The Republican Party and its leader, Donald Trump, constitute a clear and present danger to the Constitution and the rule of law. They are a greater danger to the US that the Civil War because the Confederacy sought to break away and be left alone whereas the Trump Republican Party seeks to replace our Constitution with a Hitlerian dictatorship.
I usually don’t pay much attention to “celebrities” because the vast majority of them are famous for . . . for . . . well, famous for being famous.
A celebrity named Carrie Underwood — who I guess is a singer of some kind — is performing at Trump’s inauguration. Here’s a comment about her that says a lot, mainly about stupid “celebrities.”
Trump thinks because he had a television show, that he knows how Hollywood works. These guys are The Three Stooges or the Hollywood Squares.
I’ve seen these three guys talk about Trump in interviews and conferences. All three of them now are at an age where they’re not all there. Especially Jon Voight.
“Special Ambassadors,” to a city you’ve made clear you hate. Is it troubled because of its politics or because it almost burned down? Do you need to send in troops because you believe Jews control the entertainment industry, like Mel? That’s not right, Mel said that Jews were responsible for all the wars in the world. Like that’s better. That doesn’t play too well with your support of Israel, does it?
Then you change their titles immediately to “Special Envoys.” Which is it? And what are they supposed to do?
And because you weren’t president for 4 years, Hollywood Studios were losing money. Let’s see, in 2020, box office receipts were $2.1 billion due to you, and Covid-19. In 2021 it was $4.5 billion. In 2022 it was $7.4 billion. In 2023 it was $8.8 billion. In 2024 it was down to $8.3 billion. So, you’re wrong about all that, Hollywood Studios have been doing pretty good. And that’s just at the box office, that doesn’t cover streaming or DVDs or blu-ray. Another lie, but we knew that.
Oh, they lost money to foreign countries. Sounds like you want to put tariffs on films. Sure that’s going to make us “BACK—BIGGER, BETTER, AND STRONGER THAN EVER BEFORE.” And how are these guys going to do that? And stop hitting the all caps lock.
They will be your eyes and ears. Normally that’s called being a spy. Can can anyone say the word blacklist? Enemies list?
You will do what they suggest. It sounds like you’re deliberately asking to be a puppet. Can we build some robots to impersonate them? Stepford Guys instead of Stepford Wives?
The Golden Age of Hollywood was the 1920s to the 1950s, although there is a great deal of quibbling about the start and the end.. The 1920s were silent films. Maybe you should emulate that. The 1950s had people like Senator Joe McCarthy that created Hollywood blacklists and asked actors, writers and directors if they were now, or ever had been, a member of the Communist Party. It was not a good time for creative people.
The Golden Age of America is either the 1950s, or a 25-year period after World War II. Both of them included the 1950s. This was not a good time for protests or minorities. Let’s make America racist again.
Donald, each time you speak or write, you prove there’s no connection between your brain and your mouth.
Hollywood went through a writers and actors strike last year. Things are running fine at the moment, irrespective of the fires. Stop sticking your nose in places it has no reason to be.
Rep. Brittany Pettersen (D-CO) is doing the job Speaker Mike Johnson and the rest of the atavistic evangelicals celebrate as God’s work — having a baby. But they’ll be goddamned if they let her do the job her constituents elected her to do — represent them in Congress. On Monday, the mother-to-be tweeted that the imminence of her delivery precluded her from traveling to DC. As a result, she asked that new parents be allowed to vote remotely.
Johnson rejected her request. He told NBC News’ Sahil Kapur:
“I’ve filed a brief with the United States Supreme Court asserting that proxy vote is unconstitutional. That’s been my belief as a constitutional law litigator, and I don’t see any way around that. And it’s unfortunate. I have great sympathy, empathy for all of our young women legislators who are of birthing age. It’s a real quandary. But I’m afraid it doesn’t fit with the language of the Constitution, and that’s the inescapable truth that we have.”
Is it “unconstitutional” Mikey? Is it a “real quandary”? Do you have “great sympathy, empathy”? I’ll save time and answer for him. No, no, and no. In fairness, I cannot read Johnson’s mind. So perhaps he does give a damn. But given his devotion to biblical gender roles, that is not the way to bet. However, as for the quandary and constitutional portions of his misogyny, the text of America’s foundational document is clear.
Article 1 Section 5 states:
“Each House may determine the Rules of its Proceedings”
Laws are often written so imprecisely that lawyers can charge a healthy hourly rate to argue it applies favorably to their clients — regardless of which side of the issue they are on. Sitting aloof in their perk-decorated tower, the US Supreme Court justices have been nonpareil in finding things in the Constitution that disinterested eyes cannot see. It’s how America has ended up with an unaccountable President, citizens toting war weapons to buy coffee, and women having no reproductive choice.
