I have been stating for a while that Biden was asleep for the first 2 or 3 years on the border. My fellow democrats (I’m not really democrat I’m non partisan) castigated me on Joyce Vance and Heather Richardson blogs whenever I stated this but I’m redeemed here. Every time I ask someone why they voted for Trump, only one response comes back; the border. Ok, it was the border if not in fact then in optics. But it was factual he did nothing for at least two years. Boy, do I feel like I have a home here.
The reason so many have critized me is easy to understand. We think in like-minded pods. If everyone says something, everyone agrees no matter what the facts are. Same with MAGA well, worse with MAGA but we are infected with a similar disease: the disease of conformity.
He did address the border. Illegal crossings were down. Congress had a bipartisan bill he was ready to sign, and then Trump told the Republicans to dump it.
See this is what I don't understand. Border crossings were down over Trump. No President is perfect. We have the best economy in years. He doesn't get credit for the good. Media focuses on everything but that. I'm disappointed in media and papers, etc. They have failed us.
The media rarely gives credit to Dems who are in office. How often have you heard anyone in the media point out that under Clinton Democrats not only balanced the budget but also had a healthy budget surplus that was being used to pay down the debt so future needs (like the coming temporary shortfall in the SS trust fund)could be easily paid for? The media had obsessed over the debt, repeatedly reporting the countdown of the debt clock of doom, but they ignored the Clinton surplus.
Their blatant double standard was plain to see when Gore ran against Bush. Gore strongly advocated for continuing to pay down the debt with the surplus; Bush explicitly criticized the surplus and vowed that he would destroy it with tax cuts. The media gave Bush a pass for not caring about the debt because he was “more fun to have a beer with”.
As we have all seen the media doesn’t care about debt when it is caused by Republicans cutting taxes on the wealthy — taxes that add little to our economy. The media only cares about debt when Democrats spend on investments in our country and on the welfare of ordinary Americans.
That is because the media is largely owned by very rich folk who lean very much to the right--because of those tax cuts. Greed is killing this country.
I agree that Biden should have replaced Garland. That should have been done within the first year. This, unlike claims about the border, is straightforward. Sadly, claims that Biden did nothing to help the border situation are mired in misinformation. Yes, he could have made it a central project earlier. But, that would have taken political capital away from his (remarkably successful) efforts to provide that soft economic landing. And, although the incoming administration promises to destroy as much of the nation's economic gains as possible, those gains are important. Given that many voters did not recognize how much they had gained economically during Biden's presidency, I expect they wouldn't have recognized anything he attempted regarding the border. In fact, the conversation here illustrates that problem. It may be simply perception, but perception matters. I don't know what can be done about the American refusal to accept, and blatant hostility to, inconvenient information. In this sense, Biden suffered from a similar problem as Carter.
The Supreme Court deliberately slow walked their disastrous decision on presidential immunity. They deserve a huge chunk of the blame along with Garland and Biden.
Because of what they exist to do—interpret the LAW impartially—SCOTUS is the biggest disappointment of all. They have enabled and protected a criminal—directly in opposition to their mission. Yes, Garland tarried (although remember it took awhile to get confirmed, the tfg supporting members of the DOJ failed to brief him, and when he did act, he faced obstacles placed in his path by tfg-adjacent holdovers (who might have been implicated themselves). But the worst, and btw corrupt, actors of all are, astonishingly, the United States Supreme Court.
Biden's cognitive disability kept him from making any rational decisions. Ironically, people were pointing out his decline prior to 2020 and during his first 3.5 years as president. People like Rubin, others in the media, and democrat party members chose to turn a blind eye to reality. The Defenders of Democracy chose not to invoke the 25th Amendment. Instead they chose a coup that was bound to fail.
On a different note, Tarla, please tell me what I gained economically during a cognitive impaired president's presidency. Please be specific. Did my income increase? Did my personal taxes decrease? Did the cost of running my business decrease? Did my food prices go down? Did my energy costs decrease? Please what did I fail to recognize?
Stonewall, so you think Biden could control the cost of your tomatoes? And did you know that in 2020 leading into 2021, no one was on the roads. Driving down my express way was a wonderful experience with hardly any traffic. And no car driving means low gas prices. You sound like you are throwing everything you got at Biden. Ae you by chance a MAGA in disguise?
Sorry to butt in, Bill, but, yes, Biden could control the cost of tomatoes. To save the entire economy, the Biden admin. enacted "stimulus programs". They poured huge amounts of money into the economy and saved many small businesses who were dropping like flies because customers could not leave their homes to buy things. They gave huge amounts of money to American consumers because they knew American consumers would rush to spend it. (Online shopping blew up as a result.) The consumer economy restarted, and because the country was flush with money to spend, the price of tomatoes rose. We got inlation, but our US consumer economy didn't die. I think I would have made the same choice as the Biden admin. did.
Bill, you failed in your attempt to answer the question and in your attempt to be sarcastic. If you care to discuss the finer points of the impact of economic policy on the cost of goods, please let me know.
No. No. No. For at least 2 years he sat on his fricken hands and maybe 3 years. Read this piece again. But you prove my argument that like-minded in the same pod dare not think independently; Dare not be a contrarian. And... and... I have quizzed several folks why they voted for Trump. All said "the border."
Bill, Nana Booboo and I, in the spirit of The Contrarian debate, have in fact read the commentary and dare to disagree with it.
You do actually need to convince us if you want to change our minds.
I am not convinced that Biden is to blame as you and Rubin claim he is. Not only does the argument and its evidence miss the point and contradict itself, but it is irrelevant to what we must now focus on to protect us from fascism.
Oh no, a white man from the FOX News disinformation bubble said something and somebody made a fact-based challenge, so now he's all upset and projected his bubble onto the people who didn't worship him unquestioningly!
No these are often people that can vote either way not unlike myself but I only voted for a Republican once for Gerald Ford and I later realized my mistake when I was young and stupid. Just like those young men who were successfully pitched on social media, the poison of the ages.
Amazing how people want to point out prisoners of echo chambers when they themselves are imprisoned in their own darkened cell with sound reverberating off the prison walls.
He gave VP Harris the job of determining the *root causes* of the surge, a role which was poorly understood by the public—and got the title "Border Czar" slapped on her by the right, and it stuck. Moreover, Harris did not make the obligatory visit to the border, dressed in khakis and wearing military boots, until political pressure forced it. Optics count.
And in an interview with Lester Holt on NBC on June 6, Harris was asked, "Do you have any plans to visit to the border?", and she responded with, "We are going to the border, we've been to the border." Holt pressed her further, "YOU haven't been to the border," and she admitted that she hadn't, flippantly saying, "And I haven't been to Europe."
Biden's and Harris' poor communications during his administration allowed Republicans to control the dialogue. This is why so many people thought that the economy was terrible, that we had an "open border," illegal immigrants were murdering countless Americans, eating their pets, and that America was in serious decline. None of that was true, but MAGA lies dominated the media, and MSM didn't press back enough, if at all, against these lies.
When Harris was tasked with going to Central America, I kept asking myself… no not just myself, I think I sent a letter to the president but I was hopeful that she and the president would announce a Marshall-like plan. That is the only solution. It doesn’t take a brain surgeon. And you don’t want me in the operating room with a scalpel. Why? Who knows. Central American nations need stability. We could have at least initiated the conversation. That’s how you resolve border issues not building stupid walls. I would like to have had a tiny office in the White House and have Joe visit me to ask, “Well, what to you think should we give in to Putin to avoid a catastrophic war?” Yes Mr. President, just say no NATO and avoid all out war. Later maybe in 10 years or after the little Russian mad man is history we can revisit membership.”
President Biden: “Bill, I’m glad you were hired. Stay the course we need your far-sighted ideas. Ya, I like the Marshall Plan for Central America.”
Ha ha, interesting fantasy. I agree that Biden should have put more skin in the game. I actually felt sorry for Harris when he gave her that assignment, because 1) He was handing off the problem to her, 2) Her role would be misunderstood, i.e., to figure out the root causes of the surge and fix it (as the Border Czar), and 3) She was set up for failure, because...see #1.
I don't agree, however, with our withdrawing from NATO, but Trump will probably grant your wish. The problem with NATO, in my view, is that it expanded unnecessarily. Everytime they added a country, Putin felt more threatened and behaved more aggressively; it was predictable. Withdraw now, and Putin smells weakness and opportunity. I don't think it would prevent war, but lead to one and we'd inevitably be pulled into it, but in this case from a less strategic position. It would then probably become catastrophic because there would be nuclear weapons involved.
No you mist understand. Prevent war was the best option. Now in war, all the way you can’t stop now but we will under Trump. Trump doesn’t give a F about anything. He summarily withdrew troops supporting our only Kurd allies in Syria remember?
More skin in the game? Biden didnt have two brain cells to rub together, let alone enough skin for the game. White folks here trade in slingin opinion hash. Very few are capable of dealing with fact and truth. Most wouldn't recognize either one if they walked up and bit em on the backside. In fact, it took 3.5 years and one little o debate to finally wake a few out of their slumber. Wait! What? Biden really IS senile? Why are we just finding this out now? Talk about 'sudden panic syndrome'. White folks were all in a dither. Oh no! We gotta throw Biden under the bus or we gonna lose this election.
Made me laugh. Yep you lost the election yugely. You lost the House, you lost the Senate, you lost the popular vote. You lost more black vote, more hispanic vote. All because you stuck your heads in the sand and repeated what the media like Rubin and Eisen told you to repeat. And lots o folks continue to repeat what they were told. Now your repeating more nonsense. Trump isn't withdrawing from NATO. Pull your head outta o the sand!!!
You're dead wrong. And ironically, had your hero, Joe Biden, or his shill, been elected, you might have had the opportunity to take thar literally. Of course, you can accept that.
Oh, you mean the fake pandemic you've been using to bash Trump's spending the last term of his presidency. The same pandemic caused by Tony Fauci who remains protected by the Biden cabal. You weren't vaxxed by any chance, were you. Have you seen the Pfizer list of side effects that was recently released. You might want to read it and bang it against the symptoms you're experiencing.
Hey Terry, I’m a RN, retired now, but I LIVED through 2020 when we were using refrigeration trucks as temporary morgues because so many people were dying that we didn’t have to space in the hospital. I LIVED through the corpulent Caligula pitting states against each other in desperate bids to get equipment. You got it depending on how well you kissed his ass. Our governor at the time, Charlie Baker had a plane full of equipment confiscated by trumpenstein for god knows what. When we were desperate to get our hands on point of care testing, he sent tests and testing equipment to his good buddy Putin. So, please don’t say shit about a once in a lifetime pandemic that you know nothing about. A million people died. I’ve wondered how many might have been saved if he didn’t throw Obama’s pandemic handbook in the garbage.
And don’t get me started on vaccination. MRNA vaccine had been studied for almost 25 years, it wasn’t a new concept. If that tangerine tyrant did ANYTHING right it was to dump money into vaccine development.
Pain, redness, or swelling at the site where the shot was administered, and/or tiredness, headache, muscle pain, chills, fever, or nausea throughout the rest of the body.
