"The Global Consciousness Project, also known as the EGG Project, is an international multidisciplinary collaboration of scientists, engineers, artists and others continuously collecting data from a global network of physical random number generators located in 65 host sites worldwide. The archive contains over 10 years of random data in parallel sequences of synchronized 200-bit trials every second."
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Tuesday, April 30, 2024
“A lot would have to go wrong for Biden to lose.”
It’s Election Year!
You know what that means.
It happens every 2 years.
Civic-minded citizens will be exercising their right to vote, and will be setting a host of political wanna’bees in office… or, turning them out — depending upon how well-satisfied constituents are with the politician’s performance in office, and turning them out if they’re not. NOTE: “Wanna’bees” are differentiated from honey bees. Ed.
And the BIG KAHUNA of them all, is the Presidency.
Naturally, most all of us want to know if there’s a way, a method, a tool, a process, that could accurately and correctly forecast who the next President will be.
It’s not hocus-pocus, it’s not soothsaying, it neither involves crystal balls, nor tea leaves, and has been subjected to peer review. And that’s because Dr. Lichtman collaborated with renowned mathematician Dr. Vladimir Keilis-Borok, PhD (1921-2013), a now-late Russian mathematical geophysicist and seismologist with an interest in developing an earthquake predicting tool, and published their findings in a scientific journal in order to be scrutinized.
“I first developed the Keys to the White House in 1981,
in collaboration with mathematician Vladimir Keilis-Borok.
Retrospectively, we found that
the Keys correctly accounted for the results of
American presidential elections from 1860 to 1980,
ranging from the horse and buggy days of American politics to the era of jet planes, polls, and television.” — Dr. Alan Lichtman, 2012, in “The Keys to the White House,” in Social Education 76(5), pp 233–235
Dr. Lichtman developed the 13-key forecasting system initially in 1981, and later subjected the work to Read the rest of this entry »
Fox News Fact-Checks Donald Trump’s Bond Claim: “Actually Not True”
By Rachel Dobkin
Published Mar 24, 2024 at 3:42 PM EDT
Updated Mar 25, 2024 at 6:21 AM EDT
During a Sunday interview with former Federal prosecutor Alex Little on Fox News Live, host Eric Shawn said, “We’ve also heard there’s a lot of talk about ‘this is unprecedented amount of money… this has never happened before.’ But that’s actually not true. This is from Letitia James, the Attorney General’s own court papers — I’m gonna show it to you right now.”
An on-screen chart graphic then appeared listing court cases with bonds at or over $1 billion, including:
• Sony Music Entertainment v. Cox Communications — $1.2 billion;
• Apple v. Samsung Electronics — $1 billion;
• Oracle USA v. SAP AG — $1.3 billion, and;
• Carnegie Mellon University v. Marvell Technology Group — $1.5 billion.
In February, New York State Supreme Court Justice Judge Arthur Engoron ordered Donald Trump to pay a $355 million bond by Monday, 25 March 2024, plus daily interest — which grand total is now $454 million — and barred him from doing business in New York for 3 years.
Trump and his crime family members have falsely claimed that the bond amount is “unprecedented.”
Obviously, it is not.
Eric Shawn, host of Fox News
In a September 2023 lawsuit brought by New York State Attorney General Letitia James’ office, Trump was found liable for financial fraud. Trump has claimed that he has done nothing wrong and that the case is politically motivated, and has appealed Judge Engoron’s ruling against him.
Trump was given until Monday to come up with a $454 million bond in order to prevent NY State Attorney General James from seizing his assets in order to pay Judge Engoron’s judgment.
Trump has repeatedly criticized the ruling and disparaged Judge Engoron and Attorney General James, on his social media platform Truth Social. In a post last Monday, Trump wrote, Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Monday, February 19, 2024
Fact: Most folks will not even bother to read the ruling (available from the official site here: https://ag.ny.gov/sites/default/files/decisions/trump-decision.pdf), much less download it from any site, anywhere, and will simply swallow — hook, line, and sinker — whatever the talking heads they watch/listen to tell them, and whatever their favorite blathering pundits and prognosticators write on their websites, right, center, or left.
They do themselves, and the nation, a disservice to be so blithely insincere, and casually cavalier.
So here, for your pablum-puking pleasure, are selected outtakes, copied & pasted, of the most egregiously stunning highlights from Judge Engoron’s ruling in:
PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK, Plaintiff, vs. DONALD J. TRUMP, DONALD TRUMP JR., ERIC TRUMP, ALLEN WEISSELBERG, JEFFREY MCCONNEY, THE DONALD J. TRUMP REVOCABLE TRUST, THE TRUMP ORGANIZATION, INC., TRUMP ORGANIZATION LLC, DJT HOLDINGS LLC, DJT HOLDINGS MANAGING MEMBER, TRUMP ENDEAVOR 12 LLC, 401 NORTH WABASH VENTURE LLC, TRUMP OLD POST OFFICE LLC, 40 WALL STREET LLC, SEVEN SPRINGS LLC, Defendants.
Trump Organization’s History of Corporate Malfeasance
“The frauds found here leap off the page and shock the conscience.”
“…this Court is mindful that this action is not the first time the Trump Organization or its related entities has been found to have engaged in corpora malfeasance.”
“…the more evidence there is of defendants’ ongoing propensity to engage in fraud, the more need there is for the Court to impose stricter injunctive relief. This is not defendants’ first rodeo.”
“Defendants’ refusal to admit error—indeed, to continue it, according to the Independent Monitor—constrains this Court to conclude that they will engage in it going forward unless judicially restrained.”
“…the Trump Organization does not have the ability to operate with a functional financial reporting structure that would protect against fraud in the future. The fact that there are virtually no internal controls in place at the Trump Organization, “creates an atmosphere conducive to fraud.”
“…the Trump Organization has refused to prepare SFCs, even though various loan covenants obligate them to do so, ever since the monitor was appointed, leads the Court to conclude that the Trump Organization cannot, or will not, prepare an accurate SFC that is GAAP compliant and that values assets at their estimated current values. That the Trump Organization has taken to manufacturing its own version of its assets, one that fails to include any valuations, is a telling admission that it simply cannot, or will not, prepare an SFC without committing fraud.”
“…Donald Trump testified that, even today, he does not believe the Trump Organization needed to make any changes based on the facts that came out during this trial.”
“… “To err is human, to forgive is divine.” Defendants apparently are of a different mind. After some four years of investigation and litigation, the only error (“inadvertent,” of course) that they acknowledge is the tripling of the size of the Trump Tower Penthouse, which cannot be gainsaid.”
“…defendants are incapable of admitting the error of their ways.”
“Their complete lack of contrition and remorse borders on pathological.”
“In August 2013, OAG sued Donald Trump, the Trump Organization, and affiliated entities doing business as “Trump University” for fraud in the marketing and operation of Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Sunday, February 18, 2024
“Above all, do not lie to yourself. A man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point where he does not discern any truth either in himself or anywhere around him, and thus falls into disrespect towards himself and others. Not respecting anyone, he ceases to love, and having no love, he gives himself up to the passions and coarse pleasures, in order to occupy and amuse himself, and in his vices reaches complete bestiality, and it all comes from lying continually to others and to himself.”
— excerpt from “The Brothers Karamazov,” by Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821-1881), published 1879-80, his final work, considered his masterpiece, and among the world’s finest examples of literature, in which the character Zosima speaks to Fyodor Pavlovich, found in Book II, Chapter 2. Many of Zosima’s remarks in that section are foundational in developing the main ideas in the book.
Friends, let me wholeheartedly encourage you to read Judge Arthur F. Engoron’s decision in the Trump case in New York State. It’s straightforward, easy-to-understand, not filled with legal mumbo jumbo, arcane words, and often-bizarre machinations to reach a decision. (We often see that in SCOTUS cases.)
Judge Engoron writes in a concisely clear manner, lays out the case, what the charges are, why there wasn’t a jury trial (and the rules behind that, plus, neither party sought one), the rationale, the defenses used by the defendant (Trump, et al), why they fail, and so on, and so forth.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Wednesday, February 7, 2024
Voters Dissatisfied
Party in Disarray
Never Trump Republicans sent a clear message.
The only question remaining is, “How badly will Republicans lose nationwide in November?”
Trump Chose to Lose
Loser Fairy dumped boatloads of Loser Dust on Federally-indicted convicted sex abuser Florida Loser-Man.
Nikki Haley Defeats Trump in Nevada’s GOP Primary/Caucus
Former President CHOSE to became a Loser by Default by failing to participate in NV’s Presidential Preference Primary/caucus.
Former US Ambassador to the United Nations cum-South Carolina Governess Nikki Haley defeated GOP rival Donald Trump in the Silver State’s GOP Presidential Preference Primary/Caucus Tuesday, February 6, 2024.
Then-former South Carolina Governor, later Ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley waves to attendees and delegates at the 2020 Republican National Convention in Charlotte, North Carolina.
She is now the former President’s only competitor in the race to become the party’s nominee for President; all other contenders — Vivek Ramaswamy, former VP Mike Pence, SC Senator Tim Scott, FL Governor Ron DeSantis, former NJ Governor Chris Christie, former DEA Administrator/AR Governor Asa Hutchinson, and a spattering of others — all dropped out around the time of the NH primaries, or very shortly thereafter.
Notably, Nevada GOP primary/caucus voters also failed to write-in the former President’s name. Some critics have noted an unjustified sense of overconfidence betrayed him, mistakenly thinking that he would somehow magically win, even though he chose not to campaign in the state, and failed to initiate a write-in campaign.
In stark contrast, President Joe Biden, who is campaigning for re-election, did not appear on New Hampshire’s ballot, but won that state’s Democratic primary when voters wrote in his name, with 63.8% of all 123,996 votes cast.
Like Silver State Republicans, Granite State Republicans were not thrilled by their choices, and Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Wednesday, January 31, 2024
Tomorrow (February 1) is the first day of Black History Month. BHM is also the 3-letter FAA designation for Birmingham, AL, sometimes also formerly known as “Bombingham.”
For those who say “there’s no such thing as ‘white chocolate,’” there really is. It just has none of the brown solids that give chocolate its characteristic appearance. Kinda’ like the absence of melanin in humans, which gives our skin, hair and eyes, color. Without it, we’d all be white as a sheet. That condition is called albinism.
And, tomorrow is also Decorating with Candy Day. That should be fun! Especially with Peppermint Patty, Tootsie Roll, Mary Jane, Hershey’s Kiss, Almond Joy, and Bit-O-Honey!
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Sunday, January 28, 2024
Like it, or not, politics often thrives on fear — for the Republicans, especially, and particularly — but truth be told, the Democrats do their fair share of fear-mongering, as well, just not to the extent that GOPers do it. There are a variety of tricks — yes, tricks — that both party’s politicians do to ingratiate themselves to the electorate, and fear-baiting is but one.
And whether, or not, one considers the following fear-baiting, is up to the reader to decide.
But suffice it to say, rarely in the history of American politics has there ever been a time in which Democrats and so many Republicans have coalesced against a candidate, presumptive, or not, of their own party. The former, 45th POTUS is that man.
Many have said that, he is a danger to this nation, to its founding principles, and to liberty itself. The list goes on, and on, and on, and on.
There are numerous reasons why I count myself in that camp, though none of them are based upon fear, and rather, are based upon what he did during his term in office. Never before in the history of our nation has one man attempted to overthrow it. Never before in the history of our nation has any man (or woman) elected to the highest office in the land had utterly ZERO experience in elected office, public or military service, or volunteer service in any capacity, in any organization, whatsoever. And try as one might, there is little-to-nothing good which can be said about him.
When someone tells you who they are, believe them. That man has not only done so, but demonstrated as much. And based upon what he has done, and what he has said, it seems evident enough that he could do, and quite possibly would do, many, most, or worse, even all of the following.
Hey, I “get it,” which is to say that, I understand why and what it is that people see in that man. They like his bull-in-a-china-shop style, his take-no-prisoners approach, his my-way-or-the-highway manner, his bluff, bluster and false bravado, and they believe every word that drips from his lips, as if he were some type of prophet, some type of übermensch, or super-man, as Nietzsche called his concocted idyllic mythical character. It is all interpreted by his followers as “strength,” and “resolve.”
Yet… it is anything but.
But, FEAR NOT!
These words are worth remembering, and repeating, as you cast your ballot in November:
“This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today. This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory. I am convinced that you will again give that support to leadership in these critical days.”
— Opening paragraph of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s 1st Inaugural Address, March 4, 1933
NOTE: The following is a hypothetical scenario, HOWEVER….
[Every incident mentioned in this article is based on an actual statement or action by Donald Trump, the people closely surrounding him, or something Trump has praised about his role model Victor Orbán.]
It was a hell of a year, 2025: the first year of the First Reich (as those formerly called Democrats referred to it) or The New America as the GOP now refers to our nation. One people, one nation, one leader: America, President-for-life Trump tells us, is now “truly great.”
