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The GQP: Trumpist Death Cult


Hugo Stiglitz

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37 minutes ago, elfenix said:

why do we have lame ducks anymore? 

Someone asked this the other day and the best I could come up with is the high executive offices require you to put together huge teams to step in the various agencies and be briefed by the prior.  That takes real time.  It was part of the Trump fiasco.  They had done none of the leg work of preparing to win before they won.

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40 minutes ago, SuingToGetAMessageBoard? said:

Someone asked this the other day and the best I could come up with is the high executive offices require you to put together huge teams to step in the various agencies and be briefed by the prior.  That takes real time.  It was part of the Trump fiasco.  They had done none of the leg work of preparing to win before they won.

england manages to have the new prime minister be prime minister the next day.  of course, in england they have shadow governments and don't have 10 levels of political appointees sitting on top of the professional bureaucrats. i guess what i'm saying is that that concern is addressable. 

Edited by elfenix
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2 hours ago, SuingToGetAMessageBoard? said:

Someone asked this the other day and the best I could come up with is the high executive offices require you to put together huge teams to step in the various agencies and be briefed by the prior.  That takes real time.  It was part of the Trump fiasco.  They had done none of the leg work of preparing to win before they won.

To be accurate, Chris Christie apparently had done a pretty decent job getting the transition together and the dotard literally threw all of the plans in the trash.  Took a giant binder out of Christie's hands and dropped it in a garbage can.

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5 minutes ago, Biff Tannen said:

To be accurate, Chris Christie apparently had done a pretty decent job getting the transition together and the dotard literally threw all of the plans in the trash.  Took a giant binder out of Christie's hands and dropped it in a garbage can.

Man, where'd THAT guy go?  

 

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2 minutes ago, wildcat09 said:

These people honestly believe this shit and want to kill us.

All the Republican Party cares about is helping those who already have the means to help themselves.

If that means supporting a buffoonish conman who will attract votes, so be it.

They will drop Donald Trump the minute he is no longer politically expedient.

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10 minutes ago, David Dennison said:

All the Republican Party cares about is helping those who already have the means to help themselves.

If that means supporting a buffoonish conman who will attract votes, so be it.

They will drop Donald Trump the minute he is no longer politically expedient.

The sooner you realize that Trump will never not be politically expedient, the better.

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7 minutes ago, David Dennison said:

Everyone loses their political luster. The same will be true of Donald Trump. It already started in 2018. That's why Nancy Pelosi is Speaker of the House.

If the GOP tried to replace Trump with someone more moderate, they'd lose their energized base. No, I'm afraid 2018 only led the GOP to redouble their Trump support. And going in to 2020, we now get to experience our first presidential election where the incumbent gets to openly solicit foreign interference.

Come on, man. Stick a fork in it. We're done.

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If the GOP tried to replace Trump with someone more moderate, they'd lose their energized base. No, I'm afraid 2018 only led the GOP to redouble their Trump support. And going in to 2020, we now get to experience our first presidential election where the incumbent gets to openly solicit foreign interference.
Come on, man. Stick a fork in it. We're done.

This man. He gets it.

Don’t overthink this. It’s really that simple.
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People get confused because the present state seems so salvageable on the surface. But the Republican Party has shown us that they possess the will and desire to destroy the Republic. They have also succeeded in neutering the ability of both Congress and the ballot to stop them. Oh, and they're packing the courts.

In the initial moments of a train wreck, as the engine cars crumple, the cabins furthest from impact may look undamaged, but their fate is nevertheless sealed.

Edited by ndawg
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3 minutes ago, GopherRock said:

Watching the vote in the Judiciary Committee, and 15 of the 17 GOP members of the committee are angry, fat white men. The visual contrast between the two caucuses is stunning. 

it really is. old white men and two white women from arizona and alabama, and that's it. 

https://judiciary.house.gov/about/members

whereas democrats have like a dozen women and a diverse selection of skin color.

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53 minutes ago, Jive Turkey said:

Confirming they will defend anything Trump does. 
 

 

Hey, you treasonous, spineless, orange cock-gobbling shitbags, go fuck yourself with an entire saguaro cactus right up your fucking ass.

See, I too communicate in an unique way and have an unorthodox style.  I'm sure the GOP similarly appreciates it.

Edited by Brisketexan
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Want more proof the GOP is beyond repair?

Here in Kentucky, our former Governor, Matt Bevin pardoned a man convicted of beheading a woman and stuffing her in a barrel. 

