That's not what Mr Trump thinks, Bobby. Remember Bill Barr?

He's the guy you and the Light used to fondly call AG. A tough guy, a real Trump man. Remember him?

One night, just before Jan 6 at 8pm, Bill sat down with Mr Trump and showed him. They spent nearly two hours in the Oval Office, going over every single rumour - ballot dumps, Dominion switching votes, Hugo Chavez, the lot. Bill showed Mr Trump - in detail - how the votes were counted, and where. Every contested state. Mr Trump asked him about a story he'd heard about ballot dumps in a part of Detroit. Bill told him that's how they do it there - they count all the votes in one spot. Oh, and Mr Trump won those votes.

In the end, Mr Trump wasn't happy, but there was nothing he could say. AG Barr, a Trump man to the bone, had the FBI investigate the 2020 election - that wasn't even the DOJ's job, but he'd done it for the boss. Mr Trump sent Bill home. Bill quit the next day.

On Jan 6, Mr Trump gave his rally speech. Bill watched. He heard Mr Trump repeating stories Bill had thoroughly debunked, including Detroit. Was Bill surprised?

No. He knew how Mr Trump worked. As you know, Mr Trump told over 20,000 lies while he was in office, it's just how he ran. Read the Art of the Deal if you don't believe me, but it was no shock to Bill Barr. What Bill knew, however, is that Mr Trump knew one thing without a doubt: the election had not been stolen from him. Mr Trump had lost, and he knew it.

But do you know? AG didn't need to tell Mr Trump anything Mr Trump's own family and some staff and friends like Hannity hadn't been telling him for weeks: give up. Be a man. Admit you've lost and move on. Bill didn't tell Mr Trump that, but everybody close to him did. The exceptions?

Rudy. Sidney. Roger Stone, John Eastman, and the pillow magnate, Mike Liddell, who advised Mr Trump to launch a military coup. They hung around the White House, getting on everybody's nerves.

Also, every one of them asked Mr Trump for a pardon - just in case. Mr Trump even asked the lawyers if he could pardon himself, over his Ukraine call and other crimes. He was told that was untested, but in all likelihood, no. That one probably wouldn't wash. Mr Trump never did end up pardoning Rudy and all the hangers-on.

He never paid them either.

So no, Bobby, Mr Trump had nothing stolen from him, but more importantly, he knew it. If he ever faces a court for the above crimes, and he feigns ignorance or insanity or bad advice or just bad luck, that won't wash either. Mr Trump, prez, knows better than anybody, and it hurts like hell. Look at the dumb look on his face in your meme. He lost.

You?

Ron wrote on Sep 28^th, 2022 at 11:06am:


Thank you for this well considered, thoughtful comment Ron, in
support of the execrable Pauline Hanson whom you seem to see
as a vision of reason and rationale.

The twice divorced Hanson was a high school dropout, after getting
pregnant at age 15—which marked the end of any further education.
As a result, she has a very limited intellectual mindset, and a poor
grasp of politics, race relations, civil law, sexual and gender issues etc.

Recall, her main claim to fame(?) was running a fish and chip shop,
after working as a clerical assistant and barmaid.  Obviously then
she's not the sharpest tool in the toolbox LOL.

On the other hand we have Mehreen Faruqi... who holds a Bachelor
of Engineering, a Master of Engineering Science, and a Doctorate in
Environmental Engineering.

So I think we can see who's better educated and therefore far better
qualified in order to work in parliament.

Hanson's crude, racist insults directed at Faruqi further demonstrated
her lack of formal education and her inability to move on from the 1950s
days of black and white TV, 'reds under the beds' and 'the yellow peril'.

Alas, Meister, Sleepy Joe's got an uphill battle with the transition to a renewable economy. Americans were traditionally able to respond to these kinds of shifts. Industrialisation, the end of slavery, immigration, two world wars, the transition to a consumer industrial economy, the transition to a post-industrial service economy. Political leaders such as Lincoln, Eisenhower and Clinton have been instrumental in these transitions.

Today, America is in the grip of a nihilistic political death cult. This doesn't drive all of America, but it's seriously dented the sides. The GOP is now largely incapable of acting constructively and getting things done.

The McCains of the party, those on the legislative committees and tasked with getting things done, have gone. The new GOP, now in the grip of the Marjorie Taylor Greenes, is just out to destroy.

This week, we saw Fox News conceed and make amends for knowingly broadcasting lies. These were serious lies too - they aimed to undermine the democratic process. They convinced close to a quarter of American voters that the 2020 election had been stolen and the current leadership is illegitimate.

Fox is industrial-scale political propaganda. It's the largest, highest-rating news network in a country of 332 million people. It makes over $14 billion a year. It is integrated into an international print media arm that drives the global news cycle. And now, Fox acknowledges what we always knew.

It is an empire based on lies.

That's what Sleepy Joe's up against, Great. No past president has had to contend with such a destructive force. Trump, sure - but he was on the receiving end. Fox lied for Trump. In so doing, it undermined the entire political system.

Obama had to deal with it too - hence his own inability to enact his reforms, hence his watered-down legislative attempts. In the end, Obama wasn't even able to appoint a supreme court judge - forget appoint, the GOP wouldn't even accept a nomination.