It started with the election of November 2024, when the No Labels candidacy of Larry Hogan and Joe Manchin pulled enough electoral votes away from Biden — who was more than 10 million popular votes ahead of Trump — that none of the three tickets hit the necessary 270 Electoral College votes to win the White House.
It was a scenario similar to 1824 when John Quincy Adams lost the popular vote to Andrew Jackson but, because William Crawford and Henry Clay were also running for president, neither Adams or Jackson hit the threshold with the Electoral College and the vote went to the House of Representatives, which made Adams president in a series of backroom deals known to historians as the “Corrupt Bargain.”
In a similar way, the election of 2024 was thrown into the House of Representatives, per the 12th Amendment, with each state having one single vote. Since 26 states had Republican-controlled congressional delegations and only 23 had Democratic-controlled delegations (Pennsylvania is evenly split), the House voted 26-24 for Donald Trump to become the next president. He didn’t even need to threaten his vice president or invoke a mob.
At his swearing-in, Trump announced that he was going to fulfill his “dictator for a day” promise and pardoned himself, all Republicans who were in Congress in January 2021 and helped organize or support the attack on the Capitol, and all the January 6th seditionists.
He then announced that the 24 Democrats leading their congressional delegations who’d voted against him in the House were “guilty of sedition against the United States.” As he spoke, each was arrested and taken into custody.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Friday, December 1, 2023
Others Remain At Large
It’s not always illegal to lie.
Of course, that depends upon the context — the circumstance, situation, and setting in which the lie is told.
And, believe it, or not, it’s not even always totally illegal to kill another human being, because again, the context — conditions, circumstance and situation in which the death occurs — are all taken into consideration by law enforcement authorities, in determining whether, or not, charges will be filed against the responsible party. In many circles it’s called “justifiable homicide,” with one example of justifiable homicide being a scenario in which someone, or group of people, is being threatened by at least one gun-wielding assailant, one of whom is then killed by a party who was among those threatened by a gun-wielding assailant.
There are exceptions to rules. Just about all rules, in fact. For the baseball fans among us, the Infield Fly Rule is one such example of a scenario in which human judgment reigns supreme. There is no “hard and fast” with the IFR. It’s an altogether subjective matter that relies exclusively upon the umpire to call it… or not. One ump would call it one way, and another would call it another.
But there is one crime that is ALWAYS, in every circumstance, situation, and scenario 100% illegal, at ALL TIMES, in every place.
And that crime is theft.
It is 100% illegal at all times, and in all places, to steal anything, at any time, from anyone. No matter how small, no matter how “justified” the perpetrator may feel or think about their actions, it is still always 100% illegal to steal, and always has been. There are NO exceptions to theft laws. NONE.
Theft, of course, is ultimately a type of dishonesty, because most thieves won’t, or don’t, tell others of their misdeeds — particularly and especially Law Enforcement Authorities. And it is the secrecy, the deliberate cover-up, the deception, and duplicity that often accompany theft which is so infuriating to many, if not most, or, even all victims of theft, because the crime is discovered only after the fact. To know that one was betrayed by one so close is an artful deception, if it could be so described, because it is deliberate.
While most crimes may be discovered after the fact, the making of plans to commit a crime — if it is done in conjunction with another person, regardless of whether that other person is the actual “bag man,” or not — is crime of conspiracy. In fact, conspiracy is THE single most prosecuted crime by the Federal government.
That it is a criminal act to plan a crime with another speaks volumes about how important fundamental honesty is to daily life, and the great value attached to honesty by Americans.
Russia is NOT like that.
Not even one iota.
As partial evidence of that fact, consider that the Russians lied about a dog which they sacrificed in their Sputnik 2 space capsule in 1957, gave numerous lies about it over the years, and only finally came clean with the truth in 2002 — some 45 years later. see:
https://warmsouthernbreeze.wordpress.com/2017/05/15/Dying-Laika-Russian-Dog/
Russia is a fundamentally dishonest, and inherently corrupt nation, which has been corrupt since its ancient developments and into its modern foundings. Corrupt trees bear bad fruit grown from corrupt roots. Such corruption is plainly seen in modernity in abuses by Russia’s military service members by the almost-open brazen theft from the various supply stocks that are stolen and resold by those who are tasked with its distribution to their military by their government.
And that’s just one example, of many more, all of which undeniably, and unambiguously demonstrate an inherent mentality of thievery among Russia’s military. Is such activity considered criminal in Russia? Yes, it is. Such cravenly wholesale disregard for fundamental honesty by Russian military service members is but one sign of the extensively thorough rot that has infected the entirety of the Russian army. And in many cases, we’ve seen that the materials themselves are flawed, faulty, aged, and show significantly excessive signs of shop wear.
George Santos (R-NY3) is a mirror image of what commonly happens in Russia, and the ISC report Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Sunday, November 26, 2023
Gaslighting & Psychological Projection: Pot Calls Kettle Black
Hardly a day goes by that we don’t hear some news about the former, 45th POTUS and the myriad legal troubles in which he has mired himself, Federal and State, and his numerous co-conspirators. Naturally, he denies all culpability, and continues telling “THE BIG LIE” — spinning a hypothetical yarn, hoping the too-tall tale of fantastical fiction grousing his 2020 electoral loss to Joe Biden will knit some kind of loosely-fitting garment… albeit one with numerous irreparable holes. It’s a modern version of “The Emperor’s New Clothes.”
“If you say it enough and keep saying it, they’ll start to believe you.” — Donald Trump, July 3, 2021 speech in Sarasota, FL
“I play to people’s fantasies. People want to believe that something is the biggest and the greatest and the most spectacular. I call it truthful hyperbole.”
— Donald Trump, as written in his 1987 book “The Art of the Deal”
“Stick with us. Don’t believe the crap you see from these people, the fake news. … What you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening.”
— Donald Trump, speech to VFW annual convention in Kansas City, Tuesday, July 24, 2018
Faced with the very real possibility of incarceration in a Federal prison, or State prison, loss of reputation, loss of business license, professional censure, fines, and numerous other penalties, the hard, cold, stark reality has begun to set in for the bad-dream-weaver, and his minions. One by one, the dominoes are falling.
The 45th and immediately former President, a known pathological liar, cheat, and narcissist, recently wrote on his social media website, on Saturday, 25 November 2023, that,“Bob Vander Plaats, the former High School Accountant from Iowa, will do anything to win, something which he hasn’t done in many years. He’s more known for scamming Candidates than he is for Victory, but now he’s going around using Disinformation from the Champions of that Art, the Democrats. I don’t believe anything Bob Vander Plaats says. Anyone who would take $95,000, and then endorse a Candidate who is going nowhere, is not what Elections are all about!”
As others and I continue maintaining, the formerly-Grand Old Party has perfected psychological projection, a manipulative distraction technique designed to draw attention away from themselves (the accuser as guilty party), and place it upon an innocent party (an opponent), by accusing the innocent party of doing the very thing which the accuser/guilty party is doing.
When he tells the “snake story” — the Aesop’s Fable aka “The Farmer and the Snake,” an allegorical tale about a freezing-cold viper that begged to be picked up and warmed inside a coat, the gullible “rescuer,” against better judgement, picked it up, whereupon when sufficiently warmed, the viper bit the rescuer, who loudly exclaimed, asking, “Why did you do that!?!” The viper replied, “You knew what I was before you picked me up.” — he’s talking about himself. And he is the snake. The general public long knew what kind of man he was before he ever campaigned for President. We saw how utterly unscrupulous he was. We saw how grotesquely crass, how utterly without morals, how absent all semblance of good bearing, and wholly devoid of ethics, that he was, and remains. We knew full well who he was before we voted for him.
Psychological Projection (aka “projection”) is somewhat akin to “gaslighting,” insofar as it too, is designed & purposed by the claimant to manipulate & persuade malleable others that something is true, when it is false. Singer-songwriter Phil Collins sang about that in his 1999 hit “That’s All”:
“Just as I thought it was goin’ alright, “I found out I’m wrong when I thought I was right; “It’s always the same it’s just a shame that’s all. “I could say day, and you’d say night; “Tell me it’s black when I know thats it’s white; “It’s always the same it’s just a shame that’s all.”
Analogously, to illustrate Psychological Projection, imagine if Charles Manson accused the Los Angeles County California Prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi of masterminding murder by virtue of the fact that he would be facing the death penalty for his crimes.
How perversely bizarre is that?
A SPECIAL NOTE is particularly applicable here:
In this greater ordeal & situation, that being the indictment of the 45th and immediately former POTUS upon numerous Federal -and- State charges, most particularly and especially the whole schema of events leading to the insurrection of January 6, 2021, including its precursors, it should be borne in mind that, just as Charles Manson exercised control over his “family” members (adherents), primarily obliquely, so too does Donald Trump exercise control over his followers (adherents) primarily obliquely. And just as Charles Manson did NOT directly commit the Tate-LaBianca murders, nor order them, his influence upon his “family” of followers was so great and significantly influential, to the extent that he was found guilty of the murders. Donald Trump did the exact same thing with the Proud Boys and other white supremacist militant radicals directly leading to the insurrection of January 6, 2021.
“Proud Boys, stand back and stand by!”
— POTUS Donald Trump, during the first Presidential Debate with Democratic Presidential nominee, former Vice President Joe Biden on September 29, 2020, at Case Western University and Cleveland Clinic, in Cleveland, OH.
In response, Proud Boys leader-organizer Joe Biggs (a now-6-times convicted Federal felon) wrote on the now-defunct far-right-wing social media platform Parler, “Trump basically said to go fuck them up! This makes me so happy!”
“Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!”
— POTUS Donald Trump, tweet December 19, 2020, 1:42AM
Just as Charles Manson preyed upon weak, young abused women to coerce them into his fold and further manipulate them as a means to his end, so too does Trump prey upon the weak, the marginalized, and unsuspecting, and warmly embraces them into his feign flock in order to manipulate them for his own self interests.
“I love the poorly educated!”
— Donald Trump, after victory in the February 2016 Nevada Republican caucuses
In response, respected political observer and polling analyst Nate Silver on his website FiveThirtyEight dot com noted that Trump’s victory in the November General Election was primarily innervated and predicted by “education, not income,” and noted that “educational levels are the critical factor in predicting shifts in the vote between 2012 and 2016. You can come to that conclusion with a relatively simple analysis, like the one I’ve conducted above, or by using fancier methods.”
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Wednesday, October 18, 2023
Let’s talk about American National Security for just a moment.
And like it, or not, national security is inextricably intertwined with politics — on BOTH sides.
So yes, it WILL involve some DIRECT discussion of politics.
Hamas is a terrorist organization, pure and simple, and MUST be destroyed — there’s NO question about it.
But there’s an even greater question which has arisen from Hamas’ brutal savagery and recent massacre:
How did Hamas manage to escape detection by Israel’s “Iron Dome” air defense system?
Read on.
On Wednesday, October 12, 2023, at an annual meeting of Club 47 USA, a group of Trump re-election supporters, who met at the Palm Beach County Convention Center, in West Palm Beach, FL, Donald Trump aired a list of seemingly disparate grievances, which all apparently point to Trump’s meeting with Russians in the White House, and said in part:
“But I’ll never forget… I’ll never forget that Bibi Netanyahu let us down. That was a very terrible thing. I will say that. And ah, so I see, sometimes, the intelligence — you talk about the intelligence, and you talk about some of the things that went wrong over the last week — eh, they gotta’ straighten it out, because they’re fighting — potentially a very big force, they’re fighting potentially Iran — and when they have people saying the wrong things, everything they say is being digested by these people, because they’re vicious and they’re smart — and boy are they vicious, because nobody’s ever seen the kind of sight that we’ve seen, nobody’s ever seen it — but they cannot play games. So we were disappointed by that, very disappointed, but we did the job ourself [sic] and it was absolute precision, magnificent, [a] beautiful job, then Bibi tried to take credit for it, so THAT didn’t make me feel too good, but that’s alright, but they gotta’ straighten themselves out.”
“You know, Hezbollah is very smart. They’re all very smart.”
Judging from how Hamas’ attack occurred, apparently, Hamas knew how to get around Israel’s Iron Dome defenses — because they did so successfully, by using motorcycles, civilian automobiles, and most notably, motorized paragliders — which typically fly slow and low enough to avoid radar detection, unlike missiles. It wasn’t the first time paragliders have been used to infiltrate Israel. On 25 November 1987, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command launched 2 paragliders from southern Lebanon, 1 of which landed in Israel, as reported by the Washington Post, while another terrorist then attacked an Israeli military base near Kiryat Shmona, killed 6 Israeli soldiers and wounded another 7 before being shot and killed.
Video screenshot of a Hamas terrorist infiltrating Israel using a powered paraglider October 7, 2023 during their attack.
However, it wasn’t as if Israel and the world — especially and particularly the intelligence community — didn’t have any idea, for they did.
In addition, on May 6, 2015, 9:40 PM (GMT+3), the Israel National News – Arutz Sheva media group, reported in a story headlined:
“Hamas is recruiting Palestinian students in Malaysia to carry out attacks on Israel using paragliding equipment, a report said.“
They wrote in part:
“Hamas is developing an air attack capability – by recruiting Palestinian students in Malaysia to carry out attacks on Israel using paragliding equipment, [stated] a report by the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center. The report reveals two incidents in which Hamas was found to be conducting training of Palestinian students for such attacks in that country.”
