One of the great ironies – and there are more than a few – in the case in Georgia against Donald Trump and 18 co-defendants is the law being used against them: The Georgia RICO, or Racketeering and Corrupt Organizations Act. The original RICO Act, passed by the congress in 1970, was meant to make it easier for the Department of Justice to go after crimes committed by the Mafia and drug dealers. The first time the Georgia RICO law was used after it was passed in 1980 was in a prosecution of the so-called Dixie Mafia, a group of white criminals in the South who engaged in crimes of moving stolen goods and liquor and drug dealing.
It never occurred to them that the law could be applied to their actions. The law was for Pablo Escobar, not the presidential cabinet. Worse, in their wildest dreams they never imagined the daughter of a Black Panther indicting them. God has a real sense of humor.
Did we? Putin, Orban, Xi . . . Jong-Un . . . They are still operating. And tRump is still spewing seditious, agitating tripe to his asinine followers who WILL vote.
This comment was on Charlie Sykes Morning Shot today. It seems quite appropriate right now “Republicans are the party that says government doesn’t work, and then they get elected and prove it.”
One of the great pleasures of reading you Lucian is like me you remember the strident republicans of old who were anti-Soviet to the max, were law and order to the point of no return. It’s just hilarious to see they have no principles and were only power fiends--the issues have turned out to be utterly fungible.
Evenly way back when, the Republican Party talked their talk better than they walked their walk. But at least they tried back then to appear to be coloring within the lines of legality. Now they just 'Move Fast and Break Things', as Mark Zuckerberg once advised for businesspersons.
The guy who plead guilty today and agreed to testify truthfully was a bail bondsman who knows what the jails are all about. He facilitated the Coffee county voting machine hack as well as spent over an hr on the phone with Clark in the days just before 6 Jan. They are starting to crack, expect a lot more soon. This is going to be fun to watch. 😎
Joyce Vance's latest "Civil Discourse" lays out how this works: flip the foot soldiers then work your way up the chain of command. I'm wallowing in schadenfreude. https://joycevance.substack.com/p/this-is-how-we-do-it
Another in a long line of reasons that we all need to come out to vote.I have been in the habit of voting at my local Board of Elections on the very first day of early voting.I have been reading of late that this is a good thing to do.I mainly did it previously because I was never sure how Ohio’s skewed maps would come into play so I thought I would take my chances.Not a feel good thing but I am keeping up my tradition of voting early on the first day.
As pathetic as these Republicans are I can't help but see the funny side of Lucian's great article: "We need to get tough on crime and prosecute all these low life criminals to the fullest extent of the law.. They need to know if they break the law they go to jail. Oh wait! We broke the law to help Donald Trump. Let's rethink this whole thing . . . if we defund the DOJ as a starter and then if Donald gets re-elected he will put our people in charge and all charges will be dropped. Then we'll get revenge by charging then with fake crimes and put them in jail. Trump promised he would do this."
I would maintain an even bigger irony in the modern day GOP when it comes to "laws and order." As in selective laws being passed by state legislators to deny citizens the right to vote, the right to control one's own body and, yes, the right to assemble if what you assemble for is, let us just say, not in line with local mores and traditions. What the GOP has decided to achieve by gaining control of so many state legislatures with super majorities is to write laws and rewrite state constitutions so as to give the state awesome power over individual rights.
Under cover of "law" states like Texas, Florida and Alabama are shredding individual liberty and bragging about it . And, here comes the next irony in the Law and Order theme. We once had a Supreme Court charged with defending constitutional rights. It now rewrites them along the lines the right wing Federalist Society approves once again courtesy of a GOP which has had a hammer lock on the Senate for decades under one Mitch McConnell.
Yes, it is just rewards Fanni Willis is charging this new age political Mafia under RICO but the greatest heist of individual American rights has been and is being perpetrated in the individual state legislatures in red states and in too many cases being rubber stamped by a bought and paid for Supreme Court where those like Thomas and Alito can repay their benefactors.
Republicans were never really the party of law and order. They just used law and order to criminalize people of color and anyone who threatened their white supremacy. It never even occurred to the idiots that law and order could be used against their hatred of freedom and democracy.
This is so true of the GOP since the advent of Nixon's "southern strategy," but those of us whose memories go back that far, or who have read up on the history, remember a GOP that wasn't like that. Especially in places like New England.
