I say YES. YOU say NO....Numero Tre! Enjoy!
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Take heart, NONE of those idiots in the House or spineless Republicans in the Senate has access to the nuclear codes. That fact alone is truly a reason to celebrate!!!!!
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Divine.....thank you for your post. I appreciate it very much and you make excellent points and I found it incredibly reassuring. It means a lot to me, it really does. It is so easy to get lost in despair when it comes to trump and everything that has happened over the last 4 plus years. Thank you again.
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Well, all of you know me here. It is really hard to steal my hope. It gets squashed a bit now and then, but somewhere in me it lingers on. I mainly believe that you do reap what you sow -- so I keep that hope so as to sow good things myself and to at least easily recognize them when they come along. Like the Lincoln Project. That seems to be having issues and not sure it will last, but oh am I grateful for what they were able to do.
Also Divine -- there are many things at work that we don't always hear a lot about. I'm very happy ( praying it keeps up ) that so many bit corporations and donors are NOT just freely writing huge checks to Trump or the Reps. The truth is -- the bottom line is consumers can change your bottom line quite a bit if you are doing something that doesn't set will with them Trump hasn't set well with us for some time -- but till the election ( including Georgia ) we did not have a lot of pushing power -- and now we do.
Also, the other bottom line is -- Trump has always been a loser. With the blessing of the Reps. party who chose to take him in, he had a lot of cover. Not only is Trump a loser, he is an extraordinarily bad player. He likes to take off on his own which never works well. So much of the time going against his own party and even now being just as destructive with their chances as if he was still in the WH. Thank God he is as terrible as he was. His awful narcissistic non-political fugue state just prevented him from recognizing that you need to be in tune with your party -- especially if you are their leader. Makes it all the harder to understand why they pander while knowing it is the amt. of people he still holds sway over. People all of them think they need.
So, Divine -- you are right. There are ( I read the figure just a few mins. ago ) at least 140,000 people who have given up on the Reps. party ( and therefore Trump ) just since the Jan 6 riots. It does not sound like so many -- but there were a lot before and I truly don't think that is necessarily going to stop. It may be harder to see or count -- but I don't think we have seen the end of that. People are fed up -- tired to the nth. degree of the hell Trump causes -- much of it un-knowingly. ( Bad player ) . He has caused a lot of misery and while some people are likely too far gone to exercise great control I even think -- a number of those that went to the Capitol and did Trump's bidding and got left by the wayside are likely causing other people to at least consider that if they should choose to "break-out " they will likely end up on their own. Trump famously only rescues himself. Many are finding out the hard way -- there is no free ride for lawbreaking and abuse. Of course, with Trump that looked easy and he made it seem so -- but the harvest sometimes has bitter fruits. So just another factor as we go farther.
Elderberry, it is a bitter pill to swallow -- but yes we did know there was a good chance it would work out his way. We ( you and all of us here ) are better, stronger, happier and healthier than Trump. We are going to pick up the pieces, work with President Biden and move onto the better places with our friends and allies, and rebuild. There will be nay-sayers, but we already know there are more than 7 million more of us than them. We know there are more just because many are leaving the Reps. party so that 7 million figure has likely increased somewhat. Also, we are not as unified at a party as we could be, but we are worlds above the Reps. party. So far, when it counted we have been together and unified. I think as long as the Reps. party is divided, they will have a difficult time getting very far.
Bottom line is that I think sooo many people are going to LIKE having someone hard at work ( even if you are not totally happy with it ) every day trying to make the life of all the U.S. citizens better and working hard to heal and repair all we lost this last four yrs. So much of Trump's destruction has been un-done already. Things we need -- NATO, CDC, WHO, Paris Climate Accord, just to name a few. Also, I'm sure many of the regulations that allowed our water to be poisoned, our air to be dirty etc., all those are being rolled back. Many of those companies are happy too -- even thy know you can't 'kill' off your customer base.
