It may not do any good, but I don't think that anyone should ever criticize Trump without adding that the real villains are the Republicans in the House and Senate who allow him to commit his crimes. Their oath to uphold the Constitution gives them the duty to impeach and convict him, which they refuse to do.
They couldn't stop him as readily as Congress could. Even if the six Republican politicians who pose as justices were to overturn their decision making him immune from criminal prosecution, he might not stop committing crimes. Many things he does that are "high crimes and misdemeanors" for impeachment purposes do not violate federal criminal law. For example, his impoundment of USAID appropriations, which has killed more than 600,000 people so far (400,000 of them children), is illegal but is not a crime. Congress can prohibit something without imposing criminal penalties.
The trouble with relying on the Supreme Court (aside from its makeup) is the time it takes to work through the system and the tacit wink the court's gang of six gives to trump to sue his way to victory, even in defeat. AKA, the deeds are done by the time decisions are rendered. The trump team takes full advantage of this delay and, since he has immunity and pardon power, we're in a lawless environment for him, his family, and his buddies (insert Christmas reference to Potterville in "It's a Wonderful Life"). Garry Trudeau's Uncle Duke quipped in Doonesbury years ago "but the pension fund was just sitting there" after he made off with American Samoa's wealth. Well, folks, it's our money - this needs to stop.
I still blame Mitch McConnell. He gave a rousing speech in the Senate condemning Jan 6 and blaming Trump. Then, when the second impeachment trial got to the Senate, he stood up and said (roughly) "He's not president anymore, a trial to remove him from office is moot".
But that’s not what the constitution dictates. The trial establishes guilt (or not). Then, punishment is limited to removal from office and/or barring the guilty party from office in the future.
If Mitch had stood up and said he was voting "guilty" there's a decent chance other rational republicans (admittedly a very small group) would have followed. If that had happened, Trump would be relaxing in Florida with having to occasionally fly to Washington to break the functioning of the country
Doesn't matter. Their actions & opinions are powerful in effect, (pre-authorization of any crime he commits), legally binding on all of us & longer lasting than any act of Congress short of impeachment. They are complicit.
They gave him a free pass even before that. Section 3 of the 14th Amendment makes insurrectionists ineligible to hold office. The six Republican politicians on the Court interpreted that provision so as effectively to repeal it. Trump is an unconstitutional president.
The problem is that the 14th Amendment did not define "insurrection" nor has Congress ever bothered to do so. Nor has Congress ever provided a statutory venue for adjudication that it has occurred. Thus Section 3 is effectively mute.
A judge would in that case pull out Webster's Dictionary. If the judge were honest. At least five of the Supremes are not honest and are ideologues. The Chief is on the fence - largely because of his vote on Obamacare during Trump I.
January 6 included Trump's constructive call to arms against the Constitution and the subsequent violent attack on the Capitol with the avowed intention of hanging the Vice-President if he did not comply with Trump's wishes to corrupt the certification process.
The problem lay with Merrick Garland, and ultimately Biden.
What do you expect when SCOTUS justice Thomas spouse Ginny organized a whole bus load of J-6'ers to transport to the Capitol? So basically, Hernandez & Bukele are crypto/gangster friendly politicians....what's with Trump pardoning the imprisoned Chicago gangster who only got transferred to state prison...what's in it for him or our Silicon Valley oligarchs?
It was 9-0 that Colorado could not exclude Trump from its ballot. But it was 5-4 in the part of the decision that effectively repealed section 3 of the 14th Amendment. The Court should not have reached the second part, because the question was not at issue. The question was who decides that a candidate is an insurrectionist. The majority said Congress does so, by passing a law, which requires a majority vote in the House and Senate. This makes no sense, because section 3 of the 14th Amendment simply states that an insurrectionist is ineligible to hold office unless Congress, by a vote of two-thirds of each House, makes him or her eligible. If one half makes him eligible, then two-thirds would never make him ineligible. Take a look at the Wikipedia article on Trump v. Anderson.
Here is a quote from the Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson opinion:
"It is hard to understand why the Constitution would require a congressional supermajority to remove a disqualification if a simple majority could nullify Section 3’s operation by repealing or declining to pass implementing legislation."
Actually, the problem is deeper than just the Supreme Court or the Senate. Trump represents a systemic failure of our governing institutions and the abandonment of our governing norms. That's everything and everyone. The courts, our political parties, the media, corporations, universities...everything and everyone.
At least a third - and probably more - of this country no longer believes in liberal democracy. We don't vote. We don't read newspapers or books. All most of us do is binge watch TV series on Netflix and bitch and moan about how bad things are. The rest actually like what's happening.
Until that changes, we will always have what we have now. Trump will eventually go; but others will take his place.
That systemic failure didn't just happen. What we have on our hands today is the fruit of a 60-some-year-long effort by the far right to embed ultra-conservative and libertarian philosophies (such as they are) in academia and especially law schools; to promulgate right-wing extremism throughout the court system and dominate SCOTUS; to buy Congress's unwavering devotion to deregulation and corporate hegemony; and ensure the permanence of a free-market, laissez-faire political economy.
It got started in the mid- or late '50s with Fred Koch and like-minded John Birch-style billionaires (Olin, Scaife, Mellon, Coors, others) providing endless funds for university chairs, "independent" research institutes, and the like. The 1971 Powell memo was the far right's manifesto, a bold call to aggressive action for the world of business and finance, and the accedence of Reagan to the presidency in 1980 served as the open gate through which far-right influence poured into government, to the deepest levels.
Yes, there have been a couple of interludes since Reagan (Obama, Biden), but only a couple and in the bigger picture of relatively short duration. Note that Clinton most definitely was _not_ an interlude but rather served some neoliberal goals while wearing the cloak of a Democrat. Since Reagan the far-right machine has been moving faster and faster to enrich corporatists and oligarchs, break down democratic processes and safeguards, cement ultra-conservative political power, and ensure its protection against accountability.
And here we are today, with five or perhaps six SCOTUS extremists; a Republican party that has abandoned all moral principles and its oath to the Constitution; overt encouragement and practice of racism and persecution of vulnerable groups within society; overt efforts to suppress and control any vestige of a democratic electoral process (including the open buying of elections for favored candidates); and wealth inequality so grotesque that the richest 10% of American society own more than _two thirds_ of the entire country's wealth.
Everyone here will think me a shill for another Substack writer, Matt Stoller, but his links to other news sources beneath his posts--many of them also other Substack writers--show some very unflattering depictions of the dark personalities behind the scenes and how the sausage is made, so to speak.
You're getting at it, but put the blame squarely on where it belongs: on us, the citizens of the U.S. Because we, as voters, have the power to effect all outcomes. But that requires that citizens are aware of their roles and power in a democracy, which they are not. That is a failure of all of us -- of education, mainly, but also a failure of educated liberal elites who have washed their hands of problems they think don't affect them. But the election of trump in tandem with the GOP becoming a mafia obviously does affect all of us. If we survive as a species -- not guaranteed given climate change and proliferation of nuclear-armed states -- we need to seriously think about fixing our collapsing democracy. That will require all of us, working together.
The spectacular incompetence of the DNC since 2008 is a confounding problem.
That may be the one most important factor in our descent into Trumpism. The Democratic Party is riven and is led by what probably a majority of Democrats consider odiously incapable leaders, Schumer and Jeffries.
There's been no effective opposition to the emerging madness and violent chaos of Trumpism for years. It's not a failure of a system with two reasonably competent but competing managements.
I don’t agree. The Democratic party’s leadership has not been perfect since 2008, but it has some real accomplishments that the party as a whole can be proud of. After all, since 2008 the Democrats passed the ACA, kept the world from imploding after the 2008 financial crash, put in place a highly effective recovery program for the nation after the Covid 19 pandemic and, during Mr. Biden’s administration, put into law the most progressive economic agenda since LBJ via the Inflation Reduction Act.
I also feel justified in arguing that Nancy Polosi was the most effective leader of the House in the nation’s history.
No, our current mess is not due to primarily to mismanagement by the Democratic party’s leadership. Sure, the Democrats have compromised too much with the GOP and screwed up their messaging to the public, but no compromise lasts if the other party to that compromise is a collection of unscrupulous, immoral clowns who view compromise as weakness and an opportunity to grab more; and no messaging will work if the target of that messaging is so marinated in delusion that it refuses to listen.
The Democrats should have done and should be doing better, but, to a much greater extent, so should every other individual and institution that cares about the nation’s democratic traditions, including you and me.
