He was old. A family friend of my husband was a similar age, kept himself in great physical condition, and then just one day a heart issue killed him. Chalk it up to the gerentocracy. Our present system effectively means the Grim Reaper will give many politicians the boot before their constituents do.
I know personally, I am much better informed now about the systemic realities around silencing of rape and sexual assault victims. I knew before some, I just know more now. Part of that was just having more life experiences in general, but I also credit Me Too.
There are polls coming out now. A while ago, he was running about 10 points ahead of Collins. Recently, he was neck-in-neck, within the margin of error. This will certainly put Collins in the lead. And I don’t see a path for him to recover. Even if nothing more comes up, his campaign is cooked. He should drop out so that Maine has a real choice in November.
Plenty of rape victims take a while to come forward. This is pretty common.
And violent revolutions are kind of a roll of the dice. Sure, you could have a glorious outcome. But you are just as likely to have a bunch of scared people turn to whatever warlord promises them security.
In 10 to 18 years, I bet Trump gets memory holed by the Republican Party, much like George W. Bush. They will move on, and they will try to pretend that Trump and MAGA had never existed.
The core of MAGA is Trump, and no one has been able to really duplicate it. And Trump is an old man who is already slowing down. There is no succession plan. I think the movement dies with him, maybe with his presidency. And then they pretend they never supported him.
From what I had heard of it, it was likely an AI produced target list with a human in the loop. But the problem with those is that a human in the loop often turns into a rubber stamp, with the human taking the blame for the AI’s mistakes.
So in that sense, you may be right. That is a problem that is pretty widely understood. They should have known that and taken more care. Trump and his “Department of War” has brought an even more cavalier attitude toward civilian casualties, so that may be seen as acceptable for “efficiency”.
I never said anything of the sort. But if you want a closer analogy, we should judge Donald Trump, Jr. for his father’s crimes. He has vocally supported his father and often been involved.
They are cut from the same cloth. He has a reputation for beliefs that are as hard-line, if not more hard-line. The slaughter of protestors is absolutely relevant.
The slaughter is also part of a power structure he has put himself on top of. And there is no indication that he will be any different than his father. The power structure may change a bit after this latest war, but fundamentally it is prone to deadly crackdowns on dissent.
Yup. Not a bad message, but a terrible messenger. His father is responsible for the massacre of thousands of protestors, and he was by all accounts part of that.
Trump has gotten more brazen. Buy his cryptoscam, pay to build his ballroom, give his wife a sweetheart movie deal, the list goes on and on. And yeah, then there’s the IRS tax audit immunity that would allow him and associated people to steal an estimated $100 million in forgone taxes. Truly a man who looked at the Russian kleptocracy and said “I want some of that.”
No president has done it and it certainly was not the intent of the pardon power. But it is not explicitly forbidden. Hopefully if he tries it it gets ruled against, but after SCOTUS made that horrible ruling about presidential immunity I have little confidence.
Trump getting away with a pardon and then getting assassinated is, in my mind, one of the worst scenarios. It martyrs him in the eyes of his cult. At the same time, it sets out legal precedent for a future fascist/authoritarian to pardon themselves for misdeeds in office. He’s an old man anyway and won’t last much longer. Let’s hope it does not come to pass.
It is hard to go after a federal official for state crime. They have a lot of immunity around official acts. And for good reason. Imagine a right wing state criminalizing something based on their agenda, then prosecuting Democratic officials to enact a nationwide right wing agenda based on those laws. It would be chaos.
Trump is 100% going to pardon himself. And I have little confidence that the courts will stop him. They will talk about history and tradition when it suits them, but I can totally see them making an exception for yet another unprecedented action.
Nah, timeline’s off. He had a stroke before being elected.
US Senators have no recall mechanism. Fetterman is up for reelection in 2028. We will see what happens then.
I’m usually pretty good at being able to follow multiple threads of events at once, and even I’m getting overwhelmed. I’ve had to step away from the news somewhat, simply because I know there’s only so much I can do at this point. Trump, Elon, and their minions are going on their romp around the federal government and the best anyone else can do is throw a few lawsuits at them.
Don’t worry, they’ll still have the West Bank to genocide after the ethnic cleansing of Gaza is complete.
The violent protests didn’t do shit either, they just pissed off the rest of the citizenship. When protests turn to violence, all too often it’s against the businesses that the peasants frequent.
I saw signs around Portland for a January 21 protest. From what I’ve heard, it was a lot smaller than what Portland saw in 2017. It’s hard to read the tea leaves on why that is.
They all do. Most obviously, there is the midterm election coming up. But also, as support for Trump wears away, more Republicans are willing to break with him.
So recently, Trump said that he wouldn’t sign any legislation until his pet vote rigging (sorry election security) legislation was passed. Republicans joined Democrats to pass a housing bill, over Trump’s objections.
Trump’s nominees are also having a harder time getting through the confirmation process. At the beginning of his term, he rammed through several nominees by threatening to primary Republicans. Those included RFK, Jr. and Hegseth. Now, questionable nominees like Todd Blanche are struggling to make it through.