None Call It Justice

 

As long as Fox “News,” OANN, NewsMax, Breitbart, Truth Social, Washington Examiner, et al, are on the air, online, or in print, spewing lie after lie, and Donald Trump, (TFG), is allowed to keep inciting his brainwashed, hypnotized, and heavily armed, supporters to violence, the country, democracy, nor any of us, are safe. 

TFG exposed the names and addresses of the FBI agents who carried out the search warrant at Mar-a-Lago Monday, August 8th, and the name, etc. of the federal magistrate judge who signed it.  He threatens to release his own surveillance footage of the search, which will expose agents to more threats.

Last I heard the judge was still deciding about releasing the affidavit with redactions. I’m hoping that if/when it is released, (after nine million appeals), it will show everyone that TFG stole top secret documents from the WH, which FBI was searching to recover, but not show agents names again, and not give the cult more reasons to be angry.  

BTW, for any TFG fans out there who think this is a political persecution of him by Biden, or Dems, or lefties, as I keep reading on Twitter, the judge and the head of the FBI were appointed by TFG. 

But, of course, his cult, being what it is, can’t be reasoned with using facts, evidence, or even proof positive.  As Mark Twain said, “The truth has no defense against a fool determined to believe a lie.”

The judge and the FBI agents have already been receiving death threats. In the interest of sanity, I have not paid as strict attention to all the breaking news lately.  But, because FBI agents’ addresses were shared with Breitbart, I imagine some have had to move out of their homes and go into hiding, like Christine Blasey Ford did after the debacle of the Kavanaugh hearing. 

I think the cost of increased security, safe houses, or moves for all agents and the judge should all be billed to TFG. He does not pay his bills, but we could just let the charges add up, and then confiscate his properties after the trials to pay the huge bills.  

  Of course, we also know, that he learned from Roy Cohn to delay and postpone justice by appealing over and over.  So, it’s rather hard to see TFG actually going to trial, serving time, or ever being held accountable for any of his innumerable crimes.  He has gotten away with his constant criminal grifting all his professional life.  If you can call him professional. 

He peddled his stolen election scheme to 61 courts?  He lost in 60. I think his one win was some small technicality. I don’t recall.  But, he never stops. Losing doesn’t stop him from announcing a win.  It’s what he does. Con the gullible by repeating and repeating the lies.  He just tries again and tells his cult that he’s a victim, so that they want to protect the poor, persecuted prince.

So many people I hear, do not believe he will ever be held accountable for any of his never-ending crimes. Even while one crime is being investigated, he’s committing more. He’s gotten away with them all his life. We have no precedent here to hold onto.  He figures no one will ever get to him.  Best con man US has ever seen. We just have to hope his old playbook is going out of print.

I heard he was on Fox saying that he didn’t think Merrick Garland would investigate him. I guess he was trying to intimidate him by implying that his violent mobs would start a revolution to defend him and Garland wouldn’t risk it.  We have seen that they will. January 6th being case in point.

I’m sure you saw the long parade of trucks flying you know who flags in Long Island over the weekend after the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago.  Shows ignorant fools aren’t just in the south. It very was sad, seeing how many deluded, misinformed, misguided, misled cult members are willing to go to any length to protect a guy who would never protect them. But, it’s even sadder what that power-hungry, greedy grifter and traitor has done to America.

Do any of his fans understand that he’s been a con man all his business life, maybe even earlier?  Do they understand that he’s using them for their violent support?  Do they realize he thinks they are lowlifes he would never associate with? 

They think of him as the second coming of Jesus, their savior, and he thinks of them as people he would, not only never allow in his private golf clubs, but also would never even speak to, if they weren’t cheering for him at rallies, and sending him money.  He is a completely transactional, self-serving narcissistic sociopath.  

Ask psychiatrist, Dr. Justin A. Frank.  Read his 2018 book, Trump on the Couch: Inside the Mind of the President. Or ask Bandy X. Lee, the Yale Psychiatrist, who along with 27 psychiatrists and mental health workers, wrote a book in 2017, called The Dangerous Case Of Donald Trump. 