Obama's Republican opposition was massaged, nurtured and amplified by Fox. There on Fox, every Friday morning, was Donald J Trump, prattling away about his Kenyan investigators uncovering shocking new details of Obama's African origins. And there was the ernest panel of seasoned broadcasters and journalists, nodding along, agreeing.

In the end, Fox was not able to secure a second election win for Trump. Not after a pandemic scale litany of leadership failure, not after the death toll, the job losses, the lies laid bare and the acknowledgement that, sure, he'd lied about covid and would do it again.

Instead, Fox joined Trump in propagating the big lie - that Trump had actually won and had the election rigged against him. Fox sacked the broadcaster who called Arizona. It enabled Carlson, Hannity and Pirro to spruik the big lie nightly, hours of prime time commentary devoted to vote dumps, rigged online voting machines, foreign interference and an ongoing barrage of fake news devoted to undermining the democratic process.

Dominion recieved $786 million in compensation for those lies. The damage to the process is incalculable.

America is the country that won its revolution, two world wars and, for better or worse, transformed the world in its image. It met great depressions and recessions and turned them around too. But today, I'm not so sure it can rise to meet those challenges. America has been subjected to a hostile foreign takeover that has undermined its very existence.

It would be nice to think that presidents like Joe Biden just need to go back to negotiating with legislators in good faith, but America is beyond that now. The big lie exposes just how far some are prepared to go to destroy the political process. How do you go back to work after that? How do you sit down and try to deal with people that you know have lied, and they know you know?

It's impossible. Without a re-commitment to honesty, America is doomed. While Fox continues to broadcast, the political process will be sabotaged, time and time again.

Frank wrote on Aug 3^rd, 2023 at 4:52pm:


Where's your "proper foundation or logic for your claim:"There is nothing 'uncivilised' about the death penalty" or that it is not always undeserved, Frank ?

No law or set of laws are going to provide a "fail-safe mechanism". The risk of wrongful execution is too high a price to allow the death penalty. A wrongful execution is irreversible.

It's a moral double standard and contradiction to condone the killing of a person by the state if you accept killing is immoral.

It undermines the state's authority in enforcing moral standards if it engages in the very act it condemns.

If you value and respect human life, then there is no place for
the death penalty.

There are strong concerns about racial and socioeconomic disparities in the application of the death penalty, which raises questions about its fairness and impartiality.

There are alternatives to the death penalty. In the most heinous cases life imprisonment would suffice.

There is a lack of evidence to support a link between the death penalty and lower crime rates.

The death penalty can also have an adverse psychological impact on those involved in its implementation: prison staff and witnesses, not to mention the impact on the family and friends of the person executed.

If morality, the value of human life, fairness and impartiality, and the mitigation of human suffering are characteristics of being civilised, then the death penalty has no place in a civilised society.

We need to make a clear distinction between what is actually happening and what MAGA fantasists say is happening.

Frankly, the TDS-afflicted simpletons are best ignored for now, they’re a mess of contradictions, constantly rotating their justifications, none of which withstand basic scrutiny. Their tariff arguments, for example, are so inconsistent they collapse under their own weight. So let’s put that noise aside.

Yes, the short-term pain is real, and inescapable. But the deeper concern is this, the damage being done may outpace the time or tools available to fix it. A simple change in leadership and a few strategic renegotiations won’t cut it if the geopolitical ground has shifted entirely.

If any of the BRICS nations leapfrog the United States during this period, most likely China, with Russia as a distant second, it will fundamentally alter the global balance. And ironically, Trump appears to be doing everything he can to help them. His moves to dismantle sanctions on Russia, undermine NATO, and essentially hand over Ukraine on a platter all bolster Moscow’s strategic position, expanding their manpower, resources, and industrial footprint. You couldn’t script a better foreign policy for the Kremlin if you tried.

It’s unnerving how much of what was warned about a second Trump presidency is already materialising.

The MAGA crowd, predictably, remain unteachable. They’ll never acknowledge any of this, TDS has them locked into a hallucinatory state where Trump is always the victim and never the cause. But the reality is stark.

For Americans over 50, and especially those over 65, the consequences are brutal. Many will be forced back into the workforce, in an economic climate that has no interest in hiring older workers, especially in regions where Trump support runs deepest, rural, low-income areas with limited job prospects. Add in the evaporation of retirement savings, and you're looking at a generational crisis.

And that's ignoring the planned cuts to Medicaid and Social Security.  Their children will inherit their debts.

These people aren’t retraining for tech jobs, they’re staring down the barrel of minimum wage service roles, if they’re lucky. And time is not on their side.

We know the profile, white, over 50, no university degree, often in regions hollowed out by decades of economic neglect. These same areas, small towns and low-density counties, form the spine of Trump’s base. Ironically, they’re also the most exposed to the policies he champions.

In the 2020 election, around 55% of voters aged 65 and older backed Trump. That block hasn’t gone anywhere, and they’re now the ones feeling the sharpest sting of his economic legacy. Their blind loyalty might carry them to the grave, and in many cases it will.