But in this case, the wording is clear. And Johnson knows it. The House is constitutionally permitted to conduct its business as it sees fit.
It gets worse. Johnson is well aware his position on remote voting is bullshit. In a Twitter thread, Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA) wrote of the speaker’s hypocrisy.
Speaker Johnson is 100% incorrect (receipts below) and he HIMSELF voted by proxy.
He thinks it’s *so unconstitutional* that he did it—not once or twice—but nearly 40 times?
Johnson has not denied the accusation. In addition, let’s note that during COVID, the Democratic House had passed legislation allowing remote voting. The GOP sued on the grounds it was unconstitutional. However, even the MAGA-adjacent SCOTUS did not overturn the decisions of a Federal District and Appeals Court ruling that remote voting was constitutionally permissible.
Johnson was a party to that suit, but when it failed, 112 GOP representatives, including Johnson, chose to vote remotely. He also removed his name from the defeated action. The guy´s only principle is to avoid confirming he’s a loser.
Even though the shifty bastard knows no federal court agrees with him, he still makes the specious claim to prevent a Democrat from voting in a Congress where the GOP has a minute and fragile minority. If the about-to-deliver Representative were a Republican, Johnson would lead the charge to institute remote voting. He is like most religious moralists. Absolute when it works to his advantage. Flexible when it helps the home team
Johnson has an advantage his predecessor did not enjoy. McCarthy’s antagonists dealt with Trump on the sidelines. He could be bombastic, but he had no official role. These House Republicans, who were never ‘profiles in courage’, are terrified that as a newly elected President, an even more powerful Trump will rhetorically punch them in the face as he plots primary challenges for any that show independence. However, as the midterms approach in 2026 and Trump’s disastrous policies start to tank the economy, a few marginal-seat GOPers may decide their electoral prospects are better served breaking lockstep and doing what is right by their independent constituents.
Johnson will not be one of them. He is a rat who will go down the ship. No matter how many women he has to sideline.
Virginia is home to two useless “election integrity” organizations, both of which are Republican fronts and both of which operate out of mail drops.
From 2019 until it disappeared in 2021, Virginians for America First (VFAF) used a mailing address of 7330 Staples Mill Rd., Richmond — a UPS store that has mailboxes. VFAF claimed to be working to “protect elections in Virginia.” VFAF tried — failed — to recruit and army of “poll watchers,” sent volunteers out to question local registrars about their procedures, and generally did nothing. VFAF folded after the 2020 election.
VFAF’s “executive director” was one “Bishop” Leon Benjamin whose main gig is — along with his wife — the pastor of a Richmond holy-roller church. He ran for office three times, was trounced all three times. His main assistant was a guy named Joshua Daniel Pratt . . . until Benjamin discovered Pratt was useless and fired him. Pratt got religion and is now on the staff of an independent fundamentalist congregation in Lynchburg.
Oh, but never fear . . . the “election integrity” crowd will not be deterred. In 2022 up popped the Electoral Process Education Corporation (EPEC), located at 9480 Main St, Suite 1128, Fairfax VA — which is a Staples office supply store. A call to the store discovered that no one at the address has ever heard of EPEC. Headed by a a group of directors, none of whom has been able to hold a job for more than a couple of years, EPEC has a website filled with pretty, colorful charts and graphs which show nothing more than voter turnout, ballots cast, and the like — data that is available from the Virginia Dept of Elections.
My favorite part of EPEC is their “director” whose full-time gig is running a private recording studio in his home where he records “music” by local garage bands which he sells on Spotify . . . the business is called “Willful Wreckords” or some such horseshit.
Most recently EPEC is begging for money so they can afford the cost associated with a bunch of FOIA requests they submitted to General Registrars all over Virginia, seeking data that is publicly available by visiting the Registrar’s offices.
I give EPEC another few months and they will fade into well-deserved oblivion. But, never fear, another group of clowns will emerge, preaching “election integrity.”
Former Washington, DC Metro Police Officer Michael Fanone, who voted for Donald Trump in 2016, said his politics didn’t influence his decision to respond to calls on 6 Jan 2021.
“For those of us that were there fighting Trump supporters inspired by his lies and his violent rhetoric, we were there to protect ourselves and our fellow officers,” Fanone continued. “And ultimately, those of us that chose to speak out and testify about our account and what we experienced at the Capitol on January 6th, you know, who have been targeted by Trump himself and by his supporters. And that continues to this day.”
