lookin

Didn't they also throw him a State Dinner?

I wrote the Declaration of Independence . . . I preserved the Union I united the Country . . . I won the Nobel Peace Prize . . . . . I pardoned myself

Personally, I've never understood the rationale for giving a President the power to pardon somebody. But right there it is in Article II, Section 2, Clause 1 of the U. S. Constitution. The President ... shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offenses against the United States, except in Cases of impeachment. If you want to get rid of it you'll have to amend the Constitution. In the 234 years since the Constitution was ratified, it's been amended twenty-seven times. The first ten amendments, known as the Bill of Rights, were made a year later and the last amendment was made in 1992. So it will be a pretty heavy lift to rescind the Presidential power to pardon and send Charles Kushner and Hunter Biden off to the pokey. However, that doesn't mean we can't continue to bat it around here in the Politics Forum.

Pfft! It vill be a thousand years!

According to this article, some Republican senators are weighing the choice between being primaried if they oppose Trump's nominations and losing the general election if they support his nominations. Somewhere in there might be a thought for what's best for their constituents, but so far they haven't mentioned it.

Well, as we here in the Politics Forum know all too well, talk is cheap. But here's an enterprising company that's making it easy for anyone who really does want to leave the country for the next four years. Cruise line offers ‘escape’ from Trump presidency with multi-year packages They said they came up with the plan before election results were in and it's just a happy coincidence that the cruise and the customers arrived all at the same time. For $40,000 a year, passengers can visit 425 ports of call and 140 countries without ever leaving their deck chairs. Adding in drinks and a nice tip, that would come to around two hundred grand for the four-year escape. I don't know if it's worth it or not, or who would go or how long they would float around. The company has packages for one year (Escape From Reality), two years (Mid-term Selection), three years (Anywhere But Home) and four years (Skip Forward). It's also possible that the cruise would appeal to both Trump-avoiders as well as Trump-supporters who discover that their Leader has told them some fibs too. The company has taken the precaution of playing MSNBC on one end of the ship and Fox News on the other. They'd probably have to get at least a few Trump supporters so the ship doesn't capsize. Lots of logistics to consider and then it occurred to me that the simplest solution might be to let everybody who would like to be Trump-free just stay home and put Trump on the ship for the next four years. I'm sure Melania would chip in for the ticket and perhaps even a shiver of sharks to swim alongside, just in case. Plus, the two hundred grand would be the maximum Trump or his sponsor(s) would have to pay. Once Elon Musk ramps up the Department of Government Efficiency, I'm sure he could cut a deal. In fact, I'd go so far as to suggest they share a cabin.

Personally, I don't think Trump gives a rat's ass what Rubio supports. What matters is what Trump can make him do. If Trump gets a 'former NATO supporter' like Rubio to lead Trump's battle against NATO, that's a win for Trump. It may be a loss for the U. S., it may be a loss for NATO, it may be a loss for many NATO members - present and future - but as long as it's a win for Trump, Rubio will do it or get replaced. That's what 'loyalty' means to Trump. Forget opposing ideas. He tried that the first time and he didn't like it. He may listen to Rubio for a minute or two, but Rubio will cave in or he'll be thrown out.

Worth remembering, I think, that Trump's appointments have the shelf life of a quince. My favorite so far is Marco Rubio as Secretary of State. Of course he may turn out to be a regular John Foster Dulles but, laudable or lousy, his usefulness to Donald Trump peaks on the day he resigns from the Senate so Ron DeSantis can give his seat to Lara Trump. After that, 'Widdle Marco' can take his turn in the revolving door.

More than 40 monkeys escape South Carolina research facility. I sure hope they don't start posting here in the Politics Forum.

I've been wondering if Trump could find a way to sell without crashing the stock and one way (if he doesn't sell outright to Musk) would be to arrange for someone to buy 10 million shares on a day when Trump sells 10 million shares. Putin couldn't do it, but one of his oligarchs could. Bin Salman could. Musk could. It seems a fairly transactional way for Trump to sell shares without cratering the stock price. Even retail Trump followers could buy up Trump's sales, although they wouldn't be as predictable as a whale or two. In fact, when I look at some of the daily trading volumes lately, it looks as if insiders must be unloading stock already. Could Trump be one of them? He says he won't sell, but he says a lot of things. 🗣️ I'm not so sure. Even if Trump loses, as he did in 2020, he still has the ability to divide the country and erode trust between the U. S. and our traditional allies. He's been out of office for four years but his pathogenic social disruption has slowed down little, if at all. We've been accustomed to ex-presidents who fade away when they lose elections but Trump seems to find new ways to keep us fighting among ourselves. And that's got to be useful to Putin.

