Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

Okay, but the orange makeup is a choice though.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

Hank, what level whiff is this?

Better response:

I know! We should really be talking about the merits of the claims and defenses against our ex president, but everyone keeps focusing on how fat and orange he is!

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

1st (original meaning) level was you missed my joke, 2nd level was you stepped on my joke? That would be an original meaning?

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

Respectfully (assuming you hold-- er, held, some respect for him), he's the architect of a loony tunes theory - crafted nearly of whole cloth - that Pence could nullify the results and slates of fake electors could replace the real ones.

Something is objectively wrong with the mind of a person who gets behind that sort of thing.

Maybe "deluded" fits better, as Trump's core followers seem to operate like members of a cult. But I'd say that's a distinction w/o a difference.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

He is fat and orange, and that's exactly how he'd describe himself if he were in a different body and a person who looked like him were a perceived enemy.

But yes, the petty shit is annoying. "Look at old shuffling and stumbling Joe!" No shit. Biden is old. I get it. It's funny when used in a joke, or to sadly reflect that the best this country can do is nominate 77 and 80 year old men who are way past their prime. But if that's all you can say about Biden -- if you can't bother to think about his policies even a little before you comment about his age - Don't Say Anything.

Really. Don't. Say. Anything. You're part of the problem. And the atta boys you get for the cheap shots make the country generally a dumber place than it already is. And we can ill afford that. You're giving fuel to hive minds who won't, and probably cannot, understand how the policies of Biden and Trump impact inflation, supply chain resumption, attempts at dedollarization, balkanization of the world into pre-WWII blocs, energy costs, etc.

He is fat, and he is orange, and I'll violate this suggested rule endlessly because it's just too easy to make fun of him. But that's his game. That's what he wants: MAGA vs. Wokeworld, each lobbing personal insults at the other side's candidate. Maybe opt out of it. Maybe that'll suck the wind out of the Big Dumb that Trump has turned our national discourse into over the past seven years.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

He is all sorts of things, but he's not deranged. For many years, he has purveyed borderline crackpot legal theories. It seems to have worked for him, until now. There are all sorts of things that are objectively wrong with John thinks and says, but that is very different from calling him deranged.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

Lots of conservatives would appear to simultaneously believe that Biden both is too old and doddering to read a teleprompter, but at the same time is secretly managing the various prosecutions of Donald Trump and non-prosecutions of Hunter Biden.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

I can live with crackpot.

Nihilist could be argued, but nihilists tend to pick battles they can win, as they're endlessly running pure rational models in their heads.

Opportunist could also fit, but again, opportunists pick opportunities, not hopeless crusades. And were he that, he'd have been on TV rather than sitting in the shadows crafting his John Yoo memo for the overthrow of an election.

Crackpot works because he who crafts the frivolous in the hopes of justifying and manifesting the impossible is engaged in crackpottery. It's one thing to pull a Dershowitz and defend the seemingly indefensible so well you wind up defying terrible odds. It's very much another to construct a Rube Goldberg theory to set in motion a tin pot coup administered by a Keystone Kops brigade of nitwits, drunks (Rudy), and cult adherents. One cannot view the crowd of perverts, miscreants, and mental patients comprising Team Flip the Election and say, "Yeah, I've got your brief." That's a conscious decision to jump on the crackpot train.

And now, interestingly, we'll see the line where being too reckless a crackpot exposes one to criminal liability.

(I think the GA case is a fucked mess. The shotgun-where-a-rifle-is-needed strategy is dumb. And the challenges she'll have to overcome are huge. If... if... indeed she actually ever really planned to try the case, which doesn't appear certain.)

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

A lot of progressives thought Trump was a mastermind conspiring with Putin who had an actually plausible plan to overthrow "democracy," whatever that means (conservatives are now accusing Biden of doing the same thing, but neither side has ever defined what it means, and I doubt they'd ever reach consensus on it). Fast forward seven years, with the Jan. 6 hearings in the rear view mirror and the indictments laying out likely accurate facts about Trump's inner circle and one thing is inarguably clear:

These "authoritarians" everyone was in such a lather about were stone cold idiots. They'd as much chance of overturning that election as that whack-job army of dead enders who ran amuck through the Capitol.

2016-Present has been a screenplay cribbing the darkest bits of Monty Python and Dr. Strangelove.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

I would not try to lump the whole crowd together under a single adjective. Some of them are crackpots.

But Eastman is not a crackpot. He has spouted reactionary views for decades, and has managed to make a decent living and gain some status while doing it. And what he did here was not quite so loopy, in the sense that it might have worked.

Yeah, I'm not sure why you'd say that. She has some pretty damning facts, including particularly the recording of Trump and Meadows telling Raffensberger to find the votes to make Trump the winner, after the election had been certified. Why isn't that criminal?

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

I'll stop you right there. No one thought he was a mastermind.

I'm old enough to remember:

“Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” Trump said in July 2016. “I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.”

Whether by coincidence or not, a special counsel investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election later determined that Russian hackers made their first attempt to break into computers in Clinton’s personal office on the same day as Trump’s request.

Yes, maybe it was just a big coincidence, but since Trump made his ask at a press conference, you can maybe understand why some people would believe he meant what he said.

