country and our history.   It has been the forces of "Constitutionalism" which constitute the worst of our history.   Though they won't tell you that in your education as a "Constitutional scholar."  

Either the United States will adopt a different Constitution, one which will, among other things, strip the usurped Marbury power and the even more appalling add-ons made by academic law school fascists** or the United States will possibly devolve into one of three things.  The oligarchic fascism they clearly favor (no doubt with "the vote" of white racists propagandized by our "free speech absolutist" lying media), an even worse fascism which those soft-handed, soft-brained "justices" believe couldn't happen here, or the United States will split into two or more entities,  I think there are regions and states which will eventually conclude that they can't tolerate the Constitutional order as it has become in reality.  If there will be a civil war, this time waged by the slave-power states (which now include many even in the upper-mid-west and Rocky Mountain states) against those who favor equality and democracy, God only knows.   

I used to fantasize about the possibility of Canada taking Maine, my state,  in though I would caution Canada against doing that without the strongest of grantees that U.S. habits of thinking wouldn't prevail in any part of the old US that wanted in on a more modern Constitution in a country which still aspires to egalitarian democracy.   The greatest disincentive of that on the part of Mainers,  that it would probably forfeit the Social Security of those in the state who paid into it, the Republican-fascists seem to be about to remove as they destroy Social Security - another thing the Roberts six are perfectly OK with.   If Mainers didn't have that keeping them from it,  I think only the really hard cases would oppose that.  But, of course, all that is only a fantasy.   I can tell the difference, Roberts,  Coney-Barrett et al seem to have been educated out of being able to discern that kind of thing.   The Ivys and their equivalent can do that to you.  

*  Though I have absolutely no doubt that the racism, sexism, dislike of freedom of choice in abortion and contraception,  class hatred of the six fascist "justices" are a strong motivation YOU CAN BE CERTAIN THAT THEIR PRIMARY MOTIVATION IS THE PROTECTION OF THEIR PERSONAL AND FAMILY MONEY AND THAT OF THEIR UPPER CLASS.   That, alone, explains pretty much about 19 twentieths of the history of the Supreme Court in action.  

Though, thinking this out and writing it makes me realize that we need a word to describe Clarence Thomas's clear and serially demonstrated hatred of Black People, "racist" doesn't cover it.   I don't think there has been a "justice" since the 19th century who has more clearly demonstrated his hatred of Black People than that ocean of pathology.  

**  Those currently at Harvard, alone, are a ship of lunatics who are often fools of the worst kind, and that's ONLY HARVARD!  Many of them are the most lunatic are "trad-catholic" theocrats of the most insane variety.   I was working on a post about that, too, but the iffy internet here is delaying that post. 

Answer To A Lying Piece Of Hate Mail

 

The ICEtapo Is Fascism Here And Now And Not Stopped By The Goddamned Bill Of Rights

 

ICEstapo arresting a Native American, slamming her head on the ground and when they give their excuse (probably because they found out she was Native American an not Latina) saying she was "twerking illegally."   And that's only the start of this short list of Republican-fascist secret-police crimes documented by Meidas Touch that American law, the Constitution, the goddamned Bill of Rights isn't stopping them from doing under the Roberts' Republican-fascist Court and the lower courts and Trump II Do"J" defiance of what courts might order to stop such crap.

Remember all of this the next time someone scolds you for pointing out that fascism is here and now as it has always been here and now for People of Color.   Just watch,  Trump is going to pardon the cold blooded cop murderer Derrick Chauvin, probably using his pardon of Diddy as a cover.  You just know Trump wants the cops murdering People of Color as does, clearly, the Republican Party and the American free press which will cover for him.  

If by some miracle Democrats regain power we have to make sure that they don't chicken out of addressing this like Obama and the Do"J" under Merrick Garland did and the Democratic Caucus leadership did when they had the chance to really deNazify the system.   As I mentioned that is my biggest nightmare, that Democrats will get the same kind of chance Obama got in 2009 and they will blow it like he did. 

Hate Mail

SOMEONE WHO OBJECTS to one of the things I recently posted about Israel's genocide in Gaza has asked me:

Free Palestinians in the West Bank and (now) Gaza from Israeli occupation and so-called leaders who are either genocidal terrorists or corrupt AF? 

You have got to be kidding me.  That would be opposed to the current Israeli occupation and genocide and Lebensraum and - I suppose I have to get used to the repugnant phrase now being standard "ethnic cleansing" - by the Likude and other Israeli-fascist coalition under the longest "serving" Israeli PM WHO HAS FOR YEARS BEEN AVOIDING CRIMINAL TRIAL FOR CORRUPTION IN ISRAEL THROUGH WAGING WAR AGAINST PALESTINIANS AND OTHERS, PROVOKING WARS FOR THE UNITED STATES AND OTHERS TO FIGHT WITH IRAQ AND NOW IRAN, ETC.   And those domestic crimes pale in significance to his and other members of his governments actual present criminal indictments in international court for crimes against humanity, war crimes, many more indictments that should be brought against many more Israeli politicians, terrorists encouraged by the government, "settlers," the Israeli military and terrorist-intelligence services, etc.  NONE OF WHICH IS DONE ON BEHALF OF EVEN THOSE PALESTINIANS WHO ARE ISRAELI 'CITIZENS.' OF A SORT, THAT IS UNTIL THEIR HOMES ARE DESTROYED AND APPROPRIATED EITHER "LEGALLY" BY THE OFFICIAL GOVERNMENT OR THROUGH MURDER AND TERROR BY THE "SETTLERS" WHO FORM A SIGNIFICANT PART OF THE SUPPORT OF THE PRESENT GOVERNMENT,. . .  I could go on. 

I've got a question for you.  Two, in fact.  Given the genocide in Gaza, the terrorism, murder and theft of property, driving the survivors out in the West Bank, WOULDN'T PALESTINIANS  HAVE TO BE BE INSANE TO NOT PREFER THEIR OWN DESPOTS WHO WOULD, AT LEAST,  NOT DO THAT TO THEM OVER ISRAEL'S ETHNO-DEMOCRACY WHICH PERMITS THAT AND, IN FACT, HAS HAD IT AS POLICY FOR PRETTY MUCH ITS ENTIRE EXISTENCE?   Wouldn't any non-Palestinian who sees the status quo you prefer be guilty of choosing genocide for them out of some "principle" that they would never, ever, choose for themselves or their loved ones to be subjected to?   