This issue with the courts is that Congress has too often failed to write ‘good’ laws that pass the muster…Abortion Rights should have been codified into federal law and the Supreme Court tried to warn us in time! Congress failed! And over and over over, money as speech, environmental laws, have all been poorly written! Too diffuse…
You're right, but let me respectfully point to retired-lawyer, Harry Cohen's, point made above about always include in trump-the-terrible criticism STRONG condemnation of "THE REAL VILLAINS...REPUBLICANS IN THE HOUSE AND SENATE WHO ALLOW HIM TO COMMIT HIS CRIMES." We the people must rally together to pound the Republican members of the Legislative Branch as hard and often as we can to pressure them to resign - and vote them out when nothing else "drains the swamp" (please excuse the hackneyed phrase that trump-the-terrible, the American Dictator-Wanna-Be used to dupe his pitiful millions of minions...)
SCOTUS is beyond redemption. They're bringing disrepute on the world's oldest profession. The SC needs a complete overhaul. Congress and the Senate are responsible for the current fiasco.
Don’t forget the people who voted for and twisting themselves into moral pretzels still trying to justify this blatant corruption, thievery, disregard for laws and due process, aligning our once good, dependable name with butchers and selling off our country piecemeal to the very same people who attacked us on 9/11. I guess, as usual, our gnat-sized attention span has forgotten the police, firefighters, civilians killed in NYC. Maybe they think New Yorkers “deserved” it but how about the guys and gals who died and still carry the wounds from the aftermath.
Now Saudi Arabia owns the southwest water rights. What could possibly go wrong. And why are we committing defense to Qatar, is it in the interest of Missourians and Alabamans or the interest of the Trump family?
We are making enemies in every corner of the globe, our friends no longer share information with us because who knows if they tell us, Witkoff won’t run to the enemy with it and cut a deal for his son? And it won’t be them dying when some lunatic from this hemisphere or any of them really show up on our shores looking to make 9/11 look like street fight. Pissed Ukrainians, South and Central Americans, Asia.
The only strategy is personal greed of Trump Inc & Friends and their interests are conflicting BIGLY with the interests of 340 millions Americans and billions of people in other countries.
So, yes, SCOTUS and Congress are a fucking embarrassment but they didn’t walk into office or appointments. WE, the apathetic who didn’t vote, the uninformed, the grudge seekers, put them there.
I’m no fan of MTG but if Americans were not such dumb voters, she would have said, “Go fuck yourself, primary me. I’ll grab a mic and an iPhone and get my message out.” We have allowed extremism because we are lazy voters and want our thoughts spoon fed to us. All of the decent people (not necessarily her) that have been run out of office by primaries from whackos have us, WE, to blame.
And please don’t give me that crap about Americans being soooo busy with work and kids they just have no time. Also BULL.SHIT. Equally bull shot, both sides do it. They don’t. There is no evidence to support either idea.
We have plenty of time to watch 12 hours straight if Netflix, can name every character and deliver a synopsis on all the players in Game if Throwns, watch hours upon hours of pron and video games. But read a newspaper and find out how your country will be run, the rights of yourself and your children….TOO BUSY. BUNK. Too uninterested until you wake up and YOUR due process is gone, YOUR son is getting drafted (you didn’t realize the idiot serving as your rep reinstated it) to fight for Baron Trumo and his bros. And you think “how did that happen”. It happened because you haven’t voted in a decade.
More people voted for someone other than Trump and MILLIONS didn’t even bother. And we are kissing our safety net goodbye and watching the MOST valuable asset we have which is the rule of law being abused to prop up guys who launder money for terrorists, drug dealers and human traffickers.
Marcus Imagine how, at 92, how I feel, after voluntarily being a ‘sucker’ and almost a ‘loser’ in service to my country. ‘King Donald, a plurality president, is operating like the most crooked authoritarians I have witnesses.
1)Profiting $2-3 billion less than a year in the Oval Office
2) Pardoning drug and crypto crooks as part of his oligopoly team of crooks
3) Turning the Dept of Injustice into injustice as he orders Pamsy to criminally indict anyone who has caused him ‘displeasure’
4) permitting murder in the Caribbean while he builds up a personal military arm in America which he already is intruding into cities
5) Rendering AMERICA FIRST into AMERICA ALMOST ALONE, with his cockamamie and whimsical tariff blackmail and humiliation.
What type of America will my first grandchildren inherit?
A couple of years before the death of Roe v Wade I gave a talk to a room full of young women who were considering becoming advocates for Planned Parenthood. I gave them stories and data. Afterwards, in the discussion, one woman asked - with obvious fear - “how do we know what’s true? There’s so much out there! What do we trust?”
You mentioned people could just read their newspapers. Which newspapers? So many have been bought by right wing media. Which tv and/or radio broadcasts? Sinclair owns chains and requires them to read right-wing propaganda. I’m convinced that the less-educated (primarily but not exclusively) use sources they have used forever without a clue as to the way media has been monopolized, politicized, and become propaganda.
I talked to some young friends of my 24 year old son. That was their question, how do we know what is true? That is where mainstream news is invaluable, even if you're angry that they sway with the political winds. You're not going to see a lot of completely bogus scientific stuff in the NYT, WaPo, LA Times, WSJ.
Does FOX even have a news department anymore? or is it just the WSJ for real journalism.
I guess the failure to instill and teach critical thinking is just about complete now. Anyone who can't easily see through the incessant bullshit spewing out of everyone associated with the Trump cartel should just send their account information to those Nigerian princes and be done with it.
Leavitt makes Huckleberry Slanders sound like the Oracle of Delphi, every last damn statement a hyperbolic lie. She revels in the mendacity, her drug of choice.
Her boss just spews and bloviates omnidirectionally like the insane, demented criminal he is. Pardoning a Honduran drug lord who was convicted in American courts while Pistol Pete shows children's book cartoon characters murdering presumptively innocent people on the high seas with US military firepower? Just because Biden was president during the due process?
WSJ is pretty bad now too. The US, indeed democracy anywhere, will not survive until corporate and oligarch ownership of media, and social media is addressed. The current situation, where people get to pick their own version of reality, or rather, have some version of reality imposed on them by algorithm, will destroy democracy. A necessary, but not sufficient, prerequisite for running a democracy is that voters are actually informed, about reality.
Seems to me that the MSM needs to impose standards. One standard would be, if the right lets something slip by…it is because it is true. If they report on it, it isn’t true in the case of Fox and Sinclair.
I wish I had read this before I posted my comment, which basically just repeats the last half of your post. To paraphrase Shakespeare, the fault is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we're about to lose our democracy.
Please please look at what these same crypto billionaires are establishing on the tiny Caribbean country of St Kitts and Nevis. With the active help of the government.
The crypto ones are just the most recent crooks and money launderers that the islands use to fund their government. My brother and his wife once went there on a seed company-sponsored get-away for farm couples (my brother called them rah-rah sessions, but in actuality, the attendees were actually the largest purchasers of seed, rather than sales people, farming being another concentrated industry). I took my now-deceased mother to the library and we looked this place up on the computer. Sugar cane used to be its major industry...no longer. Now it is tourism and sale of golden visas. The book/movie The Laundromat was an excellent synopsis about this phenomenon, The Panama Papers. I'm discovering that the Mazur character is more recently revealed as an agent while searching for the name of this book/movie, which I'm going to peruse right now.
Again there is "a snowballs chance in ..." calling out Republicans in Congress, Texas legislature, ... will dent the MAGA enthusiasm for DJT nor diminish the never-ending rationalizing the words and actions of DJT and the kakistocratic administration by Fox, OAN and the Republican caucus. Each and every comment here and elsewhere is incomplete without bringing to light Sen Mitch McConnell and the vast majority of the Republican caucus twice failing to convict DJT after the DJT impeachments in 2019 and 2021
I would include any number of retired "republicans" ... the Bush, Romney, and now even MTG who essentially countenance murder and deep corruption by their silence.
Not sure how these folks look themselves in the mirror
They can look themselves in the mirror because they have no conscience. It's hard for normal people to imagine.
I wonder about the Republicans in Congress who have a conscience, as I think some do. They've decided that supporting murder and corruption is a price they are willing to pay to further their pitiful careers -- pitiful because they've relinquished their power to Trump anyway. How can they look themselves in the mirror? It may be that having a conscience isn't an either/or matter. Consciences come in degrees. They might not be willing personally to murder people in boats or the 600,000 people who have died from Trump's illegally impounding USAID assistance. But to let Trump do it doesn't seem as bad to them.
Well, for the Lawyers in that crowd of folks Google AI indicates, interestingly
"A politician's oath to the U.S. Constitution does not have an expiration date and is generally considered a lifelong moral and civic commitment, even after retirement from office"
• No Expiration Date: The language of the oath itself contains no time limit. It is an open-ended commitment to "support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic".
• Moral Obligation: Although a retired official no longer holds official power or is subject to an impeachment process for actions taken as a private citizen, the oath is viewed as an enduring matter of personal honor and public trust.
• Continuing Status: Many who take the oath (including military personnel and federal employees) view their sworn commitment as binding for life, regardless of their current employment or retired status.
