Those of us who have significant experience designing abattoirs design them to be as painless and humane as possible. Eventually one evolves into a vegetarian lifestyle. Then the nightmares begin when one realizes that plants are sentient; they’re just very slow. One realizes the utter futility of life without death until immortality is obtained. Once immortality is obtained then time has little importance to oneself. Then over the epochs and eons one begins to worry about all those plants and animals who have developed a cultural animus against the immortals for having slaughtered them for food stocks. One hopes that they, too, eventually gain immortality, but one suspects that the plants might also carry a grudge against the herbivores for similar reasons.
And all of the above was done without drugs or alcohol. Blame it all on a lack of sleep.
Trump pocketed roughly $80 million on the way out the door, after spending less than $10 million on his legal challenges and sharing with others in the GOP. It was an amazing haul for a loser that should’ve been headed into retirement. He will now embark on a great 2024 money- raising routine and continue to pocket money from his zombie horde faithful. If nothing else, yesterday’s vote to acquit shows that he Trump brand is still strong within the GOP. He is “Koschei the Deathless” of Russian myth. No apparent soul, craving power and casting spells over others to keep them in a stupor. Figuratively, the House and Senate had Trump to rights, but Mitch, fearing a fundraising backlash for the party, gave Trump the 12 buckets of water, once again loosing him on the world.
Heck of a gambit by O.J. Trump. If the insurrection had been able to hank Pence and murder Pelosi, he might have been able to seize power. Since it did not work, he goes into a trial with jurors that have been payed off. A successful coup and he wins bigly… when it doesn’t go his way he ‘walks’.
Gotta give him credit for the big gamble, but as usual he fails and leaves the mess for other people to clean up.
I hope you are right, but I will be withholding judgement on this until I see some evidence of growth. IMO it is just as likely that the ranks of Trump Toadies has grown and will negate any growth of Never Trumpers.
Prediction, though, that as with the ‘January exception’ dishonestly manufactured as we’ve just seen, some ‘constitutional scholar’ will be enlisted to insist that because the ‘nevertheless … liable and subject to’ clause is appended to the ‘removal … and disqualification’ clause, then OF COURSE this liability can only apply IF he’s been removed and disqualified. Total nonsense, of course, but when’s that ever stopped them? We should see it play out soon enough.
Trump was only and specifically acquitted on a technicality, because he is not a “president”, yet he continues to say that he went through this as a “president”. Someone needs to point out this hypocrisy to those who let him off the hook.
Then, I hope we can all move on in a bipartisan way and support the criminal prosecution of citizen Donald Trump up on the charges of sedition and felony murder.
Some day I hope to get thru a day without seeing trump’s image or some story about how he bragged about being a “strong suppirter of the rule if law”. He hasn’t got the first inkling about what that phrase means. To him laws are either used as an advantage or are to be dodged or ignored when inconvenient.
At the moment trump seems to be beyond any law. I find that extremely annoying. @georgia, I agree on the charges of sedition and murder. May it come to pass.
I don’t support a trial for Trump. I would prefer arrest without bail and an endless wait for a trial that keeps getting delayed and ultimately never comes. Treat him like an ordinary poor person.
He thinks it’s incredibly apt and clever. It’s like “prime the pump.” He labors to remember the most common and obvious cliches and then starts saying he came up with it and nobody said it before him and now everybody does. Just one more of the 173 ways he’s pathetic.
I was struck that in the aftermath of the attack, everybody was pretty clear it was Trump’s fault. Even Graham renounced him wrathfully. But by the time came to vote again that evening, there was that majority of the GOP who voted not to certify the electoral vote. They washed their faces, straightened their ties, and considered with a measure of forethought that the base has proven there’s literally nothing, I suppose and hope within reason, it can’t forgive. The weasels will mostly tolerate him publicly until that support wanes, which could take years. Our problem now is not a stupid old man pacing around a room watching TV in Florida. It’s the 75 million. That’s a reprogramming job that makes the millennium look like a simple bug-fix update.