If I supported that I'd be the equivalent of an American supporter of any other criminal regime who has done that during my lifetime or in history - and I include many a state government and the federal government of the United States, in history and during my lifetime in that statement.   I will not be that kind of a person or "democrat."  

To elaborate, considering all the above and your statement that opposes any Palestinian state,  no doubt ready to see the status quo stand till the last Palestinian is either expelled, forced out or murdered,  do you ever listen to yourself?   The most charitable interpretation of your own definition of the issues involved in the matter of Israel was that its establishment was a massive mistake that ignored every aspect of the predictable* consequences that you, yourself, admit constitutes the status quo.   And you don't have to get to anything like the worst-case scenario that Zionists, those who went to Israel, those who have merely visited as tourists, those many, many who have never been there and have no intention of putting their own asses on the line to maintain the situation, ARE ENTIRELY IN FAVOR OF EVERY CRIME COMMITTED TO PRODUCE THAT STATUS QUO.   And I am fully prepared to believe that the large majority of those Zionists are not Jewish at all but are gentiles, INCLUDING MANY SUCH AS THE "CHRISTIAN-EVANGELICAL-ZIONISTS" WHO ARE CLASSIC ANTI-SEMITES**.

I am a person who believes that Nazism and any ideology which has a history of genocidal violence not only should be, in fact, totally suppressed but so  removed from the possibility of having any role in the human future.   I believe its suppression is a moral imperative and any legal theories or system which permits its perpetuation and chance of succeeding, again, into the future is a clearly and insanely illegitimate and criminal legal theory.   I hold that American style "civil liberties" that holds Nazism is to always have that chance into the future is criminally negligent.  It is, on its face,  insane to allow Nazism any possible chance to do what it holds as its basis of existence ever again out of some daffy notion of equality among ideologies.   I hold the same about many other ideologies with a similar history,  such as the white supremacy, America's indigenous form of fascism which still stains the United States, its Constitution, its legal system and our history from the start and till today.   Its permission out of "civil liberties" is directly responsible for its current resurgence to control our present and future.  For that I loathe the "civil liberties" industry.    I certainly hold the same view of Zionism is as valid as my stand that Nazism should be vigorously, legally suppressed.   I find it impossible to ignore the reality of those who ignore the most public genocide in human history,  matching those by the various governments in the former Yugoslavia and topping them, demanding that Western governments support it and succeeding in that.   I resent Israel for drawing my country into its own crimes,  I especially resent it for drawing my political party and the man who would have stood as the best U.S. President since Lyndon Johnson into supporting it.  

Argue against those arguments on an honest and rational basis and I might,  I MIGHT post your comment.  

*  That is literally predictable in that those consequences of the establishment of a modern Israeli state on Palestine were predicted decades before Israel was declared a state.

**  I have, for the past number of years, adopted the non-hyphenated spelling that Deborah Lipstadt insisted on out of my former respect for her.    Given her involvement in the IHRA coercive and dishonest defining of entirely normal kinds of criticism of the criminal state of Israel as "anti-semitism" and coercing governments and institutions around the world to adopt that dishonest and I now hold criminal cover up to use as a weapon against those legitimate critics,  any respect that shielded her against a normal level of criticism of an academic who has been part of that is gone,  gone to the extent that I have reviewed the criticism of her academic work that Norman Finkelstein has made of it and think much of his criticism is valid.   Given that, I'm reluctant to follow her spelling advice.    Given her academic specialty, it is remarkable to me that she can support a genocide happening in public, gleefully videoed and published immediately online by the genocidalists who are far more public in their genocide than almost any in the past.   She has forfeited any respect I may have once had for her largely due, I will admit it, to her exposure of David Irving.  

I Never Get Tired Of The Whining Of The FAFO Crybabies Here's an Alabama Contractor Who's Getting What He Wanted Done To Others Being Done To Him

 

Surprised To Still Be Here For What Is It, About Eighteen Hours?

THANKS TO THE TEMPORARY fix the commission pampered electric monopoly here has made to the phone pole down the road, the one that got wrecked a week ago, I can still go online.   I told my sister that they'd fix it on the hottest day of the year so I couldn't use a fan for the day, apparently that hasn't come yet.   Maybe today? 

I will start again on the long post I had going, an answer to someone who didn't like me dissing liberal democracy which,  I hold, is a form of government only lesser as the rule of gangsterism than the fascism our liberal democracy is devolving into - as so many another liberal democracy is or has so devolved.  Maybe I'll get to post it this time. 

One I'm researching right now but finding it hard - one that tries to track the links between Epstein-Maxwell and the new atheist fad among the high and sciency in the 00s and beyond - is in the works.  Among other things I found was a quote by Epstein that said all he was interested in was "Science and pussy."   No doubt that's one of the things that led him and Maxwell to finance that hotbed of the new atheist fad the "Scienceblogs."  But that was small potatoes compared to the many, many scientists, some of the biggest names in science, who had both a financial and social relationship to the leading socialites of straight (so far as we know so far) pedophile pandering and rape.   The scientists, science departments and major private universities (I haven't seen much in the way of land-grant schools named as being part of it) intersects broadly with the big names of organized atheism of the late 20th and early 21st centuries.   I'm finding it hard to research because I suspect what has been published so far is the tip of the same frozen shitberg of the Epstein-Maxwell pedophile client list of those in politics, the law and other areas of interest.   Considering how many scientists Epstein-Maxwell (they worked as a tag team of kidnapping and trafficking children and should ALWAYS be joined when that topic is discussed) threw parties for, partied with, flew to the locations where he supplied children to be raped I suspect the Venn diagram would show that intersection with the new atheist fad to be even more considerable than the one that intersects Harvard-Yale, etc. Law grad and those who Epstein-Maxwell supplied, very probably videotaped committing moral atrocities and crimes and very likely profited from blackmailing or selling their info to those who would then blackmail them.  

