Biden’s fitness for a second term

You just refuse to criticize trump.  Any rational decent individual would find trump lying that he talked to family members of a murdered woman outrageous and say so.  

But not you. Your childish response was “he lies to”.

How disgusting.

Again, people did die and there were a significant number of injuries.  There were more than 1,000 assaults on the police.  140 Capitol and Metropolitan police officers were injured, some seriously with broken bones, crushed vertebrae and cracked ribs. 5 months after the attack, 17 officers remained out of work due to injuries sustained during the insurrection. It was bloody as hell.  At least 123 people were charged with weapons charges.  People were convicted of seditious conspiracy.  Enrique Carrion, the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers and  others came perilously close to their goal of interrupting official proceedings.  We almost had a constitutional crisis with uncertainty about the next president or how it would be decided.

It was an armed insurrection.  Those that participated are not patriots, hostages or political prisoners.  Those convicted should not be pardoned for their crimes, especially not by the very person that lied about the election, invited them there and encouraged them.

There has been plenty of criticism of Biden. But, you dismiss it because the criticism does not meet your specific standards. We've criticized him for the war in Gaza, the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, the failure to pass voting rights. We've criticized him for mistakes that he made or factual inaccuracies like the bridge in Baltimore. We've criticized him for being too old and not stepping aside.

In comparison, what have you criticized Trump for? We're not even picky. We don't have a specific list that you need to criticize him for. And there's a long list to choose from.

So if someone kills someone (technically a murder), but instead is charged with manslaughter to make sure that some accountability is gotten because of a very complicated court process and our propensity (rightly so) to make sure that innocent people are not falsely convicted, then is it still a murder by true definition?  The murderer wasn’t charged with murder.   To take it one step further - say it was your family member that was killed, would you be telling people well there was no murder because technically no one was charged with murder?  IF that is the case that is really interesting take on it.

This is long, but it ties together a lot of extremist policies including abortion, judge shopping, attempted impeachments, Texas’ immigration laws, book bans and removing voters from rolls. Through all of it, Republicans refuse to moderate their opinions and instead, are lying and suppressing votes.

heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/april-3-2024

Revisiting the 2000 election reminds us that manipulating the vote through voter suppression or the mechanics of an election in even small ways can undermine the will of the people.

A poll out today from the Associated Press/NORC showed that the vast majority of Americans agree about the importance of the fundamental principles of our democracy. Ninety-eight percent of Americans think the right to vote is extremely important, very important, or somewhat important. Only 2% think it is “not too important.” The split was similar with regard to “the right of everyone to equal protection under the law”: 98% of those polled thought it was extremely, very, or somewhat important, while only 2% thought it was not too important.

Recent election results suggest that voters don’t support the extremism of the current Republican Party. In local elections in the St. Louis, Missouri, area on Tuesday, voters rejected all 13 right-wing candidates for school boards, and in Enid, Oklahoma, voters recalled a city council member who participated in the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, and had ties to white supremacist groups.

Seemingly aware of the growing backlash to their policies, MAGA Republicans are backing away from them, at least in public. Earlier this year, Florida governor Ron DeSantis called for making it harder to ban books after a few activists systematically challenged dozens of books in districts where they had no children in the schools—although he blamed teachers, administrators, and “the news media” for creating a “hoax.”

Today, lawyers for the state of Texas told a federal appeals court that state legislators might have gone “too far” with their immigration law that made it a state crime to enter Texas illegally and allowed state judges to order immigrants to be deported. (Mexico had flatly refused to accept deported immigrants from other countries under this new law.) Nonetheless, Arizona legislators have passed a similar bill—that Democratic governor Katie Hobbs refuses to sign into law—and are considering another measure that would allow landowners to threaten or shoot people who cross their property to get into the U.S.

Indeed, the extremists who have taken over the Republican Party seem less inclined to moderate their stances than either to pollute popular opinion or to prevent their opponents from voting.

While Trump is hedging about his stance on abortion—after bragging repeatedly that he was the person responsible for overturning Roe v. Wade—MAGA Republicans have made their unpopular abortion stance even stronger.

Emily Cochrane of the New York Times reported today that the hospital at the center of the decision by the Alabama state supreme court that embryos used for in vitro fertilization have the same rights and protections as children has ended its IVF services. And on Monday, Florida’s supreme court, which Florida governor Ron DeSantis packed with extremists, upheld a ban on abortion after 15 weeks and allowed a new six-week abortion ban—before most women know they’re pregnant—to go into effect in 30 days.

In the past, people seeking abortions had gravitated to Florida because its constitution upheld the right to privacy, which protected abortion. But now the Florida Supreme Court has decided the constitution does not protect the right to abortion. Caroline Kitchener explained in the Washington Post that in the past, more than 80,000 women a year accessed abortion services in Florida. This ban will make it nearly impossible to get an abortion in the American South.

