QOTD II -- A Preamble To The "Big Ugly Bill"

 

Our great Representative Jamie Raskin (D-MD) had a perfect Preamble to the "Big Ugly Bill" (a.k.a., the "One Big Beautiful Bill" for billionaires:

"Mr. Speaker, I found a Preamble to this Big Ugly Bill. We the billionaires, and our King, in order to deform and sicken our Union, establish injustice, ensure domestic servility, weaken our peoples defenses, undermine our general welfare, and reserve to ourselves and our posterity staggering debt servitude for eternity, do herby instruct the Republicans in Congress to strip 17 million people of their healthcare, increase copays, premiums and deductibles for everyone else, cut 42 million people off of nutritional assistance, increase the national debt by 4 trillion dollars, trash renewable energy systems, increase our electric bills for the carbon kings, all to weaken and destroy the Constitution of the people of these United States of America. Please include this Preamble in the legislative record. I yield back."

That about covers it!

QOTD II -- "This Is Not A Drill"

 

We're going back to Paul Krugman for our second quote of the day, this time today's "This Is Not A Drill."  Here's the opening and closing, but please read it in it's entirety:

"There are two disastrously wrong ways to read the news from Los Angeles right now, and the rest of America over the next few days. The first is to believe that there is actually anything resembling an insurrection underway. The second is to believe that the Trump administration’s response to the nonexistent insurrection is simply cynical politics, an attempt to gain Donald Trump a few points in the polls.

"What we’re actually seeing is much worse: An attempt to end politics as we know it, to deploy force to suppress dissent. Not eventually, but right now. [snip]

"Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, gets it. I’ve never had strong views about Newsom, one way or the other, but this line from his big speech Tuesday was what everyone who cares about this nation should be saying right now:

Democracy is under assault right before our eyes, this moment we have feared has arrived. He’s taking a wrecking ball, a wrecking ball to our founding fathers’ historic project: three coequal branches of independent government.

"If you’re a pundit who thinks that this is over the top, you’re part of the problem (and you have been wrong every step of the way.) If you’re a Democrat who wants to ignore the ongoing assault on democracy so we can talk about Medicaid — important as it is — you’re hiding your head in the sand.

"This is the moment. Everything is on the line, right now."

We can only add, please prepare yourselves now in any and every way you deem necessary.  In the coming days and weeks, our democracy will be hanging in the balance.

BONUS:  The thugs are out of control;  now they're manhandling and handcuffing a sitting U.S. Senator at a Border Barbie news conference in Los Angeles.  Smells like fascism to us.

QOTD II: The Cocaine Pan

“Harris will want to make personality the issue, which is hard for him to resist, but it will be a bad night for him if he falls back on hurling absurd insults at Harris. She can deliver a set piece in a debate. Will he be able to resist taking the bait? Doubt it. He’ll more likely be like a lab rat hitting the cocaine pan instead of the food pan.” (our emphasis) -- Rob Stutzman, a Republican consultant in California and an adviser for Romney’s 2008 presidential campaign, in Politico.

We dearly hope that in Tuesday's "debate" the sociopathic narcissist will hit the "cocaine pan" and have a mental breakdown if and when VP Harris gets under his orange skin. His fragile manhood and insecurities were always threatened by women in authority, and add to that his sinking poll numbers, her fundraising advantage, and his legal peril, and he's ripe for a meltdown. 

(photo: The lab rat spots the cocaine)

 

QOTD II -- Trump The Insurrectionist

 

"... The Court concludes that Trump acted with the specific intent to incite political violence and direct it at the Capitol with the purpose of disrupting the electoral certification. Trump cultivated a culture that embraced political violence through his consistent endorsement of the same. He responded to growing threats of violence and intimidation in the lead-up to the certification by amplifying his false claims of election fraud. He convened a large crowd on the date of the certification in Washington, D.C., focused them on the certification process, told them their country was being stolen from them, called for strength and action, and directed them to the Capitol where the certification was about to take place."... -- Section 293 of Colorado District Court Judge Sarah B.Wallace's ruling in Anderson v. Griswold, November 17, 2023 (pdf), finding that the Malignant Loser intended to incite an insurrection on January 6, 2021, but that he's still eligible to be on Colorado's ballot for... reasons.

