I miss Friday Funnies but I’m not sure I can reliably accumulate enough every week to commit to the task. The best I can say is I’ll try. I’ll check in with the boss for some advice. I noticed my fellow denizens of the WMDBS posted a couple yesterday. Here’s mine, thanks to my sister for passing it on.
We all remember the disastrous (and laughable) Republican responses to the SOTU over the years. Bobby Jindal’s and Marco Rubio’s responses were cringe-worthy, and Jindal’s 10 minute spotlight moment ended his career. Well, last Thursday, freshman Alabama senator Katie Britt said “hold my beer”, launching into the weirdest SOTU response in history. Typical for Republicans, they put her in a fucking KITCHEN while she breathlessly disclosed the horrors of the Biden administration like protecting women’s health and preserving the right to vote. If it wasn’t so strange it would have been hilarious.
One of Britt’s blood curdling stories was one she recounted of a private conversation she had with one woman who had been sex trafficked by the cartel in the US after crossing the border during Biden’s presidency. The story was truly horrific as she described being repeatedly raped and being held captive in a shoebox-sized room. Simply awful…with the one exception that it was complete bullshit. Not that the woman was raped and held captive – that story is likely true. The bullshit happened when Britt pinned the whole terrible scenario on Biden and his border policies. Tim-Tokker Jonathan Katz did all the work on this, so I’ll let him tell the story:
@katzonearth This isn’t going to make her like TikTok more. #katiebritt #sotu #stateoftheunion #lies #politicians #biden2024 #trump2024 #immigration #traffickingawarenes #mexico #bordersecurity #fyp
So, the victim here, Karla Jacinto Ramiro, was a victim of child sex trafficking when she was 12. In 2004. When George W. Bush was president. IN MEXICO. Ramiro is now an advocate for victims of sex trafficking and is in her 30s. Ramiro even told this same story in a congressional hearing in 2015. So, Katie Britt picks up this tragic 20 year old story and recasts it to place blame on Biden who wouldn’t be president until almost 20 years after it happened. That’s like Republicans blaming Obama for the great recession that happened under GWB or Biden for the disastrous response to COVID and Afghanistan debacle that were caused by TFG.
Not only was Britt’s melodramatic and creepy SOTU rebuttal cringe-worthy, it was also nothing but vicious character assassination and pure bullshit. AND she did it on national television. With any luck, Britt will go the way of Bobby Jindal.
At long last, the fake gold plated billionaire facade is falling down around TFG’s ears. Longstanding watchers have known that he’s always been full of hot air, not money, and had it not been for Fred Trump’s fortune and Russian money, TFG would have fallen by the wayside years ago. Because they are well known, I won’t list all of his failures, but he’s lost banks and investors billions over the years, has been a pariah in New York for 40 years and only pulled himself from the brink with a successful “reality” television show and selling real estate to Russian oligarchs.
He used the presidency of the US as a cash cow, raking in millions at his hotel in a US government owned building in DC , overcharging government agencies for hotel charges, and making millions from foreign countries who laundered money through his resorts and buildings. All of that, though, didn’t actually build any long term wealth for TFG because he really only owns a fraction of his properties with investors and massive debt. Because of his terrible reputation and disastrous presidency, even his licensing deals have dried up. Even with all that foreign money, his resorts lose millions every year and the musical chairs game is coming to an end. He now owes massive financial penalties for sexual assault, massive financial fraud, and defamation that he’s still committing, and the tab is now well over half a billion dollars. He’s admitted in official court papers that he doesn’t have the money to pay.