Maybe the ABA can "impeach" a few of these fine ladies, and gentlemen
Ryan, I thought Roe v Wade WAS codified. I guess it’s because the new judges swore they would not change it. Anyway, think how things would be if money was out of politics.
It was not codified (enacted as a statute) by Congress, but I think that some states have done so. Though Dobbs, by overturning Roe v. Wade, made the right to abortion no longer a constitutional right, if Roe v. Wade were codified, it would be a statutory right. But if a previous Congress had codified it, then the present Republican Congress with a Republican president would repeal the codification. That's because Republicans believe in small government--keeping government off our backs (if we're billionaires, that is).
The Republican Party must be tied to his criminality. If it isn't, Vance and his puppeteers will try to continue Trump's rule of lawlessness and crime. The Republican enablers must be discredited along with him.
Maybe they—senate and congressional supporters of Trump can be held accountable, like at the end of other authoritarian regimes, from Hitler and Mussolini and beyond.
Yes! If the Rubs in legislature would stand up and do their job (following the Constitution and actually doing their job of controlling the purse and not rubber stamping anything the straw boss wants) we would not be in this mess.
Not just Fox News; they're just the most well-known. There are/were lots of outlets for Trump to call in, free of charge, and spew his BS: Joe Scarborough is a good example. Today he pretends to be clutching his pearls, but he's still complicit. Alex Jones, all the podcasters...
(if Trump allows it), it needs to somehow find a way to ban these propaganda outlets. We cannot survive as a country with so many misinformed citizens .
That's a cop out. Fox enabled him, but ultimately we get the government we deserve. There will be no change until the people take responsibility for what has happened.
That comment is a cop out! This is not something a large part of us deserve. He d/n win a majority & the plurality he did win was razor thin. I have never voted for him & neither did a large number of others. We have been done in by the stupid vote.
I respectfully disagree. Under our electoral system Trump won. He made gains in working class black and latinos and young people. We Americans are responsible. We do/did have a democracy and we f****d up. I didn't vote for him, you didn't vote for him but tens of millions of Americans did. We need to take responsibility for that.
The point about Fox News is that so many people who voted for him (my dad, for instance) would not have done so if Fox News weren't constantly ignoring and/or excusing everything horrible he does. They have no idea about most of it! They think he is a good Christian trying to do the right thing. And this is totally a plot by one Rupert Murdoch, as we saw in the succession battle over the future direction of the company.
I understand your point but as an informed citizen I am not taking responsibility for voters who do not bother to know the facts or acknowledge the consequences of their acts. I may be dragged down with the entire country that I and my military family have served for 2 generations, but I will be dragged down kicking & screaming & continuing to insist that my loyalty is to the Constitution, not to the petty little dictator that a plurality of the voters have imposed. I did not say he didn't win, nor did I say he isn't the president, I said I do not deserve this president. And I maintain that I do not deserve him.
"Fox enabled him, but ultimately we get the government we deserve."
----
The electorate has been misinformed by Fox, resentment radio, Joe Rogan, foreign agent social media, and religious throwbacks. We get the government the electorate has been programmed to choose.
If Fox doesn't do it, they lose viewers to those who will. Alternative media has unleashed a monster of epistemic negligence and bad incentives that will serve as the new norm going forward.
It’s like Boardwalk Empire in real life, where prohibition-era Atlantic City has come to DC. Will the ballroom have the gold plated mirrors and garish purple decor of Trump Taj Mahal Casino? Or the red velvet wallpaper of Ed Zaberer’s?
In theory, Congress should be able to constrain some aspects of the pardon power, such as self-pardons, crony pardons, bribed pardons, preemptive pardons, and absolution of unpaid financial penalties, but does anyone think this SCOTUS would hold that the power isn't untouchably absolute, like the complete presidential immunity they conjured out of thin air?
Originalists and textualists could at least find support in the plain language of the Constitution itself (unlike the immunity), but could they turn a blind eye to the reality that the framers who created a power of presidential clemency never imagined that a 21st Century mob boss would get his greedy little fingers on it and abuse it with open, unapologetic impunity for nothing nobler than dirty money?
I will follow with great interest the fortunes (heh) of this latest glibertarian paradise. So far, every other attempt has either ended with everyone getting scammed or bears taking over the town.
To be fair, this is why Mr Krugman created this substack. The editors at the NYT probably wouldn't have let him publish this either and while he won't get anywhere near the level of readership here, at least we can share it and hopefully chip away just a little bit at that number.
I am finding it increasingly difficult to define what "America" even means at this point. Whether it's the obvious criminal activity of the elites, or the complacency of the citizens, nothing makes sense anymore.
I think it is explained in all the shopping that happened on Black Friday despite some good organization for a boycott. We want our things. We really want our things.
If the media that’s telling us this is to be believed. Read something yesterday about the gains being from the upper echelons of consumers, more of the “K” shaped economy. But, consider the shape of the letter, that little bottom line is what holds the rest of it up.
It could also be that people are doing what I’ve been doing throughout the past year-buying things that will probably need replacing before things get really bad.
Many Americans need some things and would like to acquire them at a price that is as low as possible that means shopping the sales.
I’m confused as to why anyone thinks a boycott will be successful if it requires the participants to pay more money to retailers before or after, but not during, a sale.
This seems like a maximization of the pain to the participants rather than the targets.
I think the bushes are beginning to shake, just a bit. We're still a long ways off and it's going to get far worse before it gets better, but the criminals are getting too blatant. They are sure they can get away with anything. When the magas turn against them, it will be ugly. I think the crypto criminals are sticking their necks out in their arrogance and are figuratively going to get them cut off.
Sad to say, outside of the US, liberal democracies around the world have also fallen prey to manipulation by social media, and are being ginned up to be anti-immigrant, pro-Russian, anti-science, etc.
And let's not forget David Gentile, the founder and CEO of GBP Capital, who just had his seven year sentence for running a $1.6 billion Ponzi scheme commuted by Trump.
The corruption is blatant and there for all to see. Under Trump., if you have money or something to offer, there is no such thing as true justice. Just ask Pam.
Do not ever think there is a bottom for Trump. He is a black hole of greed, corruption, and vengefulness.
What has the United States come down to? Trump this and Trump that, but this is the second time he was voted in. There are checks and balances but not enough care sufficiently about their country to apply them. Neither is it just one thing, but a whole string of horrors.
Is there no realisation that if it isn’t immediately stopped in its tracks it becomes legitimised? Look at how much and over what time Prof. Krugman has had to explain what is utterly obvious, yet there he still is. People are talking about the mid-terms to see if Trump will lose a bit of power, be somewhat challenged.
How utterly crazy! How humiliating is this for a highly educated, advanced, very wealthy nation? Yet the top of the top are happily rolling in the mud smirking as they ruin the very thing that provided them with their privilege (sudden image of smug Scott Bessant).
It is and will always be baffling to me. I used to wonder how Germans could allow a Hitler to happen, but now I know. I don't think we'd be where we are without all the misinformation and hate that's pickled so many brains.
Yes!! I was part of a small neighborhood book club before Covid, and I lost count of how many WW2 novels we read. My two ‘church lady’ friends supported Trump nonetheless.
Excellent question and I honestly don’t know, as we never managed to re-group after covid and trump 1.0. My politics are well known to them. We read a lot of bestsellers that were a few years past their peak popularity and almost always in the local libraries. We read Hillbilly Elegy (JD’s book) and I maintain that the vast majority of people who read that book weren’t MAGA … hence the shock over Usha at Trump’s second national GOP convention.
Well, Germany suffered massive devastation post WW1 (not the only one, France basically lost a whole generation of males) and because it was not invaded a narrative grew up it was betrayed. The US, oddly, remained economically well ahead of peers yet seems hugely resentful.
If you ever visit Vienna it’s worth going to The Leopold Museum which shows art works just before, during and after. It is very weird but the atmosphere of ‘after’ seems very close to where we ‘feel’ now but it is very difficult to rationalise why.
The US may be ahead of its peers economically, but all that wealth is concentrating at the top 1%, thus we have a generation that feels lost and betrayed.
In Nuremberg the Germans have established a museum, the Documentation Zentrum, in what was, at the end of WW2, the unfinished Nazi congress hall, a stone’s throw from the Nazi party rally grounds where those chilling scenes of Nazi patriotism in “Triumph of the Will” were staged. Its focus could be summed up by “how could it have happened?”
One could spend an entire dispiriting day threading through the step by step by step displays. And the phrase “triumph of the will” pretty much sums it up. I estimate that the US is about halfway into the process.
Somebody should have told Americans that when a people is given a choice between cheap eggs and freedom and they choose cheap eggs, they end up losing everything including cheap eggs.
(I wonder if anyone can work out who I was paraphrasing there?)
Actually it was Ukrainian nationalist leader Stepan Bandera (in his original quote the foodstuff was bread, I'm guessing he was thinking of the Holodomor), although it wouldn't surprise me if he had drawn inspiration from Franklin.