Futher, it’s not beyond the scope of the pale to imagine that Hamas “probably“ learned how to avoid detection by Israel’s air defense system courtesy of Iran. And how did Iran get that information? Why, they almost certainly got that information came from Russia. And from where or who, pray tell, did Russia get it? Sadly, for all the world, it very much looks like it was none other than Donald Trump, and at the request or suggestion of Putin.
Of course, it is knowledge of some not-widely-known fact, and simply obtaining, or having details of plans, that such highly sensitive information on terrorist activities would be something only a “deep insider,” or close personal friend of, would possibly know, so one would imagine that its sharing wouldn’t be so brazen.
Or, could it?
It was 6 years ago, on May 10, 2017, that then-President Donald Trump met at the White House with Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Sunday, July 9, 2023
Republicans, at least those of a sound mind, are whistling past the graveyard because of what now seems to be a lack of support by the unwashed masses (i.e., being those who supported his candidacy the first, and second times), for Mr. Mar-a-Lago MAGA Man’s third run at the Oval Office. Some of them, at least.
As with any candidate, particularly those who have ever held any public office, as he has, support is often an ever-changing thing. You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.* And the Carnival Barker in Chief knows, understands, and realizes that quite well… which is why, in part, he chose to have a campaign rally in a teeny-tiny town in South Carolina — Pickens, a town encompassing a mere 3 square miles (that’s not a typo — THREE POINT ZERO FIVE), with 3388 population. Pickens is the county seat of Pickens County, South Carolina — population, 131,404 — and is situated in the state’s western horn, which northern border abuts North Carolina for approximately 8.5 miles.
There is, of course, a Wal-Mart Super Center and a Tractor Supply store in town.
Things just LOOK better, as in appearing as if there are massive numbers of people, much like pouring one gallon of water into a pint-sized container; the cup runneth over. On the other hand, pouring a pint into a gallon container is hardly impressive, especially if the containers depicted appear “equal” in size (though they’re not).
But those who have their heads screwed on straight know better than to lend their support to a Federally-indicted candidate for public office — one who undoubtedly will be facing MORE Federal charges, including some from the State of Georgia.
But the Prevaricator in Chief knows full well that what things LOOK like, i.e., what they appear to be, are often NOT what they are in Trump World. And that is why he loves the charade of appearances. It is a form of manipulation — he is the corrupt potter, and you are the malleable manipulated clay.
Think of it like a magician’s show — it’s all sleight of hand.
So, Faux Newz recently put a spin onto the greater matter, that being the question of who the 2024 GOP Presidential candidate nominee will be, and interviewed at least TWO people in South Carolina Republican politics. That, after Marquette University Law School published their 75th Wisconsin survey, which revealed VERY unfavorable findings for Badger State Republicans — the worst being the discovery that a significant number of GOP voters would vote FOR the incumbent POTUS, Joseph R. Biden, Jr., rather than for either The Florida Man, or his rival, Chief Wanna’ Be Again.
When asked “Do you have a favorable or unfavorable opinion of Donald Trump or haven’t you heard enough about them yet?” an astounding 65% of respondents replied Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Monday, June 26, 2023
Today (Monday, 26 June 2023), Cable News Network, aka CNN, on the “Anderson Cooper 360” program, aired a portion of “the Trump tapes,” recordings made with the former President’s knowledge and permission at his Bedminster, NJ golfing club in July 2021 as he shuffled through an assortment of documents — many of which were classified national secrets, and marked as such — which he purloined from his time in office, and openly discussed with individuals present, none of whom had clearances, nor were authorized to see them.
Excerpt of a July 2021 conversation at former President Donald Trump’s Bedminster, NJ golfing club in which he acknowledged that he kept a classified TOP SECRET Department of Defense document about a possible attack upon Iran. “Milley” refers to U.S. Army General Mark A. Milley, Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Wednesday, June 14, 2023
Mary Trump, whom is Donald’s niece, relates a story from their childhood in which Donald was mercilessly despising his brother — her father, Fred Trump Jr., and would not stop. “Yes. Yeah. That’s one of our favorite family stories. They were really young kids, and I think Donald was maybe 7. And one of his favorite things to do was torment my Uncle Rob, who was a couple years younger. And it was, you know, my grandmother’s cooking dinner, and getting the table ready, and Donald was just being merciless. And Maryanne and my dad could not get him to stop.” “And finally, my dad had no other option but to pick up a bowl of mashed potatoes and just dump it on his little brother’s head. And it ended the — it ended the fight. But I think it also started something, because Donald was humiliated by it, as evidenced by the way he reacts to the story now, is no sense of humor about it whatsoever.” “Yeah. And we know that he doesn’t like the story, so I think it was a bit of a dig. It’s also a way to remember my dad in a way that’s not charged. ‘Cause all of us except Donald think it’s funny and sweet. But he did not — he doesn’t like that story.”
Here’s a thought that few, if any, are discussing:
Before Trump goes to trial, his lawyers settle for a plea deal to lesser, misdemeanor offenses, IN ADDITION TO an agreement to:
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Monday, June 12, 2023
Mister “Grab ’em by the pussy” is now being grabbed by his pussy and apparently, doesn’t like it so well.
“I better use some Tic Tacs just in case I start kissing her. You know I’m automatically attracted to beautiful—I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything.”
Maybe it’s because Special Prosecutor Jack Smith didn’t use some Tic Tacs.
TRUMP’s Public Statements on Classified Information
As a candidate for President of the United States, TRUMP made the following public statements, among others, about classified information:
a. On August 18, 2016, TRUMP stated, “In my administration I’m going to enforce all laws concerning the protection of classified information. No one will be above the law.”
b. On September 6, 2016, TRUMP stated, “We also need to fight this battle by collecting intelligence and then protecting, protecting our classified secrets. … We can’t have someone in the Oval Office who doesn’t understand the meaning of the word confidential or classified.”
c. On September 7, 2016, TRUMP stated, “[O]ne of the first things we must do is to enforce all classification rules and to enforce all laws relating to the handling of classified information.”
TOP SECRET government documents in “storage” in Trump’s bathroom in Mar-a-Lago — maybe he needed some reading material, eh?
d. On September 19, 2016, TRUMP stated, “We also need the best protection of classified information.”
[EDITOR’S NOTE: Trump made that remark at a campaign event in Fort Meyers, Florida, and more fully said, “We also need the best protection of classified information. That is the worst situation. Hillary’s private email scandal, which put our classified information in the reach of our enemies, disqualifies her from the presidency. Totally.”]
e. On November 3, 2016, TRUMP stated, “Service members here in North Carolina have risked their lives to acquire classified intelligence to protect our country.”
As President of the United States, on July 26, 2018, TRUMP issued the following statement about classified information:
As the head of the executive branch and Commander in Chief, have a unique, Constitutional responsibility to protect the Nation’s classified information, including by controlling access to it. . . . More broadly, the issue of [a former executive branch official’s] security clearance raises larger questions about the practice of former officials maintaining access to our Nation’s most sensitive secrets long after their time in Government has ended. Such access is particularly inappropriate when former officials have transitioned into highly partisan positions and seek to use real or perceived access to sensitive information to validate their political attacks. Any access granted to our Nation’s secrets should be in furtherance of national, not personal, interests.
“In July 2021, at Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey (“The Bedminster Club”), during an audio-recorded meeting with a writer, a publisher, and two members of his staff, none of whom possessed a security clearance, TRUMP showed and described a “plan of attack” that TRUMP said was prepared for him by the Department of Defense and a senior military official. TRUMP told the individuals that the plan was “highly confidential” and “secret.” TRUMP also said,“as president I could have declassified it,”and, “Now I can’t, you know, but this is still a secret.””
What else has Trump said about national security and classified information?
“Crooked Hillary Clinton and her team ‘were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information.’ Not fit!”
— July 6, 2016, Trump tweet
“We’ve seen a former secretary of state lie to Congress about her illegal email scheme, risk innocent American lives and bring dishonor onto our government, great, great dishonor. In my administration, I’m going to enforce all laws concerning the protection of classified information.”
— August 16, 2016, campaign event in West Bend, Wisconsin
“On political corruption, we are going to restore honor to our government. In my administration, I’m going to enforce all laws concerning the protection of classified information. No one will be above the law.”
— August 18, 2016, campaign event in Charlotte, North Carolina
“One of the first things we must do is to enforce all classification rules and to enforce all laws relating to the handling of classified information. Hillary Clinton put her emails on a secret server nobody knew about except for the man that was giving the Fifth, remember? What ever happened to him? Where is he? What happened to him? Where did he go? He pled the Fifth. Never heard – that’s the end of him…She put her emails on a secret server to cover up her pay-for- play scandal in the State Department. Nothing threatens the integrity of our democracy more than when government officials put their public office up for sale.”
— September 7, 2016, campaign event in Philadelphia
“We also need the best protection of classified information. That is the worst situation. Hillary’s private email scandal, which put our classified information in the reach of our enemies, disqualifies her from the presidency. Totally.”
— September 19, 2016, campaign event in Fort Meyers, Florida
“Wikileaks proves even the Clinton campaign knew Crooked, mishandled classified info, but no one gets charged? RIGGED!”
— October 17, 2016, tweet
Trump is a good carnival barker; he toes the banner line.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Sunday, October 2, 2022
In response to the question in the article linked below, “No. It does NOT absolve them of responsibility for their actions. It merely means “it’s all over but the crying.””
And this is the crying.
Emphasizing particularly that it is important to acknowledge someone akin to a debating partner, rather than a mortal enemy. It is a hallmark of civility.
As long has been said, disagreeing on the finer points of a narrow range of subjects doesn’t mean to be disagreeable, though some have so misinterpreted the aphorism. Everyone is welcome at funerals… save then-POTUS Donald Trump, whom Arizona Republican Senator John McCain specifically excluded by name before he died. Like him, or loathe him (ideologies, not personally), John McCain was a man of integrity and honor.
But, death is THE common denominator from which ALL humanity suffers.
Even at a funeral, the attendees all share a common bond — the deceased.
Funerals are NOT for the deceased; instead, they are for the living, to enable them an opportunity to publicly and collectively express their individual, private, and public, sense of loss and sorrow, at the deceased’s departure.
〝Eulogies, by their very nature, often lionize the dead,
and by so doing,
tend to give a flawed, romanticized picture of the deceased,
one that sometimes is not based in reality.
It paints a portrait of the person
as we WANT to remember them,
rather than how they were.〞
Obituaries, on the other hand, can be, and often are, written by another, sometimes not even a relative, such as with the death of a public figure, where elongated obituaries often become human interest feature articles, and can, and do, also sometimes mention difficulties, losses, struggles, and failures, not just the high-lights, or high points of one’s life.
Thinking forward, one will naturally be curious about who will attend Donald John Trump’s funeral. Naturally, there’ll be the likely suspects, Rudi Giuliani, Michael Flynn, Steve Bannon, Roger Stone, immediate family (children, their spouses & families), a few business associates, and perhaps a few others. But ‘who would want to attend’ such an event is about what I’m curious. How many extras would be hired to give the (false) appearance of being well-attended — as he did exaggeration at his Inauguration? Clearly, there he did not. The crowd size experts that estimated “numbers” of those attending the event was severally estimated by numerous independent agencies, to be between 300,000 – 600,000.
In stark contrast is the 2009 Obama inauguration’s estimated 1,800,000 attendance. That has to rile him something fierce. Of course, Trump’s obituary will likely lead with something like “he was best known for being the only twice-impeached POTUS, and instigator of the January 6, 2020 Insurrection, when murderous mobs armed with unconventional weapons literally broke into the U.S. Capitol Building, and roamed freely throughout, pillaging as they went…”
They Voted to Overturn an Election.
Did Their Obits Let Them Off the Hook?
By Michael Schaffer
09/09/2022
04:30 AM EDT
When Indiana Congresswoman Jackie Walorski died in a traffic accident last month, readers of the Washington Post write-up had to wait until the final paragraph — below the fulsome tributes from a bipartisan array of colleagues; below the discussions of her anti-abortion politics and her committee assignments — to learn about what may have been the most important vote of her career: On January 6th, 2021, she voted against certifying the results of the 2020 election.
…
It’s not that votes against certifying the election have been universally memory-holed. The New York Times obit for Hagedorn, for instance, led with his election-overturning vote. It’s that the coverage is all over the place. The same vote was mentioned low in the reports of his death offered by the Associated Press and his home-state Star-Tribune, and not at all in the Guardian, a publication that’s generally not especially friendly to baseless conspiracy theories about 2020 fraud.
