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An almost top 10,000 blog!

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if you can’t see it, then you are useless in the fight to stop it.

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Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

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rich, arrogant assholes who equate luck with genius

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You are here: Home / Open Threads / Late Night Open Thread: ‘Vengeance’

Late Night Open Thread: ‘Vengeance’

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The MAGAts — and more importantly, their enablers, like Ingraham — assume that prosecuting Trump is ‘political’ because prosecuting their enemies on manufactured charges is what they’ve always done.


Lucky for Mr. Trump, his loyal followers will certainly…

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34Comments

  1. 1.

    TKH

    There should be a trigger warning before one is shown so may close-ups of the angry yam.

    On the substance, I hope he is going to continue overplaying his (tiny) hand, however hard it may be to listen to it. I rely on the vanity of judges here and one day one is going to say “ ‘nuff o’ that!”.

  3. 3.

    eclare

    I hope he does keep speaking about the case, and the judge imposes a gag order ASAP.  Let’s see how TFG likes that.  WAAAAHHH!

  4. 4.

    JWR

    Geez, that Fox chyron, “TRUMP INDICTMENT WILL POISON POLITICS IN PERPETUITY” is really rich. How’s about not electing thugs and criminals in the first place? That’s what indicting, and hopefully convicting, the fat fart is intended to accomplish. Party of law & order my a$$.

  5. 5.

    Hangö Kex

    Sunday was election day in Finland with Sanna Marin’s PM seat at stake. While her Social Democrats made gains that was not enough to prevent the National Coalition Party (centre-right) coming in with most parliament seats with the Finns party (MAGA-ish (MFGA-ish?) right-wing populists) right behind them leaving the Social Democrats behind as the third largest party.

    YLE: Sanna Marin heads for the exit as Finland veers right

    Coming out ahead in elections after leading the government is somewhat of a feat: usually the government parties, especially the leading one with the PM seat see their support among voters erode, indeed, the other parties in Marin’s government coalition suffered devastating losses. The result seems like a combination of Marin’s popularity among voters and tactical voting by those who usually support the other coalition parties having voted Social Democrats meant to keep Marin as PM to prevent the Finns Party getting at the levers of power. Now, however, this depends on the National Coalition Party who’ll get the first shot at putting together a government coalition*: they need either the Finns Party or the Social Democrats as a partner for a viable coalition i.e. one with a supporting majority in the parliament (they can’t have both unless Marin goes back on her pre-election vow not to work with the Finns Party (which is unlikely)).

    * for an explainer of the Finnish political system and pre-election situation see: https://yle.fi/a/74-20020980

  8. 8.

    Hangö Kex

    @HumboldtBlue: There is that. Then again this had wide popular support (after the Ukraine invasion) and had been something the political right had been for all along (the left not so much, before the invasion) so it didn’t really help Marin in the election.

  9. 9.

    Brachiator

    McCarthy’s threat to interfere with the case and DeSantis’ pledge not to extradite Trump would make him a kind of king.

    Did DeSantis really say something this stupid? He should remain neutral. But by implicitly joining the “Save Our Trump” squad, he undermines his presidential ambitions, and comes across as just another Trump flunky.

    New: Trump has told advisers and associates that he’s prepared to escalate attacks against the Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg now that he’s been formally charged — and remarked in a private moment that it’s time to politically “fuck em up”.

    It’s interesting to see that Trump still depends on aggressive insults and full attack mode. He’s a one-trick pony, and doesn’t realize that he’s done. He’s going to need some smart lawyers and the continuing aid of the craven GOP to get out of this one.

  10. 10.

    Hangö Kex

    Incidentally, the D’Hondt method used in Finnish elections for proportional representation was first described by Thomas Jefferson. The concept is simple:

    Each party list gets allocated seats in proportion to their share of the vote in each electoral district. Voters pick candidates from the list, and the candidates are ranked in order of popularity. The most popular candidates from each list make it to parliament.

    (https://yle.fi/a/74-20020980)​

  12. 12.

    JWR

    @Brachiator:

    Did DeSantis really say something this stupid?

    Yes, he did, three days or so ago. But there’s more! From CBS

    “Florida will not assist in an extradition request given the questionable circumstances at issue with this Soros-backed Manhattan prosecutor and his political agenda,” he said.

  13. 13.

    John Revolta

    @JWR: Typical meaningless hot air from DeSaniflush. He knows full well that Trump has said he’ll be there for the indictment, so extradition isn’t an issue.

    The reason he’s playing nice is because he doesn’t want to needlessly piss off Trump’s supporters. If all these legal problems put Trump out of the running, or discourage enough of his fans, Ron will be there with open arms.

  14. 14.