No, I don’t have an encyclopedic memory of every New England politician since the 1960’s, especially since the Repugs you mentioned weren’t at the national forefront, except for Olympia Snowe. The Republican Party has been overtaken by super wealthy, fascist-minded, Neo nazi sympathizers. It’s no “grand statement” to say people from that cesspool are NOT DECENT. “Southern Strategy”--that’s a just a sugar-coated way of describing the racists who switched parties for Reagan in the 80’s and were hold overs from post-civil war politicians who had been democrats as a reaction against Lincoln. Racism is still at the heart of the RNC: Obscenely wealthy good, ol’ boys. How’s that for a “grand statement.”
Are you talking about the Republican Party of the 1860’s? Strongholds for the Abolitionist movement? Because that hasn’t been the case since the Nixon era. Eisenhower was the last, decent Republican president; John D. And Nelson Rockefeller were decent, although they had some sketchy, wealthy connections. . . Who and when are you referring to? Sununus and Collins--they are every bit as mealy-mouthed as Nikki Haley, except Nikki Haley hasn’t had an original thought since she was a child. To this day, New England Repugs will insist that Nixon was innocent, and, of course, the lies degrade from there.
Dawna, I grew up in Massachusetts surrounded by decent Republicans. My father was pretty much the only Democrat in my extended family. I can't remember any of them maintaining that Nixon was innocent. As to elected officials, I'm talking about, among others, Frank Sargent, Elliot Richardson, Margaret Chase Smith and Olympia Snowe (both from Maine, two generations apart), Leverett Saltonstall, and John Volpe. From outside New England -- Mac Mathias (MD), John Sherman Cooper (KY), Charles Percy (IL), Maurine Neuberger and Mark Hatfield (both OR) . . . I could go on, without going earlier than the 1960s.
. You are scraping around for OUTLIERS. There are occasionally Republicans who do the right thing, like Brad Raffensperger. But it is not a generalization when the overwhelming majority are people who back the agendas and policies of fascism and racism. The RNC is a rats’ nest of overtly racist, anti-democratic people and, no, I don’t give them a pass. I wouldn’t dream of associating myself with Republicans--a party that was dismissive of Nixon’s crimes and ever worsening criminality going forward from the 60’s to present. Drugs for arms; fake wars--which directly effected my family--wars covering up torture, right through to Jan 6 attempts to overthrow this democracy. Nope. Anyone who associates themselves with the Organized Crime Syndicate aka the RNC doesn’t deserve gold stars. Ever. That’s not an overgeneralization: THAT IS SETTING A BAR, A STANDARD OF CONDUCT.
Do I know nice people who vote Republican? Yes. But do I entirely trust them? NO.
Do I know of decent politicians who are Republicans? Not really. Just because they do “the right thing” most of the time doesn’t make up for their support of neo nazi fascists.
Read your own books on Charles Koch, Dark Money.
Funny you use the term, “over generalization,” but all you could counter with were rare outliers, family friends and non-New Englanders. None of that fits within the norm on a bell curve.
“Overgeneralization,” indeed. To people who are in the target hairs of racism and antisemitism, that sounds a lot like gas lighting.
I thought the comment referred to Republicans holding office in New England--not friends and family. Olympia Snowe was a good one. Don’t recall the others. All in all, DECENT Republicans disappeared when the military-industrial heads, including Charles Koch Industries, put Reagan in office. Some stood out at the Watergate hearings, but after that, it was a crop of divisive, power hungry, greedy fascists.
No, I don’t have an encyclopedic memory of every New England politician since the 1960’s, especially since the Repugs you mentioned weren’t at the national forefront, except for Olympia Snowe. The Republican Party has been overtaken by super wealthy, fascist-minded, Neo nazi sympathizers. It’s no “grand statement” to say people from that cesspool are NOT DECENT.
It never occurred to them that the law could be applied to their actions. The law was for Pablo Escobar, not the presidential cabinet. Worse, in their wildest dreams they never imagined the daughter of a Black Panther indicting them. God has a real sense of humor.
Wonderful irony.
Prosecuting Donald Trump (and voting) is absolutely necessary. He is a threat to the entire solar system.
Pablo Escobar was just an illegal pharmaceutical dude.
Supplying America's out of control addition demands.
Currently dictatorship is in demand by those seeking a Fuhrer. God aint cutting it.
We got Putin. ORBAN. Xi. And every few days another Military Coup.
Note;
Mayberry is gone. Did it ever really exist?
Did we? Putin, Orban, Xi . . . Jong-Un . . . They are still operating. And tRump is still spewing seditious, agitating tripe to his asinine followers who WILL vote.