Well, the cool thing was that we'll before the election (like before Biden's pitiful debate performance), the inflation that everyone was talking about was pretty much back to normal (it was about 2.4%, whereas the target is 2% an 2.2 is "normal").
Practically no one believed that. Thanks Fox News!
People weren't mad that inflation in general had gone up a few percent: they were mad that specific items had gone up by 100+%, such as eggs (bird flu), mortgage payments (end of ZIRP) or burrito taxis/Uber rides (end of ZIRP-enabled VC subsidies + rising working-class wages).
Thank you for this. Both Democrats and Republicans have gone easy on libertarians because they used to be in favor of personal liberty and were rich (donating to both parties). But personal liberty turned out to just be cover for letting corporations take over and crushing government regulation.
I see the tech bros as just another group embracing "predatory economics" -- the economics of using propaganda, corruption, fraud, bribery, extortion, and physical violence to take from others (which contrasts with "productive economics" -- the conventional economics taught in school in which investments are made in productive enterprises to generate useful goods and services plus a little profit to cover the cost of investment). For decades, the Republican Party has been openly supporting payday lenders, monopolies, private equity that buys up old productive companies and sucks all the value out of them, and private equity that buys up essential goods like houses and rents them at exorbitant rates -- all predatory enterprises. Crypto was just another step in supporting predatory companies. Trump supports predators too, but he doesn't try to hide it behind business rhetoric or calls for liberty. For him, life is all about being the biggest predator.
The issue is that those of Right Wing Authoritarian psychology are very selfish and don't care about hypocrisy, and are thus totally willing to identify as "libertarian" because they "support freedom" (by which they mean they support THEIR freedom, not anybody else's).
The libertarians were always Republicans who (as the old saying went) wanted to smoke pot. And when the Republicans in the 70's decided to use abortion as a battle cry (when relying on racism was wearing a bit thin), the libertarians decided that of all the "personal liberties" they supported, a woman being in control of her own body and destiny wasn't one of them. At this point, it is clear that the only "liberties" they support are the liberty of the rich to pollute, oppress and steal from the masses with impunity.
In 1989, the U.S., under Republican president George H. W. Bush, invaded Panama, and forcibly apprehended military dictator Manuel Noriega, who was indicted by a Miami grand jury and subsequentially convicted of drug smuggling and money laundering. While there was international outrage, and many scholars saw the invasion as illegal, most Americans supported it. Flash forward, 2025. We're PARDONING convicted international billionaire drug lords without a whimper from Republicans and murdering Venezuelan fishermen on unsubstantiated claims of drug running without trial or due process on the high seas. That says it all.
*I am relieved most everyone can see that attacking survivors in the wreckage is murder, but so are the initial strikes. To say it's OK because we are at "war" with drug smugglers is just playing with words. But if that weirdly selective outrage is what it takes to be rid of P Hegseth, bring it on.
When it comes to clemency for drug criminals, if they're sufficiently BIG-TIME, where is outraged MAGA? I guess it's just small-time, disorganized criminality that is the real enemy. If the crime is big enough, then all is forgiven. "Welcome to the winning team, no matter how you got here!"
Run by a corporation...but wouldn't the corporation need to have rules to run on? If so then it is just a government by another name.
It always seems like those who think there is another way, and that somehow a pure form of something will solve all ills, whether it be laissez-faire capitalism promoted by libertarians or a hippie's version of utopia living in a commune without laws or "the man," that in the end they all discover that some sort of laws, rules, and governance is absolutely necessary as people and their endeavors are far from perfect and there is a lot of treading on others that takes place, crime, and things that require a society to get done that requires collecting fees or some kind of tax.
People are far from perfect, to say the least. Rules and governance are simply needed in a society and in an economy, and this includes capitalism.
It seems that the billionaire class island dwellers may find themselves living in a version of the wild west, but then perhaps the island is not really meant to dwell in but to shelter wealth in, I do not know, but that does not mean there will not be a financial version of the wild west caused by crypto. I suppose is already the case, but this will help it to keep getting worse.
Even in the game of Monopoly, in the end, there is only one winner and this is what can happen with pure laissez-faire, where it is "game over" for most, and that is not a great way to run any economy or a good way to live.
The billionaires may end up destroying each other in the end, one wonders.
It certainly sounds quite likely.
In this version of doing things there are only winners and losers and not much left in between. They will crush each other.
In the end, the old saying, "careful what you wish for" may come to pass, for these folks, even for these super rich as lawlessness and survival of the fittest laissez-faire meets criminal enterprise surrounded by an ocean.
Would there even be any effort or need to "hide the bodies" so to speak?
It sounds awful, but then I also do not get why anyone would be motivated by world domination dreams, or massive wealth in the first place, it all sounds like an awful miserable grind.
This is all so corrupt and also downright miserable sounding.
Not a "happy" way to live for sure.
Roman emperors being constantly murdered and living in fear comes to mind.
At least in monopoly, when one gets truly pissed there is always the option of flipping the whole board upside down. Well, if there was ever a time to flip the board, I think it’s now.
Yet 35% of the American population continue to strongly support trump and his band of merry men. And most of the 65% remaining are sitting with their heads covered.
....50% or so of voters didnt vote in 2024 and contrary to the MSM circus, it wasnt just about Harris or Trump. There were 3rd party independent candidates on the ballots.
It may not do any good, but I don't think that anyone should ever criticize Trump without adding that the real villains are the Republicans in the House and Senate who allow him to commit his crimes. Their oath to uphold the Constitution gives them the duty to impeach and convict him, which they refuse to do.
What about SCOTUS?
They couldn't stop him as readily as Congress could. Even if the six Republican politicians who pose as justices were to overturn their decision making him immune from criminal prosecution, he might not stop committing crimes. Many things he does that are "high crimes and misdemeanors" for impeachment purposes do not violate federal criminal law. For example, his impoundment of USAID appropriations, which has killed more than 600,000 people so far (400,000 of them children), is illegal but is not a crime. Congress can prohibit something without imposing criminal penalties.
The trouble with relying on the Supreme Court (aside from its makeup) is the time it takes to work through the system and the tacit wink the court's gang of six gives to trump to sue his way to victory, even in defeat. AKA, the deeds are done by the time decisions are rendered. The trump team takes full advantage of this delay and, since he has immunity and pardon power, we're in a lawless environment for him, his family, and his buddies (insert Christmas reference to Potterville in "It's a Wonderful Life"). Garry Trudeau's Uncle Duke quipped in Doonesbury years ago "but the pension fund was just sitting there" after he made off with American Samoa's wealth. Well, folks, it's our money - this needs to stop.
I still blame Mitch McConnell. He gave a rousing speech in the Senate condemning Jan 6 and blaming Trump. Then, when the second impeachment trial got to the Senate, he stood up and said (roughly) "He's not president anymore, a trial to remove him from office is moot".
But that’s not what the constitution dictates. The trial establishes guilt (or not). Then, punishment is limited to removal from office and/or barring the guilty party from office in the future.
If Mitch had stood up and said he was voting "guilty" there's a decent chance other rational republicans (admittedly a very small group) would have followed. If that had happened, Trump would be relaxing in Florida with having to occasionally fly to Washington to break the functioning of the country
I still blame Mitch
The title for Mitch’s biography should be “Unintended Consequences”
They were intended consequences. Mitch's bio should be entitled "Burn for all eternity"
Doesn't matter. Their actions & opinions are powerful in effect, (pre-authorization of any crime he commits), legally binding on all of us & longer lasting than any act of Congress short of impeachment. They are complicit.
SCOTUS is not powerless. Their rulings carry BIG weight toward sustaining our democracy even with Krasnov’s work-arounds.
Plus, the public knows they are crimes even if they’re not technically illegal.
It's the opposite. Some things he does are illegal without being crimes.
Either way, but yes.
I want the infiltrator justices out.
They gave him a free pass even before that. Section 3 of the 14th Amendment makes insurrectionists ineligible to hold office. The six Republican politicians on the Court interpreted that provision so as effectively to repeal it. Trump is an unconstitutional president.
We're in complete agreement.
The problem is that the 14th Amendment did not define "insurrection" nor has Congress ever bothered to do so. Nor has Congress ever provided a statutory venue for adjudication that it has occurred. Thus Section 3 is effectively mute.
A judge would in that case pull out Webster's Dictionary. If the judge were honest. At least five of the Supremes are not honest and are ideologues. The Chief is on the fence - largely because of his vote on Obamacare during Trump I.
January 6 included Trump's constructive call to arms against the Constitution and the subsequent violent attack on the Capitol with the avowed intention of hanging the Vice-President if he did not comply with Trump's wishes to corrupt the certification process.
The problem lay with Merrick Garland, and ultimately Biden.