U.S. Representative Jackie Walorski, R, IN-2 –CENTER– listens during a meeting between President Donald Trump and congressional members in the Cabinet Room of the White House February 13, 2018 in Washington, DC. – Alex Wong/Getty Images
Likewise, Wright’s vote made the last paragraph of the AP obit, but was unmentioned in the lengthy obituary in his hometown Dallas Morning News or the news account of his death in the Texas Tribune. (POLITICO didn’t run traditional obits, but its news accounts of the three deaths — which featured tributes from colleagues but no lengthy resume-recitations — also did not take note of the way they voted on January 6.)
This is all, on the face of it, rather strange. The last few years have featured no shortage of assertions in the media that the preservation of democracy ought to be the profession’s highest calling. The vote on whether or not to certify the election was a seminal one, a moment to pick sides. No less a figure than Mitch McConnell called it “the most important vote I’ve ever cast.” So why not treat it as similarly defining for that vast majority of legislators with careers that have been shorter than McConnell’s?
Part of what’s going on here is our society-wide taboo against speaking ill of the dead and a major-media taboo against appearing biased. The deaths of all three members of Congress were greeted with genuine sorrow by Republican allies and generous aisle-crossing statements by the likes of Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi — warm remembrances attesting to faith and friendship and devotion to public service. Why muck it up by mentioning something controversial?
Rep. Jim Hagedorn addresses a crowd at a campaign rally for President Donald Trump in 2020. — Bruce Kluckhohn/AP Photo
Beyond the fact that mucking things up is what the news media is supposed to do, that speak-no-ill logic assumes that a vote to overturn the election was a bad thing — a statement a substantial minority of Americans disagree with, for better or worse. Presumably, if you believe the election was fatally marred by irregularities, you still agree that the vote to reject it was an important one.
More practically, unexpected deaths of sitting members of Congress are also a place where the measured judgments of people writing for history bump into the reality of Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Monday, August 15, 2022
Once, a long time ago… (Isn’t that how fairy tales start out?)
Two years is almost like forever when it comes to matters politick. But it should be noted, that the overall conditions for diplomatic talks with international terrorists is a definite first in American history. Just as much as having a POTUS work against you by every boastfully callous public remark he makes. Never before has the Department of State and the Office of the President been at odds with one another.
That is, until that maladministration of Mr. I-know-more-than-the-generals-do.
And, it’s mostly true that each new administration has some degree of “learning curve” to move beyond the lingering effects of the prior administration.
And in this case, it was two years.
No one drives forward while gazing in the rear-view mirror.
That’s NOT what rear-view mirrors are for.
Rear-view mirrors enable drivers to briefly scan behind them to see if there’s anything of which they need to be aware. Is a rapidly-approaching vehicle in your lane of travel, or not? Is an emergency services vehicle needing right-of-way? In short, rear view mirrors enable drivers to be alert for changes they may need to make in response to activity behind them.
And in a very similar manner, that’s the purpose of a retrospective — to determine what was good, and what could have been better.
It’s been two years since the Biden administration began. There’ve been some hiccups, some failures, and now, there are signs of success. But it’s taken two years just to get out of the mess the previous administration made and left for the next.
So, how accurate is that remark?
Let’s look in the rear-view mirror!
In an article published November 18, 2020 in The Diplomat, freelance journalist Sohrab Azad, who covers Afghanistan, is based in Erbil, Iraq, and founder of Advocates for a Prosperous Afghanistan, an advocacy group in Washington, DC, wrote in part, that, Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Monday, August 1, 2022
There’s a rumor goin’ ‘round that “The Donald” buried his now-late first wife Ivana on his Bedminster, NJ golf course.
It’s no rumor.
It’s true.
Dr. Brooke Harrington, PhD, is a Professor of Sociology at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, who focuses upon the economic & organizational aspects of sociology, has a professional credential in wealth management, and specializes in “tax optimization” research. She has authored several books on wealth management, and about the mind-boggling efforts that wealthy elites go to, the shenanigans they participate in, and stunts they pull, all in order to avoid paying numerous kinds of taxes.
See: https://faculty-directory.dartmouth.edu/brooke-harrington
See also: https://works.bepress.com/brooke_harrington/
She wrote that, “As a tax researcher, I was skeptical of rumors Trump buried his ex-wife in that sad little plot of dirt on his Bedminster, NJ golf course just for tax breaks.
“So I checked the NJ tax code & folks… it’s a trifecta of tax avoidance. Property, income & sales tax, all eliminated.”
She followed up on that theme by writing that the “full text of NJ tax code for land used for human burial” states that there is “no stipulation regarding a minimum number of human remains necessary” for the tax breaks to kick in — [and it] looks like one corpse will suffice to make at least 3 forms of tax vanish.”
See: https://www.state.nj.us/treasury/taxation/pdf/pubs/sales/anj22.pdf
She further substantiated that claim by pointing to extensive investigative reporting published by ProPublica in their Non-Profit Explorer online search tool which showed that “Trump Family Trust” in Hackettstown, NJ (20 miles from Bedminster) has been a 501(c)(13) tax-exempt organization as a cemetery company since May 2016, and was formed exclusively for that purpose.
See: https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/465718872
The TFT organization’s 2014 form 990, a tax return which is a public record document, as all tax exempt organizations’ tax returns are, shows that on Schedule O, the Supplemental Information form accompanying form 990, on Part III, Primary Exempt Purpose, and on Part III, Line 28, First Accomplishment, reads that, “The corporation will Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Sunday, July 17, 2022
“Grooming” is a word that gets thrown around a lot these days; from serial sexual abuse to personal hygiene, “grooming” has become a favorite Word of the Day by the GOPT — Grand Old Party of Trump.
And well it should, because that party specializes in projection, an abusive manipulative psychological distraction technique that casts blame for a problem upon one’s opponent, or enemy, claiming that they are the ones doing the very thing the accuser is doing.
By blaming another, it keeps observers distracted from what the accuser actually is doing, by busying themselves with investigating whether, or not, the one being accused is genuinely guilty as charged by the accuser, or not.
As a longtime and ardent observer of matters political, I have absolute certainty that you’re keenly aware of such actions.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Tuesday, November 2, 2021
Iowa’s Banana Republican Senator, the 88-year Old Man Charles Grassley, is mad because Joe Biden’s Border Patrol seized his fentanyl.
Welcome 2 Pres Biden’s America where 10,000 pounds of fentanyl hv been seized by Customs & Border patrol so far this fiscal yr which is enough to kill over 2 billion ppl or more than 1/4 of the world’s population
“Chuck must be getting Alzheimer’s,” said the supercentenarian. “There’s no other way to look at it. I mean, why would anyone in their right mind complain about taking deadly, addictive, illegal drugs off the streets? Right?”
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Sunday, October 3, 2021
GOP Voters DidNOTWant A Second Helping Of Trump
And, in their estimation, Trump v2.0, i.e., Trump 2024, is 100% OUT OF THE QUESTION.
Comments from the focus group referenced in the article linked below illustrate the GREAT NEED for our nation to be focused upon PROGRESS & CHANGE.
Regardless of anyone’s opinion, or any nation’s actions, catastrophic, or otherwise, tomorrow will happen.
It’s inevitable.
PROGRESS WILL OCCUR.
BUT, we could all do something to PREVENT bad things from happening, and should. We should improve conditions for our residents and humanity, rather than to allow them to suffer by negligence and neglect.
And yet, whether we do, or don’t, the sun will still rise.
Time marches on.
Recall the adage,
“If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always gotten.”
That quote is by Dr. Jessie Potter, PhD (1922-1994), Founder/Director, National Institute for Human Relationships, Oak Lawn, Illinois; faculty member University of Illinois Medical School, Northwestern University Medical School, who was featured speaker at the Friday opening of the seventh annual Woman to Woman Conference, in an article entitled “Search For Quality Called Key To Life” by Tom Ahern, published in “The Milwaukee Sentinel” of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on 24 October 1981; the quote appearing on Page 5, Column 5.
In my estimation, and in the estimation of that focus group’s members, America and American policy – domestic, and international – has REGRESSED, rather than progressed.
Progress supposes improvement. It’s like progressing from 3rd Grade to 4th Grade, or beyond. Progress implies a journey, and ALWAYS supposes improvement — getting from “Point A” to “Point B,” and beyond.
Like the primarily-Republican voters in this focus group, I too, have voted FOR candidates who were neither my first, nor best, choice. Sometimes, you vote for “the devil you know,” rather than “the devil you don’t know.”
I voted for Hillary, though I utterly loathed her for various reasons; besides being a proverbial “lightning rod” for controversy and division, rather than unity, another one being that she demonstrably screwed Bernie, and though what she did was not illegal, it was exceedingly unethical, and that she did it in secret, was very telling about her character. Had she not done that, Bernie would have most likely been the Democratic party‘s nominee – NO ONE ELSE had crowds the size of his – NO ONE.
But, because she had governmental experience, and was the nominee, I held my nose and voted FOR her. Similarly, I voted FOR Biden, though again, I much rather preferred Bernie, because I thought and hoped that Biden would essentially be a “yes man” to the party’s Progressive ideas. And quite frankly, I don’t think he’s ever demonstrated effective LEADERSHIP with ideas.
BIDEN is a conciliator, and after the previous administration, our nation was very ready for significant “conciliation.”
“Boring government” can be a good thing, per se — at least insofar as what it’s compared to in the immediately preceding administration.
Bold new ideas are not Biden’s forte. That’s Bernie’s bailiwick. And, as we all know, sometimes, “you gotta’ go along, to get along.”
We’re not even a year — 8 months 13 days, or; 36 weeks 3 days, or; 255 calendar days – into this administration, and yet, the prognosticators, pundits, and political soothsayers are busy at work. In my way of thinking, that demonstrates a deep longing for CHANGE. Not change from the GOP, but fundamental, wholesale CHANGE in governmental operations, i.e., PROGRESS.
Do we need change in our nation?
You bet your sweet bippy we do!
The colloquialism “politicians are like diapers on babies; both need changing regularly” is not mere hyperbole, it is true.
Consider our income tax system.
No one genuinely “likes” paying taxes – has anyone, ever? Even though it’s a patriotic duty, I don’t think so. But in your and my lifetime, the graduated income tax system in our nation has been highly compressed (there are now fewer brackets than ever), and the top rate for the highest income earners (multi-millionaires & multi-billionaires) has been so significantly reduced, that the net effect is a so-called “flat tax,” in which everyone – the wealthy and the impoverished – pays the same percentage rate, regardless. That’s an inherently unjust system, simply because the wealthy and the impoverished pay the same price for a gallon of milk, or loaf of bread. It just takes a BIGGER BITE out of the poor man’s paycheck, than it does the wealthy… who probably owns the farm –and– the bakery –and– the store that sells it.
It simply boggles my mind to know that Jeff Bezos, by FAR the world’s wealthiest man -and- his corporation Amazon, PAID NO INCOME TAX LAST YEAR… or, the year before, or the year before that. And he wasn’t the only one, not by a long shot. Elon Musk and Warren Buffett are also on that list of shame. Men whose names are practically household words, like Bill Gates, Rupert Murdoch and Mark Zuckerberg all come to mind. They too, paid little, if any, personal income tax compared to the Average American. To my way of thinking, that’s just plain wrong. Maybe you think differently.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Saturday, August 28, 2021
As you read this OpEd, initially, it seems to move toward the idea of nation building, but then, directs itself toward more direct involvement Congressional management and oversight of foreign policy, the constitutionally-mandated Separation of Powers, encourages a SCOTUS decision on the extent of Presidential War Powers, and curtailing the use Executive action to enact foreign policy by skirting such oversight, asserting that Executive diplomacy is not a formal treaty, and therefore not subject to Congressional oversight.
In short, while illustrating problems in American foreign policy through Executive action, it places the onus of responsibility upon Congress, where it rightfully belongs, and relegates the President’s role to primarily one of public persuasion in such matters.
Ours is a constitutional democratic republic, and we should act like it, rather than falling prey to “the grandiose belief” … of the “irresistible the siren call of personal diplomacy” by Presidents.A
What Trump’s Disgraceful Deal With the Taliban Has Wrought
by Dr. Kori Schake, PhD
August 28, 2021
Dr. Schake is Director of Foreign and Defense Policy Studies, and Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
Before joining AEI, Dr. Schake was the Deputy Director-General of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London. She has had a distinguished career in government, working at the US State Department, the US Department of Defense, and the National Security Council at the White House. She has also taught at Stanford, West Point, Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies, National Defense University, and the University of Maryland.
The American Enterprise Institute is an independent, non-profit, public policy think tank dedicated to defending human dignity, expanding human potential, and building a freer and safer world.
The work of their scholars and staff advances ideas rooted in their belief in democracy, free enterprise, American strength and global leadership, solidarity with those at the periphery of our society, and a pluralistic, entrepreneurial culture.
AEI scholars are committed to making the intellectual, moral, and practical case for expanding freedom, increasing individual opportunity, and strengthening the free enterprise system in America and around the world. Their work explores ideas that further those goals, and AEI scholars take part in this pursuit with academic freedom. AEI operates independently of any political party and has no institutional positions. Their scholars’ conclusions are fueled by rigorous, data-driven research and broad-ranging evidence.