I took this right off the Pfizer website. It took about 3 seconds to find. And these side effects? Pretty common with any vaccine.
This explains why a current leader sometimes does not continue the same as the previous one. From my book, "Donald's Vanity Tantrums."
What Some Ancient Rulers Have in Common with Trump
During ancient Egyptian dynasties, monarchs often defaced or destroyed statues representing the previous ruler to erase the reputation and deeds of the former ruler. Sometimes damage was limited to facial disfigurement as with Pharaoh Senwosrett III (1878-1840 BC) whose nose was broken off because ancients believed that the life force emanates through the nose.
Trump shares this goal when renegotiating and tearing up Clinton and Obama-era treaties.
NAFTA is one such remake that removes Clinton’s name from the global trade agreement. As Politico writer Adam Behsudi quotes Lori Wallace, director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch said, “For those who trusted Trump’s pledge to make NAFTA ‘much better’ for working people, it’s a punch in the face because the proposal describes TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership) or any other same-old, same-old trade deal.” There are no improvements -- only the removal of the Obama legacy and any other former president’s name.
This symbolic effigy-smashing of Obama extends to the Iran Nuclear Deal, to recertify to Congress every 90 days that the Iranians are complying with the rules; the Paris Climate Agreement; The Affordable Healthcare Act and all other agreements that Obama successfully negotiated regarding the environment and human rights.
In the land that I call home, tens of millions of Americans who couldn’t tell the difference between shit and Shinola, resulting in the election of a malevolent quasi-life form that makes George W. seem like Jesus, Moses, and George Washington rolled into one. Maybe our next president, if we are still electing presidents that is, will take cues from Trump and the ancients as well. A good start would be to remove any future White House portrait of him that might eventually be installed.
I feel your pain ........ Like the proverbial lemmings, controlled by an inscrutable switch. I think everyone on both sides is holding on by the ends of their nearly insufficient fingernails to a world that is moving too fast, a world of instant communications and instant consequences. that leaves no time for broader considerations. That process is most likely to mainifest the most fundamental of human instincts - for better and for worse.
I hate to inform you but EVERY industrialized country (for example Europe) has border problems !!!!!!! What’s new? Get real and focus on the things that matters the most like pay increases ( here in Europe I wish I had that), lower inflation (wish I had that too), more jobs available! Wish I had the kind of army like US to defend my country. The list goes on. It’s only you who suffer tunnel vision!! Get to the source of the matter rather that believing your influencer.
America wake up! Be like Romania and reject this Putin look alike
Jean, what I try to explain is that yes, most or all countries have border problems. But I’m viewing it in a political sense. If one side is able to use lax border enforcement and most often it’s the far right, the ugly nationalists at work the the other side must or should take some of he wind out of their sails. That’s all I’m saying. Look at what happened to the UK. Now Holland. Potentially France and Germany. Hungry.
Seriously, Biden allowed the border to get out of control. Too little too late. The endless buses of migrants from TX courtesy of Gov. Abbott to sanctuary cities went on forever.
Agreed, Linda. Garland took until November of 2022 just to name Jack Smith. Legal scholars such as Lawrence Tribe, his constitutional law prof at Harvard Law, openly wondered regularly on Twitter why Garland wasn't acting sooner. He wasted a good year if not longer, time that could have been used to get him to trial. And remember, the House Jan 6th Committee was conducting a public investigation during the first 2 years -- was the DoJ out to lunch?
I have the utmost respect for Joe Biden and his accomplishment, but that is one issue I'll never get over.
DOJ was doing something before Jack smith appt….something like 1500 citizens investigated, tried, and convicted for involvement with Jan 6……just sayin’…
Yes, but again, it took nearly 2 years to name Garland. And, in less than a week, it's quite possible every Jan 6 conviction will be pardoned, so that time will have been unproductive considering the one who got away.
Definitely a plant. Barack had em everywhere in the Biden Administration. Obama was pullin all the strings while poor old Joe was defecating in his diapers and drooling down his bib. Makes you wonder why Obama delayed? And then to see Barack being chummy with Trump at Carter's (may he rest in peace) funeral service. What is going on there?
You’ve already said the same words I use in comments all the time. “Coulda, woulda, shoulda, what if and if only”. Those few words will kill the soul. One just can’t live there without building up a lot of fulminating regret.
I contend the most potent and consequential was the use of the word, "Shoulda". As in "Biden never shoulda run again". His pride, arrogance, and selfishness put Trump back into the White House. I blame JIll, too.
I despised Garland for being a gutless coward but I have come to suspect that it is so much worse than that as he is actually tacitly working for Trump and MAGA?
Check out this article that accuses Garland of being a nefarious actor not a flaccid coward.
There is. Click on the commenter’s name and you’ll see an opportunity to do that. You can also click on the three dots to the right of Beth’s name (which I did) to report spam
Not sure if it’s always been an option, probably.. I haven’t needed to block anyone on other substack subscriptions. This one has right off the bat attracted spammers and trolls.
"Russian psyops" that manifested as Fox disinformation that bamboozled enough low-info voters to put the mole back in office. Putin has conquered America without firing a shot.
Not just Fox disinformation. It was also social media and email. In the three weeks leading up to the election, one of my email accounts (one that I use exclusively for accounts at relatively unimportant Websites, so it receives a fair amount of junk) received a THOUSAND pro-Trump or anti-Harris spam messages. The sending of each and every one of them constituted a crime.
In comparison, in that same period of time, that email account received ZERO pro-Harris or anti-Trump spam messages.
The Internet was hit with a firehose of pro-Trump garbage leading up to the election.
...most of which was from Russian bots. Yes, it was not just Fox disinformation, but a lot of their "news" came from the Internet Research Agency, the Russian troll farm that also flooded social media.
Please people, read this link. If true, it makes enormous sense and it needs to be shared, amplified, quickly. Also reported to all investigative fed agencies and nonprofits.
But if the whistleblower is telling the truth, this kind of election interference is a crime, and all the more because there was also foreign involvement. There’s been a lot of speculation that this went on.
Yeah I've wondered about that. Trump had about 34% support among die hard MAGA Republicans, and another 7% among soft supporters. He never polled above 41% in any national poll. Yet somehow he got 49.9% of the 2024 vote? Why did he tell his rallies he didn't need their votes? Did he know something we didn't?
And you didn't even mention how he had Musk funding election interference, and they had a couple years to look at the internals of the voting machines due to a lawsuit, and lots of incentive to win (stay out of jail). Rogan also said Musk knew the results 4 hours before, through some app on his phone. Musk also told Carlson he'd go to jail if Trump didn't win, and in the interview his kid was saying things like "they'll never know" and "sh, don't tell".
Is Trump young? He is a few years younger and has a family history of alzhemeirs. His sister just died last year of it and his father died in his 90's due to the complications of it. Biden was aging and had normal aging ailments. Chuck Grassley is 91 and still working in the senate and not doing anything positive for the average american. I would take Biden for four more years over Trump in a minute.
Unfortunately, the GOP are experts at ramming b.s. narratives into the mediasphere, and that drives overall public opinion. The Dems still haven't learned this and never could counter the old tag - and it didn't help that Biden was hardly visible or accessible to media.
I've long believed that Project 2025 will let Trompe last for a year or so, call for the 25th Amendment, get him out and install JD Vance to complete his term. Then they'll run Vance in 2028.
I couldn’t say that with that degree of certainty, but I tend toward that view. I have at least some hope that there will still be a 2026, and that their policies will be so unpopular by then that there will be a much larger than usual turnout for a midterm so that a Democratic Congress will try to put some serious brakes on Trump/Musk/Vance.
On Jan 20, Trump will try to emasculate all of the agencies he feels gave him trouble as # 45. Whereas SCOTUS would not permit him to declare an emergency in the DACA case, they since give a president virtually unlimited power. If he declares a national emergency, we can kiss democracy goodbye.
.Blaming Biden for not having his AG rush to justice to indict trump is way out of line. Was Biden supposed to weaponize his AG similar to what we fear trump will do. Critics can second guess Garland, but lets not forget, if not for McConnell, Garland would be a sitting SCOTUS judge
I agree that Garland was too cautious, but I also think that Biden was nit going to make moves that would give the MAGATS more fuel to accuse him of persecuting Trump.
Congress held hearings into the Jan 6 insurrection. I wish that Garland had used those hearings to act faster.
He did use those hearings to initiate the investigation into Trump’s involvement. Unfortunately, the hearings happened well into Biden’s term. It’s as though Garland finally caved to public pressure to do something after the hearings concluded. Tragic.
Yes! The day that Garland was sworn, he should have taken the perps who asked Trump for pardons to a grand jury to ask them why.
Every time we had an incident, no matter how mundane, we had to file incident statements. Everyone at the capitol and white house should have been interviewed. My ex cousin, then acting US Atty, appeared on 60 minutes -- should have appeared on his own initiative at a grand jury.
It's Biden and Garland's fault. There's no one else to blame. They made they decision to do nothing about the greatest crime in American history for TWO YEARS. They would have tried to ignore it for 4 years if the January 6th Comittee hadn't literally forced their hand. It's completely indefensible.
Saying there was no one else to blame doesn't hold water. Because you can't blame anyone else, you find someone else to pin the blame on? Biden rightfully did not interfere. That would be a Trump move.
We aren't blaming Biden for not rushing Garland to indict Trump. We are blaming Biden for hiring Garland in the first place. Biden should have hired a junkyard prosecutor to prosecute the January 6th rioters or insurrectionists, if you prefer. The January 6th committee showed in 18 months how guilty Trump and so many others were in conspiring to overturn a completely lawful election. Really, how hard would it have been to form a Grand Jury or several Grand Juries and use the full force of the FBI to find enough evidence to indict and convict Trump and his henchmen of seditious conspiracy, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, conspiracy to defraud the government, insurrection, inciting violence against the government, and murder. Had they gone after the obvious head of the conspiracy, starting on January 21, 2021, Trump, Eastman, and Giuliani would have been indicted by August 2022 and convicted by August 2023.
He appointed him as some kind lane consolation prize from Garland not getting confirmed. It was Biden's worst decision and worst appointment. Unforgivably bad.
Rush to justice? Who was confused about what happened on January 6? No reason to defer on Trump while pursuing the case against Trump. Plenty of resources at DOJ.
"Blaming Biden for not having his AG rush to justice to indict trump is way out of line" -- there was MORE than sufficient evidence to charge DJT with numerous crimes (inc. emoluments) the morning of January 21, 2021. Why this was not done I'll never understand.
I recall that the Mueller Report identified some deferred but presumably prosecutable violations. I also recall that they were allowed to expire due to statute of limitations.
The Mueller Report identified four instances of prosecutable obstruction of justice. I can only surmise that Justice was afraid of going up against the GRU.