What do you expect when SCOTUS justice Thomas spouse Ginny organized a whole bus load of J-6'ers to transport to the Capitol? So basically, Hernandez & Bukele are crypto/gangster friendly politicians....what's with Trump pardoning the imprisoned Chicago gangster who only got transferred to state prison...what's in it for him or our Silicon Valley oligarchs?
People are also pardoned for money, simple pay for pardons under Trump. A whole mini-industry, see Roger Stone et al.
Actually, I read yesterday that the decision to allow Trump to run in Colorado was 9–0.
It was 9-0 that Colorado could not exclude Trump from its ballot. But it was 5-4 in the part of the decision that effectively repealed section 3 of the 14th Amendment. The Court should not have reached the second part, because the question was not at issue. The question was who decides that a candidate is an insurrectionist. The majority said Congress does so, by passing a law, which requires a majority vote in the House and Senate. This makes no sense, because section 3 of the 14th Amendment simply states that an insurrectionist is ineligible to hold office unless Congress, by a vote of two-thirds of each House, makes him or her eligible. If one half makes him eligible, then two-thirds would never make him ineligible. Take a look at the Wikipedia article on Trump v. Anderson.
Here is a quote from the Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson opinion:
"It is hard to understand why the Constitution would require a congressional supermajority to remove a disqualification if a simple majority could nullify Section 3’s operation by repealing or declining to pass implementing legislation."
Trump was not convicted, and had to be presumed innocent. It was a no-brainer. A distraction.
Actually, the problem is deeper than just the Supreme Court or the Senate. Trump represents a systemic failure of our governing institutions and the abandonment of our governing norms. That's everything and everyone. The courts, our political parties, the media, corporations, universities...everything and everyone.
At least a third - and probably more - of this country no longer believes in liberal democracy. We don't vote. We don't read newspapers or books. All most of us do is binge watch TV series on Netflix and bitch and moan about how bad things are. The rest actually like what's happening.
Until that changes, we will always have what we have now. Trump will eventually go; but others will take his place.
That systemic failure didn't just happen. What we have on our hands today is the fruit of a 60-some-year-long effort by the far right to embed ultra-conservative and libertarian philosophies (such as they are) in academia and especially law schools; to promulgate right-wing extremism throughout the court system and dominate SCOTUS; to buy Congress's unwavering devotion to deregulation and corporate hegemony; and ensure the permanence of a free-market, laissez-faire political economy.
It got started in the mid- or late '50s with Fred Koch and like-minded John Birch-style billionaires (Olin, Scaife, Mellon, Coors, others) providing endless funds for university chairs, "independent" research institutes, and the like. The 1971 Powell memo was the far right's manifesto, a bold call to aggressive action for the world of business and finance, and the accedence of Reagan to the presidency in 1980 served as the open gate through which far-right influence poured into government, to the deepest levels.
Yes, there have been a couple of interludes since Reagan (Obama, Biden), but only a couple and in the bigger picture of relatively short duration. Note that Clinton most definitely was _not_ an interlude but rather served some neoliberal goals while wearing the cloak of a Democrat. Since Reagan the far-right machine has been moving faster and faster to enrich corporatists and oligarchs, break down democratic processes and safeguards, cement ultra-conservative political power, and ensure its protection against accountability.
And here we are today, with five or perhaps six SCOTUS extremists; a Republican party that has abandoned all moral principles and its oath to the Constitution; overt encouragement and practice of racism and persecution of vulnerable groups within society; overt efforts to suppress and control any vestige of a democratic electoral process (including the open buying of elections for favored candidates); and wealth inequality so grotesque that the richest 10% of American society own more than _two thirds_ of the entire country's wealth.
Agree. Your comments call to mind Jane Mayer’s excellent book “ Dark Money”.
Everyone here will think me a shill for another Substack writer, Matt Stoller, but his links to other news sources beneath his posts--many of them also other Substack writers--show some very unflattering depictions of the dark personalities behind the scenes and how the sausage is made, so to speak.
And guess what, We the People allowed all this to happen. To quote the great Pogo creator Walt Kelly, " We have met the enemy, and he is us."
You're getting at it, but put the blame squarely on where it belongs: on us, the citizens of the U.S. Because we, as voters, have the power to effect all outcomes. But that requires that citizens are aware of their roles and power in a democracy, which they are not. That is a failure of all of us -- of education, mainly, but also a failure of educated liberal elites who have washed their hands of problems they think don't affect them. But the election of trump in tandem with the GOP becoming a mafia obviously does affect all of us. If we survive as a species -- not guaranteed given climate change and proliferation of nuclear-armed states -- we need to seriously think about fixing our collapsing democracy. That will require all of us, working together.
The spectacular incompetence of the DNC since 2008 is a confounding problem.
That may be the one most important factor in our descent into Trumpism. The Democratic Party is riven and is led by what probably a majority of Democrats consider odiously incapable leaders, Schumer and Jeffries.
There's been no effective opposition to the emerging madness and violent chaos of Trumpism for years. It's not a failure of a system with two reasonably competent but competing managements.
I don’t agree. The Democratic party’s leadership has not been perfect since 2008, but it has some real accomplishments that the party as a whole can be proud of. After all, since 2008 the Democrats passed the ACA, kept the world from imploding after the 2008 financial crash, put in place a highly effective recovery program for the nation after the Covid 19 pandemic and, during Mr. Biden’s administration, put into law the most progressive economic agenda since LBJ via the Inflation Reduction Act.
I also feel justified in arguing that Nancy Polosi was the most effective leader of the House in the nation’s history.
No, our current mess is not due to primarily to mismanagement by the Democratic party’s leadership. Sure, the Democrats have compromised too much with the GOP and screwed up their messaging to the public, but no compromise lasts if the other party to that compromise is a collection of unscrupulous, immoral clowns who view compromise as weakness and an opportunity to grab more; and no messaging will work if the target of that messaging is so marinated in delusion that it refuses to listen.
The Democrats should have done and should be doing better, but, to a much greater extent, so should every other individual and institution that cares about the nation’s democratic traditions, including you and me.
This issue with the courts is that Congress has too often failed to write ‘good’ laws that pass the muster…Abortion Rights should have been codified into federal law and the Supreme Court tried to warn us in time! Congress failed! And over and over over, money as speech, environmental laws, have all been poorly written! Too diffuse…
Courts react, Congress writes…
You're right, but let me respectfully point to retired-lawyer, Harry Cohen's, point made above about always include in trump-the-terrible criticism STRONG condemnation of "THE REAL VILLAINS...REPUBLICANS IN THE HOUSE AND SENATE WHO ALLOW HIM TO COMMIT HIS CRIMES." We the people must rally together to pound the Republican members of the Legislative Branch as hard and often as we can to pressure them to resign - and vote them out when nothing else "drains the swamp" (please excuse the hackneyed phrase that trump-the-terrible, the American Dictator-Wanna-Be used to dupe his pitiful millions of minions...)
Same SCOTUS that said that anything a president does in his role as president is legal, and his 'role' as president is whatever he says it is.
Bad SCOTUS.
Them too.
SCOTUS is beyond redemption. They're bringing disrepute on the world's oldest profession. The SC needs a complete overhaul. Congress and the Senate are responsible for the current fiasco.
The US Constitution does not apply to Trump. Because reasons.
Don’t forget the people who voted for and twisting themselves into moral pretzels still trying to justify this blatant corruption, thievery, disregard for laws and due process, aligning our once good, dependable name with butchers and selling off our country piecemeal to the very same people who attacked us on 9/11. I guess, as usual, our gnat-sized attention span has forgotten the police, firefighters, civilians killed in NYC. Maybe they think New Yorkers “deserved” it but how about the guys and gals who died and still carry the wounds from the aftermath.
Now Saudi Arabia owns the southwest water rights. What could possibly go wrong. And why are we committing defense to Qatar, is it in the interest of Missourians and Alabamans or the interest of the Trump family?
We are making enemies in every corner of the globe, our friends no longer share information with us because who knows if they tell us, Witkoff won’t run to the enemy with it and cut a deal for his son? And it won’t be them dying when some lunatic from this hemisphere or any of them really show up on our shores looking to make 9/11 look like street fight. Pissed Ukrainians, South and Central Americans, Asia.
The only strategy is personal greed of Trump Inc & Friends and their interests are conflicting BIGLY with the interests of 340 millions Americans and billions of people in other countries.
So, yes, SCOTUS and Congress are a fucking embarrassment but they didn’t walk into office or appointments. WE, the apathetic who didn’t vote, the uninformed, the grudge seekers, put them there.
I’m no fan of MTG but if Americans were not such dumb voters, she would have said, “Go fuck yourself, primary me. I’ll grab a mic and an iPhone and get my message out.” We have allowed extremism because we are lazy voters and want our thoughts spoon fed to us. All of the decent people (not necessarily her) that have been run out of office by primaries from whackos have us, WE, to blame.