Spoiler

It’s not clear if Betty Carnes was killed by asphyxiation or by the eight blows to her head that Delmar Partin delivered with a metal pipe. The coroner couldn’t tell which killed the mother of three first, but it was very clear that her head was then chopped off and placed on her lap in a 55-gallon barrel that was destined for a toxic waste site.

On Monday, departing Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin pardoned and commuted the sentence of Partin, who was convicted of killing her at the factory where they both worked in Barbourville in 1994.

In his order, Bevin said he pardoned Partin because potential DNA evidence had not been tested.

“Given the inability or unwillingness of the state to use existing DNA evidence to either affirm or disprove this conviction, I hearby pardon Mr. Partin for this crime and encourage the state to make every effort to bring final justice to the victim and her family,” Bevin wrote.

The prosecutor on the case, Tom Handy, said he hasn’t been this angry in a long time. He called the governor’s pardon “mystifying.”

“I think its arrogance of one who has a God-like image of himself,” Handy said of Bevin. “And a lack of concern for anybody else.”

The pardon was just one of several controversial pardons and commutations Bevin issued in his final days in office. The list includes several in Handy’s old district, including a teacher, Charles Doug Phelps, who pleaded guilty to possession of child pornography and tampering with a witness. In his pardon, Bevin called the conviction “long on duration, long on accusation, long on drama and short on evidence.”

The police found photos of minors performing sexual acts on Phelps’ phone.

In the Partin case, Handy painted the picture of a grisly murder, one where no blood was found because Partin used a hook meant for hunting alligators to cut off the blood flow to Carnes’ head.

Partin and Carnes worked together at the Tremco Plant in Barbourville and had been having an affair that she had recently ended.

“He hated her so much and he wanted to punish her with her looking at him before he cut her head off,” Handy said. “The evil is unimaginable.”

Handy said Partin’s defense attorney, Bill Johnson, had never even brought up DNA evidence in his many appeals, which went all the way to the Kentucky Supreme Court.

“I don’t think the governor got the record of a two week trial and read it,” Handy said.

In 2008, Partin asked the Knox County Circuit Court to perform a DNA test on a strand of hair found in Partin’s trash can. His request was denied and that denial was upheld by the Kentucky Court of Appeals.

When the Court of Appeals ruled against testing the DNA evidence, Justice Laurence VanMeter acknowledged that “evidence of Partin’s guilt was circumstantial,” but said the “evidence as a whole was sufficient to uphold the jury’s verdict and the trial court’s denial of a directed verdict.”

VanMeter wrote that that Partin wanted the DNA test on hair found in his kitchen trash, but the jury was already aware the hair in the trash may or may not have belonged to the victim.

Johnson said he couldn’t recall exactly what DNA evidence the governor was referring to in the pardon (he learned of the pardon through a Herald-Leader reporter), but said he was pleased Partin was pardoned. Johnson said Partin was a quiet man who was well behaved in prison and adamant that he did not commit the crime.

“I always had serious doubts in my mind that Delmar had killed her,” Johnson said.

For Handy, the news of the pardon was devastating.

“I called the family last night and we all cried together,” he said.

Bevin’s former chief of staff, Blake Brickman, did not respond to a text message asking if either he or Bevin would comment on the hundreds of pardons and commutations Bevin issued in the final days of his administration, which ended Monday night.

Jackie Steele, the current commonwealth’s attorney in Knox and Laurel counties, cited several other pardons in his jurisdiction that made him unhappy.

One of them was Patrick Baker, who was one of three men convicted of a murder in Knox County in 2014. Baker’s sentence was commuted, but the other two men remain in prison. Baker’s brother and sister-in-law held a fundraiser in 2018 for Bevin that raised $21,500, and personally contributed $4,000.

“This is a travesty of our justice system,” Steele said. “When you have law enforcement and prosecutors and families who sludge through this process.... when they do get justice and he turns around and does something like this? It’s a travesty.”

 

 

Other notables among the other 427 criminals he pardoned after losing the election are: 

  • Micah Schoettle, a 41-year-old convicted of raping a 9-year-old child, who was sentenced to 23 years in prison just last year.
  • Blake Walker, who killed his parents in 2002
  • Charles Phelps, a teacher who pleaded guilty to possession of child pornography and tampering with a witness.
  • ...and Patrick Baker, who was convicted of murder in 2017...he did not pardon any of his cohorts in the robbery gone wrong.  

Spoiler Alert:  The Mr. Baker's family donated over $25,000 to Bevin's campaign...$20K of which was to pay off debts from his 2015 campaign.  

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1 minute ago, DixonHur said:

Want more proof the GOP is beyond repair?

