Thoughts and prayers.
Dammit, please stop posting stuff about Sarah Palin that causes me to experience even a fleeting grudging respect for her proto-Trumpian lying huckstering self.
I don’t think I’ve ever said this about Sarah Palin before, but she’s not wrong. Are some GOPers starting to worry that COVIDiocy and vaccine refusal might actually end up killing too many Republicans?
I think that’s how natural selection works.
To be clear, my longer post above is based more on this perspective. I was not thinking, and I did not mean to imply, that Trump or a top-level henchman explicitly ordered the DOJ to target politicians for investigation with the specific purpose of collecting kompromat. As noted, the DOJ is a large organization mostly composed of career professionals, and they would not participate in such an effort or keep it quiet if they were asked to do so.
Rather, I envisage scenarios where routine information-gathering on one target happens to uncover evidence related to another person, as clearly happened with Gaetz during the inquiry into Greenberg. The criminal implication of an elected official would, as noted, be reported up the chain. In a scenario where the DOJ has been politically compromised, one would expect the investigation of someone in the mutual political party to be quashed or procedurally derailed, to avoid hurting an ally. But that’s not what happened here, and my observation is that this is at odds with the perception that Trump politicized his agencies. Instead, it makes sense, given their history of extortion as a tool, that when notified of the investigation into an ally, rather than protecting him as one should expect, they would allow it to proceed, but order it to be done quietly.
To the point that Trump wouldn’t bother with this tactic on an elected official because it’s much more effective to threaten him with a mob of screaming loons, I grant the latter, but I do not grant the former, because Trump has never been one to leave a power advantage ungrasped. He’s not particularly capable of nuanced long-term strategy, but he absolutely is a cheerful sadist when it comes to demonstrations of superiority. If he recognizes a club he can beat someone with, he picks it up and files it away, whether or not he might actually be likely to use it.
My God:
Original:
That’s Teleprompter Palin. Like the Cheeto-Faced Shit Gibbon, when reading the words crafted by far saner people, she can almost sound human.
And like CFSG, unscripted, she sounds like a bumbling inbred idiot who quite likely battles some form of mental illness.
Under CFSG, I said …
They used to tease Obama mercilessly for his use of the Teleprompter (something every President has done since its inception), but:
a) When Obama read from the Teleprompter, at least he COULD read, and
b) When Obama read from the Teleprompter, you had the feeling that he could have written the text he was reading.
Things are very different now.
You are forgiven for according Ms. Palin a brief moment’s grace, though. It says something good about you 
That young lady in the front definitely looks like she’s picked up Creepy Uncle vibes from him as she grimaces and leans away from him.
To be fair, that was almost four years ago. Some of them are probably legal by now.
Good for them. That means Gaetz is no longer interested.
And the grifting machine shifts into high gear! Apparently donor list contact info has been spread around and everyone’s trying to get a piece of that pie:
We’ve been seeing these kinds of stories since Trump first became a major candidate. No doubt this explains why so many of his businesses fail and he had such turnover in his administration. Yet he still manages to keep his faux empire afloat and do plenty of damage.
It’ll be interesting to see if he can pull off his plans for a personal social media. Does he have any business ventures that produced something successfully? One could make the case that this is different: he’s never had such a large loyal base willing to send him money.
That’s how I see it. Plenty of rubes, er, MAGAheads eager to fork over cash to The Orange One; his not-Twitter social media company just might thrive once he begins not-tweeting on it.
I dunno 'bout that.
There are plenty of people willing to send in a donation, to fire up their Tiki Torch and march out into the streets, even to cross the country in order to take part in an insurrection.
But asking them to sign up for a subscription for an internet service? In the wise words of Weird Al, “Whoa, hold on now, baby, I’m just not ready for that kind of a commitment !”
Oh, so much this! I’ve explained Obama was responsible for the Veterans Choice Act to a Trump-supporting veteran twice now, and he still insists Trump gets credit because he (the veteran) didn’t hear about the VCA until Trump was in office. Aarrggghh!
But, like every Conservative, Sarah only acknowledged the reality of Covid when it affected her personally. She’s way too late with the mask encouragement to deserve any kudos. The pure self interest and selfishness of this crowd never ceases to amaze.
In casual conversation I’ve often defined a Republican as “somebody to whom it hasn’t happened yet.”
Totally agree with you.
I don’t see how anyone could reasonably argue with this.
This is part of the reason that “never-Trumpers” emerged early in Donald’s rise (2015 and 2016): they had lived their lives by the principle ‘party first.’ And Donald was absolutely positively utterly incapable of understanding such a rule.
For Donald, it’s always ‘Donald First,’ and that extended to his eagerness to undermine any Republicans who were failing to please him. The old guard never got over their shock at this.
It Gaetz worse every day! Keep pumping those shadendorphines directly into my brain!