17 thoughts on “Mar-a-Lago Genius”

  1. thread a-hoe photo above shows up at 9:29 minutes in in al’s monologue

    Aug 16, 2022 Al Franken steps in as guest host and talks about meeting Guillermo, Joe Biden signing the Inflation Reduction Act, Ted Cruz being a threat to democracy, most Americans having no idea who is even in the Senate, the FBI seizing 11 sets of highly classified documents from Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, the possibility that Trump could be a flight risk, and the most shocking January 6th hearing yet (with help from Bob Odenkirk.)

  2. If I have to vote for Liz in the Republican primary, I guess I’ll do it.  Hopefully, it will not come to that because Orange Adolf will be in exile…you know, if anyone else will take him.
     
     

  3. my prediction:

    plea deal in exchange for

    lifetime home isolation confinement at Bedminster overseen by special secret service detail (beefed up version of what former presidents usually get anyway)

    ironclad agreement promising no attempt to run for any government (fed, state or local) office 

    return to donors or to federal government all campaign monies held including all PAC funding

    turning over to government whether in U.S. or elsewhere all real and personal properties and financial holdings (other than what’s necessary to maintain confinement at bedminster) and all passports 

     

    [all because IMO a trial and resulting prison – even in the most super secure facility – would pose ongoing national security problems when it comes to a former high ranking official.]

     

  4. patD – The problem is that his mouth will continue to foment hate.    The problem is that his mouth will continue to help install tRUMPists into various offices.   He, and his entire crime family, need to get on a plane and go away.  

    However, his cancer has metastasized and it’s killing democracy, and will continue to do so even after he is gone.  

    ps – Tax the so-called churches that preach politics from the pulpit.

  5. just watched an old 1942 tracy hepburn film on TCM called “keeper of the flame” and was blown away by a scene towards the end where hepburn’s character is disclosing a dastardly plot that her dead beloved-national-hero husband had concocted.  wiki’s capsulation:

    … she finally breaks down and reveals the ugly truth. Her husband had been corrupted by the adulation he received and plotted to use his enormous influence to turn Americans to fascistideals and in order to gain control of the United States. She shows O’Malley papers stored in the arsenal that reveal how Forrest (backed by secretive, ultra-wealthy, power-hungry individuals) planned to use racism, anti-union sentiment, and antisemitism to divide the country, turning social groups against one another in order to create the chaos that would let him seize power.

    sound familiar?

    can’t help but wonder if a rich spoiled kid with big aspirations one day came across that same movie (can’t imagine he read the book it was based on) and was inspired by the so-called hero’s plan.

  6. wiki’s review went on to say:

    Robert Fyne, author of The Hollywood Propaganda of World War II, (1997) notes the film’s “strong warning to the American people about demagoguery, domestic fascism, and mind control, while praising the virtues of freedom of the press.”
    One film historian has concluded that Keeper of the Flame is “truly provocative in that it was one of Hollywood’s few forays into imagining the possibility of homegrown American Fascism and the crucial damage which can be done to individual rights when inhumane and tyrannical ideas sweep a society through a charismatic leader.” Other authors have noted that the film is different from other anti-fascist films of the period in that it clearly links wealth and fascism and points out the ways in which patriotism may far too easily be turned toward fascist ends.

  7. here’s hepburn’s script in that scene:

    They didn’t call it fascism. Painted it red,
    white and blue, and called it Americanism.
    In here are the funds to see it through.
    Fantastic amounts subscribed
    by a few private individuals…
    …to whom money didn’t mean anything
    but wanted political power.
    Knew they could never get it
    by democratic means.
    There’s a list of their names.
    This was the essence of their plan.
    Here are some articles ready for release…
    …to stir up all the little hatreds
    of the whole nation against each other.
    This was an article to be published
    in an anti-Semitic paper attacking the Jews.
    This was to be used in Farmers Gazette
    to stir them up against city dwellers.
    Here’s one attacking the Catholics,
    anti-Negro, anti-labor, anti-trade union…
    …subtle appeal to the Ku Klux Klan.
    Here’s a list of newspaper editors
    who either sought to occupy public office…
    …or sought to dictate
    who should occupy public office…
    …and when they failed, felt that the public
    was a great, stupid beast.
    Here’s a list of men
    who served their country in the last war…
    …and were failures in business,
    and longed for power of rank…
    …and the prestige of a uniform.
    In there are the names and addresses
    of the men…
    …who were designated
    to be America’s first storm troopers.
    But what was really shocking to me
    was the complete cynicism of the plan.
    Each of these groups was simply to be
    used until its usefulness was exhausted.
    Hates were to be played against hates.
    If one group threatened to get too powerful,
    it would be killed off by another group.
    And in the end, all these poor little people
    who never knew…
    …to what purpose they were lending
    themselves would be in the same chains…
    …cowed and enslaved…