Yes, he was supposed too due January 6th, an unprecedented attack on the capitol by an enemy of the state. You cannot always rely on principle in the face of such treasonous behavior
Can we please not forget that everything in the Jack Smith report was public before the election and available to the American people, and that a conviction would not have per se disqualified him from running? I am not an apologist for Garland or Biden, but the responsibility here rests with the 43 Senators who voted to acquit in a case that would have disqualified him, despite most of them acknowledging he was guilty, hiding behind a specious jurisdictional argument and then virtually all of them endorsing him, and then the responsibility lay with the American people, who disregarded unequivocal evidence, well publicized, of his unfitness and disqualification had the Constitution been abided, and voted to return him to office.
Bingo! Jennifer, like too many other people, wants to blame Biden for everything. Well there's a majority in the Congress, on the supreme Court, in the media, and in the electorate that I would blame first. Oh, and the 444 voting members of the DNC.
Trump is president, not because of Biden's failures, but because of the failures of many many others.
Biden's letting Anita Hill hang out to dry greased the skids for Thomas, the worst of that SCOTUS scrum. He was worried about being labeled a racist for bringing out the rest of the witnesses against a spectacularly underqualified candidate in every respect, not just in his moral character. It's the same kind of cowardice that prevented him from laying down the law with Hunter, telling him to fuck off working for a Putin-stained oligarch as he's the current VP with that area as his assigned bailiwick.
And while we're at it, he was the ranking dude in that zone when ambassadors Tori Nuland and Pyatt are caught on tape literally treating the Ukrainian elections like a chess game -- no, a puppet game -- even with nicknames for the players. Fucking sickening, and what an amateur security botch, with the cherry on top being Nuland herself who is the wife of a New American Century neocon icon who, his own self, bears mega responsibility for the clusterfuck that is the current M.E. That was under Biden's watch, his bailiwick, in the same time frame as Hunter is heading to Burisma. That was Biden allowing a huge bullseye to be painted on Hunter, for target practice by the Putin-infected American Right. That was how Weiss leveraged Garland to name him SC, via the transparently bogus Smirnov fabrications that were made of whole, moth-eaten cloth, albeit cloth that Hunter provided by his mere presence in that theater of conflict.
Joe Biden was president. He is not God. The leadership and staff of the DNC and all the state parties, all the Democratic consultants, all the elected Democrats and the mass media all deserve a huge share of the blame. Omaba rolled back great reforms that Howard Dean had instituted at the DNC which led to the collapse of the Democratic party at the state level starting in 2010.
Democrats won't fix anything until they stop thinking that all is right with the world as long as there is a Democrat in the White House.
McConnell is one of the 43 Senators who voted to acquit on jurisdictional grounds, and he is one of the majority of them who acknowledged Trump was guilty, doing so right in the well of the Senate right after the vote, and as Majority Leader he held significant influence over his fellow GOP Senators, so yeah, he bears a lot of responsibility. But they all made their own decisions and 7 of the GOP Senators voted to convict, so I am not going to say McConnell bears any more responsibility than the others for Trump being permitted to be on the ballot. That is somewhat letting the others off the hook. All 43 of them are guilty. But the American voter bears final responsibility. Government of the people, by the people and for the people. We had the opportunity to exercise our collective responsibility as citizens and reject the traitor. We failed. If my apocalyptic scenarios come to pass, we will have no one but the collective “ourselves” to blame. As Ben Franklin is supposed to have said, it’s a republic, “if you can keep it.”
And then facilitates Trump getting a pick through in his last month. There was precedent for blocking an appt in the year of an election and none as well for confirming after the election (which he lost) an appt made in the last month before the election. I’m with those that assign a lot of responsibility to McConnell. He showed no commitment to democracy.
Of course others have agency. But McConnell was the leader. He could have led others in the GOP conference. If he believed a damn word he said in the well of the Senate (Instead of covering his own ass for posterity), he would have whipped the vote, and then voted to convict himself. He did neither. Like other leaders, the buck stops with him.
I'm pissed at the people who voted for Trump, too. I'm no longer under any illusions that they don't know exactly who he is, or they were too civically lazy to care. I'm struggling with a lot of emotions on how to deal with my own family in the future. But McConnell is a United States Senator who is supposed to deeply care about our Republic. He took an oath to defend it, unlike our fellow citizens. He is a shameful disgrace of a human being.
There are two parts of an impeachment. One removal from office and two preventing the convicted person from ever holding public office again. Since the House indicted Trump the 2nd time and the Senate voted on his impeachment a second time, both showed they had the authority to convict Trump and permanently remove him from eligibility to run for President again. If McConnell and the other 43 senators who voted to acquit on jurisdictional grounds really believed they lacked jurisdiction, why didn't they claim a point of order and demand a ruling on this supposed lack of jurisdiction?
Ruling from whom? The Senate is responsible for their own rules in an impeachment. I am not a parliamentarian, but a point of order ruling, I believe, would have been voted on by the entire body, and I believe would be a majority vote, which they would have lost, and it was something they did not want to lose. They wanted to acquit their fearless leader. So by waiting to use it as a basis to vote to acquit, it gave them political cover, and they accomplished what they wanted.
From the Senate Parliamentarian. Senate does have a parliamentarian to rule whether a some action is within the Senate rules. I agree it would have resulted in a vote by the entire Senate. If McConnell and others were so sure of their position, they should have demanded a vote. Losing a vote isn't necessarily bad, because it would have supported, even in losing, that they didn't think Congress could impeach an ex-President simply because he was no longer President. I don't for a second think the Senate doesn't have the authority to convict an ex-President if the House had impeached them.
I guess I am confused at the point you are making. The jurisdictional argument was specious. Very few reputable legal or constitutional scholars supported it. There was case law to refute it. McConnell and the others didn’t really believe they lacked jurisdiction. It was just the political cover argument they used to justify the vote they wanted to make, to acquit in the face of overwhelming evidence of guilt. And by not seeking a point of order or other ruling on its legitimacy, a vote they were sure to lose, they preserved their specious argument, voted to acquit their guilty as sin fearless leader, and had a talking point when interviewed on Fox.
He's an oath breaker who intentionally let Trump get away with an insurrection to avoid political pain and let the "Democrats take care of the son of a bitch for us." If he didn't want to do his duty to the country he should have resigned.
He's afraid of Trump and afraid of MAGA. He can burn in Hell with the other traitors as far as I'm concerned.
Exactly, John. And also, let us not forget the members of Congress on Jan. 6, 2021 who were ready to throw the election back to the states disregarding the will of the people.
This is the same thing Trump did in 2020. No verifiable facts establish anything other than the election was not rigged. Our candidate lost. Elections aren’t fair only when our candidate wins.
It's not the same at all. There is no proof that it wasn't rigged at the tabulator level, which means a hand recount. There was the richest man in the world doing blatant election interference, there were lots of bomb threats which left ballots unsupervised, there were burning ballot drop boxes, but most of all there was a candidate with his freedom from jail at stake and no scruples.
Post from an H1B X whistleblower which, if true, tells the story of criminal election interference, and must be shared, reported and investigated asap.
"a conviction would not have per se disqualified him from running" -- after SCOTUS granted POTUS king powers, Biden could have issued an executive order barring felons from running. He did not.
That is just not true. The qualifications are laid out in the Constitution and can’t be modified by EO. The immunity decision did not make the President a king. It insulates the individual broadly from criminal liability but it does not change the powers of the office.
Yeah, that's true. But he should have been convicted regardless because he committed what was literally the greatest crime against the United States ever carried out by an individual.
No argument from me. I just don’t like the suggestion that the failure to convict before the election is the reason we are about to enter the ninth circle of hell on Monday. It lets the Senators who voted to acquit off the hook and suggests that without a conviction he was a legitimate, normal candidate, a vote for whom was not a crime against humanity.
I always thought Merrick Garland would have made a first-rate Supreme Court Justice. It's why President Obama nominated him. But no one anticipated that Mitch McConnell would suddenly "rule" that Black presidents are entitled to only 3/5 of a term. President Biden is guilty of decency, in trying to rectify a great wrong done to Garland. Like many others, he failed to understand just how truly despicable the Republican Party had become. We all paid the price.
I can forgive a man for having faults and being a sinner. I can't forgive the GOP for abandoning their oaths to the Constitution and bowing down before a traitor.
A lifetime Judge is a poor choice for a prosecutor's seat. A Judge considers minutia, and is responsible for keeping tabs on what prosecutors and defendants are doing and saying, plus a relatively moderate amount of office work. Garland's office in the DC Circuit was something like 1,000 times smaller than the DOJ. That kind of organizational assimilation by Garland (regarding the nuts and bolts of the agency he's now running) must have been herculean, in and of itself.
But on top of that, he steps into the largest Constitutional crisis in the US since the Civil War, and he's facing the prosecution of the crimes and criminals involved that ignominy, the leader of which crime ring is attempting to supplant your own CEO.
Garland is a temperate jurist, in personality. A Judge is tasked with making sure the law is executed, as written, and that his/her proceedings are orderly and fair. The Courtroom is never very large, even at the Supreme Court, and media are tightly controlled and, largely, give wide berth to Judges.
A prosecutor, otoh, is tasked with investigating, charging and prosecuting possible criminal behavior, so you're under a microscope, and doing so (in this case) in the maelstrom that was and is our culture's fractured condition in the wake of the 2020 election and the J6 ignominy. The fact that Trump had incited a mob to attack the Capitol was fully in the public domain. But the J6 Committee unearthed the un-trumpeted fact, obtained via phone data, that the Trump cabal on the Elipse was actually planning at least days in advance of the J6 speech he made, doing so, i.e., it wasn't spontaneous or off the cuff. A good prosecutor who understood the stakes and the urgency of the moment, would have taken that and made headlines with it. It was J6 Malice aforethought, iow. They had the texts and emails.
I misstated Garland's being a lifetime judge. He did indeed have prosecutorial experience, including with the DoJ. My apologies.
He (and all of us) would have been well served by the driving of things with more urgency, and my point is that that's not a Judge's fallback M.O., it's a prosecutor's.
Should have written "career Judge." He'd been at it since '97, that was 23 years on the bench prior to becoming Biden's AG. It's a completely different mindset, despite both professions being under the rubric of the law. And the dude was at SSA retirement age when he got the nod, just about to get shunted to the DC Circuit's "senior judge" status.
All this wasn't Biden's fault or Garland's, primarily. But they both had their hands in making the fascists' jobs easier than they should have been.
Garland, let's not forget, prosecuted the Oklahoma City Bomber case. One could posit he’d be an ideal AG. While his office can be commended for prosecuting the J6ers, it’s a real head scratcher that he wasn’t aggressive in building the case against Trump and the others at the helm. We were told he was working systematically up the chain. It was thought that Garland must be working behind the scenes to develop the evidence to indict Trump. But as the days, months and years went on it became too difficult for his apologists to make those excuses. Biden’s fatal mistake was not replacing him. He was too caught up in demonstrating proper presidential protocol in the wake of Trump’s presidency.
How sorely I've missed Rubin's work since ditching WaPo many moons ago. Her columns were the only reason I held on there as long as I did, which was six months or a year longer than I should've.
I'm sure I won't agree with everything The Contrarian publishes -- I don't need or want an echo chamber -- but I sure am glad to have Jen's and Norm Eisen's clear, sharply analytical, unafraid voices added to the others from whom I already gain insight (Hubbell, Vance, Kuo, Reich among them).