Believing you’re uniquely capable of bending things to your will is practically a requirement for becoming president of the United States. But too often, in pursuit of such influence over foreign policy, presidents overemphasize the importance of personal diplomacy. Relationships among leaders can build trust — or destroy it — but presidents often overrate their ability to steer both allies and adversaries.
Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev had built such a solid relationship that during the Reykjavik summit most of Reagan’s administration worried he would agree to an unverifiable elimination of nuclear weapons. Bill Clinton believed his personal diplomacy could deliver Palestinian statehood and Russian acceptance of NATO expansion. George W. Bush believed he looked into Vladimir Putin’s eyes and saw his soul, and Barack Obama believed he could persuade Mr. Putin it wasn’t in Russia’s interests to determine the outcome of the war in Syria.
But in both hubris and folly, none come close to matching Donald Trump. For someone who prided himself on his abilities as a dealmaker and displayed an “I alone can fix it” arrogance, the agreement he made with the Taliban is one of the most disgraceful diplomatic bargains on record. Coupled with President Biden’s mistakes in continuing the policy and botching its execution, the deal has now led to tragic consequences for Americans and our allies in Kabul.
Mr. Trump’s handling of Afghanistan is an object lesson for why presidents of both parties need to be Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Tuesday, August 17, 2021
Soprano Amalie Materna (1844-1918) as the character Brünnhilde in Richard Wagner’s “Der Ring des Nibelungen” at Bayreuth, Germany, 1876 – conjectural origin of the idiom “when the fat lady sings.”
What can anyone say about people that will cling to the body of a jet aircraft as it takes off, and then as it begins to reach altitude, fall to their deaths? Or stow away in a wheel well, where they are crushed by the mechanisms, or freeze to death at altitude?
Morons.
And desperate.
But still, morons.
They are utterly lacking common sense, stupid, and fundamentally absent the knowledge or intelligence to understand that such actions would be fool hardy at best, and – as it turned out – fatal at worst.
What would you say?
How would anyone describe it?
And yet, “it ain’t over ’til the fat lady sings.”
So goes a colloquial saying meaning “don’t count your chickens until the eggs are hatched.”
Speaking of eggs, they can’t be unscrambled.
And this matter may very well be exactly illustrative of that axiom.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Tuesday, July 27, 2021
“It was an attempted coup that happened that day.”
— Aquilino Gonell, U.S. Capitol Police Sergeant partial testimony before the January 6th Select Committee, about the 2021 domestic terrorist attacks upon our nation’s government at the U.S. Capitol.
In their testimony today, Tuesday, 27 July 2021, the U.S. Capitol police have made NO MISTAKE describing what the Trump supporters are who attacked our U.S. Congress at the Capitol Building that day —
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Wednesday, July 14, 2021
Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr departs his home September 10, 1998, in McLean, VA. The 445-page Starr report on the investigation into the affair between President Clinton and former White House Intern Monica Lewinsky was delivered to Congress Wednesday afternoon. KHUE BUI/AP
Here’s your QAnon pedophile network boss.
Would you be surprised to know that it’s Kenneth Starr?
Remember: The [radical right-wing] QAnon conspiracy theory [falsely] claims that Democrats are involved in a global cannibalistic pedophile network, and that anti-Trumpers were directly involved in an attempt to destroy the 45th President’s efforts in office because he was onto their game and was rooting them out of “deep state” government bureaucracies and big business. The never-Trump movement began as intra-party opposition by prominent conservative Republicans to prevent him from being nominated, and later morphed.
And it is worth noting, that the pernicious QAnon conspiracy theory has long been discredited by numerous independent individuals, none of whom worked together, and that like many other conspiracy theories – and viruses – continually evolves, ever changing various elements of itself to potentially become as damaging as possible.
There’s always at least one element of truth in every lie, no matter how far-fetched the lie is, for without it, the entire house of cards falls apart. That’s just how fragile conspiracy theories are. They CANNOT survive independently, and like all parasites, need hosts in order to perpetuate.
Great Saint James (top center) and Little Saint James (lower center) islands in the U.S. Virgin Islands were owned by Jeffrey Epstein.
And in this instance, pedophilia is the solitary bit of truth.
From that single germ, the conspiracy begins to grow. Assertions of the existence of international cartels or networks are built upon the fact that Epstein was known to frequently fly abroad to various nations, and between 1995 and 2013 logged at least 730 flights to and from Teterboro Airport, NJ – a small, general aviation reliever “corporate” airport, just 12 miles from midtown Manhattan, where he maintained a seven-story, including basement, 18,814 square foot residence at 9 East 71st Street, on the posh Upper East Side of Manhattan. The pilots’ flight logs of his travel to and from Teterboro Airport represent only about a third of his total air travel between 1995 and 2013, and consist of thousands of flights. He was arrested at Teterboro Airport July 6, 2019 returning from Paris.
His international travel was facilitated by ownership of several jet aircraft and helicopters, including a Cessna Citation jet, a Gulf Stream jet, and a Boeing 727 jet airliner nicknamed “Lolita Express,” along with two Caribbean islands — the 78-acre Little Saint James, and the larger adjacent 165-acre Great Saint James, in the U.S. Virgin Islands — and was known to host notable guests on the them, among whom are known to have been former U.S. President Bill Clinton, accompanied by his Secret Service agents, because flight itineraries, manifests and passenger lists detail that he flew there as Epstein’s guest at least 26 times.
Jeffrey Epstein, Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Department booking photo, 27 July 2006, following his indictment for soliciting prostitution.
Other notable personalities who Epstein hosted regularly included such high-profile individuals as Donald Trump, renown Harvard University Professor of Law, emeritus, Alan Dershowitz, the UK’s Prince Read the rest of this entry »
Too bad he didn’t hit his head and die. The world would have been much better off without “Moscow” Mitch McConnell, seen here as then-Kentucky Republican Senate Majority Leader proudly displaying the Nike brand athletic shoes which he blames for his fall which ironically, injured his LEFT shoulder.
The Senate’s self-proclaimed “Grim Reaper” has returned.
Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell of KY is keeping his Republican conference largely unified, and it’s creating major obstacles to President Biden’s legislative agenda.
McConnell has maintained the loyalty of his fellow GOP senators despite repeated attacks by former President Trump, who has called on Senate Republicans to oust him as their leader.
And it was McConnell’s opposition to a House-passed bill establishing a bipartisan January 6 commission that snuffed out the legislation in the Senate on Friday.
One GOP senator said the measure would have garnered enough votes to pass the chamber and eventually land on POTUS Biden’s desk had McConnell not gotten involved.
“The vote on the commission would have had 60 votes in the absence of McConnell’s position,” said the Republican lawmaker who ended up voting against the bill.
The senator said the vote outcome was a good example of just how influential McConnell is in the conference.
by Shayna Jacobs, David Fahrenthold
Tuesday, 25 May 2021
NEW YORK — Manhattan’s district attorney has convened the grand jury that is expected to decide whether to indict former president Donald Trump, other executives at his company or the business itself, should prosecutors present the panel with criminal charges, according to two people familiar with the development.
The panel was convened recently and will sit three days a week for six months. It is likely to hear several matters — not just the Trump case — during its term, which is longer than a traditional New York state grand-jury assignment, these people said. Like others, they spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation. Generally, special grand juries such as this are convened to participate in long-term matters rather than to hear evidence of crimes charged routinely.
The move indicates that District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr.’s investigation of the former president and his business has reached an advanced stage after more than two years. It suggests, too, that Vance thinks he has found evidence of a crime — if not by Trump, by someone potentially close to him or by his company.
Vance’s investigation is expansive, according to people familiar with the probe and public disclosures made during related litigation. His investigators are scrutinizing Trump’s business practices before he was President, including whether the value of specific properties in the Trump Organization’s real estate portfolio were manipulated in a way that defrauded banks and insurance companies, and if any tax benefits were obtained illegally through unscrupulous asset valuation.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Monday, May 24, 2021
Democratic senators say if the Supreme Court strikes a blow against Roe v. Wade by upholding a Mississippi abortion law, it will fuel an effort to add justices to the court or otherwise reform it.
The Supreme Court’s conservative majority this week agreed to hear the Mississippi case, which could dramatically narrow abortion rights by allowing states to make it illegal to get an abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy.
“It will inevitably fuel and drive an effort to expand the Supreme Court if this activist majority betrays fundamental constitutional principles,” said Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
“It’s already driving that movement,” he added.
Senator Blumenthal said it doesn’t mean that a Congress led by Democrats would immediately be able to add justices to the court, but he suggested it would add momentum to reform efforts at a minimum.
“Chipping away at Roe v. Wade will precipitate a seismic movement to reform the Supreme Court. It may not be expanding the Supreme Court, it may be making changes to its jurisdiction, or requiring a certain numbers of votes to strike down certain past precedents,” he said.
No one knows for sure when the Supreme Court will hand down its decision on the Mississippi abortion law, but it is widely expected to hear arguments after it convenes in October. That could set up a decision next year.
Rhode Island Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D), another member of the Judiciary Committee, said the court’s review of the Mississippi law raises serious concerns.
“It really enlivens the concerns that we have about the extent to which right-wing billionaire money has influenced the makeup of the court and may even be pulling strings at the court,” he said.
“We’ve got a whole array of options we’re looking at in the courts committee,” Senator Whitehouse said of the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States, which President Biden established by executive order in April.
LEFT to RIGHT: Donna Mosing, spouse of Greg Mosing; Kristi Noem; Ted Nugent, spouse of Shemane Nugent.
However, a week before he made that announcement, Nugent’s wife Shemane posted a photo on Instagram which cross-posted to Twitter, of them standing with South Dakota Republican Governor Kristi Noem and Republican donor Greg Mosing and his wife, Donna, alongside a private jet aircraft. None of them were wearing any type of protective nose/mouth covering.
She wrote: “Thank you for a great trip with Governor Kristi Noem, on Rockstar One (think Air Force One!).”
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Wednesday, March 31, 2021
He’s a “Florida Man” to be certain, and his Twitter bio states as much. He’s the moral equivalent of Jeffrey Epstein. His “NAY” vote was the EXCLUSIVE – the SOLITARY – the ONLY vote against a human sex trafficking bill. And his flimsy “excuse” or rationale why, is as weak as water. He’ll be out soon as just another worthless, hypocritical, flash-in-the-pan piece of GOP garbage.
Matt Gaetz, On The Ropes From Juvenile Sex Trafficking Investigation, Finds Few Friends In The GOP
by Juliegrace Brufke & Mike Lillis
03/31/21 05:33 PM EDT
In four years on Capitol Hill, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) has experienced a meteoric rise to national prominence — one fueled by a close alliance with former President Trump, a penchant for political theatrics and a no-apologies brand of conservatism that’s made him a darling of the right-wing cable outlets.
Matt Gaetz now – with a slicked-back pompadour, and snazzy suit.
Yet this week, facing a federal investigation into allegations of a sexual relationship with an underage girl, Gaetz is finding himself in an unusual spot: On the ropes and virtually alone.
Few of Gaetz’s GOP colleagues are coming to the defense of the third-term Floridian following a New York Times report that the Department of Justice (DOJ) is investigating allegations of sexual misconduct with — and interstate trafficking of — a minor roughly two years ago. And a number of Republicans, while warning against jumping to premature conclusions about Gaetz’s conduct, also suggested they wouldn’t miss him if he were gone.
“I don’t know anything about this situation other than to say he has certainly made enemies and painted a bull’s-eye on his back,” said one Republican lawmaker, who requested anonymity to speak freely on a sensitive topic. “This appears to be a self-inflicted wound.”
Gaetz has vehemently denied that he had a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old-girl — the central allegation of the Justice Department probe, which was launched under the Trump administration. Gaetz contends that he and his family have been targeted by a former DOJ official in an extortion scheme seeking millions of dollars to have the allegations vanish.
In a series of tweets, statements and media interviews Tuesday evening, he maintained that Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Tuesday, March 16, 2021
Yes, we all know that they’re jerkwads.
They also believe that the moon is made of green cheese, and that POS45 won re-election. That’s why he’s not in the White House – he’s on permanent vacation pooping into one of his golden toilets at his Palm Beach, FL resort, and playing golf. Because that’s what winners do, right?
And lie about practically everything. He’s a liar, so that almost goes without saying.
He deceived the American public – or, at least attempted to deceive the American public – about getting a vaccination against COVID-19 before leaving the White House.
Republican Senator Richard Burr of North Carolina joined Republican Senators Mitt Romney of Utah, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Ben Sasse of Nebraska, and Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, and all 50 Democrats in voting GUILTY to convict. But, 57 votes was 10 shy of the 2/3 required by the Constitution in order to convict.
The Senate Minority Leader Moscow Mitch McConnell had the temerity, audacity and unmitigated gall to actually give a brief speech on the Senate floor following his “NOT GUILTY” vote for Donald J. “Loser” Trump, which follows at the conclusion of this entry.