BONUS:  At least one legal expert seems to think this sets the table for "seismic" rulings from higher courts.

BONUS II:  Make it two.

QOTD II -- Narcissistic Sociopath Says What

 

“Why do you bring people like that here? No one wants to see that, the wounded.” -- the Malignant Loser, quoted in Jeffrey Goldberg's profile of Gen. Mark Milley in The Atlantic.  The remark occurred following Gen. Milley's 2019 welcome ceremony as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.  The 5- times- draft- deferred ("bone spurs!") Malignant Loser's comment was directed at wounded veteran U.S. Army Capt. Luis Avila, who had performed "God Bless America" at the event.  There. Are. No. Words.

QOTD II -- Fighting People Like Trump

 

"Every fiber of our union is being poured into fighting the billionaire class and an economy that enriches people like Donald Trump at the expense of workers. We can't keep electing billionaires and millionaires that don't have any understanding what it is like to live paycheck to paycheck and struggle to get by and expecting them to solve the problems of the working class." --  statement by UAW President Shawn Fain on news that the Malignant Loser plans on addressing current and former auto workers in Detroit on September 27, in some counter-programming to the second Christofascist Republican debate that night.

We like this guy.

QOTD II -- "A Bullet To The Groin"

 

"... In politics, sometimes you have to make enemies, but you always have to make friends. Tuberville doesn’t get that. And a man who’s lost his shirt in two ponzi schemes isn’t likely to learn from his mistakes.  [snip]

"We elected a day-trading, Florida-living, mediocre football coach to the U.S. Senate.

"The blame lands where the responsibility always was.

"We put the toddler in the room with the loose gun, and now we caught a bullet in the groin.

"This one’s on us." -- columnist Kyle Whitmire, scorching Alabama Republican/ White Nationalist Sen. Tommy "Dixie Dolt" Tuberville, for his bone- headed stunt holding up military promotions, which quite possibly led to Pentagon brass supporting President Biden's decision to halt the U.S. Space Command's move from Colorado to Alabama.  A self- inflicted wound by Alabama voters, who've wounded themselves plenty over the decades foolishly voting against their interests.

QOTD II -- WaPo, Heal Thyself

 

"Jan. 6 should have been a turning point in our politics. Voters must recognize that where politicians stand on democracy is more important than tax rates, inflation, gas prices or any other policy issue. Lawmakers who see the threat that growing illiberal forces pose to the nation must secure its democratic institutions."-- the editorial board of the Washington Post today.  Here's a thought for those editors:  replace the word "voters" with "reporters" and send this dictum to your politics- as- horse- race, both sides staff.

QOTD II: Strangling Democracy Here

 

"When Republicans in Texas passed measures last year to make their already rigid election laws even stricter, they claimed their changes would improve “election integrity.” In reality, they were an obvious attempt to subvert mail-in voting and other procedures that made in-person voting easier.

"Now, the seeds of voter suppression, which have been planted by Republican-led state legislatures across the nation, are bearing fruit. In the past few days, thousands of absentee voters in Texas have learned that their ballots have been rejected due to their state’s new voter ID requirements. Now, they must scramble to make sure their vote will be counted in their state’s primary elections, which take place Tuesday. Many will surely be disenfranchised." -- the Washington Post editorial board, with a  reminder that, while our attention is rightly distracted by events in Ukraine, our own Fifth Column/ Putin's Party is hard at work trying to cement permanent fascist governance in as many states as they can.  There's a reason an affinity exists between thug Putin and the rotted out Republican/ Putin Party in the U.S. -- strangling democracy is their common guiding principle.

QOTD II -- No Healing Without Truth And Justice

 

"The Justice Department remains committed to holding all January 6th perpetrators, at any level, accountable under law — whether they were present that day or were otherwise criminally responsible for the assault on our democracy. We will follow the facts wherever they lead."  -- from Attorney General Merrick Garland's speech today on the eve of the anniversary of the January 6 insurrection. When the January 6 committee completes its work and submits criminal referrals to the Justice Department (likely supplemented by evidence gathered by the FBI and the U.S. Attorney's office), we'll see how these words will or won't be translated into action against the coup plotters up to and including the Malignant Loser.  We're hopeful enough today to believe they will.