Dawna. I didn't mean we got rid of them.
I meant they are out there doing their dictatorship
Im addition to all the recent military voups.
Look forward to the TV series!!
This comment was on Charlie Sykes Morning Shot today. It seems quite appropriate right now “Republicans are the party that says government doesn’t work, and then they get elected and prove it.”
P. J. O’Rourke
I had forgotten about P.J.. He was brilliant back in the day. Thanks for the reminder.
And not just crippling to the Mafia and drug dealers. As a tool to freeze assets, it was deadly effective on Wall Street in the '90s.
Was it? They got bailed out to grift another day. Ironically, the BANKS are probably the most relieved to have tRump out of their hair.
One of the great pleasures of reading you Lucian is like me you remember the strident republicans of old who were anti-Soviet to the max, were law and order to the point of no return. It’s just hilarious to see they have no principles and were only power fiends--the issues have turned out to be utterly fungible.
Hypocrisy is a s old as the Bible. Politicians are often profiles in cowardice. 😫
Evenly way back when, the Republican Party talked their talk better than they walked their walk. But at least they tried back then to appear to be coloring within the lines of legality. Now they just 'Move Fast and Break Things', as Mark Zuckerberg once advised for businesspersons.
The guy who plead guilty today and agreed to testify truthfully was a bail bondsman who knows what the jails are all about. He facilitated the Coffee county voting machine hack as well as spent over an hr on the phone with Clark in the days just before 6 Jan. They are starting to crack, expect a lot more soon. This is going to be fun to watch. 😎
Joyce Vance's latest "Civil Discourse" lays out how this works: flip the foot soldiers then work your way up the chain of command. I'm wallowing in schadenfreude. https://joycevance.substack.com/p/this-is-how-we-do-it
"Law and order" my foot. It's now more like "lawn order," as in, "Get off my lawn."
It was always for the other guy, often Black, because this crowd never planned on getting caught.
Some of us have always known who the REAL criminals were. Will all the politicans step-up.
Getting them prosecuted was another story.
Cal
A former, Narc. And White Collar crime investigator. Among many other police emforcement matters.
In the past my (swat) squad and i protected witnesses testifying against the Dixie Mafia.
1968/1991
Another in a long line of reasons that we all need to come out to vote.I have been in the habit of voting at my local Board of Elections on the very first day of early voting.I have been reading of late that this is a good thing to do.I mainly did it previously because I was never sure how Ohio’s skewed maps would come into play so I thought I would take my chances.Not a feel good thing but I am keeping up my tradition of voting early on the first day.
Bizarro World!
Thank you sir! You are doing great work!
As pathetic as these Republicans are I can't help but see the funny side of Lucian's great article: "We need to get tough on crime and prosecute all these low life criminals to the fullest extent of the law.. They need to know if they break the law they go to jail. Oh wait! We broke the law to help Donald Trump. Let's rethink this whole thing . . . if we defund the DOJ as a starter and then if Donald gets re-elected he will put our people in charge and all charges will be dropped. Then we'll get revenge by charging then with fake crimes and put them in jail. Trump promised he would do this."
(So much for Trump's version of democracy.)
RICO laws are the bane of criminal enterprises everywhere. Across all categories. Isn’t it so good to see.
As for republicans and law and order? Irony must be writing a suicide note daily.
Remember H.P. Lovecraft: "From even the greatest of horrors, irony is seldom absent."
Again...no one could make this stuff up. Thank you for pulling back the Republican party’s “Iron Curtain!”
Irony, heh?
I would maintain an even bigger irony in the modern day GOP when it comes to "laws and order." As in selective laws being passed by state legislators to deny citizens the right to vote, the right to control one's own body and, yes, the right to assemble if what you assemble for is, let us just say, not in line with local mores and traditions. What the GOP has decided to achieve by gaining control of so many state legislatures with super majorities is to write laws and rewrite state constitutions so as to give the state awesome power over individual rights.
Under cover of "law" states like Texas, Florida and Alabama are shredding individual liberty and bragging about it . And, here comes the next irony in the Law and Order theme. We once had a Supreme Court charged with defending constitutional rights. It now rewrites them along the lines the right wing Federalist Society approves once again courtesy of a GOP which has had a hammer lock on the Senate for decades under one Mitch McConnell.
Yes, it is just rewards Fanni Willis is charging this new age political Mafia under RICO but the greatest heist of individual American rights has been and is being perpetrated in the individual state legislatures in red states and in too many cases being rubber stamped by a bought and paid for Supreme Court where those like Thomas and Alito can repay their benefactors.
