I strongly believe it was the announcement of Patel that led Biden to pardon Hunter tonight. Seeing who trmp wants to put in control of law and order telegraphs his intentions to continue the harassment of his son. Insanity.
It was OK for Ford to pardoned Nixon. Nixon was as bad as Trump only he was smarter. Can you mage twenty year,s under a trump for a not legal gun. Did he, Biden shoot anyone, while trump has told kill those who protested. Patel who in the world are you?
Given my feelings about the browbeating of the nyt around here I hate to bring this up, but the stories the paper has posted so far Sunday night tut-tut about the pardon without a word about the context—the big liar's scandalous past pardons and promises of worse, and the fury of his threats of revenge. Hunter is a jerk and Joe is doing the right thing.
No question, but I suspect it's been on the president's mind ever since Trump won the election. If Harris-Walz had won, he wouldn't even have considered it.
It would have to be a calendar with at least 60 months: Conway, Giuliani, Gaetz, Graham, Boebert, Jordan, Christie, Pence, Vance, Patel, Rubio, Wiles, Bondi, RFK, Jr; Stefanik, Holman, Noem, Kushner, Kushner, Kushner, McConnell, Roberts, Alito, Gorsuch, Barrett, Thomas, Thomas, Miller, Gabbard, Huckabee, Huckabee Sanders. There are dozens more, but I need to take my anti-nausea meds.
I think there should be a fold out of Melania getting in that plane with her stupid ass coat reading “I don’t care, do you?” to visit the enclosures filled with immigrant families.
oh, yuck. why would you want to look at those lickspittles, scum-suckers and arse-kissers more than absolutely necessary. if anything, perhaps the names on a bingo-like scorecard to mark off when they do something predictable (as they do constantly).
I've been doing a variation on that myself--in the grocery store and pharmacy, every time I see magazines with Rump's ugly phiz on it, I casually sidle over and turn every one of them upside down and faced in from the public. I'm not especially proud of doing so, you understand, but it is satisfying in a junior high sort of way.
my worry is mainly about national security. SO many snivelers heading into 2.0 administration are going to be dreadful security risks, either through guile or abject stupidity: loose lips sinking ships. Patel will vet whoever Donnybrook wants.
And it is not so much that fear of actually someone selling secrets--though that could well be the culture of any trump admin. It is more the unwillingness of our allies to share ANYTHING with us--that's a problem with Gabbard that is just exacerbated by Patel. Sure, America First, but also America Isolated, with no clue what other countries have detected as serious threats coming at us.
Susan, you make a good point - our allies will (once again) severely limit sharing any intel with the Administration knowing Trump and his ass-lickers will likely pass the info along to Trump's benefactor: Vladimir Putin
One scenario I can think of: Assad is aware of or even participating in another attack like 9/11. Another intelligence agency in the area becomes aware of it. Anyone going to let good buddy Gabbard know, in case she squeals the source?
Assad’s army is weak and that was just proven with Syrian rebels taking Aleppo airport and the city, itself. They have met little resistance and that is because Hezbollah and pro-Iranian forces have been taken down a few notches. Let’s see if Tulsi runs to Assad’s rescue.
I believe limiting intell by our allies has already been discussed. They can afford to take a chance on us. We will truly be isolated; but again, this is the plan I firmly believe.
nevertheless, she wrote it. That kind of thing doesn’t happen accidentally, It is obviously possible to speak the truth and still love your kid. The media wouldn’t never have bothered or even looked for it had not he been so unqualified. THAT is what I object to with H, as a practical matter—no clue what he is supposed to be doing. His sex life palls in comparison to that, except to point out, Deus Vult, that hypocrites rarely make good decisions.
This post plus Biden pardoning Hunter made my day. I think and hope that this description of long time government professional staff will apply in other agencies as well. Doesn't take a law or accounting degree to slow roll, obfuscate, produce nonsense, etc.
I think, perhaps, you underestimate Patel’s ability to create chaos with his incompetence, which is precisely what *Rump wants in all the federal departments. That permits them to claim those departments are all useless, and that he’s ‘gonna fix it’. Create a fake problem, propose a fake solution, and then take credit for having solved it. Pure *Rump bullshit.
That's a common practice for authoritarians, demagogues, etc. They create a crisis and then "solve" it. Which is why they don't do well with surprises they didn't create and can't control, like Covid and Ukrainian resistance to Russia.
my concern is not the expertise or competence of patel, but the non-FBI directors in the background advising him of the steps to take and the departments to destroy. I'm sure P25 and it's authors have something to say on this...
Great bio on Patel, Lucian. With 7 weeks to go until inauguration I’ve been thinking that Trump is looking like the lamest of lame ducks. He’s already had one cabinet pick shot down and I can’t believe that 4 Republican senators aren’t going to get their backs up and vote down a couple more if they get that far.