Here in Kentucky, our former Governor, Matt Bevin pardoned a man convicted of beheading a woman and stuffing her in a barrel. 

  Reveal hidden contents

It’s not clear if Betty Carnes was killed by asphyxiation or by the eight blows to her head that Delmar Partin delivered with a metal pipe. The coroner couldn’t tell which killed the mother of three first, but it was very clear that her head was then chopped off and placed on her lap in a 55-gallon barrel that was destined for a toxic waste site.

On Monday, departing Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin pardoned and commuted the sentence of Partin, who was convicted of killing her at the factory where they both worked in Barbourville in 1994.

In his order, Bevin said he pardoned Partin because potential DNA evidence had not been tested.

“Given the inability or unwillingness of the state to use existing DNA evidence to either affirm or disprove this conviction, I hearby pardon Mr. Partin for this crime and encourage the state to make every effort to bring final justice to the victim and her family,” Bevin wrote.

The prosecutor on the case, Tom Handy, said he hasn’t been this angry in a long time. He called the governor’s pardon “mystifying.”

“I think its arrogance of one who has a God-like image of himself,” Handy said of Bevin. “And a lack of concern for anybody else.”

The pardon was just one of several controversial pardons and commutations Bevin issued in his final days in office. The list includes several in Handy’s old district, including a teacher, Charles Doug Phelps, who pleaded guilty to possession of child pornography and tampering with a witness. In his pardon, Bevin called the conviction “long on duration, long on accusation, long on drama and short on evidence.”

The police found photos of minors performing sexual acts on Phelps’ phone.

In the Partin case, Handy painted the picture of a grisly murder, one where no blood was found because Partin used a hook meant for hunting alligators to cut off the blood flow to Carnes’ head.

Partin and Carnes worked together at the Tremco Plant in Barbourville and had been having an affair that she had recently ended.

“He hated her so much and he wanted to punish her with her looking at him before he cut her head off,” Handy said. “The evil is unimaginable.”

Handy said Partin’s defense attorney, Bill Johnson, had never even brought up DNA evidence in his many appeals, which went all the way to the Kentucky Supreme Court.

“I don’t think the governor got the record of a two week trial and read it,” Handy said.

In 2008, Partin asked the Knox County Circuit Court to perform a DNA test on a strand of hair found in Partin’s trash can. His request was denied and that denial was upheld by the Kentucky Court of Appeals.

When the Court of Appeals ruled against testing the DNA evidence, Justice Laurence VanMeter acknowledged that “evidence of Partin’s guilt was circumstantial,” but said the “evidence as a whole was sufficient to uphold the jury’s verdict and the trial court’s denial of a directed verdict.”

VanMeter wrote that that Partin wanted the DNA test on hair found in his kitchen trash, but the jury was already aware the hair in the trash may or may not have belonged to the victim.

Johnson said he couldn’t recall exactly what DNA evidence the governor was referring to in the pardon (he learned of the pardon through a Herald-Leader reporter), but said he was pleased Partin was pardoned. Johnson said Partin was a quiet man who was well behaved in prison and adamant that he did not commit the crime.

“I always had serious doubts in my mind that Delmar had killed her,” Johnson said.

For Handy, the news of the pardon was devastating.

“I called the family last night and we all cried together,” he said.

Bevin’s former chief of staff, Blake Brickman, did not respond to a text message asking if either he or Bevin would comment on the hundreds of pardons and commutations Bevin issued in the final days of his administration, which ended Monday night.

Jackie Steele, the current commonwealth’s attorney in Knox and Laurel counties, cited several other pardons in his jurisdiction that made him unhappy.

One of them was Patrick Baker, who was one of three men convicted of a murder in Knox County in 2014. Baker’s sentence was commuted, but the other two men remain in prison. Baker’s brother and sister-in-law held a fundraiser in 2018 for Bevin that raised $21,500, and personally contributed $4,000.

“This is a travesty of our justice system,” Steele said. “When you have law enforcement and prosecutors and families who sludge through this process.... when they do get justice and he turns around and does something like this? It’s a travesty.”

 

 

Other notables among the other 427 criminals he pardoned after losing the election are: 

  • Micah Schoettle, a 41-year-old convicted of raping a 9-year-old child, who was sentenced to 23 years in prison just last year.
  • Blake Walker, who killed his parents in 2002
  • Charles Phelps, a teacher who pleaded guilty to possession of child pornography and tampering with a witness.
  • ...and Patrick Baker, who was convicted of murder in 2017...he did not pardon any of his cohorts in the robbery gone wrong.  

