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The System Failed: Case Dismissed

The System Failed: Case Dismissed

From one of the best NOLA bloggers, Peter Adrastos Athas

 The son of a bitch got away with it. You and I may not be above the law, but Donald Trump is.

Democracy lost on November 5th. The rule of law lost on November 25th. The two defeats will be linked in the history books as scholars ponder the question of how this happened. How could the world’s oldest democracy elect a convicted felon who tried to stay in office by corrupt means to another term as president?

Jack Smith did what he had to do yesterday. I think it was better to move to dismiss before the Kaiser of Chaos returns to office. It enabled Judge Chutkan to dismiss the case without prejudice, which means that it could theoretically be refiled after Trump leaves. The chances of that are slim and none and slim just petitioned for a pardon for shitting on the constitution.

A more tangible advantage to this timing is that Team Smith will be able to file a report instead of being frog marched out of DOJ by vengeful Trumpers. Merrick Garland will have to approve its release, so we know it won’t happen immediately. The Attorney General should have a new middle name: Merrick Dilatory Garland. His slowness to move against Trump is one of the reasons we’re in this mess.

Jack Smith is a by the book prosecutor. This dismissal is the by the book move. Unfortunately, the Insult Comedian not only hasn’t read the book, he’s ready to burn it as well as the DOJ down. His personal lawyers will be in DOJ leadership positions come January 20th. His backup plan as AG is just as corrupt as Matt Gaetz. Pam Bondi will follow orders. It remains to be seen how far they’ll go but investigations can devastate people financially even if they don’t result in convictions. Just ask Andrew McCabe or Pete Strzok.

There’s a lot of blame for this fiasco to go around. None of it belongs to Jack Smith who moved expeditiously after his appointment. He wanted to throw the book at the Dipshit Insurrectionist-in-Chief, but SCOTUS scuttled that plan with its immunity impunity ruling. It should, however, have heard the case earlier but did not because of a dilatory process.

I might as well rank the culpable in order of importance:

1. Mitch McConnell could have led the charge to bar Trump from office. Instead, he punted to DOJ, which dropped the ball.
2. The Roberts Court slow walked Team Smith’s appeal, which made it impossible for the case to be tried before the election. The immunity impunity ruling would have continued the delay if Trump had lost.
3. Merrick Garland moved fiercely against the rioters, but timidly against Trump. He appointed the right Special Counsel but at least a year too late. In a word; Dilatory.
4. The DOJ memo barring prosecution of a sitting president. It was written to deal with the Agnew case and has caused untold mischief since then.
5. Judge Aileen Cannon who dismissed the purloined papers case before the election. Team Smith has moved to dismiss the appeal of this ruling.
6. Low information voters who bought Trumpist propaganda and gave the crook another chance to disgrace his office.

Talk about a six-pack of venality, corruption, and malakatude.

MAGA Republicans have spent the last 4 years minimizing what happened on January 6, 2021. This effort to rewrite history is about to explode. My friend and Picayune columnist Stephanie Grace nailed it at Muskville:

It happened. We all saw it with our own eyes. The police officers who were brutally assaulted experienced it. Many Republican lawmakers called it what it was in the moment and soon after, on tape for posterity. Mike Pence defended the constitution while he was being hunted.”

That’s the last time I’ll ever quote something from Twitter/X. It’s become a den of iniquitous liars and conspiracy theorists. It’s only fit for the Marge Greene’s of the world.

Americans like to say that no one is above the law. It was always more aspirational than real. There are two justice systems, one for the wealthy and another one for everybody else.

Thanks to SCOTUS the system failed: Donald Trump is above the law.

Repeat after me: The son of a bitch got away with it.

Very Cool Map

 Click the link below to see how winds are blowing across the planet, it's fascinating.  The picture is static, but the website shows you how the actuals winds are moving.

https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/surface/level/orthographic=114.06,19.98,568/loc=-87.228,27.691


Here's a screenshot:  

Monday Smile

 

The dumbing down of our electorate

 

'Fear Inoculum'

Noel Casler

Nov 17, 2024

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The stupidity that took hold of much of the United States on November 5th was decades in the making.

The dumbing down of our electorate, including much of suburban and rural red state America, was a long and carefully crafted process.

It was spearheaded by Rupert Murdoch on behalf of billionaires and bad actors across the globe.

Weakening our democracy for their own tactical and financial gains.

A litany of Bond villain-types obviously enabled and assisted him along the way; everyone from Jeffrey Epstein to Elon Musk played a hand in what occurred in our recent election.

They used the fear that many of our citizens are fed daily through chyrons and crypto bros against them; like a Judo master would use an opponent’s own weight to pin them to the mat.

Murdoch didn’t just pump poison into the minds of MAGA America through the ‘alternative facts’ of Fox News - which is and will continue to be ubiquitous on U.S. military bases and red state airports, doctor’s offices and hotel bars.