But with a “perp walk” for public humiliation since we don’t use the pillory any more (more’s the pity in this case) and incarceration as a flight risk after arrest to await trial on sedition, felony murder as an accompliceand tax evasion (hey, it got Al Capone after all). There may also be a RICO charge lurking somewhere in all of this.
What I want as fair justice is a reckoning. Not revenge. A reckoning would be prison and forfeiture of his wealth.
As for our government… The House did the correct thing in voting for impeachment. McConnell used his power to delay the trial to after 1/20/21, let’s not forget that. It could’ve happened while trump was in office…there was little but enough time to have done it. Still trump must be held to account for that riot. The people in that mob are so why not him?
I am disgusted by Mitch and his caucus of cheeseheads. I am also not proud of the weakness shown on the point of witnesses by the democrats instead settling for a written statement that will be ignored.
Our government as an institution is not something to be proud of right now. And it’s something they must correct. Now it’s up to the third branch to show some fortitude and do the right thing and mete out fair justice to trump.
My deepest thanks as well to all of the United States Senators and Members of Congress who stood proudly for the Constitution we all revere and for the sacred legal principles at the heart of our country.
Yeah. Mine too. But we’re not thinking of the same folks here.
I wish I could agree with you; it would be comforting to simply ignore him. Unfortunately, we need to pay attention. If and until he is prosecuted and convicted in the justice system, he’s not going anywhere, nor are his supporters. At least he no longer has twitter, and I don’t know about Fox’s current position on providing him with a platform; but there’s always OAN, and Limbaugh, and all those other right-wing extremist outlets. Trump continues to pose an extreme danger to our republic, and consciously ignoring his pronouncements would put us at a major disadvantage. Ignorance in this case might be bliss, but it’s also a recipe for disaster.
No witnesses! Another rushed and incomplete trial!
Nancy Pelosi owns it! Time for change. What a joke a congress that barely has a 3 day work week and they don’t have time for a real impeachment trial!
We’re getting what we deserve in the shape of the despicable Trump when we allowed failed Democratic leaders to just carry on. Pelosi and Schumer are part of the party establishment that rejects needed change and they stick with Republican lite!
I’m more worried about Democrats becoming irrelevant than I am about Trump destroying the Tepublican Party!
I do not want hime to be a martyr. If he has medical problems they should be embarrassing, like hemorrhoids. Imprisonment would be nice but what I really want and think is a realistic hope is impoverishment. I want to see him sell off golf course by golf course, acre by acre until he is left with six feet for a grave or a bit more since he is tall.
There is a fascist movement seeking to overthrow democracy in America. TPM and many other organizations stand in the way of this movement by doing good journalism and in other ways. Conviction of Trump at an impeachment “trial” by the hopelessly complicit Senate using an antique and wholly ineffectual constitutional process was never in the cards as everyone could see from the outset. In spite of this, the House had no choice but to proceed with impeachment because that is the only recourse they have. Could the process have been more effective if witnesses had been called? Perhaps, but there were no guarantees. Even with the single article and relatively short proceedings one could see in the antics of Mike Lee and others how the process could be relatively easily turned into a “circus” that would undermine the overall effectiveness of the trial. Calling witnesses would have been a gamble, maybe one worth taking, but a gamble nonetheless. As it is establishing a clear record and getting fascist and merely spineless politicians on the record was not an insignificant accomplishment in the larger struggle which is to prevent a fascist takeover in America. We need to keep our eyes on the prize and hold on not indulge in a bunch of whinging and second guessing. I could have done without the publication of Trump’s comments but I won’t second guess the journalistic judgement of the honest journalist who included them in her article. The Republican party in its current incarnation will not be reformed. It must be defeated convincingly and repeatedly and that is the task to which everyone should turn with grim determination.
Yeah. Mine too. But we’re not thinking of the same folks here.