Republicans were never really the party of law and order. They just used law and order to criminalize people of color and anyone who threatened their white supremacy. It never even occurred to the idiots that law and order could be used against their hatred of freedom and democracy.
This is so true of the GOP since the advent of Nixon's "southern strategy," but those of us whose memories go back that far, or who have read up on the history, remember a GOP that wasn't like that. Especially in places like New England.
No, I don’t have an encyclopedic memory of every New England politician since the 1960’s, especially since the Repugs you mentioned weren’t at the national forefront, except for Olympia Snowe. The Republican Party has been overtaken by super wealthy, fascist-minded, Neo nazi sympathizers. It’s no “grand statement” to say people from that cesspool are NOT DECENT. “Southern Strategy”--that’s a just a sugar-coated way of describing the racists who switched parties for Reagan in the 80’s and were hold overs from post-civil war politicians who had been democrats as a reaction against Lincoln. Racism is still at the heart of the RNC: Obscenely wealthy good, ol’ boys. How’s that for a “grand statement.”
Are you talking about the Republican Party of the 1860’s? Strongholds for the Abolitionist movement? Because that hasn’t been the case since the Nixon era. Eisenhower was the last, decent Republican president; John D. And Nelson Rockefeller were decent, although they had some sketchy, wealthy connections. . . Who and when are you referring to? Sununus and Collins--they are every bit as mealy-mouthed as Nikki Haley, except Nikki Haley hasn’t had an original thought since she was a child. To this day, New England Repugs will insist that Nixon was innocent, and, of course, the lies degrade from there.
Dawna, I grew up in Massachusetts surrounded by decent Republicans. My father was pretty much the only Democrat in my extended family. I can't remember any of them maintaining that Nixon was innocent. As to elected officials, I'm talking about, among others, Frank Sargent, Elliot Richardson, Margaret Chase Smith and Olympia Snowe (both from Maine, two generations apart), Leverett Saltonstall, and John Volpe. From outside New England -- Mac Mathias (MD), John Sherman Cooper (KY), Charles Percy (IL), Maurine Neuberger and Mark Hatfield (both OR) . . . I could go on, without going earlier than the 1960s.
. You are scraping around for OUTLIERS. There are occasionally Republicans who do the right thing, like Brad Raffensperger. But it is not a generalization when the overwhelming majority are people who back the agendas and policies of fascism and racism. The RNC is a rats’ nest of overtly racist, anti-democratic people and, no, I don’t give them a pass. I wouldn’t dream of associating myself with Republicans--a party that was dismissive of Nixon’s crimes and ever worsening criminality going forward from the 60’s to present. Drugs for arms; fake wars--which directly effected my family--wars covering up torture, right through to Jan 6 attempts to overthrow this democracy. Nope. Anyone who associates themselves with the Organized Crime Syndicate aka the RNC doesn’t deserve gold stars. Ever. That’s not an overgeneralization: THAT IS SETTING A BAR, A STANDARD OF CONDUCT.
Do I know nice people who vote Republican? Yes. But do I entirely trust them? NO.
Do I know of decent politicians who are Republicans? Not really. Just because they do “the right thing” most of the time doesn’t make up for their support of neo nazi fascists.
Read your own books on Charles Koch, Dark Money.
Funny you use the term, “over generalization,” but all you could counter with were rare outliers, family friends and non-New Englanders. None of that fits within the norm on a bell curve.
“Overgeneralization,” indeed. To people who are in the target hairs of racism and antisemitism, that sounds a lot like gas lighting.
I thought the comment referred to Republicans holding office in New England--not friends and family. Olympia Snowe was a good one. Don’t recall the others. All in all, DECENT Republicans disappeared when the military-industrial heads, including Charles Koch Industries, put Reagan in office. Some stood out at the Watergate hearings, but after that, it was a crop of divisive, power hungry, greedy fascists.
"Don't recall the others"? That's my point. It's a good idea to refrain from making grand generalizations until you know what you're talking about.
No, I don’t have an encyclopedic memory of every New England politician since the 1960’s, especially since the Repugs you mentioned weren’t at the national forefront, except for Olympia Snowe. The Republican Party has been overtaken by super wealthy, fascist-minded, Neo nazi sympathizers. It’s no “grand statement” to say people from that cesspool are NOT DECENT.
Thanks, Lucian. You’re on fire today!