Rupert knew exactly the demographic he was after but understood one must first infiltrate and influence the culture to achieve the ultimate goal. He set out to do this over decades, not just in new media but in his acquisition of television and movie studios to pump content into the hearts and minds of Americans.

Much of that programming involved crime shows often involving white women as the victim du jour at the top of the show. Usually found scantily clad poolside or in a hotel room, the victims of sexualized violence appear as an objectification of the specifically tailored type of fear for sale in America.

The pithy comments that usually flow from the mouth of the detective on duty as he stands over a beautiful young woman, while his snarky sidekick chimes in with some retort about the ‘monster that did this’, reminds us that law and order are the antidote to fear or the aggressions of ‘the other’.

Trump would often reference sexualized violence and graphically describe it being perpetrated onto a ‘beautiful young woman or girl’ at his MAGA rallies.

It seemed to be one of his obsessions but it had its purpose.

It was programing in line with Murdoch’s carefully cultivated objective, the content deemed most effective to achieve their goals and those whose interests they serve.

We consume an awful lot of fictionalized crime-based violence in our entertainment universe - and 20th Century Fox and Fox Entertainment Group produce a sizable portion of it.

One cannot help but wonder if it all calcifies in the minds of voters and influences their political choices.

Especially when the layers of fear have been built up to respond to very specific and targeted stimulation.

It makes people more willing to believe a man like Trump will protect them with his fake tough guy act and his flags and followers. My hunch is that it does indeed make a difference, a big one.

Murdoch has known this for a long time and the garden he has dutifully seeded has borne fruit.

There’s an old Arabic quote that I heard from Anthony De Mello, it states: ‘The nature of the rain is the same, but it makes thorns grow in the marshes and flowers in the garden’.

Much of our current media brings this adage to mind.

A cult built around the illusion of the patriarchal white man as savior (in this case a rather orange man of course and wearing shoe-lifts, a girdle, a dead ferret on his head and a half a gallon of deck sealant slathered on his face but I digress).

It is perhaps no accident that Trump’s message of migrant criminals descending upon America’s cities and suburbs resonated with even more suburban white women than it did in 2016.

Much of what they consumed and ALL of his rhetoric was designed to address and inflate their irrational fears.

Even the absurd and outlandish claims of Haitian migrants ‘eating cats and dogs’ found a home in many of the minds Trump targeted.

There are obviously legions of smart, educated Democratic white women voters who stood up to Donald Trump and voted for Harris/Walz but the fact that any of my fellow Americans still voted for him will never not be staggering to me.

Especially when you consider the GOP’s attacks on women’s healthcare and SCOTUS’ Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health decision which essentially overturned Roe v. Wade and sent a good portion of this country back into the dark ages concerning reproductive health care.

As shameful and as abhorrent as I have seen in my lifetime.

It will also sadly be the most impactful on the lives of both women and men and should have been at the core of anyone’s decision in this election.

I would often hear young men being interviewed as ‘undecided voters’ in the lead up to election day and when they cited the economy as their ‘main issue’ my heart would sink a bit.

Their main issue should have been standing up for women’s health care and protecting the equality of their mother’s, sisters, girlfriends and partners.

Have they been desensitized to the suffering of women by a lifetime of watching them suffer or serve as crime props and objects of desire on T.V., for most of their years, not to mention social media and the influence of the far-right manosphere in shaping their adolescent mindsets.

Toxic masculinity seemed to reach its zenith during this campaign and the brofluencers did more than their share to deliver Trump his victory.

Young men should have viewed the threat against the women in their lives as a bigger threat than any vague notion that ‘Trump was better on the economy’ which is one of the most successful lies ever told a people.

It was also one based in fear, as the Dems have been portrayed consistently by the GOP as somehow ‘weak on the economy’ for decades now, even though the data shows the opposite to be true with Republicans repeatedly taking credit for Democratic legislation and economic policies.

Trump is an absolute fool when it comes to economics and as failed and corrupt a businessman as this country has produced but he has been protected and coddled by a billionaire class bent on leveraging his venality for their own gains.

They have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams and when they’re all congratulating themselves this winter at Bohemian Grove, they should save a special toast for their old pal Rupert Murdoch.

He did more than most to make this nightmare come about and he will be rewarded handsomely for it.

The country and world beyond will suffer but that is in many ways the point.

Some times the bad guys win and this is definitely one of those times.

We can fight back by examining all angles of what we are up against and beginning to address it. Arts and culture matter - and much of American lacks a lot of it.

Together we can help to change that: we can shape our future and realize it belongs as much to us as it does to a man like Rupert Murdoch or Donald Trump.

Or most especially an Elon Musk.

At least in theory. Its up to us to make it a reality, or at least see the one we are living in with clear eyes and awareness.

In these pages I will continue to do that as best as I can - and I truly appreciate your readership and support.

I believe we will get through this together, not just as a country but as a planet.

Much Needed Levity

 SOME posts are still fun on twitter, even though I've chosen to move to Bluesky.

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I don't buy it

 

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