I say publish it all, anyone who partied with that pair should be exposed and, at this point, let them prove their association with them was innocent.   I'm tired of the Napoleonic rules for the least among us while the "innocent till not only proven guilty  then pardoned by Epstein-Maxwell's best buddy" for the rest of them,  you know, the ones who get big name lawyers (including those in the E-M orbit) to get them sweetheart deals.   From now on, as far as I'm concerned, the biggest and brightest stars get to prove their innocence,  Republican-fascist, merely Republican (corrupt) or those with a "D" after their names.  At this point there have been so many likely entirely innocent Democrats named by the fascists that it is a disservice to the truly innocent to not publish ALL OF THE EVIDENCE.   What are they going to do?   Bring those prosecutions that they, so far, have not?   Including for the four years that Harvard product Merrick Garland had to do what he so obviously was loathe to do,  go after the rich and powerful.   

Publish it so the innocent won't be further slandered.   I will point out what I pointed out the week before last, WHAT EVER IS ALLOWED TO HAPPEN UNDER THE BILL OF RIGHTS, THE U.S. CONSTITUTION IS WHAT IS REALLY CONSTITUTIONAL, and a lot of it is utterly corrupt and entirely unequal, profiting the rich, the white the male and the connected,  you know, the same ones who run the big name universities and law schools.   The founding father types. 

Surprised I'm Not Being Accused Of Celebrating Tom Lehrer's Death

USUALLY WHEN A TOM LEHRER,  or a list of many others is mentioned anywhere the usual jackass lies to say that I dissed them when I never did.   That said, I heard what Lehrer had to say before 1975, found it funny and didn't much need to hear it again after that, something apparently he and I agreed on because it was about that time he stopped working in music, writing his wittily cynical songs and performing them very well.  That's the thing about a joke, you hear it once or a few times then its store of substance is gone for you.   I can respect someone whose well of inspiration lasts through a very long life and I especially can respect someone whose well runs out AND THEY STOP GOING TO THE SAME TEAT THAT ONCE GAVE GOOD MILK BUT WHICH HAS DRIED UP.   I recalled reading him answering someone on that point and it was, typically, witty and wise.

If an idea came to me, I'd write, and if it didn't I wouldn't—and, gradually, the second option prevailed over the first. Occasionally people ask 'If you enjoyed it'—and I did—'why don't you do it again?' I reply, 'I enjoyed high school but I certainly wouldn't want to do that again.

Considering the guy who generally takes these occasions to lie about what I said and the milieu in which he says it - frequenting the Baby Blue Blog like so many others is like perpetually sentencing yourself to the nightmare of repeating jr. high - I'll let Mr. Lehrer have that last word put so perfectly.   

He died at 97,  I read, most likely of something like natural causes.  THAT isn't a tragedy.   Marvin Gaye being shot to death by his deranged father when he was far less than half that age,  THAT'S A TRAGEDY.  

UPDATE:  Stupy posted a comment I'm tempted to post containing exactly the kind of lie about what I say above to prove what I was talking about.   I can only imagine what Lehrer would make of him, he pinned down so many specimens of the failure of American education and kulcha.  One of the things he said was that he detested the kulcha and anti-intellectual aspects of the 60s era "counter culture,"  what I call "kulcha,"  which he said contributed to his abandonment of his career in musical satire.   The post-literate, post-truth Stupy is a prime example of that. 

The Roberts Court And The Media Will Be All In With The Trump Deal With Ghislaine Maxwell

as is the entire Republican-fascist caucus in the House and many in the Senate, and the entire Republican-fascist party who have not only NOT rejected Trump but HAVE NOT pulled him down from the presidency and exposed his pedophile crimes with his former best boy friend, Jeffrey Epstein.   I wonder if Ghislaine Maxwell was in on a threesome of  Trump, Maxwell, Epstein raping a minor.   Is there a video of it?  I wouldn't bet against there being one WHICH SHE HAS A COPY OF. 

We are on the verge of watching American Satyricon enter into a whole new phase with the Roberts Court, Mike "KKKristian" Johnson, white-evangelicals, "trad-Catholics" etc. all in on it this time.   Ghislaine Maxwell is going to tell Trump authored lies in exchange for a pardon from him, a degenerate who is certainly making a deal to suppress information as to his own felonies in raping children. 

We need a number of Constitutional amendments, one of those is a drastic revision of the idiotically broad presidential pardon powers our idiot - and likely as criminal- founders put in that disaster ridden document.  

I Won't Go Into Details But

an accidental event has kept me off-line since early Wednesday or so.  Not a health issue or fire or anything like that.  Corporate indulgence by the courts and regulators is part of it,  we got better service from our electric company seventy years ago back when the grid here was hardly a grid and it was probably run on phone calls and handwritten messages and the service was far cheaper than now.  Quite literally, that has everything to do with it.   

I will probably be posting lightly if at all for a few days to come.   

Someone Took Exception To My Comment About The Role Comedians Have Played In Getting Us Trump II

I ADMIT that I have found some of what Stephen Colbert has done on his late night show very funny,  especially the Stormy Watch segments and his imitation of Trump I's short term communications director, Anthony Scaramucci.   But I can't forgive him his "old Joe Biden" shtick in which he joined in the media sandbagging of Biden on his age.   If it hadn't helped bring about Trump II,  I may never have brought it up but it didn't help.  I long ago figured out that being a comedian usually meant you'd say anything to get the next laugh and it's one of the reasons I don't find professional comedians to generally be worth listening to, anymore.   

Getting flack for me making that comment reminded me of something Barney Frank said almost eleven years ago.

Q: If the press were so influential, wouldn’t Paul Tsongas have been elected president in 1992?

A: The press is very different today. It’s a major contributing factor to pro-right-wing, anti-government feeling. Because even the liberal press is anti-government. Ever watched Jon Stewart say anything good about government?

Q: He’s part of the problem?