So many experts have observed what a very sick and dangerous man TFG is and has always been. I read in one of the many books on TFG, that he was throwing rocks at his next door neighbor’s baby who was in his playpen in the neighbors’ backyard when TFG was maybe 12 or 14. 

The astounded and frightened neighbor banned her children from ever associating with the Trumps again after she caught TFG.  She probably also got bullet-proofed netting to drape around the playpen.

It just seems as though he’s getting worse with age. Dementia? Desperation? Fear of being cornered and finally being forced to pay for all his bad deeds?

I heard Dr. Frank recently on Thom Hartmann’s radio show.  He suggested, and I agree, that TFG should be confined while we await the investigation. He is too dangerous to be free.  I can see him in prison in that Hannibal Lecter face mask, only with duct tape over his mouth, too.

TFG was on air and online inciting more violence right after the FBI searched his hotel golf club in Palm Beach for the highly confidential documents he stole from our White House.  In fact, he was announcing the FBI search, as a “raid,” to his “fans,” while the FBI was still inside the hotel and were still conducting the search for documents.  

FBI never said a thing about the search, and sent plain clothes agents, so as not draw attention or embarrass the ex-POTUS. TFG made the search public, hoping to incense his brainwashed angry mob to show up and harass the agents.

Dr. Frank and I know it won’t happen.  But, TFG is such a clear and present threat to everyone, we should make an exception.  Maybe a mental health hold.  We can dream. 

Don Jr was on Twitter telling the angry hordes not to go to Mar-a-Lago, that they needed to keep it “clean” for “important people.” I laughed. As I said, good enough to cause the violence they want, but not good enough to be in his highfalutin club.

But, sadly, it was a parody account, not Jr’s.  But, I have to say, they got it right. The Trump crime family does not want their lowlife supporters messing up their “beautiful” private club. 

It certainly wasn’t legal to take classified documents there and leave them in an unsecured location in the basement of the hotel, where many people were seen coming and going over that period of time.  I heard an expert say, on Ian Masters’ Background Briefing podcast, that the FBI is investigating a cell of Russian spies in South Florida who have been seen coming and going from Mar-a-Lago.  

But, TFG does and always has considered himself above the law.  Let’s hope this time is different.  He’s broken so many federal laws.  Surely we can get some to stick.  Surely, TFG doesn’t have kompromat on everyone.

And maybe Merrick Garland is, as I heard him described, that slow moving freight train that will finally take that traitorous mobster out of our lives. A girl can dream and maybe have sweet dreams again. 🙏🏻

Jacosa Puella

August 21, 2022

As The World Burns

          

            As the planet combusts under the oppression of an unforgiving global climate crisis, 1,600 people died in Europe last week in their 104º heat wave; ice bergs continue to melt, raising ocean levels and drowning low lying islands and beaches; oceans heat and increase storm strengths, bleach coral reefs, increasing disease in plants and animals, spreading pathogens more easily and quickly in the warmer waters; old growth redwood forests are burning, and we run out of water in the drought-ridden and over-populated southwest that we need to extinguish wildfires and take care of a thirsty growing population, Republicans, and a certain Democrat or two, continue to deny there is even a climate issue. They vote against doing anything about anything.               

                    If it is not about giving tax cuts to the top 1%, gerrymandering distracts to favor themselves, or taking voting rights away from minorities, or healthcare rights away from women, the GOP is not interested in passing any legislation.

Their party (cult) has no platform, no policies.  Their only goal is to obstruct Democrats from getting helpful legislation passed in order to make Democrats look ineffectual, or worse, so they can blame Democrats for all that ails the US so they can win back Congress and the WH.  They count on voters not doing their own research.  They just continue to repeat their lying campaign rhetoric.

