138 Comments

I read that earlier and posted it on Mastodon.

I'm really happy that Jack Smith is making Donald Trump's life so frigging miserable because he's made ours as a country even more so.

I know that if he's gotten a target letter, he's going to be indicted.

The DOJ doesn't play games with this stuff.

Bring it on!

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Yes, I agree with you. Bring it on! In spades! This man has irreparably harmed this nation in so many ways and now he wants to be a dictator! Puh-leeze! A big portion of this country's populace is suffering from a form of PTSD stemming from what this ogre has said and done over and over and over again to us and it continues to this day. I want him gone!!

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Did you see the NYT article about how Trump wants to consolidate power in the Executive Branch if he were to be elected? It looks like Italy during WWII or Hungary today.

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"It Can't Happen Here"?? Yes it can if this sick SOB gets re-elected...and he just might do it if one of these idiot third party candidates runs. Joe Manchin in NH today! The "No Labels" party - funded by Repub billionaires..

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Thanks for gifting this, I had read about the article but always like to read it from "the horses mouth"!

Plus I spend my cash on Substack writers.

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The article was FRIGHTENING

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I saw it but I did not read it, because my stomach for reading what he would do back in office is very low.

I can well imagine and that is why these cases must succeed, they have to put him in prison because we cannot have him back in power.

It just cannot happen. It will not happen, and Jack Smith is probably the only person (besides the entire DOJ and his boss, Merrick Garland) who can stop him from it.

Because I'm not too sure about a lot of the voters in this country.

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They're not even trying to keep it quiet

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After reading Healther Cox Richardson's letter this morning, breaking down what the NY Times reported about the plans to turn this country into an autocracy, I was ill. This will not go away with the orange pig, in fact he is really just the front man distraction for the real work that's being done, behind the curtain, which is happening a little bit every day with the erosion of 50+ years of rights. With the lunacy of the DeSantis, and the fact that people in the state he is destroying still support him. It was, to put it mildly, sobering and frightening. And, as a friend points out, there will be fierce resistance to any guilty verdict by the very crazed, and heavily armed, defenders of rump. But...Jack Smith is the man. And no matter what lies ahead, this is a beautiful first step. We have all lived with the miasma of his narcissistic belligerence and need to dominate our lives for far too long. Enough.

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"Front man distraction" is 100% correct. The Crows, the Mercers, the surviving Koch, and the rest of them see through Trump (would you buy a used golf course from this man?) but they also know they can't get where they want to go without his base. As I noted elsewhere, I just started rereading Jane Mayer's DARK MONEY. It reminds me what we're up against. They don't play games.

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These billionaires are the real Deep State!!

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Yes! I also think of them as "the octopus" -- after Frank Norris's Progressive-era novel of that title, where the octopus was the railroads with their tentacles wrapped around farmers.

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Thanks for providing specific info about that article to which I referred in one of my posts. I am very surprised they would make these plans public since people have all this time now to realize what they actually mean.

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That’s actually part of what so frightening they don’t see any need to hide their plan

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Thank You.

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Somewhere in Hell there’s a grammar class diagramming his sentences.

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His language, btw, has been pegged, by experts, at the fourth grade level.

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Let’s hope they still try him as an adult anyhow!

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Maybe he’ll claim insanity as his defense. Might work.

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An insult to fourth graders everywhere--well, except maybe Florida and Texas

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I speak at a fourth grade level and I resent that! 😉

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Funniest comment today!

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The best! Ah diagramming, lost art of the last century.

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Why I almost failed English

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They (whoever 'they' are!) need to teach it far better, more accessibly, otherwise fine students do badly with that section of an English class. Makes no sense at all.

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I remember well diagramming sentences in a high school English class. I rate it as analogous to New Math (and I was a pretty good English grammar student).

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I think it might have been some kind of "lesson plan" default setting for a certain kind of H.S. English teacher, also part of the "I suffered through this and now you can suffer through it," since possibly they were already really, really motivated to teach English, and thought any ancillary suffering (again, a really creative teacher would make this "fun," but they are fairly rare) was just something you should put up with.

O should that be, "Diagramming sentences is pain and suffering up with which I will not put?"