Buckle up indeed. We're in a desperate fight for our country's core principles, and it's gonna be a long and dirty one, with much damage. The more voices we have speaking out, and the more we all can amplify those voices, the more effective we'll all be in that fight.
Biden should go down in history as a better POTUS than many now want to give him. Mistakes, sure. Believing in the 'norms' and 'values' that America has always stood for? Absolutely. A good, decent and honorable man? Definitely.
Unfortunately, right wing media and mainstream media are too lazy and preoccupied with "the spectacle" of trump than to actually do reporting and accurate analysis.
Joe Biden made mistakes but also accomplished a lot for our country and our democracy. as with Jimmy Carter and Joe Biden they accomplished much but getting no credit and then far too many people turn around and vote for a autocratic insurrectionist a traitor a felon unbelievably disgusting
I’m tired of Dem on Dem crime. Maybe the authors aren’t Democrats, but people will use these talking points to pick apart Democrats instead of focusing on the real problems: Republicans and financed, malignant propaganda. We tend to forget context of the recent past with our short attention spans. Biden stood for decency as his guiding principle in a hot sea of goo. Give the man a break. With his steadiness, we bypassed our inherent conflicts. Now that “civil war” among us, propagated by our enemies, is breaking out like a pimple.
Anita Hill, AUMF, not diving on re-establishing the assault weapons ban after Bush left, countenancing his son working for an oligarchic Russian-enmeshed petrocorp while he was f'n VP...that's all also part of his legacy.
Sorry, I don’t have the stomach to go further, like into actual Gropegate. And that doesn't even cover his office being run like Fineman's was, in her denoument. He has to go to bed at 8, for crissake. Harris should have been handed the tiller, probably years ago.
And the Afghan withdrawal? Acting like he was bound by an agreement with a terror org, an agreement which had already abrogated by them. Like he was not the CiC. What a lame, blame shifting move.
Yep…Biden had some screw ups(who hasn’t?)BUT I ALWAYS felt that the things he did he did for ALL Americans. Trump thinks of one person and one person only…HIMSELF.
I have felt far safer under Biden's leadership than I ever did--and ever will--under Donald's fat, greasy thumb.
I live too close to DC not give thanks, at least once in a while, "I'm glad those fighter jets/Ospreys are on my side." Now it will be..."at least, I think they are..." Donald and his friends want to play with our nation and our lives. Hang on, friends.
"Garland’s obsession with procedural niceties at the expense of basic principles of equal justice has rendered him among the worst (certainly the most foolish) attorneys general."
I'm afraid this is what Biden will be remembered for more than all the good things he did for four years. (And not dropping out of the 2024 race earlier to allow for an open primary to help promote democracy and a single candidate before the very end.)
I think Dems would have lost anyway even with a full primary. They do not understand messaging or building a narrative around Republican failures. They want you to read pages and pages of policy papers to understand their positions instead of going with something like republicans are the reason why everything in your house says “Made in China”. Why have they not spent the last 20 years explaining the failures is trickle down economics?
Biden was a fantastic president, but he also couldn’t figure out an easy to understand message on his accomplishments. Who thought”The Inflation Reduction Act” was a good title? All it does is force Dems to use the word inflation over and over again.
Now with the L.A. fires the Dems are mainly MIA again while Republicans are all over the TV spreading false info with barely any pushback. We should have entire party out there taking down the lies and talking about red state socialism and red state Hurricanes.
The failures aren’t just about Biden. It’s a party problem. Garland is no different than Chuck Schumer. It’s all about niceties, bipartisanship no one asked for and being totally useless while the country literally burns to the ground.
Dems need a rapid response team that is working 24/7 to push out the truth on policies. That means anticipating lies and half truths and distortions and getting that information in the hands of all supporters so we all can be a truth squad.
That's what I'm starting to lay the ground for with my Substack. This is not rocket science just basic common sense management. The fact that I have to do that is a huge indictment of the Democratic party leadership .. national and state level.
A few days ago the DNC launched factpostnews on social media.
It’s the KamalaHQ social media team. We’ll see what happens. This needs to be in conjunction with the entire party.
I’m convinced that everyone in the Republican Party gets a one page sheet with talking points. Every Senator, Congress person, opinion, writer, pundit, consultant, etc. reads from that same one page sheet while they do radio shows, cable news hits, podcasts, and on and on. They all repeat the same phrases millions of times.
Dems have nothing like that. They’ll launch something on social media and then think that’s all they need to do.
I agree with the sentiment. The Democrats need to start with values, then frame the issues to reflect their values, and then make policy.
Biden did a good job with policy (in most areas), and a terrible job on the first two. The party similarly gets it all backward. They start with policy, or even worse they only do policy without indicating the values that tie all of that policy together.
The only thing I disagree with is that the Inflation Reduction Act was a bad name. It got good policy passed into law. I agree with you that the framing of the values was not good and the title doesn't help. I'm not sure it passes without that title though.
It does say "reduce" after "inflation". I don't think that the title is a problem. I am sure that Republicans claimed that they voted for popular parts of the law just as they did with the Infrastructure bill.
And all people heard was the word inflation. All of the various things Biden did, inflation reduction act, chips act etc should have been under one big umbrella with a bold catchy name. The Big New Deal or whatever. Most people have no idea what the Chips act even is. They scan headlines and that’s about it. Republicans know this which is why they can so brazenly take credit for things they actually voted against. Democrats think Americans read the New Yorker when in reality they just read the headline on the cover of the New York post. Most Americans read at a sixth grade level. Republicans understand that and democrats absolutely do not.
"republicans are the reason why everything in your house says “Made in China” -- globalization was a project under several presidents (notably Clinton) and it not only raised the SOL in China and SE Asia, it also helped prevent any major wars between 1945-2022.
Biden needs to do 3 things before he keaves office.1 / Make 1 single phone call and add the ERA to tge bill of rights. 38 states have now ratified. That doesn't change losing the right to Abortion; but it's a start.
2/ Pardon everyone who worked to see Trump brought to justics.
Blanket that Bitc#!
3/ Release the 2nd part of the Jack Smith Report! He has immunity!! 47 is a clear & present danger that he did not deal with righteously....expose the jerk. He EARNED IT!
Yes! He could direct the archivist to publish the ERA before he leaves. That could perhaps make restitution for his treatment of Anita Hill (I have a LONG memory) and his key role in putting Clarence Thomas on the Supreme Court.
"2/ Pardon everyone who worked to see Trump brought to justice." The presidential pardon has almost unlimited power, I believe(?) he could preemptively pardon the Jan 6 Committee and everyone who testified before it. If he fails to protect them, they will be punished.
I think history will be contesting between a cynical view of Biden predominantly for his role in leading to Trump’s re-election and the view of how his policies have positively affected America and the world, hopefully the latter perspective can prevail
Great men and women throughout history have had to battle their egos. Some have won, most have lost. Biden did great things for our country and gave us hope over the past four years. But his ego has been his undoing. Term limits and age restrictions for all three branches need to be put into place; however, that will never happen.
For as long as I live, admittedly with more years behind me than ahead, Merrick Garland, along with Mitch McConnell will forever be on my 💩 list.
The could, woulda, shoulda’s, are just staggering. The if only’s can break your heart.
Biden did a lot of good things while he was president. However, his failure to act may be the legacy that shadows all of that.
Blessings to America. She’s gonna need them.
I have been stating for a while that Biden was asleep for the first 2 or 3 years on the border. My fellow democrats (I’m not really democrat I’m non partisan) castigated me on Joyce Vance and Heather Richardson blogs whenever I stated this but I’m redeemed here. Every time I ask someone why they voted for Trump, only one response comes back; the border. Ok, it was the border if not in fact then in optics. But it was factual he did nothing for at least two years. Boy, do I feel like I have a home here.
The reason so many have critized me is easy to understand. We think in like-minded pods. If everyone says something, everyone agrees no matter what the facts are. Same with MAGA well, worse with MAGA but we are infected with a similar disease: the disease of conformity.
He did address the border. Illegal crossings were down. Congress had a bipartisan bill he was ready to sign, and then Trump told the Republicans to dump it.
See this is what I don't understand. Border crossings were down over Trump. No President is perfect. We have the best economy in years. He doesn't get credit for the good. Media focuses on everything but that. I'm disappointed in media and papers, etc. They have failed us.
The media rarely gives credit to Dems who are in office. How often have you heard anyone in the media point out that under Clinton Democrats not only balanced the budget but also had a healthy budget surplus that was being used to pay down the debt so future needs (like the coming temporary shortfall in the SS trust fund)could be easily paid for? The media had obsessed over the debt, repeatedly reporting the countdown of the debt clock of doom, but they ignored the Clinton surplus.
Their blatant double standard was plain to see when Gore ran against Bush. Gore strongly advocated for continuing to pay down the debt with the surplus; Bush explicitly criticized the surplus and vowed that he would destroy it with tax cuts. The media gave Bush a pass for not caring about the debt because he was “more fun to have a beer with”.
As we have all seen the media doesn’t care about debt when it is caused by Republicans cutting taxes on the wealthy — taxes that add little to our economy. The media only cares about debt when Democrats spend on investments in our country and on the welfare of ordinary Americans.
That is because the media is largely owned by very rich folk who lean very much to the right--because of those tax cuts. Greed is killing this country.
I used to think I would suffer from brain fog for the rest of my life..."𝐛𝐮𝐭" this changed everything.... https://t.co/7vw6IVQMYM
👆👆👆🎯
I agree that Biden should have replaced Garland. That should have been done within the first year. This, unlike claims about the border, is straightforward. Sadly, claims that Biden did nothing to help the border situation are mired in misinformation. Yes, he could have made it a central project earlier. But, that would have taken political capital away from his (remarkably successful) efforts to provide that soft economic landing. And, although the incoming administration promises to destroy as much of the nation's economic gains as possible, those gains are important. Given that many voters did not recognize how much they had gained economically during Biden's presidency, I expect they wouldn't have recognized anything he attempted regarding the border. In fact, the conversation here illustrates that problem. It may be simply perception, but perception matters. I don't know what can be done about the American refusal to accept, and blatant hostility to, inconvenient information. In this sense, Biden suffered from a similar problem as Carter.
The Supreme Court deliberately slow walked their disastrous decision on presidential immunity. They deserve a huge chunk of the blame along with Garland and Biden.
Because of what they exist to do—interpret the LAW impartially—SCOTUS is the biggest disappointment of all. They have enabled and protected a criminal—directly in opposition to their mission. Yes, Garland tarried (although remember it took awhile to get confirmed, the tfg supporting members of the DOJ failed to brief him, and when he did act, he faced obstacles placed in his path by tfg-adjacent holdovers (who might have been implicated themselves). But the worst, and btw corrupt, actors of all are, astonishingly, the United States Supreme Court.
Yes, the Unholy Triad.
Biden's cognitive disability kept him from making any rational decisions. Ironically, people were pointing out his decline prior to 2020 and during his first 3.5 years as president. People like Rubin, others in the media, and democrat party members chose to turn a blind eye to reality. The Defenders of Democracy chose not to invoke the 25th Amendment. Instead they chose a coup that was bound to fail.