It is so expensive to run for office, (Thank you, SCOTUS and Citizens United decision.), politicians spend a huge proportion of their time dialing for dollars.  And they must pay back those big coal and oil donors, who are responsible in large part for the heating planet, and oh, big Pharma, too, of course, by decreasing or erasing their tax bills. It’s all pay to play in America, never mind that we are killing ourselves.

I don’t know why Republicans seem to feel that they, their children, and grandchildren are above it and will not be affected by this emergency.  It’s the theme of the movie, “Don’t Look Up.” 

A disaster looms, and yet, people, especially politicians, go about their mundane, myopic lives, chasing money and power, ignoring scientists’ warnings, as they are wont to do in disaster films.  

As we used to say, (from the old TV Chiffon Margarine commercials), “It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature!” Or to fool with Mother Nature, in our current crisis. She always wins. And She is, apparently, fed up with the human species, which is, I’d say, the most destructive species that ever evolved.

What is the Republicans’ Plan B? Do they plan to ride Elon Musk’s rocket to Mars and stay there? And what is an even bigger mystery to me, is how do they convince people who are not worth billions to vote for them? They are voting against their own interests or really, voting for their own death sentence.

I think we can blame social media, maybe not completely, but quite a lot. It allows lies and conspiracies to travel around the globe before we can get our proverbial pants on. 

It’s not clear, but Jonathan Swift, (17th-18th century Anglo-Irish essayist, satirist, and political writer), may have started the concept of lies getting around faster than the truth, rather than Mark Twain or Winston Churchill, to whom those sentiments have often been attributed. 

Swift wrote:  “Besides, as the vilest Writer has his Readers, so the greatest Liar has his Believers; and it often happens, that if a Lie be believ’d only for an Hour, it has done its Work, and there is no farther occasion for it. Falsehood flies, and the Truth comes limping after it; so that when Men come to be undeceiv’d, it is too late; the Jest is over, and the Tale has had its Effect…”

As the saying, (Ecclesiastes 1:9) goes, “What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.”

Humans have been, apparently, lying and cheating since we first evolved. The Bible says Adam and Eve even dared to lie to their all seeing/all knowing creator about the apple and blame the snake.  Not that that story is to be taken as more than a metaphor, but people still scapegoat to get out of trouble.

It’s just that with all of us around the world connected now, lies take purchase more easily and have a far greater staying power as they continue to go around and around, increasing in size and weight, as a snow ball does rolling down hill.

Social media is terrific and terrible at the same time, the worst and best of times. Personally, for instance, I don’t know how I got along before the internet (and google).  Britannica Encyclopedias took so much work and they could never be completely up to date or cover everything you wanted to know. And the dictionary and Thesaurus I carried everywhere, when I was younger, eventually fell apart. 

Now everything we need, (don’t need and/or don’t know we need,) is right at our fingertips. But, it comes with a big price, the ubiquitousness of mendacity, as Cat on a Hot Tin Roof’s Big Daddy used to rail.  Or as he said, “There ain’t nothin’ more powerful than the odor of mendacity… You can smell it.  It smells like death.  Mendacity is a system in which men live.”

I have family (Evangelical Republicans) who still think the former guy, Trump, (TFG) is POTUS and that he is a good guy who was sent by God to save America.  Save America from democracy, it seems.

When I give them facts and links to statistics and information, I’m told it is “fake news.”  Still, with all that has happened and even with TFG out of office, they remain loyal to the cult leader.  

Yesterday, a family member, who was messaging me to join a “Boycott Biden club,” asked me, when I told her who the lying grifter TFG, is and always has been, if I only get “filtered news?”  Filtered news.  They actually think the lies and conspiracies they are fed daily are the truth. So, when told facts, info, or news, they think it’s all lies.

What a mess TFG has made of our country. Granted, mental illness and mendacity have always been with us, but never have I seen such a prevalence of both, nor seen the insane lies so proudly and publicly proclaimed. 