His mother was swatted, the practice of someone calling the police, claiming that there was a person with a gun, or threatening a person at the residence. The goal is for police to act irrationally and shoot first when the owner opens the door.
Fanone also stated that his mother was attacked by someone driving by her home at least twice in the past several months.
“Unfortunately, my mother has suffered at the hands of these MAGA lunatics.”
“Simply because her son continues to tell the truth about his experiences on January 6th. I mean, her house has been swatted. She had an individual throw a brick at her house just a little over a month ago in the middle of the night,” Fanone said in an interview.
“And I guess, you know, most egregious of all, while she was out raking leaves, not so long ago, an individual pulled up and threw a bag of s— on her while she was in her front yard,” Fanone said.
“What kind of savage animal behaves like that?” he asked. “But this is the ideology of the Trump MAGA wing of the Republican Party.”
Fanone recently retired from the DC police force.
Shortly after midnight last night, the Justice Department released special counsel Jack Smith’s final report on former president Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. The 137-page report concludes that “substantial evidence demonstrates that Mr. Trump…engaged in an unprecedented criminal effort to overturn the legitimate results of the election in order to retain power.”
The report explains the case Smith and his team compiled against Trump. It outlines the ways in which evidence proved Trump broke laws, and it lays out the federal interests served by prosecuting Trump. It explains how the team investigated Trump, interviewing more than 250 people and obtaining the testimony of more than 55 witnesses before a grand jury, and how Justice Department policy governed that investigation. It also explains how Trump’s litigation and the U.S. Supreme Court’s surprising determination that Trump enjoyed immunity from prosecution for breaking laws as part of his official duties dramatically slowed the prosecution.
There is little in the part of the report covering Trump’s behavior that was not already public information. The report explains how Trump lied that he won the 2020 presidential election and continued to lie even when his own appointees and employees told him he had lost. It lays out how he pressured state officials to throw out votes for his opponent, then-president-elect Joe Biden, and how he and his cronies recruited false electors in key states Trump lost to create slates of false electoral votes.
It explains how Trump tried to force Justice Department officials to support his lie and to trick states into rescinding their electoral votes for Biden and how, finally, he pressured his vice president, Mike Pence, to either throw out votes for Biden or send state counts back to the states. When Pence refused, correctly asserting that he had no such power, Trump urged his supporters to attack the U.S. Capitol. He refused to call them off for hours.
Smith explained that the Justice Department concluded that Trump was guilty on four counts, including conspiracy to defraud the United States by trying “to interfere with or obstruct one of its lawful governmental functions by deceit, craft or trickery, or at least by means that are dishonest”; obstruction and conspiracy to obstruct by creating false evidence; and conspiracy against rights by trying to take away people’s right to vote for president.
The report explains why the Justice Department did not bring charges against Trump for insurrection, noting that such cases are rare and definitions of “insurrection” are unclear, raising concerns that such a charge would endanger the larger case.
The report explained that prosecuting Trump served important national interests. The government has an interest in the integrity of the country’s process for “collecting, counting, and certifying presidential elections.” It cares about “a peaceful and orderly transition of presidential power.” It cares that “every citizen’s vote is counted” and about “protecting public officials and government workers from violence.” Finally, it cares about “the fair and even-handed enforcement of the law.”
While the report contained little new information, what jumped out from its stark recitation of the events of late 2020 and early 2021 was the power of Trump’s lies. There was no evidence that he won the 2020 election; to the contrary, all evidence showed he lost it. Even he didn’t appear to believe he had won. And yet, by the sheer power of repeating the lie that he had won and getting his cronies to repeat it, along with embellishments that were also lies—about suitcases of ballots, and thumb drives, and voting machines, and so on—he induced his followers to try to overthrow a free and fair election and install him in the presidency.
He continued this disinformation after he left office, and then engaged in lawfare, with both him and friendly witnesses slowing down his cases by challenging subpoenas until there were no more avenues to challenge them. And then the U.S. Supreme Court stepped in.
The report calls out the extraordinary July 2024 decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in Trump v. United States declaring that presidents cannot be prosecuted for official acts. “Before this case,” the report reads, “no court had ever found that Presidents are immune from criminal responsibility for their official acts, and no text in the Constitution explicitly confers such criminal immunity on the President.” It continued: “[N]o President whose conduct was investigated (other than Mr. Trump) ever claimed absolute criminal immunity for all official acts.”
The report quoted the dissent of Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, noting that the decision of the Republican-appointed justices “effectively creates a law-free zone around the President, upsetting the status quo that has existed since the Founding.”