I think a lot of people have talked about threats to "democracy" when they really are talking about threats to the rule of law. So if your point is that some people use loose rhetoric, I'm with you there.

Fast forward seven years, with the Jan. 6 hearings in the rear view mirror and the indictments laying out likely accurate facts about Trump's inner circle and one thing is inarguably clear:

I don't necessarily agree with you on that, and even if you're right, isn't the real harm that they have normalized the effort? Can you imagine the Republican Party nominating someone who says that Trump lost the election and that it was wrong to storm the Capital?

The whole party keeps metastasizing into more crazy. What was beyond the pale becomes the norm.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

Manafort shared sensitive internal polling data with Klimmick (sp?), a known Russian intelligence asset/agent. State-related Russian actors (including the dearly departed Proghozin (sp?)) then used that data to target ads on Facebook and other social media. At minimum, that was campaign coordination.

Had Manafort flipped (i.e., not been able to count on a pardon), we may have learned of a lot more.

Yeah, they authoritarians often are. They are small-minded people. But sometimes they "win."

January 6 was a clown show because they couldn't get the right people (especially at DOD) to go along with it. They understand that and are already making plans to prevent that sort of thing from happening again.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

Trump was so incompetent his own lawyers had to manage his behavior because he'd "go ballistic" if he heard something he didn't want to hear.

Sure, Manafort was working with Russians. But Manafort was a very rare professional with some brains (and some really problematic spending habits) among a clown car of nutballs.

A few years from now, Adam McKay will do a black comedy on the Trump years in line with Vice and The Big Short. And I think it only fair, and all but assuredly a necessary part of any script, to poke fun at those who fretted endlessly that an evil genius had taken over the White House.

It may be that "democracy" fails in the future. But it won't be because of Trump. It'll be much subtler, and it'll be caused less by his populist tendencies and more by the sellout of the country to corporations by the milquetoast members of both parties. I don't fear a revolution led by the Proud Boys. I fear the one that arguably took place long ago on K Street -- one that grinds away slowly today, capturing all of the important levers of power, controlling all the important mouths in both parties. One that keeps the masses bickering while it lines its pockets.

It's got no name, and it's not a conspiracy. It's just Money. Giant entities with shit tons of it needn't get together and plan anything. They've got shared goals and interests. All they need do is act in their own self-interest and their efforts will dovetail, complementing each other. While the lurid poles of our political discourse fight about whether the trans folks are getting a fair shake or certain books should be banned from high school curricula.

In the teeth of efforts by these same corporate powers and their aligned govt counterparts to massage online speech, and to squelch debate about dubious to often outright fabulist narratives offered by "the institutions" in the lying guise of "saving us from dis/mis/mal-information," I find it had to worry about cranks that slither out from under the rocks of Trumpworld, or its broader universe of MAGAland. Those idiots can be controlled.

Trump is a threat, and a danger. No doubt. He can do damage. But I'd say people like Larry Fink can and are doing a whole hell of a lot more.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

[QUOTE]I disagree, but we don't need to reach that point. I'd argue with anyone claiming he was even competent.

He meant it. But any idiot could say what he said. In fact, it was arguably the most idiotic thing to say in response to Russian interference. The better response for a candidate would be to shut his mouth and let Putin do what he was going to do regardless of what that candidate said.

I think some think that. I think a lot of others, however, think that "democracy" is their side having rights and the other side not having rights. The right and left both seek to curtail the powers and rights of the other under the bizarre reasoning that the other side's use of such rights is somehow an infringement on their rights. It's a childlike logic game. "Mind your own business" is anathema to both.

Yes. That's the most dangerous element of Trumpism's disregard for norms. Somebody far smarter will actually invite real fascism (arguably, that's taking place already, as corporate and govt interests are aligning and seeking increasing control) and people will shrug. Or worse, never see its creep into our lives until its too late.

I can because I know dozens and dozens of Rs who would love to do exactly that. But that imagining becomes a mere pipe dream given the reality of the primary process and the size of the cult that Trump has behind him.

The GOP is gone. I don't know what the party is today. I don't know if it's even really a party anymore. It looks like a playground for dead enders with a few sane voices trying to right a sinking ship.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

That call has never struck me as damning evidence. It sounds bad, but in context (at that time, he was still litigating the vote and had a belief the votes were out there) it's a guy saying, granted, in mafioso-speak, "I know I won... Go find me the votes I know are out there."

My issue with her sprawling indictment is it's too broad. That case will take forever, and as Powell and Chesebro and Meadows have shown already, by demanding a speedy trial or filing any of the myriad motions to dismiss for lack of jurisdiction (and soon, the argument that the allegations don't meet the definition of a crime) individual defendants can take the case apart from endless angles and give Trump a preview of Willis' strategy.

The case is also too ambitious. She's trying to lasso a lot of acts on the parts of lower level operators which are clearly not criminal into a RICO claim. But this isn't a hub and spokes scenario. This is an allegation that all of these people, many of whom never interacted or even met each other, were all engaged in a massive concerted effort to do something they all knew was illegal. That's hard to prove, and I could see trial and appellate courts slapping Willis' hand for being abusive in her scope.