They really think they are spouting truth to save our country from Democrats, who, of course, are blood thirsty baby eating pedophiles, and communists.  They cannot understand that they are helping usher in autocracy and fascism.

What TFG has done, other than nearly over-throwing our democracy with violence to install himself as dictator, is made it acceptable to be a crazy conspiracist.  He taught his cult to play victim and to try to rid the country of the godless left by whatever means.  He has made being ignorant and/or brainwashed and wearing a hat to declare it, acceptable, and in those circles a badge of honor.

As Catherine Fahringer from the Freedom From Religion Foundation said, “We would be 1,500 years ahead if it hadn’t been for the church dragging science back by its coattails and burning our best minds at the stake.”

They do not know what they do not know and if we tell them what they don’t know, they will, if they still could, burn us all at the stake for heresy. Well, today, they can just throw us into old growth forests.

Jocosa Puella

July 26, 2022

Don't Agonize, Organize.

Been thinking what I want to say about the dangerous insanity of this current SCOTUS. What can one say? So many things, mixed with outrage, flood the mind. And, also, words become hard to form with tears flowing from your eyes and smoke billowing from your ears. I needed a few days. Crying with protestors in the streets after that ill-fated decision to overturn Roe, (after undoing NY's gun law), while I was not actually out there in the streets with them, was helpful. 

We have four justices who should not even be on the court. Let's work on impeaching them for lying under oath during their confirmation hearings as a start. Mitch McConnell, who owes his allegiance ($$$) to Leonard Leo of the Federalist society, a Catholic Opus Dei member, (I think he has placed 5-6 justices on the court, most are Opus Dei?), installed Neil Gorsuch into the seat he stole from President Obama. 

Scalia had suddenly died leaving the vacancy during Barack Obama's last year in office. Obama nominated Merrick Garland. Mitch thought, no way is this black Democratic president going to appoint three justices. So, he created his new rule: POTUS can't nominate a justice to the court within 10 months of a POTUS election. And, go figure, it worked. Dems are just too polite. To understand what a cold, rather heartless rightwing justice Gorsuch is, look up his record. And read, too, how even the other justices think he's an arrogant, patronizing know it all.

 

Then, about five minutes before the end of the reign of Donald J. Trump, (orange Caligula, as I refer to him), Mitch shoved Amy Coney Barrett into RBG's seat when RBG made the unforgivable mistake of dying before Joe Biden could take his place in our Oval Office. Because Amy's a woman and so was RBG, women will be happy, MM figured. A woman is a woman is a woman, to bastardize Gertrude Stein's poem. Of course, women knew that ACB did not smell as sweet as RBG. But, MM got away with it. Again, Dems were too polite. And meanwhile, Amy isn't even qualified to be on the court. She's the least experienced justice in 30 years, I read, (I guess the last least qualified was Thomas 30.). She never tried a case, and her opinions showed her to not care about justice or people's rights. She signed an anti-abortion ad and said she forgot about that, while avoiding abortion questions, just saying precedence is precedence. And she was literally, a "Handmaid" in her Catholic cult, People of Praise, where men make the decisions and women serve the men and God. Sounds like judge material to me.

Kavanaugh should have been left by the side of the road with a beer keg and a box of Kleenex. Lied and cried and yelled at his confirmation hearing about how much he loves beer. In that confirmation hearing, Beer Bong Kavanaugh's behavior also just screamed Supreme Court Justice material. Didn't it? It had to make you as proud as it made me. What a shocking performance. Witnesses came forward to shed light on his past sexual assaults. Christine Blasey Ford did the right thing to try to save the court and the nation. But, to no avail, and she suffered for it, even having to move out of her home due to threats. And he got onto the court. And who paid off all his very large debts remains a mystery. And another mystery to me, is why didn't Kavanaugh's wife pack up the kids and get the hell away from that snivelly little fool? 