On a different note, Tarla, please tell me what I gained economically during a cognitive impaired president's presidency. Please be specific. Did my income increase? Did my personal taxes decrease? Did the cost of running my business decrease? Did my food prices go down? Did my energy costs decrease? Please what did I fail to recognize?
Stonewall, so you think Biden could control the cost of your tomatoes? And did you know that in 2020 leading into 2021, no one was on the roads. Driving down my express way was a wonderful experience with hardly any traffic. And no car driving means low gas prices. You sound like you are throwing everything you got at Biden. Ae you by chance a MAGA in disguise?
Sorry to butt in, Bill, but, yes, Biden could control the cost of tomatoes. To save the entire economy, the Biden admin. enacted "stimulus programs". They poured huge amounts of money into the economy and saved many small businesses who were dropping like flies because customers could not leave their homes to buy things. They gave huge amounts of money to American consumers because they knew American consumers would rush to spend it. (Online shopping blew up as a result.) The consumer economy restarted, and because the country was flush with money to spend, the price of tomatoes rose. We got inlation, but our US consumer economy didn't die. I think I would have made the same choice as the Biden admin. did.
Bill, you failed in your attempt to answer the question and in your attempt to be sarcastic. If you care to discuss the finer points of the impact of economic policy on the cost of goods, please let me know.
Like "ad hominem" arguments much, Bill?
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🤬🤬🤬
Yes? You want to say something? Go ahead. Which part of my comment do you disagree with and why?
No. No. No. For at least 2 years he sat on his fricken hands and maybe 3 years. Read this piece again. But you prove my argument that like-minded in the same pod dare not think independently; Dare not be a contrarian. And... and... I have quizzed several folks why they voted for Trump. All said "the border."
Define 'addressing the border'. Sara just showed you one way that he did. Another was to work with Mexico on keeping people from reaching the border.
I don’t need to convince you, Nana Booboo. Read the commentary, please.
Bill, Nana Booboo and I, in the spirit of The Contrarian debate, have in fact read the commentary and dare to disagree with it.
You do actually need to convince us if you want to change our minds.
I am not convinced that Biden is to blame as you and Rubin claim he is. Not only does the argument and its evidence miss the point and contradict itself, but it is irrelevant to what we must now focus on to protect us from fascism.
Oh no, a white man from the FOX News disinformation bubble said something and somebody made a fact-based challenge, so now he's all upset and projected his bubble onto the people who didn't worship him unquestioningly!
😹
All the folks you talk to are in their own FOX News bubble. But you think reality is a bubble.
No these are often people that can vote either way not unlike myself but I only voted for a Republican once for Gerald Ford and I later realized my mistake when I was young and stupid. Just like those young men who were successfully pitched on social media, the poison of the ages.
Amazing how people want to point out prisoners of echo chambers when they themselves are imprisoned in their own darkened cell with sound reverberating off the prison walls.
Illegal border crossings surged early in his term, and were down late in his term. https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-12-31/year-end-border-crossings-lowest-seen-in-biden-administration.
He gave VP Harris the job of determining the *root causes* of the surge, a role which was poorly understood by the public—and got the title "Border Czar" slapped on her by the right, and it stuck. Moreover, Harris did not make the obligatory visit to the border, dressed in khakis and wearing military boots, until political pressure forced it. Optics count.
And in an interview with Lester Holt on NBC on June 6, Harris was asked, "Do you have any plans to visit to the border?", and she responded with, "We are going to the border, we've been to the border." Holt pressed her further, "YOU haven't been to the border," and she admitted that she hadn't, flippantly saying, "And I haven't been to Europe."
Biden's and Harris' poor communications during his administration allowed Republicans to control the dialogue. This is why so many people thought that the economy was terrible, that we had an "open border," illegal immigrants were murdering countless Americans, eating their pets, and that America was in serious decline. None of that was true, but MAGA lies dominated the media, and MSM didn't press back enough, if at all, against these lies.
And the bipartisan border bill that Trump got Republicans to dump was not an initiative by Biden; it came as a result of Speaker Mike Johnson insisting on one before any more money would be allocated to Ukraine and Israel. https://apnews.com/article/congress-ukraine-border-security-zelenskyy-bf932727abd5e8ff3cf5c9c848a3cf78. And that bill was ready in February 2024—three years into Biden's term.
As the commentary said, the border was part of Biden's downfall because he failured to prioritize it from the beginning.
When Harris was tasked with going to Central America, I kept asking myself… no not just myself, I think I sent a letter to the president but I was hopeful that she and the president would announce a Marshall-like plan. That is the only solution. It doesn’t take a brain surgeon. And you don’t want me in the operating room with a scalpel. Why? Who knows. Central American nations need stability. We could have at least initiated the conversation. That’s how you resolve border issues not building stupid walls. I would like to have had a tiny office in the White House and have Joe visit me to ask, “Well, what to you think should we give in to Putin to avoid a catastrophic war?” Yes Mr. President, just say no NATO and avoid all out war. Later maybe in 10 years or after the little Russian mad man is history we can revisit membership.”
President Biden: “Bill, I’m glad you were hired. Stay the course we need your far-sighted ideas. Ya, I like the Marshall Plan for Central America.”
Ha ha, interesting fantasy. I agree that Biden should have put more skin in the game. I actually felt sorry for Harris when he gave her that assignment, because 1) He was handing off the problem to her, 2) Her role would be misunderstood, i.e., to figure out the root causes of the surge and fix it (as the Border Czar), and 3) She was set up for failure, because...see #1.
I don't agree, however, with our withdrawing from NATO, but Trump will probably grant your wish. The problem with NATO, in my view, is that it expanded unnecessarily. Everytime they added a country, Putin felt more threatened and behaved more aggressively; it was predictable. Withdraw now, and Putin smells weakness and opportunity. I don't think it would prevent war, but lead to one and we'd inevitably be pulled into it, but in this case from a less strategic position. It would then probably become catastrophic because there would be nuclear weapons involved.
No you mist understand. Prevent war was the best option. Now in war, all the way you can’t stop now but we will under Trump. Trump doesn’t give a F about anything. He summarily withdrew troops supporting our only Kurd allies in Syria remember?
More skin in the game? Biden didnt have two brain cells to rub together, let alone enough skin for the game. White folks here trade in slingin opinion hash. Very few are capable of dealing with fact and truth. Most wouldn't recognize either one if they walked up and bit em on the backside. In fact, it took 3.5 years and one little o debate to finally wake a few out of their slumber. Wait! What? Biden really IS senile? Why are we just finding this out now? Talk about 'sudden panic syndrome'. White folks were all in a dither. Oh no! We gotta throw Biden under the bus or we gonna lose this election.
Made me laugh. Yep you lost the election yugely. You lost the House, you lost the Senate, you lost the popular vote. You lost more black vote, more hispanic vote. All because you stuck your heads in the sand and repeated what the media like Rubin and Eisen told you to repeat. And lots o folks continue to repeat what they were told. Now your repeating more nonsense. Trump isn't withdrawing from NATO. Pull your head outta o the sand!!!
WOW!
You're dead wrong. And ironically, had your hero, Joe Biden, or his shill, been elected, you might have had the opportunity to take thar literally. Of course, you can accept that.
I can see you’re not here to add anything coherent or thoughtful to the conversation.
And, in fairness, there was a major economic and public health crisis going on during the 1st two years that required majority of attention…….
Oh, you mean the fake pandemic you've been using to bash Trump's spending the last term of his presidency. The same pandemic caused by Tony Fauci who remains protected by the Biden cabal. You weren't vaxxed by any chance, were you. Have you seen the Pfizer list of side effects that was recently released. You might want to read it and bang it against the symptoms you're experiencing.
Hey Terry, I’m a RN, retired now, but I LIVED through 2020 when we were using refrigeration trucks as temporary morgues because so many people were dying that we didn’t have to space in the hospital. I LIVED through the corpulent Caligula pitting states against each other in desperate bids to get equipment. You got it depending on how well you kissed his ass. Our governor at the time, Charlie Baker had a plane full of equipment confiscated by trumpenstein for god knows what. When we were desperate to get our hands on point of care testing, he sent tests and testing equipment to his good buddy Putin. So, please don’t say shit about a once in a lifetime pandemic that you know nothing about. A million people died. I’ve wondered how many might have been saved if he didn’t throw Obama’s pandemic handbook in the garbage.
And don’t get me started on vaccination. MRNA vaccine had been studied for almost 25 years, it wasn’t a new concept. If that tangerine tyrant did ANYTHING right it was to dump money into vaccine development.
"Corpulent Caligula." Oh! Very well expressed!
I wish I could take credit, but I read it someplace else.
Pain, redness, or swelling at the site where the shot was administered, and/or tiredness, headache, muscle pain, chills, fever, or nausea throughout the rest of the body.
I took this right off the Pfizer website. It took about 3 seconds to find. And these side effects? Pretty common with any vaccine.
Anyone using the term "fake pandemic" is so grossly delusional that they should institutionalized.
Terry, assuming your comment is meant to be serious, it reads like satire - trite satire at that. Same old…
This explains why a current leader sometimes does not continue the same as the previous one. From my book, "Donald's Vanity Tantrums."
What Some Ancient Rulers Have in Common with Trump
During ancient Egyptian dynasties, monarchs often defaced or destroyed statues representing the previous ruler to erase the reputation and deeds of the former ruler. Sometimes damage was limited to facial disfigurement as with Pharaoh Senwosrett III (1878-1840 BC) whose nose was broken off because ancients believed that the life force emanates through the nose.
Trump shares this goal when renegotiating and tearing up Clinton and Obama-era treaties.
NAFTA is one such remake that removes Clinton’s name from the global trade agreement. As Politico writer Adam Behsudi quotes Lori Wallace, director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch said, “For those who trusted Trump’s pledge to make NAFTA ‘much better’ for working people, it’s a punch in the face because the proposal describes TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership) or any other same-old, same-old trade deal.” There are no improvements -- only the removal of the Obama legacy and any other former president’s name.
This symbolic effigy-smashing of Obama extends to the Iran Nuclear Deal, to recertify to Congress every 90 days that the Iranians are complying with the rules; the Paris Climate Agreement; The Affordable Healthcare Act and all other agreements that Obama successfully negotiated regarding the environment and human rights.
In the land that I call home, tens of millions of Americans who couldn’t tell the difference between shit and Shinola, resulting in the election of a malevolent quasi-life form that makes George W. seem like Jesus, Moses, and George Washington rolled into one. Maybe our next president, if we are still electing presidents that is, will take cues from Trump and the ancients as well. A good start would be to remove any future White House portrait of him that might eventually be installed.
I'm a student of history as well. It's grim how all this (gestures) progresses in an almost predictable fashion.
I feel your pain ........ Like the proverbial lemmings, controlled by an inscrutable switch. I think everyone on both sides is holding on by the ends of their nearly insufficient fingernails to a world that is moving too fast, a world of instant communications and instant consequences. that leaves no time for broader considerations. That process is most likely to mainifest the most fundamental of human instincts - for better and for worse.