Spoiler Alert:  The Mr. Baker's family donated over $25,000 to Bevin's campaign...$20K of which was to pay off debts from his 2015 campaign.  

Is the fact that they're criminal and crooked the problem?  Well, it doesn't help. But let's be honest -- in any political system, some players are going to play fast and loose [BOTH SIDES!]

The really big problem here is not that they're this crooked -- it's that they're this open and brazen.  What that tells you is that they no longer fear any consequences, the rule of law, etc.

It's the difference between crime in your town being a) ordinary crime, burglars breaking in to houses when folks are away, a few robberies, etc., and b) people walking right up to your house, kicking the door down, beating the shit out of everyone there, and taking their sweet time looting your shit, because they know the cops aren't even going to show up, and if they did, they can't touch 'em.

Town b) is a terrifying fucking place to live.  And we all live there right now.

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So at least 4 of the 9 want to give DOTUS complete cover for all his financial dealings. We will know probably in June whether the American experiment is done. Maybe Justice Roberts isn’t totally corrupt. I hope the brisketledge has been load tested for 100+ million folks. 

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2 hours ago, softlynow said:

So at least 4 of the 9 want to give DOTUS complete cover for all his financial dealings. We will know probably in June whether the American experiment is done. Maybe Justice Roberts isn’t totally corrupt. I hope the brisketledge has been load tested for 100+ million folks. 

Roberts will fold.  He's a gutless coward, like the rest of them.

There are no people of courage or principles left on that side of the aisle.  Not a single one.  The folks who talk about bravery, and fellate the troops, and back the blue....are the biggest bunch of cowards the world has ever seen.  They would sacrifice every single one of us for another split second of power.

Expecting anyone associated with the GOP to show a microgram of courage is wasted time.

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4 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

Roberts will fold.  He's a gutless coward, like the rest of them.

There are no people of courage or principles left on that side of the aisle.  Not a single one.  The folks who talk about bravery, and fellate the troops, and back the blue....are the biggest bunch of cowards the world has ever seen.  They would sacrifice every single one of us for another split second of power.

Expecting anyone associated with the GOP to show a microgram of courage is wasted time.

Agreed. Which is why I find myself not giving a shit about any of this so much the last few months. I'm to the point that I feel that somehow Trump will still be in the White House come February 2021, and America as we know it will really begin to disappear.

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2 hours ago, Brisketexan said:

The really big problem here is not that they're this crooked -- it's that they're this open and brazen.  What that tells you is that they no longer fear any consequences, the rule of law, etc.

Or they are on their way out of power, and have decided to loot everything they can on the way out the door.    That means not just taking cash out of the register, but taking the register itself.  And the door they are leaving through. And everything else that they can grab.  
 

As several of us have said, these people are not acting like a party that thinks it will have power after the next election cycle or two.  These are people who have decided to write off the Millenials and Gen-Xers.   That means they are seeing polling data they don’t like, seeing demographics trends they don’t like, or they know that when everything is exposed, they are finished for a long time to come.   Or a combination of those three.    Dozens of Republicans aren’t retiring from Congress for shits and giggles.  

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Just now, atomheartbevo said:

Or they are on their way out of power, and have decided to loot everything they can on the way out the door.    That means not just taking cash out of the register, but taking the register itself.  And the door they are leaving through. And everything else that they can grab.  
 

As several of us have said, these people are not acting like a party that thinks it will have power after the next election cycle or two.  These are people who have decided to write off the Millenials and Gen-Xers.   That means they are seeing polling data they don’t like, seeing demographics trends they don’t like, or they know that when everything is exposed, they are finished for a long time to come.   Or a combination of those three.    Dozens of Republicans aren’t retiring from Congress for shits and giggles.  

But they're not planning on leaving.  They just acknowledge that under ordinary rules and operations, they'd have to leave.

SOLUTION: fuck normal rules.  That's why they're going all-in on voter disenfranchisement, blocking any meaningful efforts to stop election interference, etc.  They intend to stay forever.  They would be perfectly happy with the old-school Soviet style elections: "The beloved Dear Leader of the Party, a Leader greater than Jesus Christ and Lincoln combined, Donald Trump Jr., has been propelled to victory by a margin of 98%-2%, reflecting the great love the people have for their One True Leader, who has Made America Great Forever."

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1 hour ago, Brisketexan said:

But they're not planning on leaving.  They just acknowledge that under ordinary rules and operations, they'd have to leave.