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You are in a totally different age group than I. The “good Sisters” had us diagramming sentences in fourth grade. I think the main purpose was to get us into heaven more quickly. It was either to make the trip easier through pain and suffering, or to make us want to take the journey as soon as the class was over!

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You and me both!

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I'm surprised lktiv hasn't jumped in here—diagramming sentences was a specialty of his.

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My 7th grade teacher, Miss Alma Loll, drilled it into us. I was good at it and can still do it today, altho maybe not the more complex sentences, with participial phrases and all....

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Now that would be showing off!

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❤️😂

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He accidentally told the truth - this IS ALL about Election Interference. Buh Bye Bard 👋

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I dunno..... I tend to take him at his "word." I don't think he's frightened. He's defiant, exultant, aggrieved, angry/ fighting mad. He knows there are many millions of people totally on his side and unmoved by any of the charges against him. NEVER underestimate his uncanny ability to take even the most grievous charges against him and turn them to his advantage.

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He's scared shitless. He's never been held to account for all the wrong he has done but for now..and he can't imagine why.

He thought he could get away with it forever. Imagine his shock at the fact that he's no longer a protected person, teflon no longer..

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I think he STILL firmly believes he will get away with everything.

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I think he believes he is invincible and that is why I don't think he is a flight risk. Hope I'm wrong.

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Nope, not any more. And I'll go one step further: Should there be the *probability* of prison, he will follow his friend and procurer, Jeffrey Epstein. No one agrees with me, but coward though he is, his ego could not tolerate being behind bars.

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Yeah, and I believe I am a dead ringer for Heidi Klum.....

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Agreed, Mary. Saw a vid clip on another substack earlier today of him shanking an easy golf shot onto the green. Yeah, he's scared shitless--GOOD!!!!!

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Sentence of the day, or maybe the month: “ The rest of the “statement” is a lasagna of words folded in on themselves, slathered with self-pity, and covered by a sauce grievance.”

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“sauce grievance” is here pronounced in French, as in “sose gree-VAUNCE”

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Love It!

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Here in the outskirts of Toronto we are enjoying over-baked, backyard pizza and watching the corn and grapes grow. On Thursday I’ll be back in the USA.

My Canadian grandchildren are learning about communal living at summer camp and genuinely worried about the violent,unstable nation, south of their border.

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I agree.

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A large part of our nation appears to be on a Donald Trump High, transfixed by the power of his sociopathic personality.

This is disturbingly similar to the plot of the Oscar winning 1976 movie 'Network", in which Howard Beale, a fictional popular nightly news anchor, becomes increasingly unhinged as the season goes on. Viewers are entranced by Beale and ultimately are drawn into and infected by his madness. They escape their trance only when Beale collapses into incoherence. On air.

We can't afford to wait for Trump's own collapse to awaken the tens of millions who are now in his spell. Nor can we expect to be saved by a legal prosecution that will actually strengthen Trump's hold on his followers. The slow progress of the case against Trump thus far means that we will have to try him while he has the bully pulpit as ex-president running for reelection. Networks will give him all time be needs because his ratings will be so high. We waited too long.

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Agree. The question is not;

Is Trump a criminal

but will he be elected president.

AGAIN!

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This madness has a name: "Contagious sociopathy."

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The difference is, unlike Howard Beale, the more incoherent Trump becomes, the more his cultish followers double down on worshipping him.

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I agree with you, as Tom McKelvey Cleaver explained in his TCinLA Substack this morning, that this is now a time "more dangerous than World War II." But I do not agree it is too late. The DOJ has disarmed (and in many cases imprisoned) a multitude of tRump's brown shirts. Another mass of disillusioned and disaffected now have jobs and better lives thanks to Joe Biden (whom they will never credit) making it hard for them to march on D.C. or NYC when they have real jobs to go to. And faux news will dump a loser. The Greatest Loser.

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You may be right.

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Respect

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How he loves to use the word "sad" and it curdles my stomach every time he writes or says the word. I try to avoid listening to him as it raises my stress level so high. DJT is what is "sad", and his continued attempts to destroy our democracy and his love of dictators are abhorrent.