Mr Katz
I hate to inform you but EVERY industrialized country (for example Europe) has border problems !!!!!!! What’s new? Get real and focus on the things that matters the most like pay increases ( here in Europe I wish I had that), lower inflation (wish I had that too), more jobs available! Wish I had the kind of army like US to defend my country. The list goes on. It’s only you who suffer tunnel vision!! Get to the source of the matter rather that believing your influencer.
America wake up! Be like Romania and reject this Putin look alike
Jean, what I try to explain is that yes, most or all countries have border problems. But I’m viewing it in a political sense. If one side is able to use lax border enforcement and most often it’s the far right, the ugly nationalists at work the the other side must or should take some of he wind out of their sails. That’s all I’m saying. Look at what happened to the UK. Now Holland. Potentially France and Germany. Hungry.
Seriously, Biden allowed the border to get out of control. Too little too late. The endless buses of migrants from TX courtesy of Gov. Abbott to sanctuary cities went on forever.
Those buses should have been confiscated by cities and made it a legal issue,
Agreed, Linda. Garland took until November of 2022 just to name Jack Smith. Legal scholars such as Lawrence Tribe, his constitutional law prof at Harvard Law, openly wondered regularly on Twitter why Garland wasn't acting sooner. He wasted a good year if not longer, time that could have been used to get him to trial. And remember, the House Jan 6th Committee was conducting a public investigation during the first 2 years -- was the DoJ out to lunch?
I have the utmost respect for Joe Biden and his accomplishment, but that is one issue I'll never get over.
DOJ was doing something before Jack smith appt….something like 1500 citizens investigated, tried, and convicted for involvement with Jan 6……just sayin’…
But he did not go for the ringleader for two years. That gave him all the wiggle room that the orange traitor needed to run out the clock.
Yes, but again, it took nearly 2 years to name Garland. And, in less than a week, it's quite possible every Jan 6 conviction will be pardoned, so that time will have been unproductive considering the one who got away.
The one that got away. Mobey Dick. The man, the myth, the legend!
I think Garland was either a plant or compromised. Those are the only two reasons that make sense of his inactions.
Definitely a plant. Barack had em everywhere in the Biden Administration. Obama was pullin all the strings while poor old Joe was defecating in his diapers and drooling down his bib. Makes you wonder why Obama delayed? And then to see Barack being chummy with Trump at Carter's (may he rest in peace) funeral service. What is going on there?
"of all the words of tongue or pen. The saddest are these it might have been." Whittier 1856
President Biden has done some great things but did it mightily when he failed.
I love that quote. It's melancholy in just the right way and captures the tragedy of Biden's presidency.
I agree. And it applies here perfectly.
You’ve already said the same words I use in comments all the time. “Coulda, woulda, shoulda, what if and if only”. Those few words will kill the soul. One just can’t live there without building up a lot of fulminating regret.
I contend the most potent and consequential was the use of the word, "Shoulda". As in "Biden never shoulda run again". His pride, arrogance, and selfishness put Trump back into the White House. I blame JIll, too.
I despised Garland for being a gutless coward but I have come to suspect that it is so much worse than that as he is actually tacitly working for Trump and MAGA?
Check out this article that accuses Garland of being a nefarious actor not a flaccid coward.
https://sarahkendzior.substack.com/p/servants-of-the-mafia-state?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&triedRedirect=true
Please add Lindsey Graham to your list.
stop trolling
If only there were a block button.
There is. Click on the commenter’s name and you’ll see an opportunity to do that. You can also click on the three dots to the right of Beth’s name (which I did) to report spam
Please keep posting these instructions. We don't need bots and morons in this conversation. We need informed comments.
🧐 you don't say… has this always existed? I've posed questions before asking how to block someone and gotten no response.
Not sure if it’s always been an option, probably.. I haven’t needed to block anyone on other substack subscriptions. This one has right off the bat attracted spammers and trolls.
Joe Biden is the best president of my lifetime! We will protect his legacy by undermining Trump. Here is how government workers like me will subvert Project 2025 MAGAt fascism: https://democracydefender2025.substack.com/p/resisting-project-2025-from-within-government
Biden has 5 days to stand up. Trump is illigitimate and our country was attacked by Russian psyops. We just lost the cold war. It's an emergency
"Russian psyops" that manifested as Fox disinformation that bamboozled enough low-info voters to put the mole back in office. Putin has conquered America without firing a shot.
Not just Fox disinformation. It was also social media and email. In the three weeks leading up to the election, one of my email accounts (one that I use exclusively for accounts at relatively unimportant Websites, so it receives a fair amount of junk) received a THOUSAND pro-Trump or anti-Harris spam messages. The sending of each and every one of them constituted a crime.
In comparison, in that same period of time, that email account received ZERO pro-Harris or anti-Trump spam messages.
The Internet was hit with a firehose of pro-Trump garbage leading up to the election.
...most of which was from Russian bots. Yes, it was not just Fox disinformation, but a lot of their "news" came from the Internet Research Agency, the Russian troll farm that also flooded social media.
Is there not SOME way we could cut down on the penetration of the Russian bots into our digital feeds?
Yes. AI could be used to fact-check social media posts and label falsehoods/misleading posts.
See if this fits: H1B immigrants working at X told to use AI to influence election
https://theconcernedbird.substack.com/p/elon-musks-and-xs-role-in-2024-election
Please people, read this link. If true, it makes enormous sense and it needs to be shared, amplified, quickly. Also reported to all investigative fed agencies and nonprofits.
Propaganda works, sad but true.
But if the whistleblower is telling the truth, this kind of election interference is a crime, and all the more because there was also foreign involvement. There’s been a lot of speculation that this went on.
Take a look at https://www.thenumbersarewrong2024.com/
Yeah I've wondered about that. Trump had about 34% support among die hard MAGA Republicans, and another 7% among soft supporters. He never polled above 41% in any national poll. Yet somehow he got 49.9% of the 2024 vote? Why did he tell his rallies he didn't need their votes? Did he know something we didn't?
And you didn't even mention how he had Musk funding election interference, and they had a couple years to look at the internals of the voting machines due to a lawsuit, and lots of incentive to win (stay out of jail). Rogan also said Musk knew the results 4 hours before, through some app on his phone. Musk also told Carlson he'd go to jail if Trump didn't win, and in the interview his kid was saying things like "they'll never know" and "sh, don't tell".
Greg Palast reports that millions of ballots were rejected and voters purged for bogus reasons, such as being black.
Do click on
https://theconcernedbird.substack.com/p/elon-musks-and-xs-role-in-2024-election
too.
If this H1B whistleblower is telling the truth, it needs to be broadly shared and gotten to fed agencies and investigative nonprofits asap.
Exactly
A good article and a great President. Unfortunately he is just too old and I am also almost his age.
Is Trump young? He is a few years younger and has a family history of alzhemeirs. His sister just died last year of it and his father died in his 90's due to the complications of it. Biden was aging and had normal aging ailments. Chuck Grassley is 91 and still working in the senate and not doing anything positive for the average american. I would take Biden for four more years over Trump in a minute.
The gqp did the same thing with reagan. Unfit for service but propped up to sign what was needed. Beyond disgusted.
Unfortunately, the GOP are experts at ramming b.s. narratives into the mediasphere, and that drives overall public opinion. The Dems still haven't learned this and never could counter the old tag - and it didn't help that Biden was hardly visible or accessible to media.
I've long believed that Project 2025 will let Trompe last for a year or so, call for the 25th Amendment, get him out and install JD Vance to complete his term. Then they'll run Vance in 2028.
There won't be a 2028.
I couldn’t say that with that degree of certainty, but I tend toward that view. I have at least some hope that there will still be a 2026, and that their policies will be so unpopular by then that there will be a much larger than usual turnout for a midterm so that a Democratic Congress will try to put some serious brakes on Trump/Musk/Vance.
We can't let ourselves believe that...we must fight the good fight, no matter the outcome.
Very true!
I wholeheartedly agree.
I also agree with you that Trump is too old and also deranged! We need younger, competent people to run for office.
On Jan 20, Trump will try to emasculate all of the agencies he feels gave him trouble as # 45. Whereas SCOTUS would not permit him to declare an emergency in the DACA case, they since give a president virtually unlimited power. If he declares a national emergency, we can kiss democracy goodbye.
and he will declare a national emergency and so use the US military on US citizens. Probably beyond too
I'm afraid you are correct. And Peter Hegseth, at his confirmation hearing today, refused to rule out obeying illegal orders.
That is exactly what I fear. United States Armed Forces ordered to quell trump's adversaries.
Unfortunately, there are too many MAGA's in uniform that can't wait to be turned loose against "lefties".
Ask the people still alive in Gaza if they think Genocide Joe is the best president of their lifetime.
.Blaming Biden for not having his AG rush to justice to indict trump is way out of line. Was Biden supposed to weaponize his AG similar to what we fear trump will do. Critics can second guess Garland, but lets not forget, if not for McConnell, Garland would be a sitting SCOTUS judge
I agree that Garland was too cautious, but I also think that Biden was nit going to make moves that would give the MAGATS more fuel to accuse him of persecuting Trump.
Congress held hearings into the Jan 6 insurrection. I wish that Garland had used those hearings to act faster.
He did use those hearings to initiate the investigation into Trump’s involvement. Unfortunately, the hearings happened well into Biden’s term. It’s as though Garland finally caved to public pressure to do something after the hearings concluded. Tragic.
Yes! The day that Garland was sworn, he should have taken the perps who asked Trump for pardons to a grand jury to ask them why.
Every time we had an incident, no matter how mundane, we had to file incident statements. Everyone at the capitol and white house should have been interviewed. My ex cousin, then acting US Atty, appeared on 60 minutes -- should have appeared on his own initiative at a grand jury.
It's Biden and Garland's fault. There's no one else to blame. They made they decision to do nothing about the greatest crime in American history for TWO YEARS. They would have tried to ignore it for 4 years if the January 6th Comittee hadn't literally forced their hand. It's completely indefensible.
Saying there was no one else to blame doesn't hold water. Because you can't blame anyone else, you find someone else to pin the blame on? Biden rightfully did not interfere. That would be a Trump move.
I don't know if you understand how things are done in politics. He could have worked behind the scenes. And I agree Garland was the worst AG ever.
Garland had integrity, was just a little feckless. John Mitchell, Ed Meese, Bill Barr (both times), Alberto Gonzales. All decidedly worse.
Absolutely the worst ever. He's dead last on the list. A useless and damaging AG.
Politics should have nothing to do with justice.
REALLY?? Worse than Harry Daugherty? Worse than John Mitchell? I don't think so.
They hold the most blame by far.
We aren't blaming Biden for not rushing Garland to indict Trump. We are blaming Biden for hiring Garland in the first place. Biden should have hired a junkyard prosecutor to prosecute the January 6th rioters or insurrectionists, if you prefer. The January 6th committee showed in 18 months how guilty Trump and so many others were in conspiring to overturn a completely lawful election. Really, how hard would it have been to form a Grand Jury or several Grand Juries and use the full force of the FBI to find enough evidence to indict and convict Trump and his henchmen of seditious conspiracy, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, conspiracy to defraud the government, insurrection, inciting violence against the government, and murder. Had they gone after the obvious head of the conspiracy, starting on January 21, 2021, Trump, Eastman, and Giuliani would have been indicted by August 2022 and convicted by August 2023.