Well, if DJT's price really is an indicator of Trump's electability - and I have no reason to doubt it - then Trump is 22% less electable today than he was yesterday. And after-hours trading shows he's another 5% less electable than at the market close. Based on today's valuation, Trump Media is worth $8 billion. I was surprised to learn that Musk's X now has an estimated market cap of only $9 billion, down 80% from the $44 billion he paid for Twitter. I don't know what either company would actually sell for, but I continue to believe that Trump's best bet would be to unload find a buyer for Trump Media and the ideal pigeon candidate would seem to be Musk. Perhaps they're waiting until after the election when Trump could be President and Musk could be the Secretary of Efficiency. If they could do for the GDP what they've done for their media companies, they could solve immigration too. We'd have millions of folks lined up at the borders waiting to get out.

If you believe that authoritarian followers make up most of Trump's base, which I do, and if you understand authoritarian followers, which I think I do, it explains much of the otherwise puzzling loyalty of Trump's base. Authoritarian followers need a leader. It doesn't matter what Trump does (as he himself has said), they will stick to him until another leader comes along that they can attach to. They will vote against their own interests rather than give up their leader. I don't think they'll magically change just because someone points out the failures of their leader. They've already taken that into account. We can despair that they're so illogical, we can tell them what lies in store for them, and/or we can try to reason with them, but that's not how authoritarian followers work. They need a leader to give them the simple answers they need to manage their fear of 'the other'. Trump is their leader and they will not give him up until there's someone else to take his place. They will not go without someone to follow. At least that's how I see it, and it's the one explanation that makes all the pieces fit together - for me anyway. My own hope is that, while they may stay with Trump as their personal leader, they won't necessarily turn out to vote. Trump has told them for years that elections are 'rigged' and that votes aren't reliable. He has also held out the threat that he will claim the presidency even if he loses the vote. I doubt there are many Democrats who believe their votes don't matter and, with any luck, that will tip the scales. 🤞

Cambridge Analytica gave me my first insight into how the manipulation was actually done and led to just enough voters in just the right precincts casting their votes for Trump in 2016, and that got him just enough Electoral College votes to win the Presidency. It claimed to possess detailed profiles on 230 million American voters based on up to 5,000 data points, everything from where you live to whether you own a car, your shopping habits and voting record, the medications you take, your religious affiliation, and the TV shows you watch. This data is available to anyone with deep pockets. But Cambridge professed to bring a unique approach to the microtargeting techniques that have become de rigueur in politics. It promised to couple consumer information with psychological data, harvested from social-media platforms and its own in-house survey research, to group voters by personality type, pegging them as agreeable or neurotic, confrontational or conciliatory, leaders or followers. It would then target these groups with specially tailored images and messages, delivered via Facebook ads, glossy mailers, or in-person interactions. I saw a couple of these ads on the internet once and they were aimed directly at the beliefs and fears of their target audience, which may have been only a handful of people. But they were likely voters and they were in the precincts that Trump needed to win. The ads were deleted from the internet soon after they were delivered to their targets. It was pure manipulation without leaving many tracks. Steve Bannon is a special case. I recall him saying clearly that he wanted to tear down 'the system'. He didn't say what he wanted to replace it with. He just wanted to tear it down. And when you take such direct and destructive aim at the bonds that underpin our society, that's when I think you've gone beyond 'free speech' or 'politics' and you've moved into pathogenic behavior. I think society has a need and a right to protect itself from these assaults.

Not in the least! You've had Trump's number from the get-go. And I agree with you that, even if Trump loses, we will still be vulnerable to the pathogens that come out of his mouth every time he opens it. We can dismiss it as 'just politics' or 'free speech' but the damage it has done to both individuals and to society as a whole has been, in my opinion, destabilizing to the point of fracture. If he loses the election, he'll continue to tear at the social bonds that have kept us united to this point. And I'd like to see us address the past damage and the potential for future damage as a public health issue. We've tackled nationwide physical health issues in the past and I'd like to see us tackle nationwide mental health issues with the same urgency. In the meantime, I'll encourage each one of us to pay attention to what is entering our minds, how we feel about it and what we do with those feelings. If I find myself passing along social pathogens, I become part of the problem. And that's not good for my mental health or anyone else's. At least, that's how I've got it figured out so far.