ShazzieB
ShazzieB's JournalYes, and TFG also **LIED** about having sent everything back.
He lied (or rather got his lawyer to lie for him), saying that he had sent everything back when he had done no such thing. He also lied (and continues) to lie that classified documents he took were "automatically" declassified because he decided they were.
He has never (as far as I know) acknowledged that there is a specific procedure for declassifying documents which he has not followed, or (perhaps most seriously) that all of the documents he took, classified or not, are the property of the National Archives, i.e., the American people, and not Donald Trump's personal property to do as he wishes with them!
All of this adds up to a HUGE difference between Trump's actions, as well as his attitude regarding those actions, and those of Biden or Pence regarding the small number of documents they were each found to have in their possession. It is an outrage that some media outlets have reported on these matters in such a way as to greatly minimize Trump's wrongdoing as well as the enormous differences between the actions of Trump and those of the other two.
MSNBC (at least the shows I watch) has been doing a good job of covering all of these issues, including the way Trump "confessed" to some of his actions on the CNN "Townhall." This segment from Lawrence O'Donnell's show last night is a good example of the kind of deep discussions he has with legal experts on a regular basis:
The Second Amendment is a ludicrous historical antique: Time for it to go
We're not supposed to even whisper such things because the NRA and right-wing extremists have sensible Americans — including many gun owners — so bullied and cowed that we feel we are only allowed to hope for sensible gun-safety legislation around the edges of their highly profitable assault on American lives.
We've said it before, but it is always worth repeating for the millions of younger people coming to voting age each year who may not have considered it before: It doesn't take a grammarian or a constitutional scholar to tell you that the opening clause of the Second Amendment is obviously conditional:
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
Meaning, so long as a militia of citizens is necessary (and a well-regulated one, at that), then what follows is true. But only if that first part pertains.
More: https://www.salon.com/2023/04/23/the-second-amendment-is-a-ludicrous-historical-antique-time-for-it-to-go/
Hyper-rugged individualism & the terror of the 2nd Amendment
As long as property rights hold sway over human rights, none of us are safe.
*snip*
While the Founding Fathers crafted what many consider today as a brilliant and enduring blueprint for a new nation, the Constitutions of the United States, they were nonetheless products of their times with their individual human shortcomings and biases. Just coming off a war of independence against one of the world’s great colonial powers, leaders thought it reasonable to ensure the “free” people the capability of defending themselves against any potentially tyrannical government. In this regard, they established the Second Amendment in the Bill of Rights, granting people “the right to bear arms.”
These same men owned large parcels of land, and many gained wealth from engaging in the slave trade. In her book, The Second: Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America, historian Carol Anderson argues that the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution was crafted by James Madison “…to mollify the concerns coming out of Virginia and the anti-Federalists, that they would still have full control over their state militias – and those militias were used in order to quell slave revolts.”
In other words, the “right to bear arms” was only meant for white people to repress forms of resistance, including uprisings by enslaved Black people. Since then, firearms and the culture supporting it has been encoded into the very DNA of the U.S.-American identity and what it means to be “an American.” But what was not even reasonable in the 18th century without substantial reform stands as an existential threat today.
More: https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2023/05/hyper-rugged-individualism-the-terror-of-the-2nd-amendment/
I can easily believe that we've only see his "good" (i.e. less awful) side.
Look at what we all know about him:
We've all seen ample evidence of his thin skin and his inability to handle any kind of criticism, and we've heard stories about him throwing plates of food at the walls when something doesn’t go his way.
We know how vindictive he can be when he thinks someone has "wronged" him (like Obama making fun of him at the White House correspondents' dinnner), and we've seen the way he rages on social media at those he's upset with, complete with all manner of slurs and character attacks. We know he's got a highly exaggerated sense of his own importance. As potus, he seemed surprised to learn that there were actually rules that circumscribed what he had assumed was going to be boundless power, and he didn't like it one bit.
Those are just some of the things we know about this child-man. It stands to reason that they are only the tip of a very large iceberg. Anyone capable of publicly displaying the kind of childish petulance we seen from him so many, many times is almost always capable of a lot worse in private. Trump does his best to hide it when he's on camera and/or in front of a crowd where he knows his behavior will be widely reported, but the idea of him letting loose when he deems it "safe" to do so is 100% believable to me.
He lets all that anger loose when he speaks to crowds of his supporters, deploying it against targets that he knows they hate, which makes them feel that he's on their side. The anger itself they mistake for strength, and they assume he will use that "strength" against all the people, things, and ideas they themselves hate.