So for now, I'm okay and I'm hoping that a lot of positive energies will still keep emanating from Washington and the ofc. of the White House and that people over time are going to enjoy the far more normal style we came to expect and will find lots of comfort in again. I think people will like it and continue to want it. I also think after seeing government run amuck under Trump -- they will find a bit more understanding when they don't get all they want. After all, no one ever does since we are all unique in desires -- but to have sanity and someone who will share truth with you and whom you can reason with -- it is going to be so good and I only hope I will not ever take it for granted again.
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Just mad because Goodman deflected the mob away from Pence and Pelosi.
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I would imagine that Rand Paul also lacked a bedside manner when he was a practicing physician. Can't imagine being one of his patients and think it is a blessing that he no longer practices as an ophthalmologist. Just wish he would stop spouting off about Covid because to put it mildly he doesn't know his ass from his elbow about communicable diseases. He and Hawley seem to be cut from the same mold: stupid obstructionists. To quote Forrest Gump: Stupid is as stupid does. I wonder if it had been his ass that Goodman saved, he would be still unable to applaud? Are his constituents as ignorant?
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Rand Paul left medicine for politics because try as he might, he was unable to get board-certified as an ophthalmologist. (Not only wouldn't I have trusted him to dilate my pupils, I wouldn't have trusted him to sell me a pair of Ray-Bans at Sunglass Hut).
I'd like to see a meme (I'm not skilled at creating them) reminding that having "only" a hair under 3/5 of the Senate vote to convict may be an "acquittal," but it sure as hell isn't an exoneration. (No acquittal is an exoneration, actually, without a judicial finding that the defendant didn't do the crime. "Not guilty" only means guilt wasn't proven strongly enough for the proceeding's burden of proof). If this were, as he claims, "the greatest witch hunt in history," it's because he cast so many evil spells over his followers, and face it--we didn't have to "hunt" very hard, now, did we?
Oh, and for all Van der Veen's blathering about lack of due process, impeachment is sui generis (a thing unto itself): it is neither a criminal nor civil proceeding, and there is no right to due process nor even a presumption of innocence. This is how the defense team were able get away with meeting with Cruz & Graham (who, as Senators, were jurors in the case). Were this an actual court trial and lawyers for either side met with jurors while the trial were ongoing, that's called "ex parte-ing," which would get them stiffly sanctioned if not jailed for contempt or even disbarred. If I were in an accident and Van der Veen were chasing my ambulance, I'd tell the EMTs to throw filled I.V. bags in his face, as well as used syringes to blow out his tires.
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Divine: Yes a Trump election win would have been beyond awful and that supposed Shining City on The Hill would have gone up in ashes. I hope 2022 will see more Dems and fewer GOP in the House and Senate. Democracy is still alive but teetering. I hope your faith will be born out. I must say the Biden win did make me relax some. I so agree with social media needing some controls without crushing open debate and freedom of speech. On one of these threads I mentioned that when I was in school we had classes in "critical thinking" -- that must be missing from the curriculum these days or kids skipped those classes!!
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Ruth, great point about none of the spineless Republicans having the nuclear football!
Interesting term, Sandy, “sui generis”, and it helps explain the unique nature of impeachment. Of course, the slimeball Republicans pounced on that and exploited it for all its worth.
Elderberry, I feel the same way as you about how many lack the ability to use critical thinking! I wonder how much of a side effect this is from being able to immediately google answers to anything at the tip of the fingers.
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PDA - Public Display of Affection
Yesterday being Valentine's Day was the perfect time to report on the Bidens' public affection for one another and what kind of meaning it has to our country. I loved this article because it validate one of my beliefs in how much influence a First Couple has in our lives that we absorb without even always being aware of it.
While the Bidens' PDA may be somewhat calculated, I also feel it's quite genuine and often spontaneous due to where they are at in their marriage, meaning, with all the ups and downs they've had, they know how to appreciate the fruits of all their labors and they realize their difficulties make them more compassionate. I also believe they feel that everything up to this point in their lives was preparing them to lead the United States out of the hellish mess left by the last administration, and they are honored to be the ones called, elected to do so.