He appointed him as some kind lane consolation prize from Garland not getting confirmed. It was Biden's worst decision and worst appointment. Unforgivably bad.
Rush to justice? Who was confused about what happened on January 6? No reason to defer on Trump while pursuing the case against Trump. Plenty of resources at DOJ.
"Blaming Biden for not having his AG rush to justice to indict trump is way out of line" -- there was MORE than sufficient evidence to charge DJT with numerous crimes (inc. emoluments) the morning of January 21, 2021. Why this was not done I'll never understand.
I recall that the Mueller Report identified some deferred but presumably prosecutable violations. I also recall that they were allowed to expire due to statute of limitations.
The Mueller Report identified four instances of prosecutable obstruction of justice. I can only surmise that Justice was afraid of going up against the GRU.
Yep. Cowardice to epic level.
If not for the Dems losing the Senate when Obama was POTUS Garland would be on the SCOTUS bench.
That wasn't the first time Dems enough didnt show up when the stakes were high...and as we just saw in November, that happened again...
Yes, he was supposed too due January 6th, an unprecedented attack on the capitol by an enemy of the state. You cannot always rely on principle in the face of such treasonous behavior
I think you should reread what you just posted...abandon principle?
Perhaps principal is the wrong word but he sure messed up
Who messed up? Biden? How? Explain.
Can we please not forget that everything in the Jack Smith report was public before the election and available to the American people, and that a conviction would not have per se disqualified him from running? I am not an apologist for Garland or Biden, but the responsibility here rests with the 43 Senators who voted to acquit in a case that would have disqualified him, despite most of them acknowledging he was guilty, hiding behind a specious jurisdictional argument and then virtually all of them endorsing him, and then the responsibility lay with the American people, who disregarded unequivocal evidence, well publicized, of his unfitness and disqualification had the Constitution been abided, and voted to return him to office.
We have met the enemy and he is us.
Bingo! Jennifer, like too many other people, wants to blame Biden for everything. Well there's a majority in the Congress, on the supreme Court, in the media, and in the electorate that I would blame first. Oh, and the 444 voting members of the DNC.
Trump is president, not because of Biden's failures, but because of the failures of many many others.
Biden's letting Anita Hill hang out to dry greased the skids for Thomas, the worst of that SCOTUS scrum. He was worried about being labeled a racist for bringing out the rest of the witnesses against a spectacularly underqualified candidate in every respect, not just in his moral character. It's the same kind of cowardice that prevented him from laying down the law with Hunter, telling him to fuck off working for a Putin-stained oligarch as he's the current VP with that area as his assigned bailiwick.
And while we're at it, he was the ranking dude in that zone when ambassadors Tori Nuland and Pyatt are caught on tape literally treating the Ukrainian elections like a chess game -- no, a puppet game -- even with nicknames for the players. Fucking sickening, and what an amateur security botch, with the cherry on top being Nuland herself who is the wife of a New American Century neocon icon who, his own self, bears mega responsibility for the clusterfuck that is the current M.E. That was under Biden's watch, his bailiwick, in the same time frame as Hunter is heading to Burisma. That was Biden allowing a huge bullseye to be painted on Hunter, for target practice by the Putin-infected American Right. That was how Weiss leveraged Garland to name him SC, via the transparently bogus Smirnov fabrications that were made of whole, moth-eaten cloth, albeit cloth that Hunter provided by his mere presence in that theater of conflict.
What a shit show.
Biden made huge mistakes and handed the keys right back know to Trump. Thinking he could do a second term was insane.
Joe Biden was president. He is not God. The leadership and staff of the DNC and all the state parties, all the Democratic consultants, all the elected Democrats and the mass media all deserve a huge share of the blame. Omaba rolled back great reforms that Howard Dean had instituted at the DNC which led to the collapse of the Democratic party at the state level starting in 2010.
Democrats won't fix anything until they stop thinking that all is right with the world as long as there is a Democrat in the White House.
McConnell bears more responsibility for the mess we're in than anyone. Turns out the "Grand Parliamentarian" was nothing but a gutless coward.
McConnell is one of the 43 Senators who voted to acquit on jurisdictional grounds, and he is one of the majority of them who acknowledged Trump was guilty, doing so right in the well of the Senate right after the vote, and as Majority Leader he held significant influence over his fellow GOP Senators, so yeah, he bears a lot of responsibility. But they all made their own decisions and 7 of the GOP Senators voted to convict, so I am not going to say McConnell bears any more responsibility than the others for Trump being permitted to be on the ballot. That is somewhat letting the others off the hook. All 43 of them are guilty. But the American voter bears final responsibility. Government of the people, by the people and for the people. We had the opportunity to exercise our collective responsibility as citizens and reject the traitor. We failed. If my apocalyptic scenarios come to pass, we will have no one but the collective “ourselves” to blame. As Ben Franklin is supposed to have said, it’s a republic, “if you can keep it.”
McConnell also blasted the January 6 insurrection and blamed it on Trump. Then he endorsed Trump. Hypocrite.
He also blocked Obama from rightfully nominating a Supreme Court Justice.
And then facilitates Trump getting a pick through in his last month. There was precedent for blocking an appt in the year of an election and none as well for confirming after the election (which he lost) an appt made in the last month before the election. I’m with those that assign a lot of responsibility to McConnell. He showed no commitment to democracy.
Of course others have agency. But McConnell was the leader. He could have led others in the GOP conference. If he believed a damn word he said in the well of the Senate (Instead of covering his own ass for posterity), he would have whipped the vote, and then voted to convict himself. He did neither. Like other leaders, the buck stops with him.
I'm pissed at the people who voted for Trump, too. I'm no longer under any illusions that they don't know exactly who he is, or they were too civically lazy to care. I'm struggling with a lot of emotions on how to deal with my own family in the future. But McConnell is a United States Senator who is supposed to deeply care about our Republic. He took an oath to defend it, unlike our fellow citizens. He is a shameful disgrace of a human being.
He's not a real leader.
There are two parts of an impeachment. One removal from office and two preventing the convicted person from ever holding public office again. Since the House indicted Trump the 2nd time and the Senate voted on his impeachment a second time, both showed they had the authority to convict Trump and permanently remove him from eligibility to run for President again. If McConnell and the other 43 senators who voted to acquit on jurisdictional grounds really believed they lacked jurisdiction, why didn't they claim a point of order and demand a ruling on this supposed lack of jurisdiction?
Ruling from whom? The Senate is responsible for their own rules in an impeachment. I am not a parliamentarian, but a point of order ruling, I believe, would have been voted on by the entire body, and I believe would be a majority vote, which they would have lost, and it was something they did not want to lose. They wanted to acquit their fearless leader. So by waiting to use it as a basis to vote to acquit, it gave them political cover, and they accomplished what they wanted.
From the Senate Parliamentarian. Senate does have a parliamentarian to rule whether a some action is within the Senate rules. I agree it would have resulted in a vote by the entire Senate. If McConnell and others were so sure of their position, they should have demanded a vote. Losing a vote isn't necessarily bad, because it would have supported, even in losing, that they didn't think Congress could impeach an ex-President simply because he was no longer President. I don't for a second think the Senate doesn't have the authority to convict an ex-President if the House had impeached them.
I guess I am confused at the point you are making. The jurisdictional argument was specious. Very few reputable legal or constitutional scholars supported it. There was case law to refute it. McConnell and the others didn’t really believe they lacked jurisdiction. It was just the political cover argument they used to justify the vote they wanted to make, to acquit in the face of overwhelming evidence of guilt. And by not seeking a point of order or other ruling on its legitimacy, a vote they were sure to lose, they preserved their specious argument, voted to acquit their guilty as sin fearless leader, and had a talking point when interviewed on Fox.
I won't say gutless, he picked his fights, and got his way.
He's an oath breaker who intentionally let Trump get away with an insurrection to avoid political pain and let the "Democrats take care of the son of a bitch for us." If he didn't want to do his duty to the country he should have resigned.
He's afraid of Trump and afraid of MAGA. He can burn in Hell with the other traitors as far as I'm concerned.
Exactly, John. And also, let us not forget the members of Congress on Jan. 6, 2021 who were ready to throw the election back to the states disregarding the will of the people.
I contend that it wasn't the voters who elected Trump, it was Musk and Russia.
https://www.thenumbersarewrong2024.com/
This is the same thing Trump did in 2020. No verifiable facts establish anything other than the election was not rigged. Our candidate lost. Elections aren’t fair only when our candidate wins.
It's not the same at all. There is no proof that it wasn't rigged at the tabulator level, which means a hand recount. There was the richest man in the world doing blatant election interference, there were lots of bomb threats which left ballots unsupervised, there were burning ballot drop boxes, but most of all there was a candidate with his freedom from jail at stake and no scruples.
Post from an H1B X whistleblower which, if true, tells the story of criminal election interference, and must be shared, reported and investigated asap.
https://theconcernedbird.substack.com/p/elon-musks-and-xs-role-in-2024-election
"a conviction would not have per se disqualified him from running" -- after SCOTUS granted POTUS king powers, Biden could have issued an executive order barring felons from running. He did not.
That is just not true. The qualifications are laid out in the Constitution and can’t be modified by EO. The immunity decision did not make the President a king. It insulates the individual broadly from criminal liability but it does not change the powers of the office.
Well, he could have issued the EO and let it wind its way through the courts until after the election.
Yeah, that's true. But he should have been convicted regardless because he committed what was literally the greatest crime against the United States ever carried out by an individual.
No argument from me. I just don’t like the suggestion that the failure to convict before the election is the reason we are about to enter the ninth circle of hell on Monday. It lets the Senators who voted to acquit off the hook and suggests that without a conviction he was a legitimate, normal candidate, a vote for whom was not a crime against humanity.
Hey, Ms Rubin, your 1/12 column was featured at the top of my WaPo feed this morning. How shameless is that? Congratulations on liberating yourself.
My WaPo cancellation is two days old, and I'll stop receiving it as from 23 February.
She just resigned yesterday. You think they could have hired someone else to take her place and write/publish her column in 12 hours? Come on.
It has a publication date of Sunday, and they have many other columnists.
You don't think that maybe it was a contractual thing?
I always thought Merrick Garland would have made a first-rate Supreme Court Justice. It's why President Obama nominated him. But no one anticipated that Mitch McConnell would suddenly "rule" that Black presidents are entitled to only 3/5 of a term. President Biden is guilty of decency, in trying to rectify a great wrong done to Garland. Like many others, he failed to understand just how truly despicable the Republican Party had become. We all paid the price.
I can forgive a man for having faults and being a sinner. I can't forgive the GOP for abandoning their oaths to the Constitution and bowing down before a traitor.
"Black presidents are entitled to only 3/5 of a term" = brilliant!