Knowing what I do about the "public" Donald Trump, I have no trouble believing that what JCMach1 described seeing in that airport was the real "private" Donald Trump.
I skip a lot of them, but once in a while I'm pleasantly surprised.
I watched one tonight with the title "Jamie Raskin DEMOLISHES Lauren Boebert and the GQP," and it was worth it for the great clips of Jamie Raskin responding to a speech given by Bobo on the House floor. There was a little bit of Bobo in the beginning, but most of it was Raskin, and he was on fire!
The problem is, you never can tell with these things. I happened to get lucky with that one, but there have been a lot of others I only watched a little bit of, once I saw that they consisted of a tiny clip or 2 buried in the middle of someone pontificating for several minutes on What It All Meant. Those are the ones that feel like a waste of time to me.
I do NOT fault anyone for posting these, though. I assume good intentions on the part of my fellow DUers, and I am seldom disappointed. People who come here with genuinely bad intentions usually get caught and banned early on. (Go, MIRT!) The ones that stick around seem to post things for the same reason I do; because they got something out of an item and think someone else might as well. Sometimes people guess wrong, but so what? I've guessed wrong myself. Far be it from me to beat up on anybody else for doing the same. 
He is scum, but I find that suggestion very disturbing.
I don't know if you were joking, but I would object regardless. I find torture, no matter what the pretext, very disturbing. Can't change what happened in the past, but the idea of bringing it back is horrifying to me. I don't care who you want to reserve it for. Charles Manson? Adolf Hitler? Nope and nope.
For the record, I also oppose the death penalty, and I don't find prison rape jokes remotely funny. Some people tell me I'm just no damned fun at all! 
I could use some support.
My husband woke me up very early this morning to tell me he needed to go to the hospital. He is diabetic, and his blood sugar was getting dangerously high in spite of giving himself some insulin. Since then, he has been admitted to the hospital. They're taking good care of him, and I have every reason to believe he's going to be okay, but I'm all tied up in knots in spite of that. This is the third time in (I think?) 6 years that he's had to be hospitalized due to his blood sugar going through the roof, and he has come through fine in the past, but it's very worrisome that it keeps happening,
Obviously, he is not managing his diabetes as well as he needs to, and I am going to have to get more actively involved. He's very independent and hardly ever asks for help with anything. For a long time after the diagnosis he seemed to be managing fine, and I was happy to let him do so. The first time he had this kind of problem, he was getting over the flu, and the second time it happened, he was recovering from having a lot of teeth removed. Both times, he wasn't eating right, and also got dehydrated, and things kind of spiraled out of control before we knew it. We figured, okay, we will just have to remember to keep an extra close eye on his blood sugar any time he's under the weather.This time, there wasn't any precipitating factor like an illness, which is even more scary. So like I said, I am just going to have to stick my nose into things after this, and try to help him figure out how to keep this from happening again.
Later today, I will call my daughter and ask her to go with me to see him. In the meantime, I need to get some sleep. I was up really last last night (as is my habit), so I had only had about 3 hours of sleep when he shook ms awake to tell me what was going on. I know that if I don't get some sleep soon, I'm going to crash hard at some point. I was too keyed up to feel like sleeping for a while there, but fortunately, writing this has helped me calm down.
That's it for now. Will post again when I have an update.
The GOP Civil War Over Abortion Is Just Getting Started
Note: if this post looks familiar to anyone, that's because I originally posted this article in LBN. The thread was locked, due to being an opinion piece rather than a news story, so I am reposting here.
The intraparty conflict in post-Roe America was on full display here in the Hawkeye State, where a crop of declared presidential candidates and some who are still exploring a run gathered on Saturday for the first major event of the 2024 presidential caucus cycle.
The forum, hosted by the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition, a leading organization of social conservatives, drew over a thousand like-minded attendees who came to the event in support of evangelical causes and to kick the tires on the expanding GOP presidential field.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/abortion-donald-trump-iowa_n_64454990e4b03c1b88c7a55d
Since the fall of Roe, Republicans have been gleefully shoving strict abortion bans down people's throats in one red state after another. Turns out a lot of voters are less than thrilled. Now Repubs are caught between a conservative base that wants a nationwide abortion ban, which is unpopular overall, and their desire to win elections. Oops!