A: Him and others. The effect is to tell people it doesn’t make any difference who they vote for. I differentiate Bill Maher from Jon Stewart. Maher’s very funny, but also has good and bad guys on the show. You say, “Oh, I agree more with this side than that side.” You come away from Stewart and especially [Stephen] Colbert, and say, “Oh, they’re all assholes.”

The only part of that I'd disagree with is what he said about Maher late in 2014, I have never once in my life found Bill Maher to be funny or smart or anything but a total asshole.   I will note that Jon Stewart has been playing a far different character this past year on his comeback to his old network, not unlike the one Gavin Newsome has taken in his bizarrely Obama-like desire to win friends among the Republican-fascists when if there's one thing we know,  that'll never work.  I don't know if Stephen Colbert will try a similar tack after he leaves CBS but I now wonder if like so many a show-biz liberal if he's just playing another role he doesn't really have a firm commitment to.   

If I had the time I could go over a list of alleged comedy liberals and other show-biz figures of the past who turned into right-wing assholes, like Mort Sahl did in a really big way.   I think Frank's point, though, extends to any of them who promoted a cynical view of life, in general, such as one of the most over-rated of them of all,  George Carlin.   In that I think we can see a good part of the difference between liberalism that is merely a form of libertarianism and the far less common, now, liberalism that is an expression of religious morality,  especially the Golden Rule but, in its most extreme forms, the rest of the program of Christian morality,  extreme generosity to the least among us,  acting out of equality as a religious moral requirement,  even loving our enemies and praying for those who persecute us and even refusing revenge when being the victims of violence.   

Of course a lot of the most ideal form of that is generally unworkable in the context of politics and the governance of a community or a country - those who do violence have to be stopped - but it then has to take the form of humane treatment of prisoners.   Ironically, enough, some of the greatest fuel for the engine of cynicism is the government, especially in the form of the courts and prosecutors doing exactly that when dealing with the richest, whitest, malest of violent criminals and crooks - Trump has been among the foremost beneficiaries of the secular-legal adoption of that unworkable ideal on behalf of the richest and most powerful of criminals.   And that has fed liberal cynicism which is then wasted on the impotence of comedy which has notably not kept any despot from power to my knowledge.   Was there anyone who disproves that more decisively than that focus of oceans of jokes and comedy gags, Trump?  

I think Barney Frank was right about that, I think the unwillingness of comedians working in show biz or the networks to finally, firmly and unceasingly take the side of egalitarian democracy over the powerful, the rich, the white, the male, the privileged and to not play the evenhandedness game - Colbert announced on Biden's win that he would treat him like he treated Trump,  I heard him say that as a gag to his roaring audience approval on his show - that most basic aspect of a financially successful career in show biz, getting paid the big bucks, means that they really aren't worth much.   They might do a fundraiser here and there but they aren't worth much unless they're ready to take a hit for the truth, the values of egalitarian democracy.    I wonder what Frank would say about Maher now.  

Keith Olbermann's hostility to Colbert and his take on what he thinks is the real reason he was canceled and the way that CBS chose to do it is extremely interesting.   He compares it to the real reason MSNBC cancelled that other dubious liberal hero  Phil Donohue,  which he attributed to the high cost of his show format as compared to the money it made for the network and the rapid diminution of the once large late-night TV audience.   I will admit that the clip he plays of himself with Carlin annoyed me as Carlin always did annoy me.   There's no accounting for different taste in comedy and I can respectfully disagree on that without losing respect for someone.    Unlike some of my trolls,  I'm not 12. 

Retort to the eternal tween, the perpetually pubescent. 

Actually,  I was 12 when I was 9 but then I got over it. 

As Usual Brian Tyler Cohen Gets It - Republicans Run The Greatest Snake Oil Show In U.S. History To Sucker Low Info Voters

 

If The Department Of Justice Had That Trump Birthday Card To Epstein Why Wasn't It Made Public

during the four years that Merrick Garland was the Attorney General Of The United States?   The four years when the Garland "Justice Department" didn't bring charges against any of the child rapists or associated pimps involved in the Jeffrey Epstein crime spree that lasted for decades in plain sight of the rich and powerful BECAUSE MANY OF THE THE RICH AND POWERFUL WERE ALL IN ON JEFFREY EPSTEIN CRIME SPREE OF CHILD TRAFFICKING AND RAPING AND,  ALMOST CERTAINLY, BLACKMAILING THE RICH AND POWERFUL MEN WHO RAPED THEM ON THE VIDEOS HE CLEARLY COLLECTED.   They flew on his jet, the "Lolita express,"* they joked about his sexual escapades,  certainly we know that that was all known to law enforcement after the first legal action, finally, at long last taken against him what with the sweetheart deal that the corrupt Florida-Harvard product Alexander Acosta made with him which his pimpess Ghislane Maxwell may well get the Roberts Court to spring her from the insufficient 20 year sentence she got when she was tried for her crimes.   In the reports breaking today,  it is often pointed out that the current AG the Florida figure Pam Bondi certainly knows much if not all of the evidence,  the same was certainly true of the previous Trump AG William Barr under whom and almost contemporaneously with a visit to him with Epstein in prison and Epstein's supposed suicide in prison.   We know that Barr had a long connection to Epstein because his father gave Epstein his first big job "teaching" math and physics at the elite prep school Barr's father was the head of,  a job given to a young man who didn't have a bachelors degree for a position that generally requires those who get them have a graduate degree,  not atypically a PhD in the relevant subject.  

My question or why, since the Department of "Justice" had this evidence for the four years Garland was the Attorney General didn't he make it public and end Trump's crime spree AND HIS CONTINUAL CAMPAIGN TO MAKE THE COMEBACK HE CERTAINLY HAS SUCCEEDED IN and saving the United States, the many victims in the United States, those across the world who are already dying due to the actions of those in the Trump II regime will, certainly,  have an answer that includes "rules." "Rules" of how to handle evidence, "rules" of lawyerly scrupulosity,  all kinds of rules cooked up by lawyers and groups of lawyers and maybe a few by the senior members of that sleazy profession, the judges and maybe even "justices" that may have led to Garland or other lawyers suffering professional rebuke or damage - the kind of damage that politicians of any legitimate repute are expected to take to do the right thing in their profession.    If there's one thing we know about Garland and many of the lawyers in those positions they care about nothing more than their professions and their careers and their professional and, so, social positions.   