    Hangö Kex

    @Brachiator:You are welcome. :) Sometimes getting a coalition together takes weeks or even months (this seems likely to be one of those times); sometimes this can be pretty snappy – depends on the election result. Also, sometimes the election result is such that the resulting coalition is brittle (due to fundamentally different goals of the member parties) which hampers its ability to make decisions, and, at worst, results in a government collapse before the next scheduled election (the difficulty of getting a coalition together tends to predict this); I suppose this is an inevitable drawback of a multi-party parliamentary system. In Finland, this was a often a problem following WWII, but has been improving so that the lately (from the 1990s or so) governments have at least been in place for the normal 4 year election cycle (if not always able to co-operate smoothly); this is probably due to the field of the political parties having been stable and all of them relatively moderate for the past decades (the Finns Party might change that).

  15. 15.

    Barney

    Trump, CPAC, 4th March: “I am your retribution”

    Trump, Waco, 25th March: “I am your retribution”

    Trump and supporters, after the formerly unindicted co-conspirator became an indicted co-conspirator, for a crime in which the other conspirator did prison time: “how dare you think of charging me with a crime! Vengeance has no place in our politics.”

  16. 16.

    mrmoshpotato

    @TKH:

    There should be a trigger warning before one is shown so may close-ups of the angry yam. 

    Seconded!  I like how Betty Cracker used to cover his Twitter photo with a pig face.

  19. 19.

    Kay

    MAGA/Woke panic education candidates lost big again in New Hampshire:

    “In nearly every school board race, Granite State voters chose out-spoken champions for public education and an honest, inclusive education. This is a big win for public schools and for our future. These leaders are committed to keeping our public schools strong and making sure every student has the freedom to learn in a safe, affirming learning environment,” said Zandra Rice Hawkins, Executive Director of Granite State Progress. “As the State House debates support for our public schools and whether to put a target on the backs of LGBTQ+ students, they should pay attention to what is happening at town meeting.”

    No one should think MAGA and woke panic candidates are as popular as the NYTimes/centrist pundits say they are. They lose A LOT. Remember- Twitter isn’t real life!

  24. 24.

    Ohio Mom

    @Hangö Kex: Fun fact, the city of Cincinnati Ohio instituted proportional representation for city council elections in the 1920s. It was part of a larger city government reform effort.

    I don’t know how many elections it was used for though. By the time I arrived in the late 1970s, it had long been abandoned.

    It is intersting to see that Thomas Jefferson proposed PR, especially in light of remembering Bill Clinton’s failed attempt to nominate law professor Lani Guinier to the Justice department. As I recall, one of the things held against her were her writings on alternative election methods such as PR.

    Anyway, I am tickled we have a lurker in Finland. I hope you will continue to comment.

  25. 25.

    Hangö Kex

    @Baud: I’d say the biggest issues were state finances and the Finns Party. As in, something must be done to balance the budget (which is in a worse state than usual after the direct and indirect expenses from the pandemic and the war in Ukraine), and, as in, the Finns Party must be opposed; the former emphasized from the right (by the National Coalition Party in particular), the latter from the left (by Marin in particular).

  27. 27.

    Hangö Kex

    @Ohio Mom: I suppose it is kind of hard to bring PR to a two party system as the two parties who’d need to make the decision like things as they are.

    I have been lurking here in the Ukraine War thread, which I happened to find via Kevin Drum’s blog (which in itself seemed like a convenient way to see what is up in the US (and which I originally discovered when checking out Mother Jones when they made the expose on Romney; at the time the blog was on Mother Jones, it has since moved to stand alone)). The time difference (UTC+2 here) hampers commenting, but I seem to manage to find a live thread time to time. :)

  28. 28.

    Wanderer

    @Kay:  Thank you for linking to this source… I did not know of it and it seems this may be a good resource to have.

  30. 30.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @TKH: You refer to the (Un)Admirable YamAMofo, I prezoom?

    @Alison Rose: Just FTR, that’s Dollar-And-A-Quarter-Tree Mob Boss these days. (Sons of bitches are too cheap to change their signs to account for their price gouging.)

  31. 31.

    Hangö Kex

    @Timill: ​ :) Apparently the formalities have been completed then; the last I heard the ratification paperwork from Turkey (and possibly Hungary) still needed to be deposited in Washington, DC (where these are kept by the founding treaty). It is a shame that Sweden was left out at this time though. :(

  32. 32.

    Ken

    the presiding judge will give him a gag order – and if still do this, confinement.

    Dare we hope…

    TRUMP LAWYER: We challenge the confinement on the grounds that it also requires confining his Secret Service detail, unjustly punishing them.

    JUDGE: They are already required to be in his presence 24 hours a day, I cannot see how confinement could be worse than that. Dismissed.

  33. 33.

    Bill Arnold

    @JWR:

    “Florida will not assist in an extradition request

    For those who don’t know the US Constitution.
    Article IV, Section2, Clause 2

    A Person charged in any State with Treason, Felony, or other Crime, who shall flee from Justice, and be found in another State, shall on Demand of the executive Authority of the State from which he fled, be delivered up, to be removed to the State having Jurisdiction of the Crime.

  34. 34.

    Ohio Mom

    @Hangö Kex: Cincinnati has a third local party, The Charterites. They were the group that pushed for reforms in the 1920s. Now they are something of a relic, they serve no real purpose anymore. They vote with the Democrats so I’m not against them.

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