Apparently, Donny is out there prepping the Deceived for a guilty verdict in his current felony trial. Obviously, NOT because of all that crime he actually did. Nor was it the meticulously presented case supported by physical evidence and/or witness testimony. No, Donny keeps suggesting he’s going to be found guilty (he will) because the whole thing is rigged (it’s not).

At a campaign rally in New Jersey, he was whining about the ongoing New York trial, Trump said “we haven’t had a decision here, but the decision here can probably only be one thing, I guess … ’cause … this whole thing – it’s a rigged deal; it’s a rigged deal.” Listen, putz, the decision will be the decision because YOU made choices – criminal choices. You shouldn’t have done that. SHAME on you, Donald J. Trump.

He hasn’t explicitly said he expects to be found guilty. Instead, he’s showing his belief in that outcome by whining about the process and the people involved. Normal, day-to-day events of criminal trials suddenly become outrageous affronts in Donny’s eyes. And, according to him, they’re all designed and intended to keep him from defending himself. He never clarifies how publicly calling people mean names and trying to intimidate witnesses is supposed to be a defense for him – but I think we all know.

According to the ‘USA Today’ yesterday, all of his whining, bloviating, blowhard, blather is intended to convince the Deceived that the system is rigged against him before the guilty verdict so voters will disregard the verdict in favor of the preferred, con victim status. As if MAGA needs help protecting his precious self. How DOES this whining, simpering, fragile little snowflake continue to convince his base he’s secretly a tough guy? Enquiring minds…

But, he’s not doing it for them, is he? MAGA already knows what they know and they’re not going to let any stinkin’ facts get in their way. According to the article, the trumpery is intended to gain favor with moderate conservatives and independents. But moderate conservatives and independents are not MAGA. They still have measurable brain function.

I’ll tell you this: I think moderate conservatives and independents are going to know that a guilty verdict most likely means he did the crime. It’s an Occam’s Razor thing: It’s just the simplest explanation…

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As Trump’s trial goes worse and worse for him, MAGA is getting madder and madder. I find I feel badly for them sometimes. Just think of the crash they’re due. If the scales ever fall from their eyes, and finally they see the trumpery for what it is, how epically disappointing, right? But right now, they’re fighting mad.

I got into a discussion with a MAGA who said to me, “This lawfare conspiracy with its unconstitutional manipulation that you all cheer for while you jeer Patriots Like MTG is a disgrace.” “Patriot?” “MTG?” “A patriot?!?” You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

I can help: Patriot /pā′trē-ət, -ŏt″/ (noun)
One who loves, supports, and defends one’s country.
One who loves his country, and zealously supports its authority and interests.

The only thing I could say about MTG is that she HATES America and desperately wishes it was more like an authoritarian dictatorship and not the messy Republic we enjoyed until MAGA came along. She tried to have the Speaker removed because he did something good for the country. She was angry that he was working with Democrats. I’d say he worked with his fellow Americans for the benefit of America – and MTG effing hated it.

I’ll tell you this: That ain’t no “patriot…”

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It looks like Steve Bannon is off to jail. He was convicted of two counts of contempt of Congress for refusing to comply with a subpoena to appear before the J6 committee. He has been free to inveigh against America pending appeals but in his latest effort the appellate court upheld the law rather than his personal preference. So? Off he goes.

He’ll be out again by the election. He was only sentenced to four months. That’s a heck of a lot better than the outcome he faced for defrauding the Deceived out of millions of dollars in his “Build the wall” scheme. Bannon and his co-conspirators promised to finish building Donny’s wall and then, instead, used the money they raised for themselves and lived a lavish lifestyle on the dollars of the Deceived. Donny had to pardon him to get him out of that one, though he apparently still faces state charges in the matter and, last I knew, THAT trial is scheduled to start later this month.

If he reports to prison, say, June 1, AND serves all of his time, he would be out at the end of September. But he won’t serve all of that time. They give time off for good behavior. He’ll likely do around two months. So, he’ll spend his summer in prison, then get out and start lying for Donny again. Well, unless he IS convicted in the “Build the wall” scam.

Hey, maybe Donny will be convicted by then, too, and Steve and Donny can be “roomies!” They can sit in their cell together and cry and whine about how unfair life has been to them…

Yesterday, I wrote that “virtually everybody associated with Donny has credibility issues.” To that point, the auditor, BF Borgers, for Donny’s media company, TMTG, has been charged with “massive” accounting fraud in their oversight of Donny’s company. Apparently, Borgers has filed over 1,500 fraudulent SEC filings on behalf of TMTG, the parent company of Donny’s lying ‘Truth Social’ site. BF Borgers has to pay $14 million dollars in damages and has been banned from accounting forever.

By now, I’ve gotten quite used to the fact that Donald Trump is a criminal surrounded by criminals in a vast web of criminal activity. But I continue to be impressed by the number of people willing to do his bidding – and they just keep coming back. Bill Barr is only the latest to switch from “He’s a criminal who has no business in the White House” to “Oh, yeah, I’ll vote for him.”

