As we expected, Judge McAfee, the judge overseeing the Georgia Racketeering case, ruled today that the romantic relationship between DA Fani Willis and her chief prosecutor Nathan Wade did not avoid the appearance of conflict while not technically violating the law.  He gave her the choice that either she or Wade had to go.  He talked extensively about Willis’ poor judgement in a case this important and her unprofessional behavior during testimony.  Wade resigned a few hours later.  Legal experts are saying that this debacle almost assures that the case will unlikely go to trial before the election.

As I said before, this is 100% Willis’ fault.  What she did was stupid, but exceptionally stupid when she was going after a former president of the US.  The carelessness is breathtaking.  In another slow moving disaster, the NY hush money case was delayed today for at least 30 days because, after a YEAR of waiting, the SDNY US attorney’s office dumped 150,000 pages of evidence that DA Bragg had requested.  TFG’s lawyer asked for a 90 day delay but the judge delayed for 30, but that will surely be appealed.

So, with a big assist from the Trump-Thomas SCOTUS when they rewrote the 14th Amendment of the Constitution, it looks like TFG’s going to win by running out the clock.  Add that to TFG’s handpicked judge in Florida slow walking the documents case and that’s almost a certainty.  What’s infuriating is that Garland, the NY DA, and Fani Willis dragged their feet so long that we’re now up against the election and it’s almost certain that no trial, much less a verdict, will happen before the election.  Garland sat on his ass for almost two years before he was shamed into prosecuting Trump only after the Select Committee on January 6th produced a warehouse full of damning evidence of insurrection.  He also KNEW TFG was sitting on thousands of government documents, 800 of which were classified TOP SECRET, but waited 21 months to finally do something.  Because of that negligence and the stupidity on Willis’ part, we’re not going to get any justice before Election Day.

There’s a good chance TFG’s going to win the election, and if he does, the documents case and the election interference cases will certainly be dropped by his new AG.  The NY hush money case and Georgia case will continue, but prosecuting a sitting president will be almost impossible, and the Trump-Thomas SCOTUS will make sure nothing happens.  Fani Willis will probably lose her re-election bid and the new DA could just drop the Georgia case. But those aren’t the biggest problems – the biggest problem is that TFG will gut the DOJ and FBI, pardon the almost 1,000 charged or convicted insurrectionists, and undo all the progress we’ve made while Biden has been in office.   He’ll pack the WH and his cabinet with criminals, white supremacists, and authoritarians, and it could easily be game over for the US as we know it.  If by chance he loses the election, he most certainly won’t accept it and will call for civil war.  There’s no good result here, and you can thank the Trump-Thomas Court, Merrick Garland, and Fani Willis.  Thanks for nothing.

Last night, CNN stupidly handed TFG 70 minutes on the national stage to spew his bullshit and play his greatest hits of lies, big lies, gigantic lies, and intergalactic lies.  His “town hall” quickly became a TFG rally complete with mocking of the moderator and continued defamation of every perceived enemy from Biden to E. Jean Carroll.  What idiot at CNN thought it would be a good idea to fill a room with TFG supporters and unleash them on national television?  TFG began his stream of lies within one minute of taking the stage, and it continued for over an hour, completely running over moderator Kaitlan Collins, who’s effort to fact check TFG was an exercise in futility.

If there was any good that came from last night’s shameful display, it’s that TFG did a superb  job of burying himself in confessions of crimes and continued defamation of his enemies, especially E. Jean Carroll, to whom he already owes $5 million.  He openly celebrated the January 6th insurrection, calling it a “beautiful day”, and repeated his promise to pardon insurrectionists.  He admitted to taking classified documents and hiding them at Mar a Lago.  You can bet that Jack Smith and other federal and state prosecutors were listening very carefully and taking copious notes.  I have to admit one thing about TFG – he clearly understands his plight and has pushed all of his chips to the center of the table.  He knows that if he’s not successful at winning the presidency and taking down the US government, he’s facing the rest of his life either in jail or fighting desperately to stay out.  Without a win, his fate is sealed.

We may as well brace for almost two years of this rolling shitshow as it’s clear that TFG controls the former Republican party and no one will come close to taking him down in the primaries.  EVERY voter needs to understand the stakes here; you can bet that TFG does.