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I’m 76 and relatively healthy but I’m not sure I’ll see what I think is a 50/50 possibility- the dissolution of the United States . Unfortunately, a solid 20-40% of our citizens support a Christian dictatorship, and they’re not all “white” men either, although their predominant support is. I think the country will split into 3 or 4 units- some allied with others as well as Canada, UK etc. It’s becoming a Twilight Zone scenario.

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The North East will hang together.

MN will probably try to affiliate with Ontario.

The other 4 upper Midwest states are red state cesspools. Pacific coast and Hawaii will stay United. Alaska probably will try for independence.

Sad times

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HEY! Michigan is run by our phenomenal Democratic (female) Trifecta! And we have a dynamite new candidate, Callie Barr, to oust our 1st Congressional District Republican insurrectionist (oil) representative, Jack Bagman Bergman. Watch this!

https://youtu.be/F0sKsOPptko

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Every indictment, well earned and well deserved.

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Two years late, but better late than never. The question for me is - when does the weight of what Dump faces finally drive him to flee the jurisdiction? Trump Air can reach the UAE without refueling, right?

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No it can't. Would have to refuel it Europe or east Africa.

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Or dive into the wine dark sea, hopefully

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Your wish and mine!

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Upvoted both for the sentiment and invoking Homer, nice!

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I’d have been drummed out of the family if I couldn’t

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LOL, you could always try this line on someone likely to rise to the bait, you know, explaining very calmly that "of course, Homer was probably a woman. For instance..." etc. etc.

*****

Was Homer's 'The Odyssey' Actually Written By A Woman?

by Charlotte Ahlin

Feb. 20, 2019

If there's one thing we know about the Victorians, it's that they loved to be scandalized. The dominant moral values of British society during the 19th century were fairly vanilla, you see. Hetero-normative gender norms were rigidly enforced. Classical literature was venerated. Sexuality was repressed. And then author, scholar, and professional scandalizer Samuel Butler came along and proclaimed that The Odyssey was written by a woman.

Samuel Butler had already made a career of going against the Victorian grain by the time he published The Authoress of the Odyssey in 1897. He wrote the dystopian satire Erewhon, which basically dragged the Victorians for being a bunch of moralizing hypocrites. He predicted the rise of artificial intelligence in his articles about the evolution of technology. And he believed that the Homer who wrote The Odyssey was actually a young Sicilian girl who wrote herself into the actual text in the form of the princess Nausicaa.

Yes, that's right. Not only did Butler believe that The Odyssey — the groundbreaking, foundational text of Western Literature — was written by a woman, but he believed it was a self-insert fanfic written by a teenage girl.

Now, in the cold grey light of 2019, I think it's time to ask: Was the original Odyssey written by a woman?

The Odyssey has always been full of fascinating female characters. Odysseus is guided by the wise, soft goddess Athena. He seeks to return to his wily, faithful wife Penelope. Along the way, he is seduced, attacked, saved, and outwitted by a number of witches, nymphs, sirens, and giant lady sea monsters. Even the dang whirlpool is a girl.

It's only in the past few years, however, that a woman's perspective on the story has crept into mainstream literature. In 2005, Margaret Atwood released Penelopiad, a retelling of the story from Penelope's perspective. In 2017 Emily Wilson became the first woman ever to translate The Odyssey into English, shedding light on all the ways in which male translators have historically added their own subconscious bias to the poem. (The sirens aren't canonically sexy.) And in 2018, Madeline Miller's bestselling novel Circe re-imagined the enchantress Circe as the hero of the story. ***** Source:

bustle.com/p/was-the-odyssey-written-by-a-woman-its-not-as-far-fetched-as-you-may-think-15898917

Of course you'd have to be fairly conversant with few of the more convincing arguments for it, but it really seems full of promise. Make them promise not to drum you out of the family first, though!

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Great thought!

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Also why no matter how many times I’ve been called a witch I know I am not since he hasn’t been vaporized

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Maybe if we form a Democrat Coven.

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Up for it - lots of work to get done

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I suspect there is a friendly dictator or two in Africa who would let him land, refuel and continue on. The Europeans might give him the Pinochet treatment. But then again, if he could get to Hungary...

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Yes, he gets to Hungary, member nation of NATO, authoritarian government for now - I would give it two months tops before Hungarians realize what a terrible blunder it was to allow him egress.