Garland had chance after chance to take down Trump and he dithered and delayed until he finally appointed someone else to do it far too late for that to work.    I won't go into the help he had in making sure Trump got away with the greatest crimes of the thousands he'd committed up till that time -IN ORDER THAT HE NOT HAVE THE CHANCE TO COMMIT THE CRIMES HE IS COMMITTING RIGHT NOW AS PRESIDENT - that help given him by the "rules" he and his gangster lawyers have manipulated Trump's entire life to get him off of answering for his crimes and the many instances of him robbing contractors and others,  of colluding with organized criminals here and from the Putin regime, laundering money for them, etc.   Many of the greatest enablers of Donald Trump, in his life of crime and cheating, in his first chance as president, after leading an insurrection to destroy American democracy and his successfully getting another chance to do it again have been judges and, especially, the "justices" of the goddamned Roberts Court - lawyers all, all "officers of the courts" all of them allegedly in the business of "justice."   

American democracy, the victims of the Trump II crime wave have been more ill served by the lawyers, the legal profession, the great fraternity of the law than they have any foreign adversary.   We have all been a victim of the "rules" that are used by an excuse by those professional ass-coverers and cowards with LL.D or JD after their names.    They have, with almost no exceptions, been careerist cowards when they aren't actual colluders in the the crimes of Trump,  just as the infamous and powerful Roy Cohn was,  the man who taught Trump all about evading responsibility for crimes and civil wrongs through using the rules and the courts (judges scheduling light work days for themselves, for example) - the only thing that Trump has ever actually mastered.   His crimes and wrongs have been known to his lawyers and the judges who have dealt with the evidence of those for more than half a century.   They have never held him to real account for them.  

I have no doubt that virtually any lawyer who is currently a member of the Republican Party,  the fully fascist party which isn't the merely corrupt party of their fathers and grandfathers, will never do anything to save American democracy, something I had long ago figured out.  If I'd had any notion that there was even one of those who were the brave and stalwart figures of public virtue the activities of Robert Mueller and the accommodation he gave to his good friend William Barr when Barr misrepresented and suppressed his report on his investigation into the crimes of Trump would have killed that off.   

Before the term of Merrick Garland I may have expected that non-Republicans might have put themselves slightly at risk to save the country,  I don't think that anymore.   I don't expect it of any lawyer,  these days the scruples and adherence to "the rules" by Democrats with law degrees in the Congress and as president give me nightmares that if, by some miracle, Democrats are in a position to save American democracy that their legal training and adherence to Garland style scruples will lead them to, like Obama, like, I am sorry to say,  Joe Biden, waste the opportunity that the American voters gave them.    I will say that I think it was Biden's principled adherence to not getting involved with the so-called Department of Justice, to not interfere with them that leads me to think there is a good chance that he had far, far less knowledge of the evidence in the Epstein case than the man he sentimentally appointed to be Attorney General did.  If there is something I fault Biden for it was him giving the man Obama nominated to the Supreme Court and who the Republican-fascists wouldn't even talk to as they prevented the Black President from practicing the full extent of his granted powers the consolation prize of being Attorney General.   Garland was Biden's worst appointment and it couldn't have been more disastrously consequential for the country.  But he isn't alone in that,  it's a long, long lifetime ago that a Democrat appointed a really good Attorney General, and I'm not talking about Bobby Kennedy or Janet Reno. 

I may have confused a few people here the other day when I alluded to my contempt for the legal profession.   I hope I've explained that in a bit more detail,  this rant could have gone on a lot longer.  America's lawyers have done some of the greatest damage to this country,  especially those on Supreme Courts, in the Congress and as president.   It's a sleazy, rotten profession that exists primarily to make money from the deepest pockets, those like Trump and Epstein, and I think that corruption accounts for some of the greatest damage to the American People in our history.   It's certainly the case, today. 

Since we can see how far the Roberts Court has gone in enabling and servicing the power grab and crime spree of Trump II, on behalf of the stupidest, most incompetent and corrupt vulgarian who has ever held the office of president (we do live in history making times) imagine what they'll do for J.D. Vance once he has assumed office to give Trump the pardon he has, certainly, already negotiated with him for, just as Nixon certainly negotiated with Gerald Ford for.   Maybe Vance will expect to be given the Kennedy,  the 'Profiles in Courage" prize that Teddy and Caroline Kennedy gave Ford for doing one of the most damaging things ever to be done to the rule of law in the United States, pardoning Nixon half a century ago.   Both of the Kennedys were lawyers, Harvard products,  though Caroline got her LL.D. from another of the Ivys,  Columbia. 

P.S.  I should note that the piece of shit who is about to get a position on one of the Courts of Appeal,  Emil Bove, is a product of that Ivy Equivalent run by Jesuits,  Georgetown.  Another great example of the morality imparted by Catholic elite education. 

*  It should have been called the Humbert Express because that's who it mostly carried,  old men who raped young girls.   It should never be forgotten in this that the girls were not "Lolitas" the middle age male fantasy of a young teenage girl who has an uncontrollable desire to have sex with men old enough to be her grandfather.  The girls were gulled into a place of total powerlessness and raped by Epstein and Maxwell (it is reported that she participated in the actual sexual abuse with Epstein)  groomed to be trafficked by them to the disgusting old goats who raped them.   I have always held that that book by Nabokov was disgusting fiction, promoting child rape and the alibi of the men who rape them,  that they were seductresses who were in control of the situation.    It was exactly the same fiction, inverted, that Gore Vidal gave as an excuse for the pedophile priests who began to be exposed at the end of the his long and largely fictitious life.  He said that the boys who were raped were "young hustlers" and he, out of all of his irreligious character, claimed the rapist priests were their victims.   