Senate Minority Leader “Moscow Mitch” McConnell who wrote email to his Senate minions saying,
“Colleagues, as I have said for some time, today’s vote is a vote of conscience and I know we will all treat it as such. I have been asked directly by a number of you how I intend to vote, so thought it right to make that known prior to the final vote. While a close call, I am persuaded that impeachments are a tool primarily of removal and we therefore lack jurisdiction. The Constitution makes perfectly clear that Presidential criminal misconduct while in office can be prosecuted after the President has left office, which in my view alleviates the otherwise troubling ‘January exception’ argument raised by the House.
“Given these conclusions, I will vote to acquit.
“Mitch”
Yeah… that Kentucky heathen not only voted to acquit the POS45, aka Liar in Chief, leader of the Cult of Trump, but passed the buck.
Not guilty, not guilty 2x, guilty. Alcee Hastings was impeached and found guilty of on charges of perjury and conspiring to solicit a bribe, and was removed from office as a Federal judge in 1989. He’s been a United States Representative for Florida’s 20th Congressional District since 1993.
Here’s the thing, though: For a man who claims to have an interest in historicity for the purpose of the Senate, he is DEAD WRONG about his opinion that, as he writes, “I am persuaded that impeachments are a tool primarily of removal…”
As a matter of history, there has been of late at least a moderate amount of discussion and news made about an historical matter involving circumstances very similar to this one (in which the impeached individual is no longer in office), insofar as the two individuals impeached had ALREADY been resigned from, or otherwise out of office when their impeachment occurred.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Friday, February 12, 2021
“Trump told us to do it.”
Trump’s MAGA supporters rioter-insurrectionists who were assembled at the White House Ellipse Park January 6, 2021 quickly became violent exclusively because they believed that Trump was asking them to do so – that they were doing his bidding.
“He said, ‘Be there.’ So I went and I answered the call of my president.”
House Impeachment Managers cited social media posts, recorded video, and court documents which reflected as much.
“I Answered the Call of My President.”
Impeachment Managers also extensively documented that several months BEFORE the election, Trump was laying the groundwork for convincing his cult of followers that the November presidential election was fixed, and that his victory was stolen because of Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Friday, February 12, 2021
The third-rate lawyers trying to defend Trumpanzee, aka “POS45” and formerly as the “Liar in Chief” from charges of Inciting Insurrection, were given 16 hours to make their case.
They quit after 4.
Remember: Charles Manson did NOT kill anyone, yet he was convicted of murder.
The Senate’s RINOs will likely NOT vote to convict their hero.
Donald Trump (sipping Diet Coke soda pop through a straw, like a goddamn 4-year-old child) during the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner at Waldorf Astoria October 20, 2016 in New York, New York.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Thursday, February 11, 2021
Suddenly, a Juror becomes a Witness!
Senator from Utah, Mike Lee suddenly stood up and said…
“Statements were attributed to me moments ago by the House Impeachment Managers. Statements relating to the content of conversations between a phone call involving President Trump and Senator Tuberville were not made by me. They’re not accurate, and they’re contrary to fact. I move pursuant to Rule 16 that they be stricken from the record.”
There is NO court of jurisdiction EVER which has allowed a juror to become a witness also.
Lead Impeachment Manager Representative Jamie Raskin, Maryland-8, Democrat
In the trial’s final hour of arguments on Day 2, Wednesday, February 11, 2021, Representative David Cicilline, an Impeachment Manager, and Democrat of Rhode Island-1, spoke of then-President Trump who, during the very midst of the insurrection and breach of the Capitol building, had mistakenly called Republican Senator Mike Lee of Utah, in an effort to reach newly-elected first-time politician Republican Senator Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, a former football coach for Auburn University. In describing the call, which was detailed in numerous news reports, Representative Cicilline asserted that Senator Lee had stood by as Trump asked Senator Tuberville to make additional objections to the certification of President Biden’s electoral votes.
“With a mob of election protesters laying siege to the U.S. Capitol, Sen. Mike Lee had just ended a prayer with some of his colleagues in the Senate chamber when his cellphone rang.
Caller ID showed the call originated from the White House. Lee thought it might be national security adviser Robert O’Brien, with whom he’d been playing phone tag on an unrelated issue. It wasn’t O’Brien. It was President Donald Trump.
“How’s it going, Tommy?” the president asked.
Taken a little aback, Lee said this isn’t Tommy.
“Well, who is this? Trump asked. “It’s Mike Lee,” the senator replied. “Oh, hi Mike. I called Tommy.”
Lee told the Deseret News he realized Trump was trying to call Sen. Tommy Tuberville, the newly elected Republican from Alabama and former Auburn University football coach. Lee walked his phone over to Tuberville who was talking to some colleagues.
“Hey, Tommy, I hate to interrupt but the president wants to speak with you,” Lee said.
Tuberville and Trump talked for about five to 10 minutes, Lee said, adding that he stood nearby because he didn’t want to lose his cellphone in the commotion. The two were still talking when panicked police ordered the Capitol to be evacuated because people had breached security.
As police were getting anxious for senators to leave, Lee walked over to retrieve his phone.
“I don’t want to interrupt your call with the president, but we’re being evacuated and I need my phone,” he said.
Tuberville said, “OK, Mr. President. I gotta go.”
Lee said when he later asked Tuberville about the conversation, he got the impression that Trump didn’t know about the chaos going on in the Senate chamber.
Impeachment Manager David Ciciline, a Democrat representing Rhode Island-1 said,
“Senator Lee described it. He had just ended a prayer with his colleagues here in the Senate chamber, and the phone rang. It was Donald Trump. Senator Lee explains that the phone call goes something like this. ‘Hey, Tommy,’ Trump asks. Sen. Lee says, ‘This isn’t Tommy.’ He hands the phone to Senator Tuberville.
“Senator Lee then confirmed that he stood by as Senator Tuberville and President Trump spoke on the phone. And on that call, Donald Trump reportedly asked Senator Tuberville to make additional objections to the certification process.”
Senator Lee NEVER objected to the news report which he himself had told to Deseret News on January 7, 2021. Nor did he note that any corrections should be made to it, and there is no errata or corrections cited on the story.
As Impeachment Manager Representative Ciciline was speaking, Senator Lee became apparently agitated and wrote in large letters upon a sheet of paper from a legal pad at his desk “This is not what happened.” and then handed the paper to David Schoen, one of Trump’s lawyers.
As Lead Impeachment Manager Representative Jamie Raskin, a Democrat representing Maryland’s 8th Congressional District, was at the speaker’s podium and was attempting to close the day’s session, Senator Lee then stood up, and Read the rest of this entry »
The mention of his religion is of no consequence, save perhaps, for the fact that he had asked for, then rescinded his request for the trial to take a day off – Saturday, beginning from sundown Friday, to sunrise Sunday (the Jewish “sabbath”) – to attend Synagogue, wear his little beanie, not use electricity, not serve dairy and meat together (like on a cheeseburger), or to practice whatever superstitious silliness that religiously observant Jews practice on Saturdays – just like Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, who is married to Ivanka Trump, Loser Trump’s second child, and first-born daughter, of whom he said that he would be “dating her” (TRANSLATE: Having sex with) if he wasn’t married to Malaria, er… Melania, and noted that she was a “fine piece of ass.”
The TEMERITY to quote Lincoln in his closing remarks!
Is he trying to defend, or prosecute his client?
The atrocity occurs very near the closing after 3:57… that’s 3 HOURS and 57 minutes.
“Stand with anybody that stands RIGHT. Stand with him while he is right, and PART with him when he goes wrong.” –– The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln edited by Roy P. Basler, Volume II, “Speech at Peoria, Illinois” (October 16, 1854), p. 273.
And then, to read – and give an UTTERLY HORRIBLE performance of – an 1849 poem by American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow!
That’s utter heresy!
The atrocity!
A goddamn moron, he is.
Schoen, a 3rd rate goofball, who the Piece of Shit former loser President hired after his first slew of attorneys quit in disgust, after the shit bag insisted that they base their claim of defense that he lost because of massive vote fraud, and they refused.
What?
Giuliani couldn’t do it?
Loser Trumpanzee is a goddamn moron.
Schoen is the 3rd, or 4th string.
Loser Trumpanzee can barely sign his name with a Sharpie permanent marker. He butchers words like “Yosemite” pronouncing it instead as “Yo – Semite” as if he were talking to his bigoted Semite son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Yeah… the bigot who was credibly accused of housing discrimination (he’s a slumlord) against Blacks, and rather than go to trial, agreed to Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Monday, February 8, 2021
Banana Republicans in the United States Senate do NOT, and will NOT need, “smoking gun evidence” to convict Donald Trump of Insurrection, because in their warped imaginations, he did nothing wrong.
Those feckless individuals have not merely bowed the knee to Trump, or fallen prostate at his feet to lick his boots and the ground he walks upon, but by so doing, they have unambiguously signaled that they are not merely corrupted, but are traitorously and treasonously aligned, as well.
Allan Lichtman
Their fealty, their loyalty, their oath, though it may have appeared so, is NOT to the Constitution, but to some other nation, some other government, one that is NOT the United States of America – The Cult of Trump.
The benighted Moscow Mitch McConnell and his equally benighted Kooky Kentucky Klown pal Rand Paul are still up to no good.
Here Is The Smoking Gun Evidence To Back Impeachment Of Donald Trump
By Dr. Allan Lichtman, PhD, opinion contributor
02/08/21 10:00 AM EST
While the House impeachment managers have focused on events leading up to the Capitol breach, it was the real time response from Donald Trump to the rioters which yields smoking gun evidence of his intent to incite the insurrection. Trump failed to promptly call off his followers or to summon timely assistance for the police, despite pleas from his fellow Republicans caught up in the mayhem. His final words that day connect his incendiary statements about a “stolen election” to the storming of the Capitol.
As he watched the insurrection unfold on television, with some delight according to witnesses, Trump made no immediate demand that the rioters leave the Capitol. He failed to heed the pleas of Republicans in Congress, who desperately tried to call him with no response. “We are begging essentially, and he was nowhere to be found,” Representative Anthony Gonzalez of Ohio said. We know Trump did call Senator Tommy Tuberville of Alabama after mistakenly dialing Senator Mike Lee of Utah. Trump called Tuberville not to ask about his safety or to offer assistance, but to discuss a strategy for objecting to the count of electoral votes.
When rioters breached the Capitol in full view of cameras, Trump did not appear on television to denounce them or tell his followers to cease and desist. Instead, he stoked the incitement with a tweet to attack his vice president and double down on claims about a stolen election. He wrote, “Mike Pence did not have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our country and our Constitution, giving states a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones.”
Trump later sent a tweet in the passive voice, “Stay peaceful!” He sent a similar message more than half an hour later. He still had not appeared in person on any medium at this point. Trump eventually released a video that told his supporters, Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Monday, February 8, 2021
The transcript of then-President Trump’s hour-long call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger is too lengthy to duplicate here, per se, but suffice it to say, it all boiled down to this oft-repeated remark by Trump during the call:
“The ballots are corrupt, and they’re brand new, and they don’t have seals, and there’s a whole thing with the ballots. But the ballots are corrupt. And you are going to find that they are — which is totally illegal — it is more illegal for you than it is for them because, you know, what they did and you’re not reporting it. That’s a criminal, that’s a criminal offense. And you can’t let that happen. That’s a big risk to you and to Ryan, your lawyer.
“All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have because we won the state.”
The call, which occurred on a Saturday afternoon, January 2, 2021, is a classic example of a shakedown.
In common parlance, the term “shakedown” refers to a criminal activity, describing extortion of money, as by blackmail. It is the preferred and primary definition in most reputable, and modern dictionaries.
Even the “Urban Dictionary,” a repository of modern colloquial use acknowledges similarly, but takes it at least one step further, by also acknowledging context of usage by writing that shakedown is,
“Another word for extortion/blackmail, or the obtaining of a good or service through means of force, threats/intimidation, or abuse of power.
Only one other dictionary acknowledges that capacity by writing that shakedown refers to “extortion, as by blackmail or threats of violence.”
Merriam-Webster defines it as “to rob by the use of trickery or threats.”
The Online Slang Dictionary finds similarly, by writing that it means “to extort. That is, to obtain something via force, threats, intimidation, abuse of power, etc.”
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Tuesday, February 2, 2021
As a treasonously wicked, son of perdition and Manipulator in Chief, Trump’s planned corruption played out in public, in print and broadcast news reports (he’s a media whore), on Twitter (he’s a narcissist), on other social media, like FaceBook, and Parler, the favorite of White Supremacists, neo-Nazis, and other right-wing extremists.
His followers are rightly called the “Cult of Trump.”
WALLACE: In general, not talking about November, are you a good loser?
TRUMP: I’m not a good loser. I don’t like to lose. I don’t lose too often. I don’t like to lose.
WALLACE: But are you gracious?
TRUMP: You don’t know until you see. It depends. I think mail-in voting is going to rig the election. I really do.
WALLACE: Are you suggesting that you might not accept the results of the election?
TRUMP: No. I have to see. Look, Hillary Clinton asked me the same thing.
WALLACE: No, I asked you the same thing at the debate.