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'It just symbolizes everything': Bidens bring presidential PDA back to the White House
Historians and relationship experts agree: The first couple's romantic gestures aren't just genuine — they're restorative.
[Politico]
On a mission to rebuild institutional norms and help heal a hurting nation, Joe and Jill Biden are trying something novel after four years of the Trumps: a little tenderness.
Since Inauguration Day last month, the first couple have been conspicuous in their frequent public displays of affection, from a fleeting kiss before boarding Marine One to a cozy morning stroll among oversized candy hearts on the White House North Lawn.
The romantic gestures between the Bidens are representative not only of their resilient, 43-year marriage, but also of the new president's self-proclaimed “tactile" style of interpersonal communication.
And although Joe and Jill Biden's shows of warmth are just the latest in a long history of presidential PDA, they are even more pronounced in contrast to Donald and Melania Trump — whose sometimes chilly public interactions shattered the steady cultural progression of first couples growing increasingly comfortable expressing affection in front of the cameras.
Dr. Lara Brown, director of the Graduate School of Political Management at the George Washington University, described the Trumps as “famously cool," citing the several times the former first lady appeared to yank her hand away from her husband in public.
The Bidens, by contrast, “want very much to help the country back from what I think the Trump administration continually conveyed," Brown said, “which was that relationships and all of the presidency is transactional rather than transformational."
>>> A president's bearing and rhetoric are “like the background music to the country," Brown argued — and PDA can be a key part of that soundtrack.
“People aren't necessarily listening to every word, but they're listening to the tone. They're listening to the cadence," she said. “They're kind of taking in these behaviors or gestures or relationships. How is the president engaging with the Cabinet? How is the president engaging with the first lady? How is the president managing the symbolic, as well as the substantive?"
Presidential scholars and relationship experts agree that the first couple's PDA carries a great deal of unspoken significance for Americans at this particular moment in history — both coming after the Trumps and in the context of a fractured, pandemic-torn nation.
“I think that the Bidens know that the affection they show for each other is serving as a healing agent," said Dr. Douglas Brinkley, the Rice University professor and presidential historian.
“New presidents and first ladies have to be empathetic," he explained, and the Bidens' PDA is just one part of the first couple's effort to fulfill that institutional imperative.
When we watch [first couples] together, we don't want to feel a tension in their marriage," Brinkley said. “We don't want to feel that they enjoy being separated from each other. One wants to believe that there's some harmony and deep respect there."
...Baby Boomers, a generation far less fazed by PDA than their forebears, gained entry to the White House in the form of Bill and Hillary Clinton. But their marriage, rocked in the mid-1990s by the Lewinsky affair, represented a major turning point in the history of presidential PDA, as millions of Americans started scrutinizing the first couple's movements for signs of insincerity.
Since Bill and Hillary Clinton, the presidency has seen a series of first couples — George W. and Laura Bush, Barack and Michelle Obama, and Joe and Jill Biden — who demonstrate that American culture is “past all the taboos" that were formerly associated with PDA, Perry said.
The glaring exception is the previous first couple, Donald and Melania Trump, whose frigid public encounters interrupted what had otherwise been a natural integration of PDA into everyday presidential behavior.
In that sense, the Bidens' displays of affection appear somewhat foreign after the last four years, even though they represent yet another return to the norms of past administrations that the new president repeatedly pledged to rehabilitate on the campaign trail.
“It's comforting. It's warm. It's genuine," Perry said. “And so if you layer the Covid issue, our divided country [and] the violence in our country upon the contrast with the Trumps, it just symbolizes everything."
Drew Joseph, a Washington-based couples therapist who has practiced for nearly three decades, similarly interpreted the Bidens' doting exchanges as “very welcome signals" in 2021.
>>> “Whether the Bidens know it or not, their public closeness also “communicates tremendous confidence" in the face of crisis, he said.
But putting the dire state of the union aside, PDA from leaders like Joe Biden is “really important" in its own right, Joseph said, because it demonstrates that attributes of strength and sensitivity aren't mutually exclusive.