And please don’t give me that crap about Americans being soooo busy with work and kids they just have no time. Also BULL.SHIT. Equally bull shot, both sides do it. They don’t. There is no evidence to support either idea.
We have plenty of time to watch 12 hours straight if Netflix, can name every character and deliver a synopsis on all the players in Game if Throwns, watch hours upon hours of pron and video games. But read a newspaper and find out how your country will be run, the rights of yourself and your children….TOO BUSY. BUNK. Too uninterested until you wake up and YOUR due process is gone, YOUR son is getting drafted (you didn’t realize the idiot serving as your rep reinstated it) to fight for Baron Trumo and his bros. And you think “how did that happen”. It happened because you haven’t voted in a decade.
More people voted for someone other than Trump and MILLIONS didn’t even bother. And we are kissing our safety net goodbye and watching the MOST valuable asset we have which is the rule of law being abused to prop up guys who launder money for terrorists, drug dealers and human traffickers.
We, the Peole, are the problem.
And also sorry….im so pissed off at the state of this country. Hard not to go off like a maniac.
Marcus Imagine how, at 92, how I feel, after voluntarily being a ‘sucker’ and almost a ‘loser’ in service to my country. ‘King Donald, a plurality president, is operating like the most crooked authoritarians I have witnesses.
1)Profiting $2-3 billion less than a year in the Oval Office
2) Pardoning drug and crypto crooks as part of his oligopoly team of crooks
3) Turning the Dept of Injustice into injustice as he orders Pamsy to criminally indict anyone who has caused him ‘displeasure’
4) permitting murder in the Caribbean while he builds up a personal military arm in America which he already is intruding into cities
5) Rendering AMERICA FIRST into AMERICA ALMOST ALONE, with his cockamamie and whimsical tariff blackmail and humiliation.
What type of America will my first grandchildren inherit?
Bang on. And no need to apologize. You’re not Canadian, lol. But damn if you don’t sound like one of us. Elbows up! 💪💪💪
Agreed...
Completely understand!
A couple of years before the death of Roe v Wade I gave a talk to a room full of young women who were considering becoming advocates for Planned Parenthood. I gave them stories and data. Afterwards, in the discussion, one woman asked - with obvious fear - “how do we know what’s true? There’s so much out there! What do we trust?”
You mentioned people could just read their newspapers. Which newspapers? So many have been bought by right wing media. Which tv and/or radio broadcasts? Sinclair owns chains and requires them to read right-wing propaganda. I’m convinced that the less-educated (primarily but not exclusively) use sources they have used forever without a clue as to the way media has been monopolized, politicized, and become propaganda.
Thanks for your post; excellent work!
I talked to some young friends of my 24 year old son. That was their question, how do we know what is true? That is where mainstream news is invaluable, even if you're angry that they sway with the political winds. You're not going to see a lot of completely bogus scientific stuff in the NYT, WaPo, LA Times, WSJ.
Does FOX even have a news department anymore? or is it just the WSJ for real journalism.
I guess the failure to instill and teach critical thinking is just about complete now. Anyone who can't easily see through the incessant bullshit spewing out of everyone associated with the Trump cartel should just send their account information to those Nigerian princes and be done with it.
Leavitt makes Huckleberry Slanders sound like the Oracle of Delphi, every last damn statement a hyperbolic lie. She revels in the mendacity, her drug of choice.
Her boss just spews and bloviates omnidirectionally like the insane, demented criminal he is. Pardoning a Honduran drug lord who was convicted in American courts while Pistol Pete shows children's book cartoon characters murdering presumptively innocent people on the high seas with US military firepower? Just because Biden was president during the due process?
WSJ is pretty bad now too. The US, indeed democracy anywhere, will not survive until corporate and oligarch ownership of media, and social media is addressed. The current situation, where people get to pick their own version of reality, or rather, have some version of reality imposed on them by algorithm, will destroy democracy. A necessary, but not sufficient, prerequisite for running a democracy is that voters are actually informed, about reality.
What you want is MSNOW, formerly MSNBC. Real lawyers, Judge Luttig, congressmen and senators. In short, primary sources.
Seems to me that the MSM needs to impose standards. One standard would be, if the right lets something slip by…it is because it is true. If they report on it, it isn’t true in the case of Fox and Sinclair.
Amen. I'm sure there are many people who know every frigging detail about the Kardashians but don't have time to read or vote because....
You just nailed it ! Continue and spread the word !
I wish I had read this before I posted my comment, which basically just repeats the last half of your post. To paraphrase Shakespeare, the fault is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we're about to lose our democracy.
Congressional Republicans have bellied up like dead dogs to Trump and SCOTUS is all for Project 2025.
The U.S. has no mechanism to stop this without its two branches of co-equal government. And that was the plan.
which is why many of them are jumping ship by retiring or not running again
Agree. The Republican Party in complicit in Trumps criminal behavior.
Those responsible include every single person who voted for Trump in 2024.
I heard Virginia Giuffree's co/ghost writer say that Giuffre was excited a out Trump releasing the Epstein files.
That is so tragic, that a woman who was so exploited by Epstein and Maxwell would believe Trump's lies.
There is more backbone in a bowl of chocolate pudding than there is in the entire leadership of the Republican party.
Please please look at what these same crypto billionaires are establishing on the tiny Caribbean country of St Kitts and Nevis. With the active help of the government.
The crypto ones are just the most recent crooks and money launderers that the islands use to fund their government. My brother and his wife once went there on a seed company-sponsored get-away for farm couples (my brother called them rah-rah sessions, but in actuality, the attendees were actually the largest purchasers of seed, rather than sales people, farming being another concentrated industry). I took my now-deceased mother to the library and we looked this place up on the computer. Sugar cane used to be its major industry...no longer. Now it is tourism and sale of golden visas. The book/movie The Laundromat was an excellent synopsis about this phenomenon, The Panama Papers. I'm discovering that the Mazur character is more recently revealed as an agent while searching for the name of this book/movie, which I'm going to peruse right now.
The actual partners in the Panamanian firm were Mossack & Fonseca, not Mazur.
Again there is "a snowballs chance in ..." calling out Republicans in Congress, Texas legislature, ... will dent the MAGA enthusiasm for DJT nor diminish the never-ending rationalizing the words and actions of DJT and the kakistocratic administration by Fox, OAN and the Republican caucus. Each and every comment here and elsewhere is incomplete without bringing to light Sen Mitch McConnell and the vast majority of the Republican caucus twice failing to convict DJT after the DJT impeachments in 2019 and 2021
Absolutely right. The republicans in congress could get rid of trump immediately if they had the guts to do so. Sickening cowards!
I would include any number of retired "republicans" ... the Bush, Romney, and now even MTG who essentially countenance murder and deep corruption by their silence.
Not sure how these folks look themselves in the mirror
They can look themselves in the mirror because they have no conscience. It's hard for normal people to imagine.
I wonder about the Republicans in Congress who have a conscience, as I think some do. They've decided that supporting murder and corruption is a price they are willing to pay to further their pitiful careers -- pitiful because they've relinquished their power to Trump anyway. How can they look themselves in the mirror? It may be that having a conscience isn't an either/or matter. Consciences come in degrees. They might not be willing personally to murder people in boats or the 600,000 people who have died from Trump's illegally impounding USAID assistance. But to let Trump do it doesn't seem as bad to them.
Well, for the Lawyers in that crowd of folks Google AI indicates, interestingly
"A politician's oath to the U.S. Constitution does not have an expiration date and is generally considered a lifelong moral and civic commitment, even after retirement from office"
• No Expiration Date: The language of the oath itself contains no time limit. It is an open-ended commitment to "support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic".
• Moral Obligation: Although a retired official no longer holds official power or is subject to an impeachment process for actions taken as a private citizen, the oath is viewed as an enduring matter of personal honor and public trust.
• Continuing Status: Many who take the oath (including military personnel and federal employees) view their sworn commitment as binding for life, regardless of their current employment or retired status.
Maybe the ABA can "impeach" a few of these fine ladies, and gentlemen
#wishful-thinking
A technical point. Lawyers are admitted to state bars, and state bars can disbar them. The ABA has nothing to do with it.
tech point redux: ... I'm not a lawyer, ... just sorta frustrated LOL
And for the MBA's in the crowd, Harvard had Standards of Conduct (which should be a lifelong commitment): This broad code includes rules on honesty
Not to speak out is a basic form of dishonesty
Ryan, I thought Roe v Wade WAS codified. I guess it’s because the new judges swore they would not change it. Anyway, think how things would be if money was out of politics.
It was not codified (enacted as a statute) by Congress, but I think that some states have done so. Though Dobbs, by overturning Roe v. Wade, made the right to abortion no longer a constitutional right, if Roe v. Wade were codified, it would be a statutory right. But if a previous Congress had codified it, then the present Republican Congress with a Republican president would repeal the codification. That's because Republicans believe in small government--keeping government off our backs (if we're billionaires, that is).
