RockyRoadTravel

I just finished Pelosi's 2024 book, The Art of Power. For people who follow politics it provides a survey of events of American politics over the last 40 years. I'm not too sure if it'd have much of an audience outside of the politically committed (unlike the Obama's various books). Pelosi emphasizes HIV/AIDS as a reason for her first entering into electoral politics in late 80's. Then there are sections on the 9/11 Commission, passing the ACA and the attempted MAGA coup in 2021. It's really in the last section of the book dealing with the assault on American democracy on January 6th that the book comes alive. Maybe it's more recent, maybe it's the fact that her daughter's life was in danger as well that day while in the Capital. She talks about various Republican elected officials that day, from the courage of Mike Pence refusing to leave the Capitol and his commitment to the peaceful transfer of power, Mitch McConnell's initial condemnations of the Incompetent-in-Chief while later refusing to consider impeachment, Steve Scalise's involvement in calls to the President which he later denied were ever made, and she has a special place in her heart for Kevin McCarthy's portrait in cowardice whining there was nothing he could do at all that day.

The Grand Jury was never presented with the final charging document by the rookie prosecutor that the Grand Jury voted on. It's just more incompetence from the Incompetent-in-Chief's administration. Leavitt blaming other people for the Administration's own incompetence - what a man baby we have in the White House. My god will this Administration take responsibility for any of the thousands of their screw ups and self-dealing.

AND a plan for building and funding infrastructure from the Incompetent-in-Chief

I just saw Wicked for Good. I hope no one throws water on the Incompetent-in-Chief before he releases this Plan (that the GOP has been promising for 15+ years).

I don't think I've pointed out my question adequately. This isn't about the the Supreme Court striking down progressive legislation. They're right-wing extremists, no one is expecting them to support civil rights, voting rights or small 'd' democracy. This is about this group of extremist activist justices weaponizing the shadow docket - seldom used before 2017 - to issue quick anonymous rulings that lack any explanation, legal precedent or reasoning backing them up. Presented with the exact same set of circumstances under a Republican or a Democratic President and/or Congress with the shadow docket they could issue two separate politic decisions depending on who's in power. The shadow docket decisions are more political decisions and less about the rule of law and the Constitution.

Even the blind right-wing extremists can't be immune to the blatant corruption and personal dealings of the Trump Crime Family. The Trump Derangement Syndrome of the MAGA base has to be cracking. My concern is that a swath of Americans who legitimately think/feel the system is screwing them over (40 years of neo-con economics has decimated the middle and working classes in the USA), and have believed the MAGA lies, will turn to a pox on both your houses. Disengage or think violence is the answer - right-wing extremist violence is the most significant terrorist threat we currently face - rather than recognize the lies they've been fed by FOX, NewsMax, Breitbart, Infowars etc.

The shadow docket, historically, was rarely used. However since 2017, the current extremist majority of the Supreme Court has been using the shadow docket as a means of issuing emergency stays of lower-court rulings at the behest of the Incompetent-in-Chief's Justice Department. The shadow docket has been rightly criticized for it's lack of transparency or accountability. These are unsigned rulings where no oral arguments have been heard and little is any legal basis for the decision is provided. Ruling without arguments or precedents. My question is given the lack of transparency, the lack of accountability, the lack of any provision of a legal reasoning and the clear political bias of the current right-wing extremism of the Court's majority, what's to prevent this Court's majority to rule in a completely opposite way with the same set of circumstances when a non-rightwing-extremist Administration is back in the White House. For example, with shadow docket overruling Humphrey’s Executor, the Supreme Court allowed for the firing of federal agencies' leadership without a rationale, even though this countered 100 years of legal precedent regarding the separation of powers. Given a sane Administration in the White House after 2028, would this extremist Supreme Court majority maintain these shadow docket rulings or would decide to flip their unexplained unsigned decisions and run interference for the extreme right?