The New "Pro-life" Movement Has a Plan to End Abortion
And it doesn’t care if American voters don’t agree with it.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2023/04/pro-life-anti-abortion-roe-mifepristone-pill-ban/673763/
Yet the movement’s activists don’t seem to care. Thirteen states automatically banned most abortions with trigger laws designed to go into effect when Roe fell; a Texas judge this month stayed the FDA approval of the abortion pill mifepristone, setting in motion what is sure to be a drawn-out legal battle; and some lawmakers are pursuing restrictions on traveling out of state for the procedure—what they call “abortion trafficking.”
*snip*
Hawkins [president of the anti-abortion group Students for Life] is realistic about the fact that her movement’s progress has a ceiling. Some states, especially the liberal strongholds of Illinois and New York, are never going to go for the kinds of laws that she’s pushing for. This is when, she says, her organization will shift its emphasis to the federal government—pushing for a constitutional amendment that would recognize fetal personhood, or for a ruling from the Supreme Court to affirm that the Fourteenth Amendment already does.
*snip*
Yet American culture seems to be moving in the opposite direction. The Dobbs ruling, though exciting for anti-abortion activists, was so enraging for abortion-rights supporters that, in some places, they responded by enshrining the right to abortion into state law. These and other political losses suggest that the pro-life movement is already overreaching—and generating a backlash. “It’s breathtaking to see people so motivated and so well funded to push an agenda that is so incredibly unpopular,” Jamie Manson, the president of the abortion-rights organization Catholics for Choice, told me. The months since Dobbs have exposed a fundamental tension between the outcome that abortion-rights opponents want and the one democracy supports.
Yeah, who cares what Americans really want? Who cares about democracy? Not these sanctimonious crusaders!
Their goal is for abortion to become “both illegal and unthinkable” (direct quote from the article) throughout this country. They are swimming against the tide, but we can't afford to let our guard down for a second.
By the way, that bit about about how they think the Fourteenth Amendment may already recognize fetal persohood is absolute codswallop. The Fourteenth Amendment, which defines the rights and privileges of US. citizenship, begins by stating that "All persons born or naturalized in the United States" are citizens thereof. There's not much I would put past the current SCOTUS "originalists," but its really hard to see how even they could redefine that very clearly worded statement to apply to the so-called "pre-born."
Cross-posted to Pro-Choice
The New "Pro-life" Movement Has a Plan to End Abortion
And it doesn’t care if American voters don’t agree with it.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2023/04/pro-life-anti-abortion-roe-mifepristone-pill-ban/673763/
Yet the movement’s activists don’t seem to care. Thirteen states automatically banned most abortions with trigger laws designed to go into effect when Roe fell; a Texas judge this month stayed the FDA approval of the abortion pill mifepristone, setting in motion what is sure to be a drawn-out legal battle; and some lawmakers are pursuing restrictions on traveling out of state for the procedure—what they call “abortion trafficking.”
*snip*
Hawkins [president of the anti-abortion group Students for Life] is realistic about the fact that her movement’s progress has a ceiling. Some states, especially the liberal strongholds of Illinois and New York, are never going to go for the kinds of laws that she’s pushing for. This is when, she says, her organization will shift its emphasis to the federal government—pushing for a constitutional amendment that would recognize fetal personhood, or for a ruling from the Supreme Court to affirm that the Fourteenth Amendment already does.
*snip*
Yet American culture seems to be moving in the opposite direction. The Dobbs ruling, though exciting for anti-abortion activists, was so enraging for abortion-rights supporters that, in some places, they responded by enshrining the right to abortion into state law. These and other political losses suggest that the pro-life movement is already overreaching—and generating a backlash. “It’s breathtaking to see people so motivated and so well funded to push an agenda that is so incredibly unpopular,” Jamie Manson, the president of the abortion-rights organization Catholics for Choice, told me. The months since Dobbs have exposed a fundamental tension between the outcome that abortion-rights opponents want and the one democracy supports.
Yeah, who cares what Americans really want? Who cares about democracy? Not these sanctimonious crusaders!
Their goal is for abortion to become “both illegal and unthinkable” (direct quote from the article) throughout this country. They are swimming against the tide, but we can't afford to let our guard down for a second.
By the way, that bit about about how they think the Fourteenth Amendment may already recognize fetal persohood is absolute codswallop. The Fourteenth Amendment, which defines the rights and privileges of US. citizenship, begins by stating that "All persons born or naturalized in the United States" are citizens thereof. There's not much I would put past the current SCOTUS "originalists," but its really hard to see how even they could redefine that very clearly worded statement to apply to the so-called "pre-born."
Cross-posted to General Discussion.
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Name: SharonGender: Female
Hometown: Chicago area, IL
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Member since: Tue Mar 26, 2013, 04:18 AM
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