SOLUTION: fuck normal rules.  That's why they're going all-in on voter disenfranchisement, blocking any meaningful efforts to stop election interference, etc.  They intend to stay forever.  They would be perfectly happy with the old-school Soviet style elections: "The beloved Dear Leader of the Party, a Leader greater than Jesus Christ and Lincoln combined, Donald Trump Jr., has been propelled to victory by a margin of 98%-2%, reflecting the great love the people have for their One True Leader, who has Made America Great Forever."

Except they aren't acting like it.  Trump is not acting like it - FFS, he's being triggered by teenage girls on twitter, and he's cranking out tweets and retweets every 5 minutes or so for hours on end.

Trump is not acting like an alpha male who is sure he will be sitting in the Oval Office 13 months from now.

Hell, at times, he's acting like he's not even sure Turtle and Co. are going to bail his ass out.

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Like all of you, I kinda feel like this is an immediate power grab, knowing that most every demographic and economic trend runs against them. After that, my guess is we'll see their painful retreat holding on for dear life to maintain every advantage they made during this period.

In the long run, they know they can't stop the wheels of time nor history, but they will hold off the power of progress as long as they can -- hoping that they'll personally never see the day again that a middle class minority attains the highest office -- while indoctrinating as many of the young 'un alt-righters as they can for some future date beyond their own mortality.

It's my view that the techie Parscale/Spencer hipster dress-up incel types will be the ones that our kids will be dealing with in the foreseeable future as a radical terrorist minority.

In other words, everything we're seeing now is the precedent for a protracted rear-guard action following our current "Battle of the Bulge" situation.

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12 hours ago, David Dennison said:

All the Republican Party cares about is helping those who already have the means to help themselves.

If that means supporting a buffoonish conman who will attract votes, so be it.

They will drop Donald Trump the minute he is no longer politically expedient.

that's what Chuck Todd contends as well.

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11 hours ago, GopherRock said:

Watching the vote in the Judiciary Committee, and 15 of the 17 GOP members of the committee are angry, fat white men. The visual contrast between the two caucuses is stunning. 

Why?  It's the same as their base.

Edited by Mdhorn
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Or it could just be a complete lack of acceptance that the world could be or certainly will be different than they can imagine, which might be at the heart of conservatism.

Conservative beliefs aren't necessarily a bad thing as they might provide a useful "tap the breaks" purpose to head-long change. Where it becomes dangerous is when they're a refusal to accept reality or, worse, an insistence to try to reverse the clock to the detriment of all of us: conservative, liberal, black, white, latino, men, women, and otherwise.

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21 minutes ago, bolverk said:

Like all of you, I kinda feel like this is an immediate power grab, knowing that most every demographic and economic trend runs against them. After that, my guess is we'll see their painful retreat holding on for dear life to maintain every advantage they made during this period.

In the long run, they know they can't stop the wheels of time nor history, but they will hold off the power of progress as long as they can -- hoping that they'll personally never see the day again that a middle class minority attains the highest office -- while indoctrinating as many of the young 'un alt-righters as they can for some future date beyond their own mortality.

It's my view that the techie Parscale/Spencer hipster dress-up incel types will be the ones that our kids will be dealing with in the foreseeable future as a radical terrorist minority.

In other words, everything we're seeing now is the precedent for a protracted rear-guard action following our current "Battle of the Bulge" situation.

Thing is, the Dems don't fully know what's going to happen because it's uncharted waters but neither do the Pubs which is why so many are stepping aside.  

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1 minute ago, bolverk said:

Or it could just be a complete lack of acceptance that the world could be or certainly will be different than they can imagine, which might be at the heart of conservatism.

Conservative beliefs aren't necessarily a bad thing as they might provide a useful "tap the breaks" purpose to head-long change. Where it becomes dangerous is when they're a refusal to accept reality or, worse, an insistence to try to reverse the clock to the detriment of all of us: conservative, liberal, black, white, latino, men, women, and otherwise.

I'm a Conservative but not if what I'm conserving is a way of life for the mega rich.  And even then, it's not to suppress them so much as get them to pay their fare share.

Edited by Mdhorn
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1 minute ago, Mdhorn said:

 

Thing is, the Dems don't fully know what's going to happen because it's uncharted waters but neither do the Pubs which is why so many are stepping aside.  

No one knows the future with certainty, but remaining nimble is the only way to ride the foreseeable waves.

Fighting it is pointless. Navigating the flow is the only manageable or rational choice. It's like the NIMBY's refusal to adapt to Austin's inevitable growth, fucking it up for everyone.

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  • Hugo Stiglitz changed the title to The GQP: Trumpist Death Cult


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