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Category: ~Toots

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Catering to the torches and pitchforks encourages more torches and pitchforks

And weakening the rule of law out of fear doesn’t make anyone any safer

Timothy Snyder has a good piece here on the dangers involved in the “commentariat” pushing SCOTUS to a “pitchfork” ruling on Colorado ‘s pushing Trump off the ballot.  By saying Colorado Supreme Court should be overruled because its ruling is “divisive” or will “inflame” the January 6th folk who were carrying around virtual torches and pitchforks, the politicos and pundits on both sides of the aisle would fundamentally weaken the rule of law … and simply encourage the folk waving pitchforks to wave them more, knowing they will get their way.

snyder.substack.com/p/the-pitc

The Pitchfork Ruling
The Trap the Commentariat Sets for the Court

The Pro-Active Pardon

Haley and DeSantis belittle the rule of law by preemptively declaring they would pardon Trump were they elected President

Is it must me, or is there something deeply unserious about both Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis pledging they would, of course, pardon Trump of any federal convictions. Regardless of any further evidence. Regardless of what judges and/or juries decide.

Sure, DeSantis insists it’s just akin of Ford pardoning Nixon to help “re-unite a divided country.” Except, pardoning Trump wouldn’t reunite anything. For Trump opponents it would be seen as complete and utter politics. For Trump, and his mob, it would be taken as an exoneration. And Trump would be stirring up the next insurrection, unabashed and emboldened.

Ford could barely get away with pardoning Nixon — and, in fact, it sank his chances of a second term — because he was respected and liked going into the job, and wasn’t seen as being part of Nixon’s corrupt coterie. He was deeply criticized for poor judgment in pardoning Nixon, but it wasn’t seen as as partisan corruption. That would hardly apply to either Haley or DeSantis doing the same thing for Trump — especially, in the circumstances they describe, he would already be convicted, something Nixon never was.

Do I really think that Haley and DeSantis think Trump shouldn’t be punished for what he did, or that they are seeking some sort of cleansing national unity? Of course not. At the most obvious, they are hoping  to garner presidential votes by appealing to the Trumpist mob. More likely, they simply want to tee themselves up as being part of the MAGA movement that, however the election in November turns out, will propel them to future power.

washingtonpost.com/politics/20

The Unbearable Lightness of Being Kim Jong Un

“People aren’t paying attention to me? How rude! Better make some new threats!

Sounds like Kim is feeling a bit neglected. Like his favorite former US President, he hates it when people aren’t paying him attention.

To be fair, he doesn’t sound much different from … Ron DeSantis?

North Korea’s Kim says military should ‘thoroughly annihilate’ US and South Korea if provoked
The North Korean leader has vowed to boost national defense to cope with what he called an unprecedented U.S.-led confrontation.
Ron DeSantis keeps talking about blowing up The Bahamas
Ron DeSantis is curiously talking about “flattening” the Bahamas on the campaign trial, prompting the US Embassy in Nassau to respond.

Lindsey folds. Again.

Lindsey Graham deserves to either be remembered forever, or forgotten forever.

As Lindsey Graham takes the last, squishy bits of spine he had left, carefully places it in Ziplok bag, and leaves it in the back of Trump ‘s fridge, somewhere between 2003 KFC leftovers and a container of Putin’s favorite borscht.

thehill.com/homenews/senate/43

Graham backtracks on earlier Jan. 6 criticism of Trump: ‘It depends on what the conduct is’
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) on Sunday appeared to backtrack on earlier criticism of former President Trump’s actions on Jan. 6 and suggested instead that his presidential immunity defense was “a l…

TV Review: Doctor Who Holiday Special 2023

A nice, neat, fun, high-budget intro to the new Doctor

Finally watched the Doctor Who Christmas Special, Holiday Special, or Special No. 4 (depending on which advert you see for it).

I think the Fifteenth Doctor is going to be a lot of fun, full of compassion and whimsy. Not gotten a solid coherent read off of Ruby yet, but we’ll see.

The plot it self was moderately intricate, left some bits dangling for RTD to come back to, and, if a bit fantasy-heavy … well, Doctor Who has always been fantasy with most the numbers filed off.

Good stuff.

Ruby Sunday and the Fifteenth Doctor
Ruby Sunday and the Fifteenth Doctor

Trump just likes being mean to people

Trump’s rule: If you don’t have something nice to say about someone, say it even louder.

I find it difficult to believe that Trump has particular feelings, one way or the other, over care and treatment of transgender kids, except that it makes a convenient cudgel for him to rile up the troops.

“DeWine has fallen to the Radical Left. No wonder he gets loudly booed in Ohio every time I introduce him at Rallies, but I won’t be introducing him any more. I’m finished with this ‘stiff.’ What was he thinking.”