Y’all smell that?  That stench of partisanship that Sotomayor pointed out about the now GOP-packed SCOTUS?  Yeah, there’s that stench, but the stench I’m talking about is that of insurrection.  We already know about the federal judge who ruled today that TFG likely committed multiple felonies trying to steal the election and stay in power and that’s no surprise, but what’s emerging now is the stench emanating from the office of our own junior senator from Texas, Fled Cruz.  Apparently, he is asshole buddies with insurrectionist lawyer John Eastman, who’s now been ordered to turn over records to the January 6th Committee since his “work” for TFG was not privileged because the judge said he was likely concealing or assisting him to commit fraud against the American people.  BTW, that’s a crime.  Cruz has known Eastman since they clerked together in 1995, and they teamed up (and succeeded) in 2000 to make sure that Al Gore didn’t get a fair count in Florida in that disputed election.

Cruz has continued that tradition ever since, but now it’s coming to light that not only is he a sniveling brown noser who can’t tolerate cold weather or stand up to an ignorant blowhard like TFG, he decided that helping his effort to overthrow the US government was more important than being not a slimy-skinned reptile.  Cruz agreed to lead the insurrection charge in the Senate for TFG, using Eastman’s battle plan to steal the election from Biden by coercing Pence to defraud the American people and his involvement ain’t pretty.  I encourage everyone to read Heather Scott Richardson’s summary of Judge Carter’s order to Eastman to disgorge the damning documents he’s been concealing for over a year, hiding behind attorney privilege that doesn’t exist. It is chilling.  Since it’s “more likely than not” that TFG and associates criminally obstructed Congress, that evidence could not only incriminate Eastman, but all those doing his and TFG’s bidding, like our Junior Senator who dishonors Texas on a daily basis.

I’m popping popcorn.

It’s now been a week since the communications office of the Supreme Court announced that Clarence Thomas had been hospitalized “for an infection” and that he would go home in a few days.  That few days has now expanded to a full week, and repeated attempts by the press to get more information on him have been met with silence.  This is one of the most odd set of circumstances about the health of a SCOTUS justice that I can recall, especially after the detailed blow by blow reporting from the court about Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s health in the few years before she passed away in 2020.

Coincidently, news is breaking daily about the deep involvement of Thomas’ wife, Ginni, in the effort to overturn the US presidential election in order to illegally keep Trump in office after he lost.  It turns out that not only did she attend the “Stop the Steal” rally on January 6th, she communicated extensively with Mark Meadows and others in the conspiracy to overturn the election by amplifying lies about non-existent voter fraud.  Apparently there were 29 texts between them from the election to January 10, 2021.  She also communicated with other like minded folks in Trumpland including Jared Kushner.

Not coincidently, Justice Thomas voted against the other 8 justices when the court refused to intervene in the order to release Trump’s WH records.  He also wrote a dissent when the Court declined to hear the Pennsylvania case that was seeking to disqualify mail-in ballots in that state.  Ginni Thomas also publicly supported expelling Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger from the RNC when they voted to impeach Trump in the second impeachment and then joined the January 6th Committee.  In her texts to others in Trumpland, she also repeated QAnon bullshit conspiracy theories, loudly proclaiming the election was stolen and supporting the lawyers spreading the lies.  Worse, she has Justice Thomas’ ear 24/7/365 and even mentioned to Meadows in one text that she was talking to her “best friend” about how the election was stolen.  Not coincidently, her “best friend” has ruled 100% in Trump’s favor in cases brought before him.

The stink of the Thomases’ corruption just adds to the existing stench of the cheating and partisanship that has finally overtaken the Court since McConnell successfully stole Merrick Garland’s seat and then rammed through the nominations of Kavanaugh and Barrett, clearly unqualified nominees.  The Court has been rapidly undoing decades of precedent in many areas with particular focus on taking away a woman’s right to seek her own healthcare and making it harder for non-Republicans to vote.  John Roberts has been concerned about the eroding public confidence in the Court, and with good reason.  In a recent Gallup survey, confidence in the Court has declined to a low point of 40%.  Twenty years ago, confidence was as high as 62%.

Is it merely coincidence that Justice Thomas has suddenly dropped off the face of the earth as the scandal of his wife’s deep involvement in the insurrection comes to light?  I think not.  I wouldn’t be surprised to see a sudden retirement from the bench to avoid what looks to be the first impeachment case built against a SCOTUS justice.  Nothing else explains the deafening silence about Thomas’s supposed health problem and hospitalization.  We’ll be watching this one closely.