So, TFG is for sale. The purchase price is only reachable by the billionaire class consisting of guys like Musk, Bezos, and a handful of others, and on Sunday he met with Musk in Palm Beach. Even after his $44 billion fiasco with Twitter, Musk is still estimated to be worth over $200 billion, and Bezos is more. I’m not convinced that Musk is buying because much of his fortune is in SpaceX and Tesla stock, but there’s also this other little detail that SpaceX is significantly dependent on the US government for a good chunk of its revenue even though they don’t disclose the amounts. So, if Musk purchases TFG and he loses the election, he would be hundreds of millions in the hole and have a pissed off Biden to deal with. I don’t believe Bezos is a buyer. It’s just not his style. So, what if a Russian oligarch purchases him? There’s not a lot we can do, especially since the Thomas Trump SCOTUS has pretty much unwound any meaningful campaign finance laws. As well, it’s unclear if there are any state or federal requirements for Trump to disclose where he got the money to pay off his debts except for IRS regulations and if he’s president, that doesn’t mean anything.
So picture this – there’s a really good chance that we could have a president that has been bought and paid for by an oligarch who will remain unidentified; the DOJ will quickly drop all federal charges against him. That leaves the NY hush money case and the Georgia RICO case which Fani Willis has almost singlehandedly fucked up for all of us with her love life. On the same day of his inauguration, he’ll immediately begin disassembling the US government as we know it through Project 2025 and re-forming it for his own benefit which includes consolidating power to the Oval Office and turning the DOJ into a weapon to prosecute political enemies like Joe Biden, Alvin Bragg, Fani Willis, and may others.
How’s that picture look? So, sleep well tonight, dear readers, as the rest of 2024 could be the end of the US as we know it if Americans don’t get off their ass and take responsibility for themselves.
Super Tuesday and the recent decisions by the Supreme Court seem like a perfect backdrop to the ultimate question in a representative democracy. I can filibuster here, but the question is a fairly simple one to ask, but a very hard one to answer. Do we believe that we are better off with the people (all of the people) being able to have unfettered choices in who represents them? I would say it is pretty clear that the answer to that question has been a resounding no throughout our history.
In the beginning, only land owners could vote and even then they had to resort to the electoral college. African Americans and poor people didn’t get the vote for nearly a century. Women had to wait almost 50 years after that. Finally, younger people could work, pay taxes, and go to war, but they couldn’t vote until after the Vietnam War. Fast forward to the present time and the biggest battles of our times have been the methods used to keep certain people from voting.
The efforts in Colorado, Maine, and Illinois represented the other guard rail that we could place on our democracy. If you don’t want to restrict who can vote then you can restrict who they can vote for. The last nine years has been a circle jerk where each party or group has waited for the other to do the dirty work for them. The Republican party hoped that he would lose at the ballot box and go away. They also said it was the responsibility of the Justice department. The Justice department clearly slow rolled their prosecutions and hoped he would just go away. The cabinet could have used the 25th amendment. Congress could have voted to convict once if not twice. Mitch McConnell himself said it was a job for the courts. Now, the courts are saying it is a job for Congress.
I’m not sure whose failure is the most egregious. Each institution taken by itself could explain its actions. I found the use of the 14th amendment to be problematic at best. At some point some recognized court or institution has to come to an official stance that he participated in insurrection. The January 6th committee danced around it. Jack Smith has been dancing around it. We have been calling it out on cable television and the blogosphere, but there has been nothing definitive or official.
That lands us right back at the opening question. Do we absolutely trust the people to make this call? If the answer is no then it is time to do some hard soul searching. I’d argue that if we were really about letting the people choose their leaders in an unfettered way then he has been told no twice already. That’s a tiny consolation. If we still think it is way too dangerous to allow ordinary people to have the unchecked ability to choose their leaders then we have to seriously reevaluate who we are. I personally think a number of Americans are too stupid to vote and understand the gravity of it. They are easily led and vote against their interests too easily. I also have to acknowledge that the same exact arguments were used against women, African American, and young people voting. Do we bring back literacy tests? Do we bar people with red hats or stupid bumper stickers? Obviously, I speak in jest but if you decide that some people are incapable of doing it properly then you are fundamentally responsible for finding a way to cull the voter rolls in a fair and equitable way. Otherwise, we have to let it ride and fight like hell.