Clarence Thomas, Uncle Tom or Peeping Thomas, as he's been referred to, had a similar problem with his past. Anita Hill was a hero back then, too, but also to no avail. It remains a white man's world, after all, due to gerrymandering and cheating and voter suppression. And few are whiter than that black man.

 

So, two sexual assaulters helped undo Roe v Wade for women who are raped, or are victims of incest, and become pregnant. Even if your doctor says you will die in childbirth, you will be forced to die in childbirth now, or be charged with murder. Stranger than fiction. Life always is. Isn't it? About 30 years after Thomas' confirmation hearing and Anita Hill's testimony, "Gin" Thomas, that lovely MAGA insurrectionist, called Anita very early one morning, demanding that she apologize for the things she'd said about her husband back then. Bit of a delayed reaction, I'd say. I figured Ginni had been tippling all night long, and got more enraged with every drink until she drunk dialed her husband's old nemesis and dumped on poor, unsuspecting Anita Hill.

 

We are losing our democracy and sliding into a theocracy. A theocracy which gives more rights to guns than to women. I still do not understand the guns and god thing or what makes "Christians" think Jesus would be into any weapon. Have they ever actually read what Jesus purportedly said? To me it is an unholy alliance from hell. 

Leonard Leo's long range plan has been to unravel our democratic republic and replace it with a theocracy. And he's been very good at it. He is well funded by Koch brothers and others and because Dems are just too polite. 

Let me amend myself. US is not becoming a theocracy. It is fast becoming a Christofascistic state. QAnon Christofascism. Women in the Jewish religion have the right to an abortion. They believe life begins at your first breath and ends at your last breath. I guess they will have to demand a religious exemption to this Christofascist ban to receive their God given right to reproductive healthcare.

The world is astounded and frightened to see what America, the democratic country they looked up to, is becoming. I think they fear for us and laugh at us by turns. I think the world is still dumbstruck by how uneducated Americans are and how many guns US has, (393.3 million guns to about 330 million citizens.), and how many mass shootings, (at least 250 so far in 2022), and how many children are murdered in their classrooms. How does any civilized nation comprehend, explain, or defend it? 

And I hope those who are applauding that now public funds have to pay for religious schools, too, and that coaches are allowed to pray on the field, enjoy when a Muslim school demands taxpayers support it, and an Islamic Imam spreads his rug out and prays to Allah to bless their games, or asks Allah to kill America, the Great Satan. Or the Church of Satan prays that their team wins. Go Satan!

What a world. I'm back where I started. What can one say about the state of the union today? Stop the world, I want off? My suggestion is that Dems stop being so freakin' polite! And that everyone of voting age, get off their asses and get out and vote in November like their country and their lives depend on it! They do! It's not too late to reverse a lot of the damage done.

 

We can stop our downfall by taking more control of Congress, ending the filibuster, and expanding SCOTUS. While we’re at it, let’s set term limits, too.  This justice for life is not working, either. The generic post Roe reversal poll I read recently, had Dems up by 10 points. We can do this! 

As the phrase, the Afro-American woman civil rights activist, Florence Rae Kennedy, coined, and many, including Gloria Steinam and Rosi Braidotti, quoted, and Occupy Wall Street movement turned into a bumper sticker, said: "Don't agonize, organize!" 

And Rosi Braidotti is right. "Violence, pain and resentment are conducive to paralysis, not to change." Don't go down with the ship, yet. Remain positive and fight like hell. Re-radicalize! VOTE!

Free Time for Equal Time

        The traitorous coup thrower, and would be despot, feels he is not getting his fair day in court. He demands equal time. Just not under oath. He wants hours of free TV prime time to repeat his "rigged election" mantra to rebut the "Russia, Russia, Russia, here we go again" witch hunt. The former guy (TFG) is, apparently, glued to these hearings, (Cheating on Fox News with CNN, I assume.), and it's causing his bloated pumpkin head to explode. 