The sordid details of TFG’s extreme efforts to stay in power after he lost the election in 2020 are finally surfacing.  TFG tried to get the US military, the DOJ, and Homeland Security to seize the voting machines in states he lost so he could steal the presidency away from millions and millions of voters who chose the other guy.  I even remember the rumors that were floating around that the US military was seizing machines, as far fetched as that sounded pre-January 6. Today, it’s perfectly plausible, because that’s EXACTLY what TFG was actually trying to do.  He’s even publicly admitted it.

Even today, all of these facts are not only shocking, they are enraging.  It REALLY pisses me off that people in the government KNEW what he was doing.  A LOT of people knew what he was doing.  Many people in these agencies were aware of TFG’s efforts to steal the election; more important, those in high ranking political and non-political offices knew, including the Joint Chiefs, Attorney(s) General, Secretary of Homeland Security, the FBI, CIA, and hundreds of staffers in these agencies.  Fortunately for us our brittle system held this time, but that’s unlikely the next time it happens (and it will) with the changes Republicans have rammed through the state legislatures over the last year to make it easier to overturn election results they don’t like.

What I want to know, and I demand this answer, is where in the hell have these hundreds of people been in the last year?  Because he was so dangerous, I understand the cone of silence until we ousted TFG from the WH, but why the silence since then?  Now he’s just a crazy old fat man sitting on his gold plated toilet screaming at his television. It’s been over a year since he committed serious crimes on both state and federal levels, and NO ONE has come forward with the full story.  Why in the hell isn’t the FBI perp walking him right now?  This son of a bitch almost succeeded in overturning a national election, aided by many, many, co-conspirators.  Why aren’t THOSE people being perp walked?

Hey, Merrick Garland, DO YOUR DAMN JOB.  No more eggshell walking – go after this guy and everyone who either aided him or even looked the other way.  If there is such a thing as accessory to sedition, THIS IS IT.

Get to work.

At some point when we were children we were told that sticks and stones may break our bones, but words would never hurt us. It’s a nice sentiment for toddlers and young children, but anyone that has ever had an argument with a friend, loved one, or even a casual acquaintance knows this to be untrue.

We’ve seen any number of monikers for the ex-president as well. People have found all kinds of creative names and acronyms to avoid saying his name. They do this because he sucks all of the oxygen out of the room. He is just a gigantic lump of vanity or the human form of a black hole. Unfortunately, these are only words too.

At a recent event, he admitted out loud that Joe Biden won the election and he was trying to overturn the election. However, I’m sure he doesn’t see it that way. He will continue to assert that he won while uttering phrases like this that showed that he lost.

Words matter. How we address our friends, neighbors, family members, and those we work with matters. How we speak to people matters. This is why we pay so much attention to our politicians in the first place. We pay attention to not only what they say but how they say it. When those words and the deeds that follow match up then we know we are onto something. On a similar timeline, the ex-president promised to pardon insurrectionists should he be reelected in 2024. Such talk could be seen as idle chat, but it is important to look at his history of pardons while he was in the White House.

Certainly, it wasn’t everyone on the list. Yet, when you look at a alarmingly large number of folks pardoned or commuted you see a pattern. It is a pattern of someone that used the oval office as somewhat of a criminal enterprise. It could credibly be said that no one gets poorer going to Washington. Still, no one has profited from the presidency quite like the last occupant.

In the face of these words, the mantra from the right has been eerily consistent. He didn’t mean it like that. He was just joking. You libs are taking him way too literally. He’s not a politician, so he’s not an artful speaker. He just tells it like it is. Suddenly you look up and they’ve tied themselves in knots trying to explain off something that can’t be excused.

What the former guy knows is that nothing serious is ever going to happen to him. People will talk and there will be investigations and they will find more than enough evidence to charge him, but somehow that won’t happen. It won’t happen because he breaks the law in plain sight. He tells you he’s going to do it. He tells you he’s done it. Surely no criminal would do such a thing.

He also is banking on an over 200 year tradition in this country. Underlings and henchmen go to jail. The principals never do. We don’t throw our political opponents in jail. The whole country would descend into chaos if we did. Chaos is just another word after all. Still, it is a pretty good descriptor of what is going on right now.