If there were rapist victims in this,  they were those who Epstein and Maxwell almost certainly videotaped committing felonies and then blackmailed,  some of those named by those who have seen the evidence powerful figures in politics and finance - it is speculated that Epstein and Maxwell may well have made money peddling what they had to foreign and maybe U.S. intelligence services who certainly would use it to make those powerful men do what they wanted.   So Epstein and Maxwell may have had a hand in the corruption of governments in that manner.   Such elite victims are in positions to transfer the costs of what they did to other People,  WE ARE THE ONES WHO PAY FOR THEIR CRIMES.  Such are the ways of the civil and criminal law.   

I've heard the names of three prominent Democrats floated as possibly being named or even recorded in the Epstein evidence,  if that's true I say publish it and let them face the consequences.   If they did rape children supplied to them by Epstein,  lock them up and throw away the key.   Who knows who else is doing what Epstein and Maxwell did.   It's important to let those who did the raping as well know they're in danger of imprisonment for their crimes.   Maybe they can get a plea deal by telling the full extent of what they paid and to who in the blackmail that resulted.   Though that would certainly have involved them in committing other crimes to get their asses out of the sling Epstein got them to put their asses in. 

Made The Mistake Of Hearing Some Brit Invasion Crap So I Need A Remedy - Sam & Dave Hold On I'm Comin' Live

 

Grassley's Name Should Become a Byword For The Corruption Of The Senate And The Courts Like "McCarthyism" Has Been - Iowa should answer for him

THERE WAS A TIME when saying or hearing the word "Iowa" didn't make me want to spit on the ground,  that was back when Iowa used to send the like of Tom Harkin to the Senate.   That was a long time ago, now.   Now it sends the like of Joni Ernst and Chuck Grassley to the Senate along with four Republican-fascists in the House.   Added to that has been such 19th century bull shit as the Iowa Caucus.   

While I have despised some of the others,  Ernst,  the former Nazi enthusiast House member, Steve King. etc.   There is no one who mixes personal and political sleaziness with sanctimony and pompous piety like the vile Chuck Grassley.   He has outdone himself in his role as the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee.    His role in the Republian-fascist judge making assembly line has been as bad as any of the tales of Congressional corruption from the filthiest of periods in the 19th and 20th centuries.   

Here's what he's been up to this week, as recounted by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse. Note the obvious collusion and coordination of the Trump regime,  the Republican-fascists in the Senate AND THE ASSEMBLY LINE TRUMP JUDGES ALREADY PUT ON THE BENCH BY GRASSLEY AND HIS CORRUPT, ANTI-DEMOCRATIC, ANTI-DEMOCRACY PARTY. 

As for Iowa,  I hope it goes bankrupt. I hope to hear FAFO wailing and gnashing of teeth from them as they reap what they've sown.   It's the only thing that will teach the majority of selfish, sanctimonious and greedy Republicans there anything.  I don't trust any lessons learned to last past one election cycle.   I won't bother trying to appeal to them on any grounds higher than self-interest,  on anyone who is a Republican in 2025.   I've stopped wasting my time on their better angels,  maybe those angels have been corrupted by them or maybe they've fled to preserve their virtue.  

Amos Goldberg Holocaust History Scholar At The Hebrew University of Jerusalem Has Called What Israel Is Doing Genocide

I DON'T WANT YOU TO TAKE MY WORD FOR ANYTHING.  Best would be for you to look at the evidence and see what's right there before the eyes of the world, that is what many though far too few Israelis have done and many Jews around the world.   I would disagree with Goldberg that the crimes of the Israeli government and military are a "stain on Jews" for generations, only on all People who supported Israel in its genocide and many more of those are gentiles.

You can hear what he said from a post made today. 

Is Democracy Too Complicated To Work Or Just Too Complicated For Abstract Pondering And Publishing?

WHENEVER SOMEONE starts talking "natural" as in "natural law" my skepticism starts kicking in.   I have, repeatedly, noted that the modern meaning of the term in the claims of science are a mixed bag, indeed,  finding both closer approximations of the truth IN SOME AREAS and peddling claims that are anything from dubious as a product of the violation of that quintessential (NOTE THE "ESSENTIAL" IN THAT WORD) requirement of accurate and measured observation of nature given as a complete explanation of phenomena.   In the most legitimate uses of that idea,  such as the demonstrably successful products of physics and chemistry,  those claims work out for a large range of observable phenomena until they don't.  Most famously the massively successful framing of Newtonian physics proved to be deficient as a complete explanation of observable phenomena during the 19th century and the early 20th century drastically modified that view in both Einstein's model and in quantum physics,  which are, famously, not yet and perhaps never will be entirely reconciled with each other.   No doubt the concepts of physics today are far more complete as a workable explanation of observed physical phenomena as Newtonian physics is still enormously useful as an explanation of a range of physical phenomena and a tool for harnessing what are contained in that explanation as "forces" such as energy and gravity - in themselves anything but completely or even basically defined, descried and understood. 

The hubris of those for whom science and its methods are taken as a replacement for another very mixed bag of thought, religion,  has given rise to the superstition that all phenomena,  all of existence, in fact, must conform to "laws of nature" which science has defined.   That can lead to the inept and entirely unevidenced application of such "laws" usually in the form of some mathematical modeling, in itself of little to no demonstrable connection to what is observed - psychology, sociology, much anthropology,  the "political-science" which I have recently expressed my doubts about and that other extremely dangerous "science" economics are all the product of the superstitious belief in what I've described in this paragraph.   All of those university ordained courses of study,  departments, even schools in modern universities are about as scientific in fact as astrology is and their wildly, bizarrely obvious inability to come up with firm and durable OR EVEN TESTABLE theories and even hypotheses should have discredited all of them to the extent that their official academic standing should be that of astrology or other ancient forms of divination and would be manipulation of "natural phenomena" but such is the ubiqutious modern superstition about the validity of the "natural laws" that scientists have successfully demonstrated in some areas and very partially demonstrated in others giving us a known and entirely reliable framing of reality so as to rely on such pseudo-scientific procedures and claims,  that we can just brush past the falling of previous universal framings as Freudian or Behaviorist psychology as the inadquacy and, sometimes demonstrable fraudulence of them to go on to the next big thing of as little actual legitimacy peddled by the next "school" of psychology that gains prominence in universities.  Evolutionary psychology is probably the one that is now ripe for overturning and succeeding now.   