They go to jail for him or testify in order to avoid jail but for everyone who comes into contact with him, it seems, the threat or fact of jail is in their future. So why the hell do they keep signing on?

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Speaking of signing on, or swallowing the Kool-Aid, Kellyanne Conway was on ‘Real Time with Bill Maher’ this weekend, all bubbly and energetic and mendacious. I presume she doesn’t think she’s lying. She likely thinks she’s merely advancing the Roepublican position. But she’s lying. MAGAS “positions” on anything are fluid, at best, and lying is required to keep up. The GOP KNOWS far too few people want to vote for their horrific true agenda so? They lie! Clever solution. EVERY second grader has come up with it and given it a try.

Personally, I hold that a position that requires a lie for support doesn’t deserve support. But I’m not a conservative. Since I dabble in reason, fact, verifiable evidence, and truth, it’s just easier to be progressive. But Kellyanne, obnoxious as she is in doing so, advances the GOP positions like a pro. She won’t acknowledge anything negative about cons. She just changes the subject and ducks into whataboutism. She’ll happily spew favorable statistics, which is easy for her since she just make them up as she goes along. Actually, she’s probably not just making them up as she goes along. I suspect she has a set list and plays it and plays it, so the pseudo-facts she presents become well known to her.

A woman’s right to choose looms, yet again, as a major factor in the upcoming elections. We’ve all seen state after state moving to out-do each other in cruelty to women. We’ve all heard various GOP members “suggesting” or calling outright for a national abortion ban at the Federal level. Kellyanne says I’m lying or playing ‘Chicken Little.’ The GOP won’t, she insists, try to institute a national abortion ban.

But Lindsay Graham actually introduced legislation trying to do exactly that – and he wasn’t first. Hey, Kellyanne, actions speak louder than words. You can tell me all day long that the GOP doesn’t want to implement a national abortion ban, but they have already tried. I’m going to remember what they did, not what you say.

I expect the GOP WILL implement a national abortion ban if they get the power to do so. That’s why I’ve taken to spelling their party name “Roepublicans.” I think it will help people remember which party did this to them in the first place. Smart people STILL have to come out and vote like their freedom depends upon it. Because freedom depends on it. (I know, they’re delivering the SAME message in conservative circles. Americans promote ‘freedom.’ MAGA promotes ‘freedumb.’ It’s VERY different.)

Kellyanne also claimed the economy was perfect under Donny. That was simply not true, even before Donny’s pandemic. The cons like to excuse Donny’s failed presidency by blaming Covid-19 but I, for one, continue to remember that if he hadn’t dismantled America’s “early warning system” because he was incapable of understanding it’s import, we and the world might not have suffered so mightily. That was ALL Donny, the Dumbass Don…

And, of course, she trotted out the old ‘Biden’s economy sucks’ bit. Cons LOVE to act like the Mad Max marauders are roaming our dystopian streets and that bread costs a wheelbarrow full of money. Inflation, inflation, inflation! Yes, things cost more. A LOT more. IS that systemic inflation? No. It’s not. It’s greed. And it’s greed brought to you by forty years of conservative practices and policies. It’s the inevitable result of deregulation. Once wealth controls a market, any market, they will squeeze that market as long and as hard as they can.

Yeah, yeah, economists can point to all kinds of charts and graphs and toss out a bunch of highfalutin words to make the economy sound mysterious and complex. But I can make it straightforward for you. Do you know how you can know, for sure, that current high prices are the result of greedy gouging and NOT systemic inflation? Profits. It really IS that easy.

If it really IS systemic inflation, prices go up as costs to the company go up, and the company’s overall profit position remains relatively unchanged. But that’s not what you’re hearing in profit reports, is it? Tell me, do the words “record profits” sound familiar to you? And aren’t you hearing the phrase “record profits” over and over and over again? Investors are starting to spook if companies don’t report record profits. It’s insane. Not as insane as investing in Donny’s criminal media company, but it’s pretty crazy.

The worst part is, these record profits hit us in the most vulnerable areas: housing, energy, and food. We need them all. But the drivers of the increases are just greed. The companies want more, there’s less competition (thanks to deregulation), so they take more. That’s not Biden’s fault. In fact, there’s very little he can do about it without Congress on his side.

Don’t vote against Biden because he’s having difficulty unwinding forty years of conservative destruction all by himself. He needs a Congress that will work with him and, as we all know, it’s the CONS who WILL NOT help, under any circumstances, lest they give Biden a “win.”

I’ll tell you this: If we give Biden a second term and give control of Congress to the Dems, we will see improvement. Sure, MAGA would choke on that notion. But MAGA thinks Trump is a genius and perhaps a god-on-earth. Why would rational people bother with input from people who can’t tell up from down and right from wrong?

I’ve noticed an interesting trend in our media. The students setting up camps protesting the genocide in Gaza are generally referred to as “Pro-Palestinian.” The people who object to those protests are called “Counter-Protestors.” I wonder why they’re not identified as “Pro-Israel?” Are there no “Pro-Israel” camps? Certainly none that have been rousted and made the news.