I read in the NYT that there’s a trend among conservative women to not use birth control and rely on timing.
I predict a good many of these women will come to be sorry about the demise of Roe v Wade.
The Republican Party must be tied to his criminality. If it isn't, Vance and his puppeteers will try to continue Trump's rule of lawlessness and crime. The Republican enablers must be discredited along with him.
Totally agree.
Maybe they—senate and congressional supporters of Trump can be held accountable, like at the end of other authoritarian regimes, from Hitler and Mussolini and beyond.
Yes! If the Rubs in legislature would stand up and do their job (following the Constitution and actually doing their job of controlling the purse and not rubber stamping anything the straw boss wants) we would not be in this mess.
Everything that Trump does is pro-crime and anti-American
All made possible by Fox News covering for him.
Not just Fox News; they're just the most well-known. There are/were lots of outlets for Trump to call in, free of charge, and spew his BS: Joe Scarborough is a good example. Today he pretends to be clutching his pearls, but he's still complicit. Alex Jones, all the podcasters...
Once a Democratic administration takes over
(if Trump allows it), it needs to somehow find a way to ban these propaganda outlets. We cannot survive as a country with so many misinformed citizens .
Read this:
https://newrepublic.com/post/188197/trump-media-information-landscape-fox
That's a cop out. Fox enabled him, but ultimately we get the government we deserve. There will be no change until the people take responsibility for what has happened.
That comment is a cop out! This is not something a large part of us deserve. He d/n win a majority & the plurality he did win was razor thin. I have never voted for him & neither did a large number of others. We have been done in by the stupid vote.
I respectfully disagree. Under our electoral system Trump won. He made gains in working class black and latinos and young people. We Americans are responsible. We do/did have a democracy and we f****d up. I didn't vote for him, you didn't vote for him but tens of millions of Americans did. We need to take responsibility for that.
The point about Fox News is that so many people who voted for him (my dad, for instance) would not have done so if Fox News weren't constantly ignoring and/or excusing everything horrible he does. They have no idea about most of it! They think he is a good Christian trying to do the right thing. And this is totally a plot by one Rupert Murdoch, as we saw in the succession battle over the future direction of the company.
Watch “The Brainwashing of My Dad.” It’s on YouTube.
I understand your point but as an informed citizen I am not taking responsibility for voters who do not bother to know the facts or acknowledge the consequences of their acts. I may be dragged down with the entire country that I and my military family have served for 2 generations, but I will be dragged down kicking & screaming & continuing to insist that my loyalty is to the Constitution, not to the petty little dictator that a plurality of the voters have imposed. I did not say he didn't win, nor did I say he isn't the president, I said I do not deserve this president. And I maintain that I do not deserve him.
"Fox enabled him, but ultimately we get the government we deserve."
----
The electorate has been misinformed by Fox, resentment radio, Joe Rogan, foreign agent social media, and religious throwbacks. We get the government the electorate has been programmed to choose.
Great, anarchy. Our country’s founders are turning over in their graves.
Stability and the rule of law have served us well for almost 250 years... But you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.
You’ve got to wonder what these people are thinking.
If Fox doesn't do it, they lose viewers to those who will. Alternative media has unleashed a monster of epistemic negligence and bad incentives that will serve as the new norm going forward.
We are enduring the mob boss presidency. The Presidential Pardon must be eliminated from the Constitution.
It’s like Boardwalk Empire in real life, where prohibition-era Atlantic City has come to DC. Will the ballroom have the gold plated mirrors and garish purple decor of Trump Taj Mahal Casino? Or the red velvet wallpaper of Ed Zaberer’s?
Just about any pejorative adjective can be applied to tRump... crude, crass, déclassé.
Yes, the president's power to pardon must be abolished.
In theory, Congress should be able to constrain some aspects of the pardon power, such as self-pardons, crony pardons, bribed pardons, preemptive pardons, and absolution of unpaid financial penalties, but does anyone think this SCOTUS would hold that the power isn't untouchably absolute, like the complete presidential immunity they conjured out of thin air?
Originalists and textualists could at least find support in the plain language of the Constitution itself (unlike the immunity), but could they turn a blind eye to the reality that the framers who created a power of presidential clemency never imagined that a 21st Century mob boss would get his greedy little fingers on it and abuse it with open, unapologetic impunity for nothing nobler than dirty money?
Libertarianism is anarchy for rich people.
"The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all." G.K.Chesterson
very apropos
I will follow with great interest the fortunes (heh) of this latest glibertarian paradise. So far, every other attempt has either ended with everyone getting scammed or bears taking over the town.
They all smack their heads into the wall of reality sooner or later.
1. Some humans are predatory sociopaths.
2. You have to have rules in order to constrain those humans.
3. You have to have a power structure to enforce those rules.
4. Individuals will disagree on the right specifics of rules, power structure and enforcements.
So there will be unhappy people in any country of more than 1 person. Organized society is about a fair distribution of said unhappiness.
Perhaps this will end in Thiel, Andreesen and others engaging in their own libertarian gang war against each other.
A circular firing squad of these sociopaths would be lovely.
Sadly, kind of yeah.
5. A healthy, honest democratic politics is the only reliable mechanism for resolving such disagreements without violence.
The name Próspera is a real groaner.
Is there one called Bayesia?
Jonestown for plutocrats?
Terrorist organization
Right. Anarchists want every person to be free and untrammeled, and libertarians feel the same about every dollar bill.
Thank you for this report. It's too bad that over 70 million American adults won't bother to learn about any of it.
To be fair, this is why Mr Krugman created this substack. The editors at the NYT probably wouldn't have let him publish this either and while he won't get anywhere near the level of readership here, at least we can share it and hopefully chip away just a little bit at that number.
Yeah, somebody over there got hushed up real quick (threat?) by connecting El Salvador's leader Bukele to similar dealings as the Honduras bunch.
I am finding it increasingly difficult to define what "America" even means at this point. Whether it's the obvious criminal activity of the elites, or the complacency of the citizens, nothing makes sense anymore.
I think it is explained in all the shopping that happened on Black Friday despite some good organization for a boycott. We want our things. We really want our things.
Yeah. Actually, seeing that really blew my mind. I guess Americans care about shopping, and that's it.
If the media that’s telling us this is to be believed. Read something yesterday about the gains being from the upper echelons of consumers, more of the “K” shaped economy. But, consider the shape of the letter, that little bottom line is what holds the rest of it up.
It could also be that people are doing what I’ve been doing throughout the past year-buying things that will probably need replacing before things get really bad.
Many Americans need some things and would like to acquire them at a price that is as low as possible that means shopping the sales.
I’m confused as to why anyone thinks a boycott will be successful if it requires the participants to pay more money to retailers before or after, but not during, a sale.
This seems like a maximization of the pain to the participants rather than the targets.
Perhaps someone can explain this to me.
I think the bushes are beginning to shake, just a bit. We're still a long ways off and it's going to get far worse before it gets better, but the criminals are getting too blatant. They are sure they can get away with anything. When the magas turn against them, it will be ugly. I think the crypto criminals are sticking their necks out in their arrogance and are figuratively going to get them cut off.
Sad to say, outside of the US, liberal democracies around the world have also fallen prey to manipulation by social media, and are being ginned up to be anti-immigrant, pro-Russian, anti-science, etc.
And let's not forget David Gentile, the founder and CEO of GBP Capital, who just had his seven year sentence for running a $1.6 billion Ponzi scheme commuted by Trump.
The corruption is blatant and there for all to see. Under Trump., if you have money or something to offer, there is no such thing as true justice. Just ask Pam.
Do not ever think there is a bottom for Trump. He is a black hole of greed, corruption, and vengefulness.
What has the United States come down to? Trump this and Trump that, but this is the second time he was voted in. There are checks and balances but not enough care sufficiently about their country to apply them. Neither is it just one thing, but a whole string of horrors.
Is there no realisation that if it isn’t immediately stopped in its tracks it becomes legitimised? Look at how much and over what time Prof. Krugman has had to explain what is utterly obvious, yet there he still is. People are talking about the mid-terms to see if Trump will lose a bit of power, be somewhat challenged.
How utterly crazy! How humiliating is this for a highly educated, advanced, very wealthy nation? Yet the top of the top are happily rolling in the mud smirking as they ruin the very thing that provided them with their privilege (sudden image of smug Scott Bessant).
It is and will always be baffling to me. I used to wonder how Germans could allow a Hitler to happen, but now I know. I don't think we'd be where we are without all the misinformation and hate that's pickled so many brains.
Yes!! I was part of a small neighborhood book club before Covid, and I lost count of how many WW2 novels we read. My two ‘church lady’ friends supported Trump nonetheless.
I'd be interested to hear whether your "church ladies" are thrilled by all the blatant cruelties now being committed in their names...