Most dangerously for the world, right now, are the various frames and claims of economic theory,  theories which are put into law directly to the benefit of the few over the needs of the many and, ultimately,  to the destruction of the biosphere on which all of us depend.   I've noted here now the combination of economics with Darwinist claims of the universal efficacy of the far from demonstrated theory of natural selection is directly responsible for Trump I and such as the government of Sweden adopting policies that needlessly resulted in the deaths of tens or hundreds of thousands of deaths during the Covid pandemic and are currently endangering many more through the Trump II administration of RFK jr.  which again makes the crudest of Darwinian eugenics the actual law of the United States.   And in that I will stress that the "natural law" of natural selection which is a pillar of such thought is, in itself, the most over-sold "law of nature" in the history of science.   One which flows from the crudest and most self-unaware of economic theory, the Brit upperclass framing and call for mass death of Malthusian economics - in case you think I'm being overly dramatic in the potential for this kind of pseudo-science adopted by the academic industry as a universal "natural law' to get lots of People killed, not only as an incident of neglect but as an adopted and intentional part of human made law.   I could go for several more paragraphs on the part of that other field of academically blessed and peddled "law" the legal profession but if you read me you know that my skepticism of that racket (the thing that gives Little Bobby Kennedy his credentialing and misplaced authority) is currently boundless. 

I would hope, while actually thinking it's hopeless, that scientists would adopt what should have been a universal law of science that what cannot be adequately observed or measured cannot be the subject of the scientific method, which would immediately disqualify all of those pseudo-social-sciences and such things as "natural selection"* from membership of the science club, with all the rights and privileges attached to that.   No matter how desirable it might be to be able to treat such subjects and obtain such successful results as you sometimes get with physics and inorganic and some organic chemistry,  permitting it to have the rights and privileges on the basis of that desire without the ability to actually submit them to real scientific procedures is one of the most consequential of academic sins of often deadly effect. 

What has provoked me to point this out, again, is an article by Sean Micheal Winters enthusiastic about the recrudescent emergence of "natural law" talk in poly-sci and the ever dubious field of journalism.

It's been a good week for natural law. People are talking about it even if they do not mention it by name.

David Brooks, at the Aspen Ideas Festival, [Note: BS shield activation] spoke about the pattern of "rupture and repair" that has characterized our society. Brooks said that we are in a moment of rupture now, and offered some ideas about how we commence the work of repair.

Near the start of his talk, which I watched this past weekend after three friends sent me a link, Brooks quoted two of my favorites, the evangelical historian George Marsden and columnist and thinker Walter Lippmann.

Marsden wrote, "What gave such widely compelling force to [Martin Luther] King's leadership and oratory was his bedrock conviction that the moral law was built into the universe." Brooks commented that, in the past 60 years, "we've become a much more individualistic country. ... The moral order has frayed."

To try to encapsulate something as complex as "King's leadership and oratory" so as to come to a simple conclusion as to what made it what it was strikes me as a habit of thought that is related to, if not a product of the superstitious extensions of science where science cannot go.   To complicate that with the like of David Brooks making use of Marsden's thinking of it extends all of it well past the point where anything said is reliable.   If my view of the legal profession has failed,  my view of journalism failed a lot longer ago, espcially when it comes to that most debased embodiment of that racket, the "columnist."   While I am totally dismissive of a creature like Brooks, even a better practitioner of column scribbling like LIppmann gets you way out on the ice where it gets very cold, soupy and deep.  

The problem is not just individualism, however, but our conception of freedom. Lippmann wrote in 1955, "If what is good, what is right, what is true, is only what the individual chooses to invent based on his feelings, we have left the ground of civilization."

America's core understanding of freedom has always been a negative freedom, a "freedom from." Our revolution aimed to free us from British control. American liberalism through the 19th century and first half of the 20th century sought freedom from the overly large influence of the business interest. Our involvement in two world wars was about making the world free from tyranny. Throughout, freedom of religion and speech and assembly were understood as freedoms from government control.

This conception of freedom was essentially political and it could be because Americans held to a widely shared conception of the moral order. The one time we could not agree on what that moral order required, we fought a great and terrible civil war to resolve the difference.

In the years after World War II, that shared conception of the moral order evaporated as the personal became political. There was a shift in our conception of freedom to something not just more individualistic but more volitional. We believed we could "choose" and "invent" the morality that worked for us.

He goes on in the article in ways I don't have the time to deal with, today. 

While I think Winters is on to somethings in some of this,  I would remind him that there was nothing new in the "choosing and inventing" of morality in America under its so-called "democracy,"  what with Indians being murdered so their land could be stolen,  Africans kidnapped and brought here into slavery,  the breeding of slaves (with even those who supported slavery noting how often the slaves resembled the fathers and male members of the enslaving family), the subjugation of Women, the legalized theft of wage slavery, etc. inventing and choosing morality has been a part of it, all along.  It has been easy as pie for relatively affluent, straight, white males (even Gay white males) to not notice that, as it is for those not the object of those to ignore those evils happening all around them.  Such as has had control of academic discourse, by and large, the reaction to the small amount of academic discourse dealing with the experiences of all of those Others, being among the things most decried and suppressed by those with power. 

This is libertarianism, and it is found on the left in social issues and on the right in economic ones. Both versions paved the way for Trumpian authoritarianism. Both.

I agree with this statement almost without reservation and with the crisis in the concept of liberty, especially, but also "freedom." 

How do we recover a shared sense of the moral order that is built into the universe? I am not sure, but dusting off the idea of a natural law might allow us to at least find a shared moral vocabulary again. That might lead to the discovery of shared moral ideals, without which any project at renewal and repair after Donald Trump will be stillborn.