I hope I didn't scoop @EmmetK with this posting

I'm wondering if the next administration will be able (or more likely willing) to pass legislation to retroactively recoup the money stolen through the rampant corruption of using the Oval Office like an ATM for the personal enrichment of our current Incompetent-in-Chief. There has never been a more corrupt (and incompetent) occupant of the Oval office than the Trump crime family.

Stop. I really don't want to think of Mandami fucking a TACO

Marjorie Taylor Greene was quoted as saying that Trump's latest comments about her could endanger her personal safety (from crazy Trump supporters with TDS). Who's going to break the news to her that Trump doesn't give a shit if he endangers anyone's personal safety, and, more than that, he gets off on threatening people's personal safety. Hate, fear and division are the three pillars of his dunce stool of politics.

The USA has never had a more incompetent and embarrassing President. Americans are pretending to be Canadians in Europe. The Canadians are getting pissed about it.

The Incompetent-in-Chief survives by distraction. If his actions to create fear and support with his attack on the economy doesn't work. He'll distract with a foreign war, no doubt defending his bullshit Gulf of "America".

District 9 State Senate race in Texas last Tuesday, almost 15 point swing to the Democrat running. From an Incompetent-in-Chief +20 district, the State district (which is larger became a +5 for the GOP. A loss for the Democrat, but it paints a bleak picture for the MAGAists for their marginal seats in the coming election. Let's hope the Incomeptent-in-Chief doesn't hide away for the last couple weeks of the campaign as in 2024. Americans hate him when he's front and center.

Even the MAGA deniers knew, on some level, that the Incompetent-in-Chief was involved with Epstein's crimes. As a serial sexual harasser and convicted sexual predator himself, of course the Incompetent-in-Chief is involved. Even the MAGA sheeple know this. It's just another level of the Trump Derangement Syndrome that the MAGA supporters are suffering from.

I hope she's working on an autobiography. It'd be required reading for anyone interested in American politics, and how to work within a system of power. It'd be so interesting, I expect that she'd name names, and I want to know why a public option never made it into the Affordable Care Act.

Did FOX News show any consistency and bring out their stale old racists tropes and mention anything about her "anchor baby" and her "intellectual" visa?

To me it's just the latest instance of needing to say "release the names". The secret benefactors and the obscene dark money politic that the extremists on the Supreme Court unleashed on the American public with their "Citizens' United (for Corruption)" decision. The secret benefactors the Incompetent-in-Chief has used to fund all his vanity projects.

That would work well in the newly re-named Michelle Obama Ballroom.

This just came to mind. In Britain after Thatcher passed away, Ding Dong the Witch is Dead, rocketed to Number 1 on the Billboard charts. What song will go viral after the Incompetent-in-Chief passes away? A digression from this thread I realize. "A Six Dressed up as a Nine"? It's nicely Canadian.

I was surprised that Senator Dick Durban, Illinois, was one of the senators who caved. He was one of the 25 Democrats who voted in the Senate against the GOP plan to invade Iraq in 2003.

The percentage of agricultural goods produced by family farms is a lot higher in Canada than in the USA because of their system of supply chain management that guarantees adequate price levels for goods produced. Rather than the American system of stepping in with subsidies during a crisis. Supply chain management is hated by the MAGAists was part of the 2018 free trade agreement negotiations, and will likely be part of the 2026 free trade renewal agreement. MAGA wants to kill the Canadian family farm, as well as the American family farm. And speaking of bankruptcies, America remains the only major economy where citizens have to declare bankruptcies because of medical debt issues. And now MAGA wants to throw even more people off of their health insurance with their Big Ugly Bill, part of their Contract on America.

How can you tell he's lying? His lips are moving. The people who are paying the tariffs are the American people. A good is imported, a tariff is applied to the good, the price of the good has the tariff price added to it. It's not mathematics, it's arithmetic. Even the Incompetent-in-Chief should be able to handle arithmetic.