Excellent question and I honestly don’t know, as we never managed to re-group after covid and trump 1.0. My politics are well known to them. We read a lot of bestsellers that were a few years past their peak popularity and almost always in the local libraries. We read Hillbilly Elegy (JD’s book) and I maintain that the vast majority of people who read that book weren’t MAGA … hence the shock over Usha at Trump’s second national GOP convention.
Well, Germany suffered massive devastation post WW1 (not the only one, France basically lost a whole generation of males) and because it was not invaded a narrative grew up it was betrayed. The US, oddly, remained economically well ahead of peers yet seems hugely resentful.
If you ever visit Vienna it’s worth going to The Leopold Museum which shows art works just before, during and after. It is very weird but the atmosphere of ‘after’ seems very close to where we ‘feel’ now but it is very difficult to rationalise why.
The US may be ahead of its peers economically, but all that wealth is concentrating at the top 1%, thus we have a generation that feels lost and betrayed.
We were never invaded and we are as large as Europe as a whole. In 1941, Hawaii wasn't even a state. It was a military post.
Trump pushes resentment. “They’re ripping us off,” he says of foreign countries.
In Nuremberg the Germans have established a museum, the Documentation Zentrum, in what was, at the end of WW2, the unfinished Nazi congress hall, a stone’s throw from the Nazi party rally grounds where those chilling scenes of Nazi patriotism in “Triumph of the Will” were staged. Its focus could be summed up by “how could it have happened?”
One could spend an entire dispiriting day threading through the step by step by step displays. And the phrase “triumph of the will” pretty much sums it up. I estimate that the US is about halfway into the process.
We are all being Good Germans.
Somebody should have told Americans that when a people is given a choice between cheap eggs and freedom and they choose cheap eggs, they end up losing everything including cheap eggs.
(I wonder if anyone can work out who I was paraphrasing there?)
Franklin, those who sacrifice liberty for safety will have neither.
Actually it was Ukrainian nationalist leader Stepan Bandera (in his original quote the foodstuff was bread, I'm guessing he was thinking of the Holodomor), although it wouldn't surprise me if he had drawn inspiration from Franklin.
The high price of eggs was due to avian flu. The government could not control it. The price came down as it subsided.
Anyone who voted Trump over this was very ignorant.
Well, the cool thing was that we'll before the election (like before Biden's pitiful debate performance), the inflation that everyone was talking about was pretty much back to normal (it was about 2.4%, whereas the target is 2% an 2.2 is "normal").
Practically no one believed that. Thanks Fox News!
MAGA rants about Biden inflation (due to Covid and worldwide) to this day.
People weren't mad that inflation in general had gone up a few percent: they were mad that specific items had gone up by 100+%, such as eggs (bird flu), mortgage payments (end of ZIRP) or burrito taxis/Uber rides (end of ZIRP-enabled VC subsidies + rising working-class wages).
Some are very wealthy, but educated ? I have to laugh they are just ignorant crooks who bought elite pieces of paper.
At this point, I think describing the U.S. as "highly educated" is not even close to being accurate.
He only won against women (HRC and Kamala, a woman of color) he can be beaten.
He cheated in all the fringe states 2024 election - honest counting would have made him a LOSER
What portion of the electorate do you suppose has access to honest information about Trump? The economy? Vaccines? Climate change?
I'd go on, but my friends and I are having a Celebrity Traitors* watch party!
______________________
*I have no idea what CT is, just that it's popular.
Crypto=klepto
Thank you for this. Both Democrats and Republicans have gone easy on libertarians because they used to be in favor of personal liberty and were rich (donating to both parties). But personal liberty turned out to just be cover for letting corporations take over and crushing government regulation.
I see the tech bros as just another group embracing "predatory economics" -- the economics of using propaganda, corruption, fraud, bribery, extortion, and physical violence to take from others (which contrasts with "productive economics" -- the conventional economics taught in school in which investments are made in productive enterprises to generate useful goods and services plus a little profit to cover the cost of investment). For decades, the Republican Party has been openly supporting payday lenders, monopolies, private equity that buys up old productive companies and sucks all the value out of them, and private equity that buys up essential goods like houses and rents them at exorbitant rates -- all predatory enterprises. Crypto was just another step in supporting predatory companies. Trump supports predators too, but he doesn't try to hide it behind business rhetoric or calls for liberty. For him, life is all about being the biggest predator.
The issue is that those of Right Wing Authoritarian psychology are very selfish and don't care about hypocrisy, and are thus totally willing to identify as "libertarian" because they "support freedom" (by which they mean they support THEIR freedom, not anybody else's).
The libertarians were always Republicans who (as the old saying went) wanted to smoke pot. And when the Republicans in the 70's decided to use abortion as a battle cry (when relying on racism was wearing a bit thin), the libertarians decided that of all the "personal liberties" they supported, a woman being in control of her own body and destiny wasn't one of them. At this point, it is clear that the only "liberties" they support are the liberty of the rich to pollute, oppress and steal from the masses with impunity.
That's also the reason that Trump and his shadowy AI/Crypto Czar, David O. Sacks, have blocked any attempt to bridle AI.
This Heather Cox Richardson post dovetails nicely with Paul's
https://open.substack.com/pub/heathercoxrichardson/p/november-30-2025?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email
In 1989, the U.S., under Republican president George H. W. Bush, invaded Panama, and forcibly apprehended military dictator Manuel Noriega, who was indicted by a Miami grand jury and subsequentially convicted of drug smuggling and money laundering. While there was international outrage, and many scholars saw the invasion as illegal, most Americans supported it. Flash forward, 2025. We're PARDONING convicted international billionaire drug lords without a whimper from Republicans and murdering Venezuelan fishermen on unsubstantiated claims of drug running without trial or due process on the high seas. That says it all.
*I am relieved most everyone can see that attacking survivors in the wreckage is murder, but so are the initial strikes. To say it's OK because we are at "war" with drug smugglers is just playing with words. But if that weirdly selective outrage is what it takes to be rid of P Hegseth, bring it on.
When it comes to clemency for drug criminals, if they're sufficiently BIG-TIME, where is outraged MAGA? I guess it's just small-time, disorganized criminality that is the real enemy. If the crime is big enough, then all is forgiven. "Welcome to the winning team, no matter how you got here!"
A small time criminal is just that and is punished accordingly. A major rich criminal makes policy with money and is rarely punished.
Run by a corporation...but wouldn't the corporation need to have rules to run on? If so then it is just a government by another name.
It always seems like those who think there is another way, and that somehow a pure form of something will solve all ills, whether it be laissez-faire capitalism promoted by libertarians or a hippie's version of utopia living in a commune without laws or "the man," that in the end they all discover that some sort of laws, rules, and governance is absolutely necessary as people and their endeavors are far from perfect and there is a lot of treading on others that takes place, crime, and things that require a society to get done that requires collecting fees or some kind of tax.
People are far from perfect, to say the least. Rules and governance are simply needed in a society and in an economy, and this includes capitalism.
It seems that the billionaire class island dwellers may find themselves living in a version of the wild west, but then perhaps the island is not really meant to dwell in but to shelter wealth in, I do not know, but that does not mean there will not be a financial version of the wild west caused by crypto. I suppose is already the case, but this will help it to keep getting worse.
Even in the game of Monopoly, in the end, there is only one winner and this is what can happen with pure laissez-faire, where it is "game over" for most, and that is not a great way to run any economy or a good way to live.
The billionaires may end up destroying each other in the end, one wonders.
It certainly sounds quite likely.
In this version of doing things there are only winners and losers and not much left in between. They will crush each other.
In the end, the old saying, "careful what you wish for" may come to pass, for these folks, even for these super rich as lawlessness and survival of the fittest laissez-faire meets criminal enterprise surrounded by an ocean.
Would there even be any effort or need to "hide the bodies" so to speak?
It sounds awful, but then I also do not get why anyone would be motivated by world domination dreams, or massive wealth in the first place, it all sounds like an awful miserable grind.
This is all so corrupt and also downright miserable sounding.
Not a "happy" way to live for sure.
Roman emperors being constantly murdered and living in fear comes to mind.
At least in monopoly, when one gets truly pissed there is always the option of flipping the whole board upside down. Well, if there was ever a time to flip the board, I think it’s now.
Yet 35% of the American population continue to strongly support trump and his band of merry men. And most of the 65% remaining are sitting with their heads covered.
....50% or so of voters didnt vote in 2024 and contrary to the MSM circus, it wasnt just about Harris or Trump. There were 3rd party independent candidates on the ballots.
Finally, the swamp is restored.
Libertarians equal psychopaths. No conscience. No empathy. No nothing.
Don't they at least want good roads?
Only the ones leading to where between their properties and where their private jets are parked.
If you are a politician and you say that, Fox News and the maga-sphere will crucify you
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_didn%27t_build_that
Good *private* roads. Nothing that the riff-raff can use.