BONUS:  We're not alone.

QOTD II: Youngkin "Unfit For Office"

The Washington Post editorial board delivered a stinging rebuke to mega millionaire Glenn Youngkin, the slippery Trumpist candidate for Governor of Virginia, in this morning's paper. Here is their summation (but read the whole editorial):

"When asked by a hopeful GOP voter whether the courts might reverse the 2020 election results, Mr. Youngkin dodged, saying that courts move slowly and 'it’s unclear' whether they might reinstall Mr. Trump as president. When another voter asked about fraudulent ballots cast by dead people — another falsehood popular among Republicans — Mr. Youngkin offered sympathy and tacit agreement, urging tighter voting rules and pledging as governor to 'make some reforms.'

This is not an everyday campaign dispute. We might disagree with Mr. Youngkin on Medicaid expansion, say — he termed it 'sad,' though it extended health insurance to hundreds of thousands of Virginians who lacked it — without arguing that his stance is disqualifying. But at a moment when democracy itself is under assault, Mr. Youngkin chose to dignify a fundamental fiction that is subverting our system, rather than stand up squarely for the truth. In so doing, he proved himself unfit for office."  (our emphasis)

Despite his Trumpist positions, Youngkin has tried to come across as an affable, suburban dad in his smarmy and dishonest ads, which are filling the airwaves in the Washington suburban region. November 2 is election day, and early voting in Virginia closes on Saturday, October 30. This election is of national importance in that it will signal 10 months after the January 6 insurrection whether voters take the continuing threat to our democracy based on the "Big Lie" seriously and reject its local proponent, Glenn Youngkin.

(image: composite image The Daily Beast. Getty photos)

QOTD II -- The Hammer Of Justice Is Falling

 

 

“Mr. Bannon has declined to cooperate with the Select Committee and is instead hiding behind the former President’s insufficient, blanket, and vague statements regarding privileges he has purported to invoke. We reject his position entirely. The Select Committee will not tolerate defiance of our subpoenas, so we must move forward with proceedings to refer Mr. Bannon for criminal contempt. I’ve notified the Select Committee that we will convene for a business meeting Tuesday evening to vote on adopting a contempt report.

“The Select Committee will use every tool at its disposal to get the information it seeks, and witnesses who try to stonewall the Select Committee will not succeed. All witnesses are required to provide the information they possess so the Committee can get to the facts. We’re grateful to the many individuals who are voluntarily participating and to witnesses who are complying with subpoenas, including several who met the deadline to begin producing materials to the Select Committee. We’re moving ahead quickly to get answers for the American people about what happened on January 6th and help secure the future of American democracy.” -- Chairman of the January 6 House Select Committee Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS), on the committee moving forward with a criminal contempt referral next week for Trump toadie Steve "Loose Cannon" Bannon.  As our earlier QOTD presaged, the committee isn't playing games with these lowlifes.  Better start packing your toothbrush and your soap- on- a- rope, Loose Cannon.

QOTD II -- Breaking Faith With Democracy

 

"Against this backdrop, Milley’s efforts to ensure stability until the new and legitimately elected president could take office — and avoid an illegal or unethical military action — hardly constitute a refusal to accept civilian control. On the contrary: In an impossible and unprecedented situation, Milley did his best to remain scrupulously out of the realm of politics, and he repeatedly reiterated his loyalty to the nation, its law and its Constitution — all duties higher than that of mindless obedience to a president who had clearly indicated a willingness to ignore the law.

"In a democratic society, the notion of civilian control of the military is predicated on the assumption that civilian leadership will be exercised in a lawful manner. If Milley and other military leaders sought to prevent potentially unlawful presidential actions, they weren’t breaking faith with democracy: Our democracy had already been badly broken by the highest civilian official in the land. And that’s a far different — and far bleaker — problem than a general walking the difficult line between obedience and conscience. Trump demonstrated how easily American norms and institutions could be subverted by a lawless president — and unlike Milley, millions of Americans, and scores of GOP elected officials, never even bothered to speak out." -- Rosa Brooks, law professor at Georgetown and former senior Defense Department official under President Obama, in today's Washington Post, discussing the crisis faced by Gen. Milley and other senior military officers following the Trump- led insurrection of January 6.  Contrary to the bad faith pearl- clutching about weakening of "civilian control," we should all thank Milley for serving his country in the noblest sense, unlike those who broke faith with our country's democracy in service to a lawless, malicious President willing to do almost anything to stay in power.