We've already seen the grotesque COVID-era posts, people literally dying in hospital beds still insisting the virus was a hoax, with the next post a family member begging strangers for funeral costs and help with medical bills they left behind on GoFundMe. That level of delusion doesn’t dissolve easily. Even as their world burns down around them, many of these people will die blaming everyone but the man holding the match.

And yet, even among them, Trump Regret is quietly creeping in. The question is whether it comes fast enough, or too late to matter.

Assuming it isn't already too late.

It's documented evidence in the Epstein files. The files were sitting on Pam's desk as we speak, do you recall? Pam was going to leave no stone unturned. The entire resources of the DOJ were there at her disposal, she said. Everything would be investigated. The victim's statements, the client list, the lot.

Hear hear, you said. It won't be long now. We're going to see mass arrests, hangings, the lot. DL better look 'em in the eye, you said.

Hang on, we said. Watch what happens next.

Sure enough, right on cue, Pam and Kash did their fake news briefing. There they stood, sweating before the fakers. Now, Pam said, the Epstein files...

Yes? The fakers said.

There's been a bit of a mix-up, Pam said. We must have meant the Goldstein files.

Oh? The fakers said.

Or the Weinstein files, Kash said.

Yes - that's it, Pam said, the Weinstein files. The odd thing is, the Epstein files are totally empty. There's nothing at all to see.

Gone! Kash said. I blame Sleepy Joe Biden.

Yes, Pam said, he's clearly a target here. The Epstein files, you see, well... they're missing.

So, Kash said, that's that.

But hang on, the fakers said, didn't you say they were sitting on your desk?

They're the Wallerstein files, Pam said. Totally boring.

Kash jumped in - the Weinstein files.

Yes, Pam said. It's a similar name, you see. I must have meant the Waller - sorry, the Weinstein files.

So...

No further questions, Pam said, and that was that.

But the fakers weren't happy. Margorie had been watching, and she certainly wasn't happy. She found a handful of other traitors in Congress to write a law. They took it to Mike.

Maybe next year, Mike said. Better wait until the mid-terms.

No, Margorie and her friends said, we'll need to pass it now. So she went to the Dems, found the votes and came up with one vote less.

They went back to Mike. No worries, they said, we've got the numbers, one more Dem needs to be sworn in.

Drats, Mike said. That's a bit of a problem. Congress is out, you see.

So? Margorie's traitors said. You just swore in three new members, pass one more.

Sorry, Mike said, no can do. Orders.

You're the House Speaker, they said. Orders from who?

Someone who would prefer you waited until after the mid-terms, Mike said, giving them a nervous look. They said to wait and see what happens.

So the traitors waited, the Senate turned the government back on, and the Dem got sworn in. The House voted to release the Epstein files. Mike wasn't happy, but what can you do?

Oh, Pam said. Are you sure you don't mean the Weinstein files?

The traitors wrote Epstein on their Bill - along with time in jail for any Attorney General or Director of the FBI who tries to hide them.

So, stuck between a rock and a hard place, Pam released the Epstein files.

Strangely, they were all redacted. The only ones you could read were about about Bill, the old dog, Clinton.

Rigged! The traitors said. The fakers had a field day, as you'd expect.

But that was just a taster. Pam was dragging her feet. A couple of weeks later, on Christmas Eve, Pam released more. This time, her loyal Deputy Director Todd, DL's former lawyer, issued a waiver.

Most of this is krap, he said. Scrupulous, uninvestigated allegations, he said, so unfair. If there was any truth to it, the corrupt Democrats would have used it as LAWFARE.

DL came out with a post on Truth Social. So unfair to see all these scrupulous uninvestigated allegations - if there was any "truth" to it, the CORRUPT DEMOCRATS would have used it as LAWFARE !!! He posted.

Then on Fox: it's just scrupulous, uninvestigated allegations, Judge Jeanine and Maria Barbarino said. If there was any truth to it, the corrupt Democrats would have used it as LAWFARE.

On Christmas Day, the fakers went through the DOJ's dump on the internet. Most of it was krap, but there, buried in a whole bunch of paystubs, was an interview with witness A, DL's limo driver. He was reporting a statement from a stressed witness B, his passenger, who had just been raped by Jeff Epstein and his best buddy, your DL.

When the big fella got back in the limo, his driver was so mad, he wanted to bash him up. What was his angle? DL's driver was asked by the agent doing the interview. Just to see justice served, the driver said.

I see, the agent said.

You know the rest of the story. The FBI ignored it, Jeff and the big fella got off, and that was that. There were stains from coffee cups all over witness A's interview transcript.

All that rape nonsense?  Pam, the Attorney General, has been tasked with getting justice for all those rape victims. Back in March, it was her key priority. Now she has the Intel. It took Margorie Traitor Greene, a vote by every member of Congress bar one, the fake news and a popular outcry to get Pam to find the files she said she had sitting on her desk all along.

And that's just the beginning. Todd's already asked for more time to release a million pages more. We haven't even seen the dirty bits yet. From here on in, it gets nasty. Don't believe it?

You believe every last bit. How do we know?

Back in 2024, you said.

So, how does it feeeeel?