I think the so-called “Pro-Palestinian” factor should really be called the “anti-genocide” team, since that’s the true focus of their goal. I guess that won’t work with the American media’s choice of presentation, though, since it runs the risk of making the “Pro-Israel” faction the “Pro-Genocide” team. Still, “Pro-Palestine” vs “Counter Protestors” creates a false impression and I don’t much like it.

When a bunch of “Counter-Protestors” attacked a “Pro-Palestine” camp in the middle of the night at a college recently, it caused violent conflict but the masses were only told in passing that the violence started when “Counter-Protestors” (“Pro Israel?”) attacked the camp. Then the focus was ALL on the “Pro-Palestinian” factors fighting back. It seems to me that the message is rather heavily slanted in favor of one point of view.

Either way, I think the college kids (keyword: ‘kids’) have gone too far. Demonstrations of support are all well and good. Trying to get schools to divest from companies profiting from the death and destruction Israelis are inflicting could even be seen as honorable. But fighting over here is not going to change anything over there. Taking over buildings undermines their efforts. Running Palestinian flags up American flag poles isn’t convincing anyone of any thing.

It is the way of young people. Their passions regularly take them to extremes. As a movement gains popularity, more people not truly invested in the cause get involved and the newcomers often lack the detailed understanding of things. That’s when the racial slurs start. They don’t help anything, either.

So I find myself a bit ambivalent about the college actions. On the one hand, maybe added pressure from the public will result in something positive. On the other hand, the over-the-top actions we’re seeing threaten to undermine the whole effort as the “movement” gets too far afield from the base cause. If the “Counter Protestors” succeed in turning the understanding of the movement from “anti-genocide” to “anti-Jew,” the efforts of the “Pro-Peace” team will be fully defeated, despite their original intent.

I’ll tell you this: The best thing I can say about the college actions is that I believe the organizer’s hearts are in the right place. I support their cause – stop the violence – but I reject many of the tactics they have adopted as unhelpful…

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Donny’s main defense in his current criminal trial, the hush money payment trial, is that he knew nothing about it. It was all, if you ask him, Michael Cohen. Cohen did this, Cohen did that. Donny didn’t even know. I guess the prosecution anticipated this. They played recordings in court of Donny and Cohen talking about the payments in detail, clearly indicating Donny had knowledge. The recordings were made in September, 2016.

Team Trump took the only avenue they have: they claimed the FBI planted the recordings. Uh-huh. But what are you going to do? The recordings put you right in the middle of things, dead to rights. Donny can tell the Deceived the recordings are AI and they’ll believe him because they WANT to believe him but in court he can’t say any such thing. Neither can his attorneys. Because it’s not true. He CAN lie on the campaign trail. He CAN’T lie in court. But his lawyers CAN “suggest.” So that’s what they did.

As the news of the payments became public in 2018, Donny tried to pretend even to those in his inner circle that Cohen had made the payments all by himself out of the goodness of his heart. Hope Hicks, one of the people Donny interacted with on a regular basis, says she never believed that story. On the stand, under oath, she testified that she never thought of Cohen as that kind of a selfless guy and she simply didn’t buy the story.

The main event is Michael Cohen on the stand (which will happen) vs Donny on the stand (which will NEVER happen). Cohen has some credibility issues, to say the very least. That’s what happens when you lie and lie and lie some more. But virtually everybody associated with Donny has credibility issues. Lawyers know how to deal with that and the prosecution is following the path, step by step.

One witness after another corroborates Cohen’s story even before he tells it. That way, when he DOES testify, the facts of his testimony will have been established well before he even takes the stand. That’s going to make it very difficult for Donny’s lawyers to paint him as lying.

The short version? The case isn’t going well for Donny. That’s the reason he has fought so hard to keep these trials from happening. NONE of them, if they actually get to trial, are going to go any better for him than this one is going. I think he’s going to lose this trial. That is to say, I think he’ll be convicted of a felony criminal offense.

MAGA won’t care. They’ve already dismissed the trials as fake news, despite the fact that we now KNOW Donny, himself, was the author of most of the fake news he was crying about. I don’t know if they’ll put him in jail. They should, in my view, if the evidence supports the charge but this really IS a special case.

MAGA is fond of whining that nothing like this has ever happened before and they’re correct, although for the wrong reasons. What had actually ‘never happened’ was that Americans had never been so stupid as to put such a low-level, whiny criminal into the most powerful office in the world before. But RussoMAGA got it done in 2016 and now the country has to clean up the mess.

I’ll tell you this: I think Donny should face the same punishment as anybody else convicted of such a crime, assuming a conviction is where it lands. No more, no less. But I suspect he’ll get a lenient sentence so I’ll just have to content myself with the fact that, as a convicted felon, he won’t be able to vote for himself. Even Trump won’t vote for Trump. I have to confess, I get a kick out of that…