    […]

    …when he spoke to the people.
    Perhaps he loved the people.
    Perhaps he loved them…
    …but didn’t trust them
    to think for themselves.
    Or perhaps he was insatiable…
    …and wanted even more power
    to add to his glory. I don’t know.
    But he envied the dictators …

    that plan she described sounds just like what’s happening today

  8. Jen citing Larry on why taking the 5th should disqualify from office SFB and any others who take the oath to preserve and protect the Constitution.  WaPo

    Indeed, taking the Fifth — especially concerning his alleged misconduct related to the attempted coup — should disqualify him from the presidency.

    Laurence H. Tribe, a constitutional scholar at Harvard Law School, explains that a president “has a constitutional as well as a moral duty to see to it that the laws are faithfully executed — not just a passive duty to avoid violating the law, a duty everyone of course shares, but an active duty to ensure that the law is fully enforced as well as complied with. That active duty arguably includes an obligation to avoid invoking various otherwise available privileges — including the privilege to withhold criminally incriminating information.”

    Nor should the obligation to one’s oath be limited to the president. Tribe, in his 1978 book “American Constitutional Law,” discusses the importance of the oaths of office, which are required not only for presidents but also for Supreme Court justices, state legislators and every executive and judicial officer in the country. Tribe notes that Article VI of the Constitution specifies that public officials must take an oath “not just to obey the Constitution and laws of the United States but ‘to support this Constitution.’ ”

    And she and he explain that in more detail.

  9. https://www.texastribune.org/2022/08/17/texas-abortion-law-history/

    “The law had been on the books for as long as Texas had books, dating back to the creation of the state’s penal code in 1857. It remained in effect, largely unchanged but only intermittently enforced, for the next 116 years until the U.S. Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional in the Roe v. Wade decision in 1973.”

    “Doctors were generally paid by the case, and since they weren’t particularly well-respected, they weren’t called on that often.”

    “But women were having babies every two years,” Kluchin said. “So doctors are trying to push in on midwives, in terms of childbirth, but midwives also tended to be the healers in their communities.”

    “Nationally, doctors started a campaign against midwives, Kluchin said, painting them as dirty, uneducated and dangerous to pregnant women.”

    “But these are health care providers who have a ton of knowledge and deep experience, and they tend to have better outcomes in terms of obstetrics than doctors,” Kluchin said. “Doctors come in in the 1850s with forceps and anesthesia promising an easier birth, but there’s no regulations.”

    “Midwives were also the keepers of knowledge about how to terminate a pregnancy. This is part of why state laws regulating abortion often had an exception to save the life of the pregnant patient — as determined by a doctor.”

    “Birth rates in the U.S. plummeted during the 19th century from about seven children per woman to less than four, with white women making up the steepest declines.”

    “The thought was that with the abortion laws as they stood, the racial stock of the U.S. was going to decline,” Ziegler said. “Because the wrong people were going to be having more kids and the right people were going to be having fewer kids.”

    “In Texas, a slave state with a large Mexican population, these racial concerns were front and center. Murillo posits that maintaining white birth rates was seen at that time as an essential part of maintaining white power in the state.”

    “Unlike in current times, Texas’ 1850s abortion ban didn’t spark much of a backlash.”

    “People just kept having abortions,” Ziegler said. “To the extent there was a protest, it was just people ignoring the law.”

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