Meanwhile, in another part of the WaPo, the story is being treated as a point/ counterpoint exercise in normalizing the extraordinary events surrounding the election and transfer of power.  Here's the headline on the Missy Ryan piece:

"New disclosures show how Gen. Mark A. Milley tried to check Trump. They could also further politicize the military."

 

Oh, FFS, "Democracy Dies in Darkness" Post.

QOTD II -- On Donald Rumsfeld

 

"Rumsfeld was the worst secretary of defense in American history. Being newly dead shouldn’t spare him this distinction. He was worse than the closest contender, Robert McNamara, and that is not a competition to judge lightly. McNamara’s folly was that of a whole generation of Cold Warriors who believed that Indochina was a vital front in the struggle against communism. His growing realization that the Vietnam War was an unwinnable waste made him more insightful than some of his peers; his decision to keep this realization from the American public made him an unforgivable coward. But Rumsfeld was the chief advocate of every disaster in the years after September 11. Wherever the United States government contemplated a wrong turn, Rumsfeld was there first with his hard smile—squinting, mocking the cautious, shoving his country deeper into a hole. His fatal judgment was equaled only by his absolute self-assurance. He lacked the courage to doubt himself. He lacked the wisdom to change his mind." -- George Packer in "How Donald Rumsfeld Deserves To Be Remembered," in The Atlantic. 

QOTD II: Leveraging Biden's Successes Abroad

 

The WaPo's international affairs pundit David Ignatius makes some uncharacteristically interesting points in his column today:

"Biden’s next challenge, after the successful summits, is to pass key parts of his domestic legislative agenda over objections from Republicans who seem, weirdly, more antagonistic toward him than Putin. He should use the same tactics that worked in his trip abroad. Negotiate with his adversaries but remind them of his hard options. Be a pragmatic centrist, not bipartisan. Make them worry about the political dangers of obstruction.

An outside-in strategy would use Biden’s new strength on the international stage to challenge Republicans: When the whole world seems to be celebrating the fact that America is back, does the GOP really think it can remain in its own bubble of resentment and lies?

When Europe and Asia are uniting with Biden to contest Beijing’s agenda, do Republicans really want to appear, with their recalcitrance, as China’s best friends? And really, is the GOP so brain dead it imagines — after the obsequiousness of Donald Trump — it can criticize Biden as soft on Russia?"   (our emphasis)

Not that the Dems will draw a contrast with themselves and the Russia-aligned, autocrat-loving Republican / Dear Leader cult of personality, or exploit the fact that the GQP has handed them a semi-tractor trailer sized opening. Of course the Dear Leader's cult is impervious to persuasion (and they love Putin), but there's always hope that independents, undecideds and wavering Republican suburbanites will wake up and smell the borscht that the Republicans are peddling.

QOTD II -- Turtle In Distress

 “That is the President of the United States. That is the most powerful person in the world and we see him like an obese turtle on his back flailing in the hot sun realizing his time is over.”-- CNN's Anderson Cooper, reacting on camera to another bizarre appearance tonight by sore loser Donald "COVID Donnie" Trump, which was so full of dangerous bullshit and conspiracy mongering that all the networks cut away from it early, and all fact- checked it afterward. (h/t Mock Paper Scissors)

QOTD II: Trump's Exploitation Of The Military

"Donald Trump also threatened to exploit the most powerful military on the face of the earth, disrespecting our troops in the process, in order to do it. To then see the Secretary of Defense, a West Point graduate who swore to never ‘lie, cheat, steal, or tolerate those who do’ and the Chairman of the Joints Chiefs of Staff walking like lapdogs behind a five-time draft dodging coward who is more interested in looking like a leader than actually being one sends a horrifying message to our troops—including our black and brown troops—that our military’s leaders will not protect them from unlawful orders.