A lifetime Judge is a poor choice for a prosecutor's seat. A Judge considers minutia, and is responsible for keeping tabs on what prosecutors and defendants are doing and saying, plus a relatively moderate amount of office work. Garland's office in the DC Circuit was something like 1,000 times smaller than the DOJ. That kind of organizational assimilation by Garland (regarding the nuts and bolts of the agency he's now running) must have been herculean, in and of itself.
But on top of that, he steps into the largest Constitutional crisis in the US since the Civil War, and he's facing the prosecution of the crimes and criminals involved that ignominy, the leader of which crime ring is attempting to supplant your own CEO.
Garland is a temperate jurist, in personality. A Judge is tasked with making sure the law is executed, as written, and that his/her proceedings are orderly and fair. The Courtroom is never very large, even at the Supreme Court, and media are tightly controlled and, largely, give wide berth to Judges.
A prosecutor, otoh, is tasked with investigating, charging and prosecuting possible criminal behavior, so you're under a microscope, and doing so (in this case) in the maelstrom that was and is our culture's fractured condition in the wake of the 2020 election and the J6 ignominy. The fact that Trump had incited a mob to attack the Capitol was fully in the public domain. But the J6 Committee unearthed the un-trumpeted fact, obtained via phone data, that the Trump cabal on the Elipse was actually planning at least days in advance of the J6 speech he made, doing so, i.e., it wasn't spontaneous or off the cuff. A good prosecutor who understood the stakes and the urgency of the moment, would have taken that and made headlines with it. It was J6 Malice aforethought, iow. They had the texts and emails.
I misstated Garland's being a lifetime judge. He did indeed have prosecutorial experience, including with the DoJ. My apologies.
He (and all of us) would have been well served by the driving of things with more urgency, and my point is that that's not a Judge's fallback M.O., it's a prosecutor's.
Should have written "career Judge." He'd been at it since '97, that was 23 years on the bench prior to becoming Biden's AG. It's a completely different mindset, despite both professions being under the rubric of the law. And the dude was at SSA retirement age when he got the nod, just about to get shunted to the DC Circuit's "senior judge" status.
All this wasn't Biden's fault or Garland's, primarily. But they both had their hands in making the fascists' jobs easier than they should have been.
Garland, let's not forget, prosecuted the Oklahoma City Bomber case. One could posit he’d be an ideal AG. While his office can be commended for prosecuting the J6ers, it’s a real head scratcher that he wasn’t aggressive in building the case against Trump and the others at the helm. We were told he was working systematically up the chain. It was thought that Garland must be working behind the scenes to develop the evidence to indict Trump. But as the days, months and years went on it became too difficult for his apologists to make those excuses. Biden’s fatal mistake was not replacing him. He was too caught up in demonstrating proper presidential protocol in the wake of Trump’s presidency.
Exactly this.
Congrats Ms Rubin for liberating yourself. Buckle your seatbelts America. It’s gonna be a bumpy ride.
How sorely I've missed Rubin's work since ditching WaPo many moons ago. Her columns were the only reason I held on there as long as I did, which was six months or a year longer than I should've.
I'm sure I won't agree with everything The Contrarian publishes -- I don't need or want an echo chamber -- but I sure am glad to have Jen's and Norm Eisen's clear, sharply analytical, unafraid voices added to the others from whom I already gain insight (Hubbell, Vance, Kuo, Reich among them).
Buckle up indeed. We're in a desperate fight for our country's core principles, and it's gonna be a long and dirty one, with much damage. The more voices we have speaking out, and the more we all can amplify those voices, the more effective we'll all be in that fight.
Biden should go down in history as a better POTUS than many now want to give him. Mistakes, sure. Believing in the 'norms' and 'values' that America has always stood for? Absolutely. A good, decent and honorable man? Definitely.
Unfortunately, right wing media and mainstream media are too lazy and preoccupied with "the spectacle" of trump than to actually do reporting and accurate analysis.
Joe Biden made mistakes but also accomplished a lot for our country and our democracy. as with Jimmy Carter and Joe Biden they accomplished much but getting no credit and then far too many people turn around and vote for a autocratic insurrectionist a traitor a felon unbelievably disgusting
I’m tired of Dem on Dem crime. Maybe the authors aren’t Democrats, but people will use these talking points to pick apart Democrats instead of focusing on the real problems: Republicans and financed, malignant propaganda. We tend to forget context of the recent past with our short attention spans. Biden stood for decency as his guiding principle in a hot sea of goo. Give the man a break. With his steadiness, we bypassed our inherent conflicts. Now that “civil war” among us, propagated by our enemies, is breaking out like a pimple.
Anita Hill, AUMF, not diving on re-establishing the assault weapons ban after Bush left, countenancing his son working for an oligarchic Russian-enmeshed petrocorp while he was f'n VP...that's all also part of his legacy.
Sorry, I don’t have the stomach to go further, like into actual Gropegate. And that doesn't even cover his office being run like Fineman's was, in her denoument. He has to go to bed at 8, for crissake. Harris should have been handed the tiller, probably years ago.
And the Afghan withdrawal? Acting like he was bound by an agreement with a terror org, an agreement which had already abrogated by them. Like he was not the CiC. What a lame, blame shifting move.
"...which had already been abrogated by them."
"Feinstein", my bad. I'm 7 years younger than Joe, and mind-farts are a way of life.
Yep…Biden had some screw ups(who hasn’t?)BUT I ALWAYS felt that the things he did he did for ALL Americans. Trump thinks of one person and one person only…HIMSELF.
I have felt far safer under Biden's leadership than I ever did--and ever will--under Donald's fat, greasy thumb.
I live too close to DC not give thanks, at least once in a while, "I'm glad those fighter jets/Ospreys are on my side." Now it will be..."at least, I think they are..." Donald and his friends want to play with our nation and our lives. Hang on, friends.
"Garland’s obsession with procedural niceties at the expense of basic principles of equal justice has rendered him among the worst (certainly the most foolish) attorneys general."
I'm afraid this is what Biden will be remembered for more than all the good things he did for four years. (And not dropping out of the 2024 race earlier to allow for an open primary to help promote democracy and a single candidate before the very end.)
Agreed.
💯
I think Dems would have lost anyway even with a full primary. They do not understand messaging or building a narrative around Republican failures. They want you to read pages and pages of policy papers to understand their positions instead of going with something like republicans are the reason why everything in your house says “Made in China”. Why have they not spent the last 20 years explaining the failures is trickle down economics?
Biden was a fantastic president, but he also couldn’t figure out an easy to understand message on his accomplishments. Who thought”The Inflation Reduction Act” was a good title? All it does is force Dems to use the word inflation over and over again.
Now with the L.A. fires the Dems are mainly MIA again while Republicans are all over the TV spreading false info with barely any pushback. We should have entire party out there taking down the lies and talking about red state socialism and red state Hurricanes.
The failures aren’t just about Biden. It’s a party problem. Garland is no different than Chuck Schumer. It’s all about niceties, bipartisanship no one asked for and being totally useless while the country literally burns to the ground.
Dems need a rapid response team that is working 24/7 to push out the truth on policies. That means anticipating lies and half truths and distortions and getting that information in the hands of all supporters so we all can be a truth squad.
That's what I'm starting to lay the ground for with my Substack. This is not rocket science just basic common sense management. The fact that I have to do that is a huge indictment of the Democratic party leadership .. national and state level.
A few days ago the DNC launched factpostnews on social media.
It’s the KamalaHQ social media team. We’ll see what happens. This needs to be in conjunction with the entire party.
I’m convinced that everyone in the Republican Party gets a one page sheet with talking points. Every Senator, Congress person, opinion, writer, pundit, consultant, etc. reads from that same one page sheet while they do radio shows, cable news hits, podcasts, and on and on. They all repeat the same phrases millions of times.
Dems have nothing like that. They’ll launch something on social media and then think that’s all they need to do.
I agree with the sentiment. The Democrats need to start with values, then frame the issues to reflect their values, and then make policy.
Biden did a good job with policy (in most areas), and a terrible job on the first two. The party similarly gets it all backward. They start with policy, or even worse they only do policy without indicating the values that tie all of that policy together.
The only thing I disagree with is that the Inflation Reduction Act was a bad name. It got good policy passed into law. I agree with you that the framing of the values was not good and the title doesn't help. I'm not sure it passes without that title though.
I'm seeing so much more propaganda in my algorithmic feeds now, too. It's terrifying. Last night I yelled at YouTube "I"M NOT JOINING THE CULT!!"
Dozens of anti Democratic, pro-Trump spam emails daily. I take the time to unsubscribe to all but it makes no difference.
It does say "reduce" after "inflation". I don't think that the title is a problem. I am sure that Republicans claimed that they voted for popular parts of the law just as they did with the Infrastructure bill.
And all people heard was the word inflation. All of the various things Biden did, inflation reduction act, chips act etc should have been under one big umbrella with a bold catchy name. The Big New Deal or whatever. Most people have no idea what the Chips act even is. They scan headlines and that’s about it. Republicans know this which is why they can so brazenly take credit for things they actually voted against. Democrats think Americans read the New Yorker when in reality they just read the headline on the cover of the New York post. Most Americans read at a sixth grade level. Republicans understand that and democrats absolutely do not.
I heard Republicans say they were against "Biden's Inflation Act," forgetting the word, "Reduction." I agree, poor titling.
"republicans are the reason why everything in your house says “Made in China” -- globalization was a project under several presidents (notably Clinton) and it not only raised the SOL in China and SE Asia, it also helped prevent any major wars between 1945-2022.
Biden needs to do 3 things before he keaves office.1 / Make 1 single phone call and add the ERA to tge bill of rights. 38 states have now ratified. That doesn't change losing the right to Abortion; but it's a start.
2/ Pardon everyone who worked to see Trump brought to justics.
Blanket that Bitc#!
3/ Release the 2nd part of the Jack Smith Report! He has immunity!! 47 is a clear & present danger that he did not deal with righteously....expose the jerk. He EARNED IT!
Yes! He could direct the archivist to publish the ERA before he leaves. That could perhaps make restitution for his treatment of Anita Hill (I have a LONG memory) and his key role in putting Clarence Thomas on the Supreme Court.
PUBLISH THE ERA NOW!!!
PUBLISH THE ERA NOW!!!
"2/ Pardon everyone who worked to see Trump brought to justice." The presidential pardon has almost unlimited power, I believe(?) he could preemptively pardon the Jan 6 Committee and everyone who testified before it. If he fails to protect them, they will be punished.
Add Anthony Fauci.
And Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss.
I think history will be contesting between a cynical view of Biden predominantly for his role in leading to Trump’s re-election and the view of how his policies have positively affected America and the world, hopefully the latter perspective can prevail
Except that Trump will do everything in his power to undo those positive effects.
And then blame the Democrats!
Russian psy ops.
Who? Above?
Great men and women throughout history have had to battle their egos. Some have won, most have lost. Biden did great things for our country and gave us hope over the past four years. But his ego has been his undoing. Term limits and age restrictions for all three branches need to be put into place; however, that will never happen.
I don't think it was so much his ego that got in his way as much as his appointment of Merrick Garland.