That observation hits hard today, as January 14 is officially Ratification Day, the anniversary of the day in 1784 when members of the Confederation Congress ratified the Treaty of Paris that ended the Revolutionary War and formally recognized the independence of the United States from Great Britain. The colonists had thrown off monarchy and determined to have a government of laws, not of men.
But Trump threw off that bedrock principle with a lie. His success recalls how Confederates who lost the Civil War resurrected their cause by claiming that the lenience of General Ulysses S. Grant of the United States toward officers and soldiers who surrendered at Appomattox Court House in April 1865 showed not the mercy of a victor but rather an understanding that the Confederates’ defense of human slavery was superior to the ideas of those trying to preserve the United States as a land based in the idea that all men were created equal.
When no punishment was forthcoming for those who had tried to destroy the United States, that story of Appomattox became the myth of the Lost Cause, defending the racial hierarchies of the Old South and attacking the federal government that tried to make opportunity and equal rights available for everyone. In response to federal protection of Black rights after 1948, when President Harry Truman desegregated the U.S. military, Confederate symbols and Confederate ideology began their return to the front of American culture, where they fed the reactionary right. The myth of the Lost Cause and Trump’s lie came together in the rioters who carried the Confederate battle flag when they breached the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.
Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Defense, Fox News Channel host Pete Hegseth, is adamant about restoring the names of Confederate generals to U.S. military installations. His confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee began today.
The defense secretary oversees about 1.3 million active-duty troops and another 1.4 million in the National Guard and employed in Reserves and civilian positions, as well as a budget of more than $800 billion. Hegseth has none of the usual qualifications of defense secretaries. As Benjamin Wittes of Lawfare pointed out today, he has “never held a policy role…never run anything larger than a company of 200 soldiers…never been elected to anything.”
Hegseth suggested his lack of qualifications was a strength, saying in his opening statement that while “[i]t is true that I don’t have a similar biography to Defense Secretaries of the last 30 years…as President Trump…told me, we’ve repeatedly placed people atop the Pentagon with supposedly ‘the right credentials’…and where has it gotten us? He believes, and I humbly agree, that it’s time to give someone with dust on his boots the helm.”
The “dust on his boots” claim was designed to make Hegseth’s authenticity outweigh his lack of credentials, but former Marine pilot Amy McGrath pointed out that Trump’s defense secretary James Mattis and Biden’s defense secretary Lloyd Austin, both of whom reached the top ranks of the military, each came from the infantry.
Hegseth has settled an accusation of sexual assault, appears to have a history of alcohol abuse, and has been accused of financial mismanagement at two small veterans’ nonprofits. But he appears to embody the sort of strongman ethos Trump craves. Jonathan Chait of The Atlantic did a deep dive into Hegseth’s recent books and concluded that Hegseth “considers himself to be at war with basically everybody to Trump’s left, and it is by no means clear that he means war metaphorically.” Hegseth’s books suggest he thinks that everything that does not support the MAGA worldview is “Marxist,” including voters choosing Democrats at the voting booth. He calls for the “categorical defeat of the Left” and says that without its “utter annihilation,” “America cannot, and will not, survive.”
When Hegseth was in the Army National Guard, a fellow service member who was the unit’s security guard and on an anti-terrorism team flagged Hegseth to their unit’s leadership because one of his tattoos is used by white supremacists. Extremist tattoos are prohibited by army regulations. Hegseth lobbied Trump to intervene in the cases of service members accused of war crimes, and he cheered on Trump’s January 6, 2021, rally. Hegseth has said women do not belong in combat and has been vocal about his opposition to the equity and inclusion measures in the military that he calls “woke.”
Wittes noted after today’s hearing that “[t]he words ‘Russia’ and ‘Ukraine’ barely came up. The words ‘China’ and ‘Taiwan’ made only marginally more conspicuous an appearance. The defense of Europe? One would hardly know such a place as Europe even existed. By contrast, the words ‘lethality,’ ‘woke,’ and ‘DEI’ came up repeatedly. The nominee sparred with members of the committee over the difference between ‘equality’ and ‘equity.’”
Senate Armed Services Committee chair Roger Wicker (R-MS) spoke today in favor of Hegseth, and Republicans initially uncomfortable with the nominee appear to be coming around to supporting him. But Hegseth refused to meet with Democrats on the committee, and they made it clear that they will not make the vote easy for Republicans.