We cannot allow any Commander in Chief to use our active-duty servicemembers to silence our neighbors. To drive yet another wedge between Americans. We cannot allow any Commander in Chief to put our Armed Forces’ reputation as the last institution Americans can trust and respect at risk by using them unlawfully and putting them in a position of exacerbating the divisions driving our union apart. Tear-gassing peaceful protesters is not leadership, it’s cowardice. Threatening military force and imprisonment against Americans exercising their Constitutional rights is not Presidential, it’s tin-pot dictatorial." (our emphasis) -- Illinois Sen. Tammy Duckworth, a wounded, decorated Army combat veteran serving her first term as U.S. Senator, reacting to Trump's exploitation of the military for his political purposes. Full statement here.

Sen. Duckworth has been one of the most outspoken and colorful critics of Trump, often referring to him publically as "Cadet Bone Spurs."  Here, she not only shreds him, but also the cowardly lapdogs who surround and facilitate his sick behavior. We like her immensely.

QOTD II -- Saying The Quiet Parts Out Loud

"Mother Nature has to clean the barn every so often," Burkman counters. "How real is it? Who knows? So what if 1 percent of the population goes? So what if you lose 400,000 people? Two hundred thousand were elderly, the other 200,000 are the bottom of society. You got to clean out the barn. If it's real, it's a positive thing, for God's sake." -- Inept Republican ratfucker Jack Burkman, quoted in a tape recording with a woman with whom he was conspiring (along with fellow clown Republican ratfucker Jacob Wohl) to frame Dr. Anthony Fauci for a phony sexual assault (!!).  The woman was queasy about her potential role in smearing someone so critical to the pandemic response. Well, the same "argument" is coming from all corners of the right, perhaps prompted by Dear Leader's notion of having the pandemic "wash over" the country."  The "party of life":  hypocrites, sociopaths, racists, and social Darwinists.

QOTD II: "This Rotten Corpse"

Never Trump activist and political consultant Rick Wilson worked on the ad from The Lincoln Project that got unstable con man Donald "COVID Donnie" Trump to go on a Twitter hissy fit in the early morning hours of yesterday. Wilson was asked about the ad on Lawrence O'Donnell's show last night:

“You know, we have known all along what a weak man Donald Trump is and how mentally infirm he is and how easily he can be set off and, you know, now that we found his weak spot — he demonstrated for 12 straight hours in a row that he could be compared to Ronald Reagan, had the truth told about it, and he would absolutely lose his damn mind.

And so, you know, we expected this ad to hit. We did not expect him to behave in the completely maniacal way he behaved all day, but here we are. We are here because of him. We have hung this rotten corpse around his neck, and he’s going to have to drag it around for a few months.” (our emphasis)

Which gives us an opening for another encore posting of the video. All hands on deck to defeat Trump.

QOTD II -- Media, Do Your Job

"It is a matter of universal consensus among experts, journalists, career officials, and people of good faith generally that Trump botched the response in tragic fashion. His desire to dramatically recalibrate public expectations of what constitutes success reflects an awareness of his own failures and a desperation to deceive people about them, all to minimize political harm to himself. [snip]

"The test here is not just whether he can game allied and broken institutions to present this falsified history as truth, or a matter of legitimate debate. It’s whether he can exploit a mass forgetting of the very thing that made the idea of a Trump presidency so unacceptable in the first place, now that one of the great warnings has come to pass.  [snip]

"It would seem to defy natural law that a man could do so much manifest harm, in such a well-documented way, with such horrendous consequences, and yet gain the lasting faith of one-time skeptics, while losing none of his supporters. But there are no fundamental properties of politics that consign failed leaders to defeat; they have to be defeated. Trump will exploit all the weaknesses he’s exposed in our systems of accountability to prevent that from happening, and he’ll do it shamelessly, because this is a final test for him, too. Whether he prevails or not is up to the very people whose power to spread truth and shape public opinion he undermines largely unchallenged every day." -- Brian Beutler challenging a largely supine media to report the facts and truth about the criminal incompetence of Donald "Moron Vector" Trump in responding to the coronavirus outbreak.  In other words, media, do. your. job.