At a conference in Nashville, hosted by the Faith and Freedom Coalition, TFG said, "There's no clearer example of the menacing spirit that has devoured the American left than the disgraceful performance being staged by the unselect committee." (except for "unselect," it sounds more like Stephen Miller.) 

TFG had only lost his case in 61 courts, after all. Drop in the bucket. He has never been known to let facts, laws, a judge's opinion, (or 61 judges' opinions), or the majority popular vote, or a majority of electors, or the Constitution get in his way. It's good to be King. He knows how to play to his gullible MAGA followers. Lie, lie, lie, and lie some more, double down, rinse and repeat, and keep repeating the lies until the Second Coming. 

His "Christian" followers love him and believe every bit of the word salad that spews from his mouth. He is their savior. What he is, is the consummate con man, maybe the best America has ever seen. I loved when he called the January 6th Select Committee, "con people. They're con artists," he said. Oh, the irony wasted on the irony deficient. 

Malignant narcissists lie and project their behavior onto others. And if TFG was not so dangerous to democracy, America, and life itself, he would be a fascinating masterclass in abhorrent behavior and some of The DSM-5's 157 mental disorders, such as sociopathy, borderline personality and histrionic personality disorders. And who knows? Maybe Mental health workers could coin some new diagnoses after analyzing him. 

We came within 40 feet of throwing our country into "a revolution inside a Constitutional crisis," according to Republican Judge Michael Luttig at the last hearing. Not sure where the mob thought they were going to go with this overthrow of the government after assassinating Mike Pence and Nancy Pelosi, and anyone else who got in their way at the Capitol, but in TFG fashion, it was not well thought out. (Maybe it's due to his ADHD, or dyslexia, or Adderall snorting, or dementia, or...? Insurrection by the Keystone Cops. 

And now TFG just wants to tell US about "the good things, the things that we want to hear," about that day. "It's a one-way street. It's a rigged deal." He needs to give his side of the story, so it's fair and balanced and unbiased. And then, victimhood is another sign of malignant narcissism. 

The fourth January 6 Select Committee Hearing airs, nearly everywhere but Fox News, tomorrow 9am till 12:30pm PT. Don't miss a minute. 

Jocosa Puella June 20, 2022

To Bee or Not

It’s been too long. Very long time no write. Not here, anyway. Life. It’s forever getting in the way. Isn’t it?
I don’t even know what I want to say now, I just realize I must say something. Keep my hand in, as it were.
Health care legislation passed during my MIA act. I mean, if you can call it health care. Seems like another give away to giant corporations to me. But, hey. I’m not a politician.
It seems they have to sell their souls to get anything resembling anything passed and get re-elected, so they can keep their fabulous tax payer paid health care coverage.
Well, at least we may do away with pre-existing conditions being a condition of getting coverage. No a priori genetic malfunctions hanging over our heads. Or do they still hang us in the end? I think I read we can apply to some expensive pool if we want to have insurance coverage.
Did you believe that wonderful Supreme Court decision to allow corporations to spend any obscene amount of money they choose to, to promote or trash candidates? Wonderful. Wonderful.
Thank you, The Supremes. What a great group. But, really, corporations are people, too. Don’t they deserve their rights as much as the next guy? Just because they can outspend the other guy a billion to one, doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be allowed to do that. Right?
Nothing like the good old United States of Corporations, business as usual. Democracy in this country is nothing but P.R. Yeah, don’t get me started about the P.R. driven media, either. I don’t have the time. They're just pabulum. Dangerous to our health pabulum. They’ve become more the inciting to riot and create mayhem variety.
Oh, well… C’est la vie…
You want justice? Dream on, Dream Girls. Life is illusion. And those who would keep their illusionary pockets lined with as much illusionary gold as they can accumulate keep you living in your own version of Lala Land. And hey… Why not? If it is all pretend world, anyway, we might as well pretend we live in the land of flowing honey.
Well, I have to don my beekeeper’s suit and go harvest… I’ll bee back. Well, at least some illusion of me will bee... or not.