The top Democrat on the committee, Senator Jack Reed (D-RI) said he did not believe Hegseth was qualified for the position. Senator Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) exposed his lack of knowledge about U.S. allies and bluntly told him he was unqualified, later telling MSNBC that Hegseth will be an easy target for adversaries with blackmail material.
Hegseth told the armed services committee that all the negative information about him was part of a “smear campaign,” at the same time that he refused to say he would refuse to shoot peaceful protesters in the legs or refuse an unconstitutional order.
After the release of Jack Smith’s report, Trump posted on his social media channel that regardless of what he had done to the country, voters had exonerated him: “Jack is a lamebrain prosecutor who was unable to get his case tried before the Election, which I won in a landslide,” he wrote, lying about a victory in which more voters chose someone other than him. “THE VOTERS HAVE SPOKEN!!!”
It’s as if the Confederates’ descendants have captured the government of the United States.
He has a lot of tats. I guess that makes him a warrior.
Democrats hammered defense secretary nominee Pete Hegseth at his confirmation hearing on Tuesday, slamming the Fox News host for his sexist views on women in combat, his alleged sexual impropriety, his alleged drinking on the job, and his bad managerial skills that led to his exit from two veterans charities.
Their tough questioning came as Republicans handled Hegseth with kid gloves, protecting him from accountability by limiting questions from senators and by allowing an exceedingly incomplete FBI report to stand as sufficient for his confirmation.
Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia asked some of the toughest questions of Hegseth during Tuesday’s hearing.
Kaine questioned Hegseth about his alleged infidelity, accusation of sexual assault, allegations from colleagues that Hegseth drank on the job, and the fact that Hegseth withheld information about these accusations from Donald Trump’s team during the interview process for the role.
When Kaine asked Hegseth whether it’s disqualifying to show up drunk at work, Hegseth didn’t answer and instead falsely claimed those reports came from anonymous sources. In fact, one of the people who accused Hegseth of workplace impropriety was Jessie Jane Duff, a Marine veteran and former Trump campaign official who in 2016 sought to get Hegseth removed as head of the Concerned Veterans of America group, CBS News reported.
When Hegseth told Kaine he is “an open book,” Kaine scoffed, noting that Hegseth’s accusers are under “multiple nondisclosure and confidentiality agreements” that are “tying the hands of many people who would like to comment to us.”
Kaine also brought up that Hegseth has defied oaths he’s taken in the past, including to be faithful to his wives—of which Hegseth has had three.
“You had just fathered a child two months before by a woman that was not your wife. I am shocked that you would stand here and say you’re completely cleared. Can you so casually cheat on a second wife and cheat on the mother of a child that had been born two months before? And you tell us you were completely cleared?” Kaine said.
Kaine refused to accept Hegseth’s excuse that the allegations against him shouldn’t be believed because they were made anonymously, saying that among the people who made the allegations against Hegseth was his own mother.
“You claimed that this was all anonymous. We have seen records with names attached to all of these, including the name of your own mother. So don’t make this into some anonymous press thing,” Kaine said, basically accusing Hegseth of lying.
Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona built on that line of questioning, saying Hegseth’s excuses about his drinking and sexual misconduct do not add up
“Which is it—have you overcome personal issues, or are you the target of a smear campaign? It can’t be both. It’s clear to me that you’re not being honest with us or the American people because you know the truth would disqualify you from getting the job,” Kelly said. “And just as concerning as each of these specific disqualifying accusations are, what concerns me just as much is the idea of having a secretary of defense who is not transparent.”
Meanwhile, Democratic Sen. Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, a military veteran who lost both of her legs in combat in Iraq, quizzed Hegseth on basic information about the military, and Hegseth could not answer.
Duckworth asked him to name one member of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and the relationship the United States has with them. Hegseth couldn’t answer.
“I suggest you do a little homework,” Duckworth told Hegseth, later adding “You’re not qualified, Mr. Hegseth.”
I’ve heard that phrase used to describe Hegseth several times today, even by people who otherwise acknowledge his complete lack of qualifications for Secretary of Defense.
But he’s a good communicator… Like what? A host on QVC selling junk jewelry?
He isn’t truthful, he doesn’t explain anything, he doesn’t respond to meaningful questions in a meaningful way, he doesn’t inform people he’s talking to about anything, he has no interest in honest dialog.
How does that make him a “good communicator?”
It just means he’s slick enough for enough people who don’t know the difference to get away with it.
Even worse, he’s not even that talented at being slick, he’s just getting a huge assist by cowardly Republicans.
This is an unretouched photo — no, it has not been photoshopped — from today’s confirmation hearing for Trump’s nominee to be Secretary of Defense. The spelling is by Senate Republicans.