“We all need to feel, 'This is a person who has the capacity and the will to protect us — and they're also a human being, and they understand and they're not afraid of the vulnerabilities and the needs that we all feel.'"
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Ohhhh yeahhh.....
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It'll Do
Impeachment did not prevail, but Trump still lost.
David Frum
February 13, 2021. The Atlantic
In 1955, a junior United States senator named John F. Kennedy published Profiles in Courage, a collection of short essays about eight of his predecessors who had risked their careers for their ideals over the previous 150 years.
In one single day in 2021, that many senators showed courage worth enduring historical honor. Seven were Republicans: Richard Burr, Bill Cassidy, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Mitt Romney, Ben Sasse, and Pat Toomey. The other was Joe Manchin, a Democrat from a state where nearly 69 percent of the voters chose Donald Trump for president in 2020.
Thanks to their integrity, a clear majority of the Senate voted to condemn the former president as an insurrectionist against the United States. The 57–43 margin wasn't enough to convict under the Constitution. It wasn't enough to formally disqualify Trump from ever again seeking office in the United States. But practically? It will do as a solemn and eternal public repudiation of Trump's betrayal of his oath of office.
You say that you are disappointed? That a mere rebuke was not enough? That justice was not done? It wasn't. But now see the world from the other side, through the eyes of those who defend Trump or even want him to run again. Their hope was to dismiss this impeachment as partisan, as founded on fake evidence, as hypocritical and anti-constitutional—to present this verdict as an act of oppression by one half of the country against the other. That hope was banished today.
It's not half against half. It's a clear American majority—including a sizable part of the Republican Senate caucus—against a minority. And even many of the senators who voted to acquit went on record to condemn Trump as an outlaw and a seditionist.
Again and again, the Trumpists lost key votes. Five Republican senators and then six rejected the argument that the Senate lacked jurisdiction. Five Republican senators rejected the vote against witnesses. The accusing majority consistently stuck together. The condoning minority repeatedly splintered.
The 57 votes against Trump silence any complaint that he was condemned on some partisan basis or by some procedural unfairness. It crushes his truculent lawyers' claim that the argument against Trump was mere chicanery. The senators who voted to acquit are the ones likely to justify their decision on some strained, narrow, technical ground. The number who truly believed Trump innocent of the charges brought against him is surely smaller than the 43 who voted to acquit. Statements by senators such as Mitch McConnell and Rob Portman show that their votes did not match their thoughts.
Trump's likely reaction to the trial will make things even more difficult for him if he ever tries for the presidency again. He will now erupt in a vendetta against the senators who voted to convict him, stoking primary challenges against them as he had previously threatened to do, even against senators who ultimately protected him, such as John Thune of South Dakota. The 2022 Senate map is a challenging one for Republicans, and Trump will be acting the part of party-wrecker.
The background fact of this second Trump impeachment trial was how broadly popular it was. In January, a Monmouth survey found that 56 percent of Americans wanted Trump convicted. Quinnipiac reported that 59 percent regard him as responsible for inciting violence against the U.S. government. According to ABC/The Washington Post, 66 percent believe that Trump acted irresponsibly during the post-election period. According to polls, fewer than a quarter believed that Trump did "nothing wrong" on January 6.
Those are not the numbers on which to base a Grover Cleveland–style comeback tour—especially not when the majority of Americans also believe that Donald Trump did a bad job handling the COVID-19 pandemic and that President Joe Biden is doing a good job.
Things will get worse for the 45th president. The 57–43 margin in the Senate flashes a green light to federal and state prosecutors that, if they find evidence of crimes, proceeding with legal action against Trump would be politically safe.
Trump also faces the prospect of civil actions by the families of those who lost their lives in the insurrection that he incited. If and when they sue, their attorneys will surely cite what Senator Mitch McConnell said immediately after the trial vote. The Senate minority leader condemned Trump's actions as a "disgraceful, disgraceful dereliction of duty" and said he held Trump "practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day." McConnell continued:
The people who stormed this building believed they were acting on the wishes and instruction of their president. And their having that belief was a foreseeable consequence of the growing crescendo of false statements, conspiracy theories, and reckless hyperbole which the defeated president kept shouting into the largest megaphone on planet Earth. The issue is not only the president's intemperate language on January 6 … It was also the entire manufactured atmosphere of looming catastrophe, the increasingly wild myths about a reverse landslide election that was somehow being stolen by some secret coup by our now-president.