I mean, DeWine is about as reliably Right as you can find. But after taking the time to look at what the Ohio lege’s gender-affirming health care ban would do, he took a principled stand and said, “No, this is going to hurt people.”

Which just teed him up for Trump’s criticism because, hey, hurting people is what Donald is all about.

thehill.com/homenews/lgbtq/438

Trump hits Ohio governor over veto on proposed gender-affirming health care ban
Former President Trump went after Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine (R) for vetoing a proposed ban on gender-affirming health care for transgender minors Saturday. “DeWine has fallen to the Radical Left,” Trum…

Nikki Haley tries to dance around Slavery and the Civil War

Because the only acceptable answer in the GOP is that the Civil War was about Big Government!

It makes little difference what Nikki Haley actually believes. She simply cannot be trusted. She has shown herself adept at saying things that sound relatively sane one sentence, and then making appeals to the MAGA Right with the next.

She is either a fanatic herself, or (my belief) disingenuously willing to glibly court the fanatics.

And she is still arguably the least-worst of the folk at-all-possibly-getting-the-GOP-nomination-for-President .

politico.com/news/2023/12/27/h

Haley declines to say slavery was cause of Civil War
The former South Carolina governor instead said it was a dispute over how ‘government was going to run.’

UPDATE:

Aaaand … Nikki Haley backtracks, admits that, yeah, slavery was the cause of the Civil War … which will doubtless draw more criticism from both sides.

She then deflects and says the person who asked the original question was a “Democratic plant” … which is altogether possible, but doesn’t address her inability to give the answer she knows is true in the first place.

So Haley is willing to tell the truth about the Civil War when forced to, but not when she isn’t. Got it.

forbes.com/sites/anafaguy/2023

Nikki Haley Backtracks On Civil War Comments, Says ‘Of Course’ Slavery Was The Cause
In a town hall Wednesday, presidential contender Nikki Haley omitted slavery as a cause of the Civil War.

Boebert bails on her Congressional District

If you can win in your own district … move to another!

So, scared (and rightfully so) that she will lose next year if she stays in her own CO-3 district, given how much folk have grown to dislike her shenanigans there, Lauren Boebert is carpet-bagging over to CO-4, where old school reactionary Ken Buck is retiring from.

That makes the Dem running again in CO-3 less likely to win that solid-red district… but I doubt the CO-4 GOP are going to be any more tolerant of Boebert’s bad behavior.

9news.com/article/news/politic

Boebert to run in Colorado’s 4th Congressional District
The Republican lawmaker currently represents the 3rd Congressional District.

Florida’s school book bans go beyond sex, gender, and race

Florida’s race to get rid of Evil Sex Books has swept up a number of Jewish authors

But, hey, let’s talk about how “liberals” are anti-Semitic.

“Florida district pulls many Jewish and Holocaust books from classroom libraries”

A global bestseller by a Jewish Holocaust victim; a novel by a beloved and politically conservative Jewish American writer; a memoir of growing up mixed-race and Jewish; and a contemporary novel about a high-achieving Jewish family are among the nearly 700 books a Florida school district removed from classroom libraries this year in fear of violating state laws on sexual content in schools.

The purge of books from Orange County Public Schools, in Orlando, over the course of the past semester is the latest consequence of a conservative movement across the country — and strongest in Florida — to rid public and school libraries of materials deemed offensive. While the vast majority of such challenged and removed books involve race, gender and sexuality, several Jewish books have previously been caught in the dragnet.

The Orange County case is unusual for the sheer volume of books removed — 699 including some duplicates, according to documents the district provided — and for the unusually large number of books about the Holocaust and Jewish identity included among them.

timesofisrael.com/florida-dist

“Presidential Immunity for me but not for thee”

Trump says that if he doesn’t get full immunity, he’ll prosecute Biden without it. “Merry Christmas”

Short Trump: “Presidents get total immunity. But only me. Biden I will totally prosecute for shit.”

What an asshole.

“Trump rails against special counsel Jack Smith in Christmas Eve posts”

The former president said Biden would be prosecuted without presidential immunity for the way he handled the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 and his handling of the U.S. southern border.

Trump said in another post that Smith is one of Biden’s “misfits and thugs” who are going after him “at levels of persecution never seen before in our country.”

“It’s called election interference. Merry Christmas!” Trump said.

thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefin

Trump rails against special counsel Jack Smith in Christmas Eve posts
Former President Trump railed against special counsel Jack Smith again in Christmas Eve posts on his Truth Social account. Trump claimed in one Truth Social post that he is “fully entitled” t…