Anya Cook, who in 2022 nearly died after she was denied an abortion under Florida’s 15-week ban, gave Kitchener a message for Florida women experiencing pregnancy complications: “Run,” she said. “Run, because you have no help here.”

Extremist Republicans have managed to put their policies into place not by winning a majority and passing laws through Congress, but by creating cases that they then take to sympathetic judges. This system, known as “judge shopping,” has so perverted lawmaking that on March 12 the Judicial Conference, the body that makes policy for federal courts, announced a new rule that any lawsuit seeking to overturn statewide or national policies would be randomly assigned among a larger pool of judges.

On March 29, the chief judge of the Northern District of Texas, where many such cases are filed, told Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) that he would not adhere to the new rules.

Rather than moderating their stances, extremist Republicans are doubling down on their attempt to create dirt on the president. With their impeachment effort against President Joe Biden in embarrassing ruins, House Republicans are casting around for another issue to hurt the Democrats before the 2024 election.

Jennifer Haberkorn of Politico reported today that in the last month, House Republican Committee chairs have sent almost 50 oversight requests to a variety of departments and agencies. Haberkorn noted that there is “significant political pressure on the party to produce results after months of promising it would uncover evidence of high crimes and misdemeanors involving Biden.”

But it is Trump, not Biden, who is in the news for questionable behavior. In The Guardian today, Hugo Lowell reported that Trump’s social media company was kept afloat in 2022 “by emergency loans provided in part by a Russian-American businessman under scrutiny in a federal insider-trading and money-laundering investigation.”

There is more trouble for the social media company in the news today, as two of its investors pleaded guilty to being part of an insider-trading scheme involving the company’s stock. They admitted they had secret, inside information about the merger between Trump Media and Digital World Acquisition Corporation and had used that insider information to make profitable trades.

Meanwhile, Trump is suing Truth Social’s founders to force them out of leadership and make them give up their shares in the company. His is a countersuit to their lawsuit accusing him of trying to dilute the company’s stock.

Of more immediate concern for Trump, Judge Juan Merchan denied yet another attempt by Trump—his eighth, according to prosecutors—to delay his election interference trial. The trial is scheduled to begin April 15.

Finally, in an illustration of extremists aiming not to moderate their stances but to impose the will of the minority on the majority, Republicans are putting in place rules to make it easier for individuals to challenge voters, removing them from the voter rolls before the 2024 election.

Marc Elias of Democracy Docket noted today that states and local governments have regular programs to keep voter registration accurate, while right-wing activists are operating on a different agenda. In one 70,000-person town in Michigan, a single activist challenged more than a thousand voters, Elias reported, and in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, right-wing activists have already challenged 16,000 voters and intend to challenge another 10,000.

One group boasted that their system “can and will change elections in America forever.”

Rather like the election of 2000.

I also haven’t seen anything acknowledging that crime statistics are not based on convictions, so her wild statements about crime not actually being down in blue cities are false.

Nor have I seen an acknowledgement of the foolhardiness of painting any one group of people as criminals because of the actions of a very tiny minority.

Oh no, please don’t apologize. I just felt like my experience was relevant in both the cases where I brought it up. One never gets over that kind of thing, but after 17 years, it’s not difficult to talk about.

And what we likely have to look forward to in November.

plus.thebulwark.com/p/start-the-steal-trump-november-2024

He and the others convicted in the Jan 6 armed insurrection are not heroes, patriots, hostages or political prisoners. And yet, Trump has promised to pardon him and the other insurrectionists.




www.justice.gov/usao-dc/pr/washington-state-man-sentenced-over-seven-years-prison-actions-during-jan-6-capitol

According to court documents, prior to the events of Jan. 6, 2021, Johnatakis posted numerous messages to social media revealing his intent to obstruct the election certification. In one instance, on Jan. 5, 2021, Johnatakis posted: “…and that’s why I am going to DC, to CHANGE the course of HISTORY #stopthesteal.” That same day, he posted: “urn the city down. What the British did to DC will be nothing…”




www.justice.gov/usao-dc/pr/washington-state-man-found-guilty-assaulting-law-enforcement-and-other-charges-actions


Taylor James Johnatakis, 39, of Kingston, Washington, was convicted of seven charges, including three felonies, by a federal jury in Washington, D.C. Johnatakis was convicted of obstruction of an official proceeding, civil disorder, and assaulting, resisting, or impeding certain officers, all felony offenses. In addition to the felonies, Johnatakis was convicted of four misdemeanor charges, including entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds; disorderly and disruptive conduct in a restricted building or grounds; engaging in physical violence in a restricted building or grounds; and engaging in an act of physical violence in the grounds of any of the Capitol building.