77 Days: Trump’s Campaign to Subvert the Election
Within a few hours after the United States voted, the President declared the election a fraud — a lie that unleashed a movement that would shatter democratic norms and upend the peaceful transfer of power.
By Jim Rutenberg, Jo Becker, Eric Lipton, Maggie Haberman, Jonathan Martin, Matthew Rosenberg and Michael S. Schmidt
January 31, 2021
By Thursday the 12th of November, President Donald J. Trump’s election lawyers were concluding that the reality he faced was the inverse of the narrative he was promoting in his comments and on Twitter. There was no substantial evidence of election fraud, and there were nowhere near enough “irregularities” to reverse the outcome in the courts.
Mr. Trump did not, could not, win the election, not by “a lot” or even a little. His presidency would soon be over.
Allegations of Democratic malfeasance had disintegrated in embarrassing fashion. A supposed suitcase of illegal ballots in Detroit proved to be a box of camera equipment. “Dead voters” were turning up alive in television and newspaper interviews.
The week was coming to a particularly demoralizing close: In Arizona, the Trump lawyers were preparing to withdraw their main lawsuit as the state tally showed Joseph R. Biden Jr. leading by more than 10,000 votes, against the 191 ballots they had identified for challenge.
As he met with colleagues to discuss strategy, the president’s deputy campaign manager, Justin Clark, was urgently summoned to the Oval Office. Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, was on speaker phone, pressing the president to file a federal suit in Georgia and sharing a conspiracy theory gaining traction in conservative media — that Dominion Systems voting machines had transformed thousands of Trump votes into Biden votes.
Mr. Clark warned that the suit Mr. Giuliani had in mind would be dismissed on procedural grounds. And a state audit was barreling toward a conclusion that the Dominion machines had operated without interference or foul play.
Mr. Giuliani called Mr. Clark a liar, according to people with direct knowledge of the exchange. Mr. Clark called Mr. Giuliani something much worse. And with that, the election-law experts were sidelined in favor of the former New York City mayor, the man who once again was telling the president what he wanted to hear.
Thursday the 12th was the day Mr. Trump’s flimsy, long-shot legal effort to reverse his loss turned into something else entirely — an extralegal campaign to subvert the election, rooted in a lie so convincing to some of his most devoted followers that it made the deadly Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol almost inevitable.
Weeks later, Mr. Trump is the former President Trump. In coming days, a presidential transition like no other will be dissected when he stands trial in the Senate on an impeachment charge of “incitement of insurrection.” Yet his lie of an election stolen by corrupt and evil forces lives on in a divided America.
A New York Times examination of the 77 democracy-bending days between election and inauguration shows how, with conspiratorial belief rife in a country ravaged by pandemic, a lie that Mr. Trump had been grooming for years finally overwhelmed the Republican Party and, as brake after brake fell away, was propelled forward by new and more radical lawyers, political organizers, financiers and the surround-sound right-wing media.
In the aftermath of that broken afternoon at the Capitol, a picture has emerged of entropic forces coming together on Trump’s behalf in an ad hoc, yet calamitous, crash of rage and denial.
But interviews with central players, and documents including previously unreported emails, videos and social media posts scattered across the web, tell a more encompassing story of a more coordinated campaign.
Across those 77 days, the forces of disorder were summoned and directed by the departing president, who wielded the power derived from his near-infallible status among the party faithful in one final norm-defying act of a reality-denying presidency.
Throughout, he was enabled by influential Republicans motivated by ambition, fear or a misplaced belief that he would not go too far.
In the Senate, he got early room to maneuver from the majority leader, Mitch McConnell. As he sought the president’s help in Georgia Read the rest of this entry »
What We Learned from Trump’s Effort to Overturn the 2020 Election Results
by Matthew Rosenberg, Jim Rutenberg
February 1, 2021
The January 6, 2021 rally/riot of MAGA Trump supporters before their assault on the Capitol. Nina Berman/NOOR, via Redux Pictures
An examination by the New York Times of the 77 days between election and inauguration shows how a lie the former president had been grooming for years overwhelmed the Republican Party and stoked the assault on the Capitol.
For 77 days between the election and the inauguration, President Donald J. Trump attempted to subvert American democracy with a lie about election fraud that he had been grooming for years.
A New York Times examination of the events that unfolded after the election shows how the president — enabled by Republican leaders, advised by conspiracy-minded lawyers and bankrolled by a new class of Trump-era donors — waged an extralegal campaign that convinced tens of millions of Americans the election had been stolen and made the deadly Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol almost inevitable.
Interviews with central players, along with documents, videos and previously unreported emails, tell the story of a campaign that was more coordinated than previously understood, even as it strayed farther from reality with each passing day.
Here are some key takeaways:
As some lawyers on Trump’s team pulled back, others were ready to press ahead with suits skating the lines of legal ethics and reason
Within 10 days of the election, even as Mr. Trump and his supporters promoted allegation after allegation of voter fraud, his team of election lawyers knew that the reality was the inverse of what Mr. Trump was presenting: They were not finding substantial evidence of malfeasance or enough irregularities to overturn the election.
That reality was hammered home on November 12, when final Arizona results showed Joseph R. Biden Jr. with an irreversible lead of more than 10,000 votes that rendered the legal team’s main lawsuit in that state — which had identified 191 ballots to contest — moot.
At an Oval Office meeting that day, the election lawyers squared off against the president’s personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, over Mr. Giuliani’s embrace of questionable legal tactics and conspiracy theories like one that Dominion voting machines had transformed Trump votes into Biden votes.
Ultimately, Mr. Trump decided to give Mr. Giuliani leadership of the entire legal strategy, making November 12 the day when Mr. Trump’s effort to reverse his loss in the courts became an all-out, extralegal campaign to disenfranchise millions of voters based on the false notion of pervasive fraud.
Voting-machine conspiracy theories became intertwined with a supercomputer story pushed in conservative media
The Dominion conspiracy theory taking root among the president and many of his supporters had been weeks in the making. In late October, an obscure conservative website, The American Report, was pushing stories about a supercomputer called The Hammer that it said was running software called Scorecard to steal votes from Mr. Trump.
The theory found amplification the day before the election on the podcast of Mr. Trump’s former political strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, who Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Monday, February 1, 2021
“Loony lies and conspiracy theories are cancer for the Republican Party and our country. Somebody who’s suggested that perhaps no airplane hit the Pentagon on 9/11, that horrifying it school shootings were pre-staged, and that the Clintons crashed JFK Jr.’s airplane is not living in reality. This has nothing to do with the challenges facing American families or the robust debates on substance that can strengthen our party.”
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky issued a short statement Monday night that didn’t directly mention Georgia’s Banana Republican MT-headed Greene by name, but left no mistake that he wrote about her exclusively.
Hey, you ignorant Kentucky hillbilly!
Read your history.
Ku Klux Klansmen rally in support of Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater, 1964 GOP Presidential nominee.
Image: Universal History Archive/Getty Images
In 1964 at the Republican National Convention, New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller reminded the delegates that he warned over a year earlier that the party was in danger of being infiltrated by radical elements, such as the Ku Klux Klan, Communists, John Birch Society members, racist Dixiecrats, White Supremacists who used Nazi-like tactics, and other such ilk. By the time of the convention, it already had been.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Sunday, January 31, 2021
The answer to the question below is an unambiguously, and resounding: “YES!”
There is an overwhelmingly abundance of evidence that shows he did, most all of which was plastered across social media by the man himself – particularly on Twitter.
Did Trump know what was about to happen January 6?
By Donald Ayer and Dennis Aftergut
Donald Ayer served as Deputy Attorney General under George H.W. Bush and as a U.S. Attorney and Principal Deputy Solicitor General in the Reagan administration.
Dennis Aftergut is a former federal prosecutor and Supreme Court advocate, currently a Lawyers Defending American Democracy steering committee member.
President Trump speaks to his rioters before they breached the Capitol.
Photo: Carol Guzy/Zuma Press
That close call should compel robust criminal investigations — not only to hold accountable all those who entered the Capitol but also to tell us exactly what Trump knew when he gave his speech that morning inciting the rioters.
The facts already known do not cast Trump in a good light.
Consider the context: Trump’s increasing desperation on January 6 as the walls closed in on his prospects for holding power.
• More than 60 courts had rejected Trump’s unfounded legal attempts to overturn the election.
• On January 2, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger had refused, in an hourlong phone call, to knuckle under to Trump’s pleas to alter the Georgia vote count.
• On January 3, Trump was stopped from replacing then-acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen with Jeffrey Clark, an assistant attorney general working with Trump to overturn Georgia’s election. A threat from the rest of the Justice Department leadership team to resign en masseforced Trump to back down.
• On January 5, the U.S. Attorney in Georgia resignedrather than collaborate in Trump’s attempts to overturn a state election result affirmed in three recounts.
These facts — along with Trump’s January 6 speech in which he told supporters, “If you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore,” “You’ll never take back our country with weakness” and “When you catch somebody in a fraud, you’re allowed to go by very different rules” — ought to be evidence enough, we think, to convict him in his imminent impeachment trial.
What is already known to prosecutors is likely also sufficient to indict Trump for his willful efforts to deny Americans’ civil rights by subverting our democracy.
But more is needed.
History — as well as competent prosecution — demands that we establish Trump’s knowledge and intent on January 6 so that he is held accountable and Read the rest of this entry »
January 6 Rally Funded by Top Trump Donor, Helped by Alex Jones, Organizers Say
by Shalini Ramachandran, Alexandra Berzon and Rebecca Ballhaus
Updated Jan. 30, 2021 1:28 pm ET
The rally in Washington’s Ellipse that preceded the January 6, 2021 riot at the U.S. Capitol was arranged and funded by a small group including a top Trump campaign fundraiser and donor facilitated by far-right show host Alex Jones.
Mr. Jones personally pledged more than $50,000 in seed money for a planned Jan. 6 event in exchange for a guaranteed “top speaking slot of his choice,” according to a funding document outlining a deal between his company and an early organizer for the event.
Mr. Jones also helped arrange for Julie Jenkins Fancelli, a prominent donor to the Trump campaign and heiress to the Publix Super Markets Inc. chain, to commit about $300,000 through a top fundraising official for former President Donald Trump’s 2020 campaign, according to organizers. Her money paid for the lion’s share of the roughly $500,000 rally at the Ellipse where Mr. Trump spoke.
Another far-right activist and leader of the “Stop the Steal” movement, Ali Alexander, helped coordinate planning with Caroline Wren, a fundraising official who was paid by the Trump campaign for much of 2020 and who was tapped by Ms. Fancelli to organize and fund an event on her behalf, organizers said. On social media, Mr. Alexander had targeted Jan. 6 as a key date for supporters to gather in Washington to contest the 2020-election certification results. The week of the rally, he tweeted a flyer for the event saying: “DC becomes FORT TRUMP starting tomorrow on my orders!”
Alex Jones addressed protesters on the Capitol grounds on Jan. 6.
Photo: Jon Cherry/Getty Images
The Ellipse rally, at which President Trump urged supporters to march to the U.S. Capitol, was lawful and nonviolent. But it served as a jumping-off point for many supporters to head to the Capitol. Mr. Trump has been impeached by the Democrat-led House of Representatives, accused of inciting a mob to storm the Capitol with remarks urging supporters to “fight like hell.”
Few details about the funding and organization of the Ellipse event have previously been revealed. Mr. Jones claimed in a video that he paid for a portion of the event but didn’t offer details.
Messrs. Jones and Alexander had been active in the weeks before the event, calling on supporters to oppose the election results and go to the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. Mr. Alexander, for instance, tweeted on Dec. 30 about the scheduled Jan. 6 count for lawmakers to certify the Electoral College vote at the Capitol, writing: “If they do this, everyone can guess what me and 500,000 others will do to that building.”
Julie Jenkins Fancelli, shown in 2019, donated more than $980,000 in the 2020 election cycle to a joint account for the Trump campaign and Republican Party, records show.
Photo: Barry Friedman/LKLNDNOW
A hodgepodge of different pro-Trump groups were planning various events on Jan. 6. Several of them, led by the pro-Trump Women for America First, helped coordinate the Ellipse event; another group splintered off to lead a rally the night before, at which Mr. Jones ended up speaking, and the group organized by Mr. Alexander planned a protest outside the Capitol building.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Monday, January 25, 2021
There’s a saying, that one becomes like the object their hatred.
In which case, many Evangelical and other sects of Christendom have become like the radical Muslims that they so despised and feared.
Haters are not isolationists, they seek to join groups of others, which for them, provides strength, and anonymity, with diminished, or absent accountability or responsibility.
Dr. John R. “Jack” Schafer, Ph.D. is a retired FBI Special Agent, now Professor at Western Illinois University in the Law Enforcement and Justice Administration (LEJA) Department. While with the FBI, he served as behavioral analyst assigned to the FBI’s National Security Behavioral Analysis Program. Dr. Schafer earned his Ph.D. in psychology at Fielding Graduate University, Santa Barbara, California, has authored numerous articles and books, conducted research, is a consultant, and lectures domestically, and internationally.