I am not discouraging anyone from reading Winter's articles or even reading the NYT whited sepulcher Brooks or Lippmann (and when you throw in him on such subjects,  you should always See Also that other over-rated and under-rated thinker John Dewey) but I will note that in this article the complete absence of two of the most salient words to an understanding of how American democracy has failed "equality" through the assertion of inequality and "lies" as Trump is a direct product of,  lies told and permitted to be told by the freest of "free presses" in American history,  both the "news" divisions and, especially relevant,  the "entertainment" division (he would never have had a political career without "reality TV" which is, start to finish, the presentation of lies and pretend) though as a journalist I have no doubt that Brooks, Winter, Lippmann, or John Dewey, for that matter, would not be too enthusiastic over a real and rigorous, even a quasi-scientific analysis of the consequences of "free press-speech" absolutism in the corruption of democracy because it impinges directly on their professional careers.   John Dewey was, by the way a practitioner of the rank pseudo-science, psychology, so I'll toss that fact into this mess - Lippmann, while I disagree with him about much, was about the least compromised in that way of all mentioned so far.   I don't know how much psychology he may have imbibed through his study with William James at Harvard or if he just got the his reliable philosophical thinking from him.    I'm somewhat more confident in Marsden's profession though I know little about Marsden's writing.   But whenever someone starts talking "natural law" even in the less pretentious forms of that surrounding theology I get my back up.   Perhaps it's due to the use of that phrase against Women and LGBTQ+ People that accounts for that,  though my skepticism about the actual ability of anyone to discern with complete accuracy a single "law of nature" enters into that, too.   It might be desirable to have such a law book to hand but I doubt any one ever compiled will be any more valid than the laws of the pseudo-social-sciences or the literal mother of all such pseudo-laws, in the current world  natural selection. 

That "shared sense of the moral order" is certainly not something to recover because that "shared sense" of it existed with all of the evils of inequality and the product of freely told fully present in the society and in American law right up to the adoption of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts whatever partial and very brief period was had while those were the law of the land now overturned by such in the Rehnquist and Roberts Courts who have nullified them - I would bet most of them, to one extent or another, great enthusiasts for the concept of "natural law."  Things are far too slippery to allow such language to control how we think about these things.  Trying to do so so they would fit into a course of philosophy at an old lCatholic university such as Notre Dame was and, to too great an extent, still is, only gets you farther from the truth.  

I think political experience is if not more reliable, at least is less prone to lead you on wild goose chases than academic and columnist babbling.  

Geri Allen Trio - Dark Prince

Geri Allen - piano 

Ralph Armstrong - bass 

Ralph Penland - drums

Duke Ellington - Ivie Ivy Anderson - I Got It Bad And That Ain't Good

 

"Christians ought not to support a MAGA movement that claims the name of Jesus, but whose core sacrament is the systemic ritual abuse of the Other."

I ALMOST DIDN'T LISTEN to this one but I'm laid up with resurgent sciatica and I'm in too much pain to read a book.    The guy in the video, an ex-evangelical mininster-ex-Republican has a theory about how the fantasmagoric, obsessive, eternal damnation - Revelations literalist soteriology of that anti-Christianity is related to what makes them so damned cruel.

I think universalism is a far healthier movement that seems to be gaining some traction in popular Christianity - I think the better scholars among universalists make a rather convincing case for their belief - one which some are afraid would lead to amorality though I don't think you can make the case that a belief in the most grotesque idea of eternal damnation leads to better morals.   The entire history of Western culture right up to today would have probably been a lot less evil if eternal conscious torture was not pushed by the churches.   I wish they'd never put Revelation into the canon of Scripture,  it's been little more than trouble for the few beautiful images held within it.   Its danger has actually grown since the early modern period when Biblical literalism came up in a big way with Protestant "sola Scriptura" doctrine.   Though as "trad-catholics" prove, they're just as bad as the worst of them.  

Trump's Brains and Epstein's Procurer Working Together To Get Her Sprung

I'M GENERALLY ALLERGIC  to the rambling Meidas Touch style - though generally not their content - but this one is definitely worth listening to.    

He laid out pretty well what seems to be going on in the dance between Trump - or, rather,  Trump's brains and Ghislaine Maxwell over her holding back on what she knows about Trump and other rich white child rapists balancing her certain fears of being offed like Epstein was and her desire to get pardoned or otherwise sprung from the 20 year sentence she got for tafficking young girls through Epstein.   I have no doubt that the rumors that several countries intelligence agencies may have a stake in this,  I've heard Russia,  Israel,  the U.S. and Britain as likely having had connections to the child peddling almost certain blackmailer who is known to have had his properties in which the child trafficking to rich, powerful men happened rigged for video recording.   No doubt the favorite child of the known triple agent degenerate and crook Robert Maxwell - who as well "committed suicide" when his crimes just started catching up with him - would have known a lot as well as the possibility that a "suicide" or other untimely death in custody was possible for her if she told what she could have to get more lenient treatment than she got.   That's the reason Trump wanted to pardon her all along,  only he was convinced it would be worse for him than if he took his chances on her playing the game she has.

ON a related note,  re, the Michael Wolff claims that he's got tapes and had seen photos as he's describing NOW! instead of when those may have saved the country and the world from Trump II.   If a "journalist" or even a journalist has such information and they don't do what a journalist does REPORT IT TO THE PUBLIC IN A TIMELY MANNER but hold it for yet another book deal (I'm looking at Woodward here, too) then they are total assholes and as bad as anyone in Trump's regime or campaign for holding it back.   I think in Wolff's case he should be required to put up or shut up instead of being cited.   If he doesn't have what he claims to or if what he has isn't what he's hinting it is,  he will end up helping  Trump,  Bondi, Patel, etc. in burying this scandal,  doing Trump's bidding.   If he does have it and has withheld it hoping to get a fifth book out of the Satyricon Now Trump era he's a massively irresponsible asshole.   That latter possibility won't get him kicked out of the "profession" of journalism,  he's just helped set the low, low bar that you have to shuffle over to be one of those these days.   I used to put the scare quotes over the "journalism" but these days that so-called profession is about as worthy of respect as lawyering and being president of the United States.  

If someone like Brian Tyler Cohen or another who does it better by using a well-written script instead of winging it (though I'll admit sometimes Ben is doing that better for the amount of practice he's gotten)  comments on this,  I'll try to post their's as well.