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I know I'm in the minority on this but I still think the Dumpster will, upon conviction & sentencing to prison in one or more cases, depart the U.S. of A. for who knows where. Hey, he likes to play golf so maybe Saudi Arabia might be a destination? Golf courses in Russia probably aren't well maintained enough for him plus it gets damn cold there in winter. I really don't care where this lardass ends up, prison or overseas. Just want to see him out of our lives.

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His passport would be pulled, and he’d be on the ‘no fly’ list, but since he has his own plane, he could probably sneak out, probably to Saudi Arabia.

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Wherever would have to have McDonald's. So Saudi would fit the bill, but rules out Russia and other "shithole countries."

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It can’t happen soon enough. And lawyers for Teixeira are correctly asking, why isn’t their client eligible for bail while tRump roams free, spreading incendiary rhetoric aimed at subverting the Justice Department?

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I’d like to see a special prison built for him on Ship Island, twelve miles off Mississippi’s Gulf Coast. There he could reap all the benefits of Climate Change.

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Actually, there is a prison down in Cuba where the ferocious heat is intolerable.

Guantanamo Bay doesn't have AC.

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Let’s make it a prison like Napoleon’s--lavishly decorated with green wallpaper that exudes arsenic.

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Excellent idea!

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Adak Alaska is a better destination.

The next best is Wake Island. 4000 miles from anywhere.

It is controlled by the Air Force but we could minimize that risk by building a compound staffed by secret service and DOJ cos.

No internet. Only DOJ phones with the “you are receiving a call from”.

Strict visitors list. His own family won’t come to see him in his exile.

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Mentioned a similar proposition a while back. Will amend it (a separate smallish building at a Federal Prison) build to the exact shape/dimensions/paint scheme inc. paintings of windows/curtains and doors on the walls of the Oval Office. That is where the similarity end and standard prison accommodations take over.

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And we can put in with him all of his loyal lawyers and staff who aided and abetted him in Jan 6th.

I'm thinking Mark Meadows, Steven Miller, Walt Nauta (who else would clean up after an attack of ketchup?) and others. He'd be very happy especially if he had a canteen full of McDonalds and cokes for life.

But NO Twitter or Truth Social. Cell phones are forbidden in federal prison. (but that doesn't mean they don't have them...)

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Oh…yessss!

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Yes! A place where he can play act President for life!

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BoP guards and his USSS detail can view him on Prison-CCTV 24/7, commercial free episodes of Celebrity Inmate pretending to be President of the USA.

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I got a good laugh reading about “Celebrity Inmate Pretending to be President” on prison CCTV. Hope we can all watch. It will be the #1 TV program in the country.

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1. Me too!

2. Yes, me too! And Trump would bask in the ratings! The bestest parts of the show would be the episode reveal in the opening of a day: 4eg Epi-MMMDLV and when the prison lights went out at 9PM local time and America chimed in with good night XOXOXO piped into his room. Interactive teevee is coming.

(Try not to allow Trump into my noggin' unless it involves some sort of mockery, lame or otherwise.)

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It is something to which we can all look forward.

(Trying to be more grammatically correct!)

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I'm trying to imagine the expression on your face as you wrote this, the upward curve of the corners of your mouth, the glitter in our eyes. Wait! That was *my* expression as I read your piece. However, on behalf of good and bad chefs and cooks everywhere, is it fair to the food to describe Trump's verbal puke as "lasagna?" And on behalf of the famous fact-checkers at The New Yorker, as well as those at other old-fashioned magazines, I don't think it is physically possible for Defendant "never-seen-a-golf-cart-that-I-didn't-ride-in" Trump to be "running scared," not even as a metaphor. Waddling scared is more his speed, or lack of it. [Insert sweaty, but smiling, emoji here.]

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If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck...(in this case, a criminal).

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Authoritarian defendant Trump. I believe there are 477 days and 6 hours and 59 minutes or so until the next presidential election. I guess next time you are a target of an indictment, just file the paperwork to run for President.

As my favorite podcaster said. “A Recipe for Cesar”

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Unfortunately, his gibberish passes for high wisdom to his core imbeciles.

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