Through his behavioral research, that found that, among other things, that “Hate masks personal insecurities. Not all insecure people are haters, but all haters are insecure people. Hate elevates the hater above the hated. Haters cannot stop hating without exposing their personal insecurities. Haters can only stop hating when they face their insecurities.”
His 7-stage model of hate is:
Stage 1: The Haters Gather
Stage 2: The Hate Group Defines Itself
Stage 3: The Hate Group Disparages the Target
Stage 4: The Hate Group Taunts the Target
Stage 5: The Hate Group Attacks the Target Without Weapons
Stage 6: The Hate Group Attacks the Target With Weapons
Stage 7: The Hate Group Destroys the Target
Dr. Edward Ludwig “Ed” Glaeser, Ph.D., is the Fred and Eleanor Glimp Professor of Economics in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University Kennedy School of Government, where he has taught since 1992. In 2004, he authored a paper entitled “The Political Economy of Hatred,” which stated in part that, “People say that they hate because the object of their hatred is evil. Hatred relies on people accepting, rather than investigating, hate-creating stories. Hatred declines when there is private incentive to learn the truth.”
How Self-Proclaimed “Prophets” From A Growing Christian Movement Provided Religious Motivation For The Events January 6 At The U.S. Capitol
by Dr. Brad Christerson, PhD
January 12, 2021 – 8:24am EST
In addition to symbols of white supremacy, many of the rioters at the Capitol on January 6 carried signs bearing religious messages, such as “Jesus Saves” and “In God We Trust” while others chanted “Jesus is my savior and Trump is my president.” In a video interview, one of those who breached the Senate floor describes holding a prayer to “consecrate it to Jesus” soon after entering.
Many white evangelical leaders have provided religious justification and undying support for Trump’s presidency, including his most racially incendiary rhetoric and policies. But as a scholar of religion, I argue that a particular segment of white evangelicalism that my colleague Richard Flory and I call Independent Network Charismatic, or INC, has played a unique role in providing a spiritual justification for the movement to overturn the election which resulted in the storming of the Capitol.
INC Christianity is a group of high-profile independent leaders who are detached from any formal denomination and cooperate with one another in loose networks.
Prayer Marches
In the days and hours leading up to the storming of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 the group Jericho Marchorganized marches around the Capitol and Supreme Court building praying for God to defeat the “dark and corrupt” forces that they claimed, without evidence, had stolen the election from God’s anointed president – Donald Trump.
Jericho March is a loose coalition of Christian nationalists formed after the 2020 presidential election with the goal of overturning its results. Leading up to and following the Capitol violence, their website stated: “We are proud of the American system of governance established by our Founding Fathers and we will not let Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Monday, January 25, 2021
WashingtonMonthly.com
Can Trump’s Pardons Be Reversed?
by Holly Brewer and Timothy Noah
President Ulysses S. Grant did it, and George W. Bush, and the Constitution would seem to encourage it.
January 22, 2021
2:07 PM
We’ve seen a lot of hand-wringing about President Donald Trump’s eleventh-hour marathon of glaringly unethical pardons, but only a little consideration (see 1-here, 2-here, 3-here, 4-here, and 5-here) about whether the Constitution permits them. A decent case can be made that it does not—and that at least some of these pardons can be reversed.
The relevant passage is Article II, Section 2, in the so-called “Commander-in-chief clause.” The president, it says, “shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.” Nobody knows precisely what that means, but Trump has been under impeachment and awaiting Senate trial — for the second time — since January 13, 2021.
The most interesting real-life precedent for restricting a president’s right to issue pardons concerns President Andrew Johnson, who in March 1868 became the first of three presidents to be impeached by Congress, and two months later became the first to win Senate acquittal.
In March 1869, Johnson, on his last full day in office, pardoned Jacob and Moses Dupuy, who’d been convicted of defrauding the Internal Revenue Department, and Richard C. Enright, who’d been convicted of conspiracy to defraud the government. On assuming office, Johnson’s successor, President Ulysses Grant, reversed all three by calling back the U.S. marshals out delivering the pardons. A fourth pardon that Grant meant to reverse, to one James F. Martin, was permitted to stand because Martin had it already in hand, according to the late P.S. Ruckman, Jr., a political scientist at Rock Valley College in Rockford, Illinois. Grant’s reversal of Moses Dupuy’s pardon was challenged in court and upheld on the technical grounds that Dupuy never received it. (Ruckman, an expert on presidential pardons, Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Sunday, January 24, 2021
Dear Judas,
(A Letter to the Evangelical Church)
NOVEMBER 20, 2020
by JOHN PAVLOVITZ
Dear Evangelicals,
I thought of you today.
I was reading the Bible. (You may remember the Bible from a sitting president’s recent upside-down, tear-gassed, church steps photo op.)
I came across Matthew’s story of Judas’ final moments here on the planet: overwhelmed with guilt, in a searing, sweaty panic — realizing that he had betrayed his beloved Jesus and sent him to an unthinkably violent death, all for thirty cold pieces of silver that now felt worthless in his hands.
He’d kissed him and he’d killed him, just to gain a quick windfall that he suddenly realized was fool’s gold.
He died knowing he’d forfeited his soul and couldn’t get a refund.
President Donald Trump poses with a Bible outside St. John’s Church across Lafayette Park from the White House Monday, June 1, 2020, in Washington, D.C. Part of the church was set on fire during protests on Sunday night. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)
I wonder if you will ever have such a last-minute awakening: a similarly sickening moment of clarity-come-too-late, when you look around and see all that you’ve destroyed and how many people you’ve grievously wounded — and if you too will realize that you’re now permanently in the red because you have abandoned your namesake for another name that adorns very different kinds of buildings.
Take a moment and survey the coins in your hand, now, friends.
Roll them around your fingers.
Feel the weight of them.
Your thirty pieces of silver were these last four years, some Supreme Court Justices, a couple hundred lower court judges, the temporary high of a few political wins, the bully pulpit of a President’s Twitter feed for forty-eight months, and perhaps soon, loss of a woman’s right to autonomy over her own body.
That was your soul’s selling price.
Was it all worth betraying Jesus for, I wonder?
Was it worth brutalizing the already vulnerable and oppressed, whose lives he said he inhabited?
Was it worth aligning with this petulant, profane Caesar in all his pervasive and prolific violence?
Was it worth driving a generation from the Church that Jesus built to be a refuge for wanderers, a balm for the hurting, a destination for weary pilgrims, and a home for prodigals?
From where I’m standing, it wasn’t.
From where I’m standing, you’re bankrupt.
From where I’m standing, you’re stuck.
President Donald Trump (in blue tie, 3rd from right) poses outside St. John’s Church across Lafayette Park from the White House Monday, June 1, 2020, in Washington. Part of the church was set on fire during protests on Sunday night. Standing with Trump are, LEFT to RIGHT, Defense Secretary Mark Esper, Attorney General William Barr, White House national security adviser Robert O’Brien, Trump, White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany, and White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)
I’m out here with the multitudes who will never darken the door of one your gatherings ever again because they’ve seen your greed.
I’m here with those whose last remaining tethers to religion have been fully severed seeing you abandon the tender world-loving heart of Jesus, in favor of a thin facade of nationalistic bravado.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Monday, January 18, 2021
Dear President Lincoln,
You and George Washington had something in common, aside from Presidency – you were both honest men.
There’s a story told, that as we understand it now, is but a mythical fable of someone’s vivid imagination, although every lie has an element of truth. That fable was first apparently crafted by the Reverend Mason Locke Weems (1759-1825), the first person ordained by the Anglican Church for the Episcopal Church in America after the American Revolution.
Though he first studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh, and in London, his calling was apparently to the Christian ministry, and he never practiced medicine.
His 1784 ordination – first as deacon, as customary, September 5, and then as priest on September 12 – was remarkable in part, because he was the first beneficiary of the English Parliament’s passage of the Enabling Act on August 13, 1784, which thereby enabled English bishops to ordain clergy for the American Church without requiring them to swear a loyalty oath to the English sovereign.
He later served as rector in two Maryland parishes – All Hallows’ Parish in Anne Arundel County, 1784-1789, and then from 1790-1792 of Westminster Parish in the same county.
For about 20 years, he was also an itinerant preacher at various Virginia parishes, most notably among them the Pohick Church, where George Washington (1732-1799) attended, before the Revolution. That enabled him to refer to himself as “formerly rector of Mt. Vernon Parish.”
From around 1791 until his death, he became an author, and book peddler for publisher Matthew Carey. Though he wrote and had published various moralizing tracts and biographies of individuals of renown in that era, such as Benjamin Franklin, William Penn, and General Francis Marion (a Continental Army General nicknamed the “Swamp Fox” for his elusive tactics), his most famous biography was of George Washington – “The Life and Memorable Actions of George Washington, General and Commander of the Armies of America” – and first published in 1800. It proved to be quite a success, especially with school-aged children, and in its fifth edition in 1806 – albeit with a slightly different title, “The Life of George Washington: With Curious Anecdotes, Equally Honourable to Himself, and Exemplary to His Young Countrymen” – for the first time, there appeared the anecdote of Washington and the cherry tree.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Sunday, January 17, 2021
Oh yeah… add QAnoners, Deep Staters, Alex “InforWars” Jonesers, Stop the Stealers, militia members, neo-Nazis, White Supremacists, Proud Boys, and other nutzos – including Banana Republicans.
That is the “Party of Donald Trump.”
“This gathering should send a message to them; this isn’t their Republican party anymore, this is Donald Trump’s Republican party, this is the Republican party that will put America first.”
–– Donald Trump, Jr., January 6, 2021 at the “America First/Stop the Steal” (or whatever they called it) “officially known as the “March to Save America,” was largely organized by a 501(c)(4) group known as Women for America First” rally on The Ellipse, a 52-acre park south of the White House, which can be seen in the background
Speaking of which…
Here’s what the Liar in Chief and his clan were doing while the Capitol Building was under seige.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Wednesday, January 13, 2021
The actions of Banana Republicans in the House that did NOT vote to impeach President Donald J. Trump a SECOND time, are simply mind-numbing.
Here, we have a President ON VIDEO TAPE who:
1.) Encouraged and invited rioters to come to Washington, D.C. SPECIFICALLY on January 6, 2021 in order to “stop the steal” writing on Twitter December 19, 2020 that “Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!”
-AND-
2.) Though his deliberately provocative rhetoric, incited a riotously violent insurrection in which the thousands upon thousands of Trump2020 mobsters there present stormed and laid siege to the Capitol Building and deliberately disrupted a Joint Session of Congress in which the Electoral College Votes were being counted to certify Joseph R. Biden as the President-elect
As fallout continues from the deadly siege on the U.S. Capitol, Ed Stetzer, head of the Billy Graham Center at Wheaton College, has a message for his fellow evangelicals: It’s time for a reckoning.
Evangelicals, he says, should look at how their own behaviors and actions may have helped fuel the insurrection. White evangelicals overwhelmingly supported President Trump in the 2020 election.
Some in the protest crowd raised signs with Christian symbolism and phrases.
“Part of this reckoning is: How did we get here? How were we so easily fooled by conspiracy theories?” he tells NPR’s Rachel Martin. “We need to make clear who we are. And our allegiance is to King Jesus, not to what boasting political leader might come next.”
Members of the audience react as U.S. President Trump delivers remarks at an Evangelicals for Trump Coalition Launch at the King Jesus International Ministry in Miami, Florida, U.S., January 3, 2020. REUTERS/Tom Brenner
In the interview, Stetzer also laments that evangelicals seem to have changed their view of morality to support Trump.
“So I think we just need to be honest. A big part of this evangelical reckoning is a lot of people sold out their beliefs,” he says.
Here are excerpts from the Morning Edition conversation:
You write that “many evangelicals are seeing Donald Trump for who he is.” Do you really think that’s true? There have been so many other things that Trump has said and done over the past four to five years that betray Christian values and their support didn’t waver. You think this time it’s different?
I think it’s a fair question, and I’ve been one for years who was saying we need to see more clearly who Donald Trump is and has often not been listened to. But I would say that for many people, the storming of the Capitol, the desecration of our halls of democracy, has shocked and stunned a lot of people and how President Trump has engaged in riling up crowds to accomplish these things. Yeah, I do think so. I think there are some significant and important conversations that we need to have inside of evangelicalism asking the question: What happened? Why were so many people drawn to somebody who was obviously so not connected to what evangelicals believe by his life or his practices or more.
You write that Trump has burned down the Republican Party. What has he done to the evangelical Christian movement?
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Wednesday, January 13, 2021
First POTUS to ever be impeached TWICE.
He also holds the distinction of being the President who has had the most members of his own party vote for his impeachment.
Or perhaps instead, should that be FOUR-TIME LOSER?
1.) Lost 2016 Popular Vote
2.) Impeached December 18, 2019
3.) Lost 2020 Election: Popular -and- Electoral College Vote
4.) Impeached January 13, 2021 in the final days of his totally failed presidency
Tomorrow (February 1) is the first day of 
But the Prevaricator in Chief knows full well that what things LOOK like, i.e., what they 
Warm Southern Breeze 