His own damning assessment did not suffice to persuade McConnell to convict Trump of impeachable offenses. That abdication will weigh on McConnell's conscience and historical reputation.
But McConnell's words on the record may well suffice in future civil proceedings to impose responsibility on Trump for the harm he did. If your loved ones were injured or killed on January 6, the leader of Trump's party in the Senate just volunteered his video testimony about who might be held liable for your loss.
Even more significantly, McConnell reminded senators that regular criminal law could deal with common criminals—as the Republican leader suggested Trump to be. Maybe McConnell was just emitting words, only maneuvering. But if federal and state law-enforcement officials are pursuing Trump, today's events will encourage them, not deter them.
If you looked to the U.S. Senate for a full measure of accountability, you did not receive it, of course. Donald Trump, the twice-impeached president, is also a twice-acquitted president. He lives in a palace on the sea, supported by unconstitutional emoluments from foreign governments, unethical payments from the U.S. Treasury to his businesses, and gullible donations from the suckers he duped. Almost half a million are dead from the plague he promised would go away by itself, even as he received the benefit of miracle treatments available only to the most favored few.
But if justice failed, democratic self-preservation is working. Trump lost the presidency, and that loss held despite all his attacks on the vote and the counting of the vote. His party split against him on this second round of impeachable offenses. He has lost his immunity to civil suit and his impunity against federal indictment. The world is crashing down upon his head.
The impeachment did not prevail. But Trump still lost. And as the power of that loss reverberates, so should the honors to the heroes of the day: the brilliant and eloquent House managers, led by Representative Jamie Raskin—and the eight senators who wrote their own profiles in courage.
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Great piece, Divine.
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The Biden family spent the weekend at Camp David. I'm sure it was a welcome and much needed break just to catch their breath.
His granddaughter Naomi put a photo on Twitter of her grandfather wearing a tan baseball cap with the Presidential Seal on it, saying his grandkids “bought him some swag since it's Presidents' Day weekend and he's 'literally' President."
And, she continued, “just to make sure the job title doesn't go to his head", she also posted this photo:
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I find nature so nourishing. I love to hike, especially in the mountains. When I'm walking in nature, I feel in awe of the wonder of creation. Nature is full of surprises, always changing, and we must change with it. In nature, the soul is renewed and called to open and grow. In the wilderness, you're up against whatever nature brings you-- the dangers as well as the beauty. -Linda Leonard
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Love all the above entries. I think while Trump did not get the just desserts we all thought should be on full public display asap, in the end he will in fact reap what he has sown. I also think of him as a person/man/human who is stuck in a personal mal-metal adjustment that will not turn him loose. All of us have perhaps a couple oddities, or strange quirk -- but no one I think has so many as Trump. Essentially means he will always strive to have what he cannot find a way to get. He is in a mental warp that cannot be escaped, while the rest of us have the mental ability to find where we may have gone wrong and correct it. That door is forever closed to him.
I very much dislike not SEEING him get is -- just to be sure that he does, but the fact is that it will come and maybe we are okay for having to wait -- for allowing ourselves to 'calm' and wait for a natural flow. Maybe it is time to enjoy the peace we have coming from his having to vacate the White House where he never belonged in the first place. Time to enjoy the pride and dignity that comes from having someone sane, worthwhile, and willing to work on our behalf back in the White House. A little time to enjoy not having to wake up with dread and anxiety for what the day would bring. And, I sooo, sooo love knowing that Pres. Biden isn't looking for reasons to get in front of a camera on a daily and sometimes two or three times daily basis. To not concern myself with tweets or what Fox News has to say. Time to enjoy some freedom. Karma will come. In the meantime I will pray for patience.
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Love the Valentine!
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The words or the fly, Divine.
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