Trump left the first time with 29% approval. He’s a lock to finish below that in a second term. Just like 2016, he’d have been better off losing and we’d be better off if he’d lost.
RIght! The whole lame duck thing keeps hope alive for me. Supposedly, the window for anything getting done is the first 18 months and if you're a lame duck it's probably even less. Senators serve for 6 years, so they have an incentive to oppose Drumpf's insane proposals and cabinet appointments.
Isn't it possible the Senate will refuse to confirm Patel? He isn't the only "sniveling fool" (as Lucian says) in D.C., but perhaps enough enlightened senators will vote against him. Yes?
Sorry for this long post, but in response to your newsletter I came across this most interesting essay from a 16th century philosopher - LaBoetie. Applicable? I'd say yes, definitely!
Discourse on Voluntary Servitude: Why People Enslave Themselves to Authority.
“How does it happen that an entire nation suffers under a single tyrant?
People suffer plundering, wantonness, cruelty on account of a single little man. Too frequently this same little man is the most cowardly in the nation, a stranger to the powder of battle and hesitant on the sands of the tournament, and with hardly enough virility to bed with a common woman. Who could really believe that one man alone may mistreat millions and deprive them of their liberty?
The answer? We let ourselves be deprived before our own eyes of the best part of our liberties. This misfortune, this ruin descends upon us not from alien foes but from the one enemy whom we ourselves render as powerful as he is.
The more a tyrant pillages, the more he craves, the more he ruins and destroys. And the more we yield to him and obey him, the mightier and more formidable he becomes, the readier he is to annihilate and destroy us.
But if not one thing is yielded to him, if without any violence he is simply not obeyed, he becomes naked and undone and nothing, just as when the root receives no nourishment, the branch withers and dies.
He has indeed nothing more than the power that we confer upon him to destroy us.
He does not have any power over us except through us.
Let’s not grow accustomed to the idea of subjection.
Let’s not lose warlike courage, all signs of enthusiasm because our hearts are degraded, submissive, and incapable of any great deed. A tyrant is well aware of this, and in order to degrade his subjects further, he will do what he can for us to assume this attitude and make instinctive.
The tyrant may reduce our freedom of action, of speech, and almost of thought, but in spite of this we will stand together in our aspiration. Our love for liberty and valor will not perish.
The desire for True Liberty must give us new strength. Not the notion of ‘liberty’ that is used to cover a false enterprise.
If things are to change, we must also realize the extent to which the foundation of tyranny lies in the vast networks of corrupted people with an interest in maintaining tyranny.
Such men must not only obey orders, they must anticipate his wishes, to satisfy him they must foresee his desires; they must wear themselves out, torment themselves, kill themselves with work in his interest, and accept his pleasure as their own, neglecting their preference for his, distorting their character and corrupting their nature; they must pay heed to his words, to his intonation, to his gestures, and to his glance. Can this be called a happy life? Can it be called living? Is there anything more intolerable than that situation … for anyone having the face of a man?
Still, men accept servility in order to acquire wealth and personal power.
The fact is that the tyrant is never truly loved, nor does he love.
There can be no friendship where there is cruelty, where there is disloyalty, where there is injustice. And in places where the wicked gather there is conspiracy only, not companionship. They have no affection for one another. Fear holds them together. They are not friends, they are merely accomplices.
We simply will give the tyrant nothing.
We will not weaken ourselves in order to make him the stronger and the mightier to hold us in check.
We are resolved to serve him no more and aim to regain your freedom.
We will simply no longer support him.
Like the great Colossus whose pedestal has been pulled way, he will fall of this own weight and break into pieces.”
Spent entirely too much of my working life dealing with little shits like Patel. Glad I'm retired and don't have to hear or see any of them ever again. Patel will fuck up so royally that he'll end up quitting or being forced out in disgrace, assuming of course that he is confirmed. He may be too much for even for the Senate to swallow.
I strongly believe it was the announcement of Patel that led Biden to pardon Hunter tonight. Seeing who trmp wants to put in control of law and order telegraphs his intentions to continue the harassment of his son. Insanity.
President Biden to his credit called out the bull manure.
Anyone else would have been allowed to plead to a gross misdemeanor. Because his last name was Biden he had to be turned into a felon.
Hunter Biden is far from perfect. I always thought he was too good of a lawyer for his own good.
Anyway I am glad that President Biden essentially gave Trump and his minions the middle digit.
It was OK for Ford to pardoned Nixon. Nixon was as bad as Trump only he was smarter. Can you mage twenty year,s under a trump for a not legal gun. Did he, Biden shoot anyone, while trump has told kill those who protested. Patel who in the world are you?
Given my feelings about the browbeating of the nyt around here I hate to bring this up, but the stories the paper has posted so far Sunday night tut-tut about the pardon without a word about the context—the big liar's scandalous past pardons and promises of worse, and the fury of his threats of revenge. Hunter is a jerk and Joe is doing the right thing.
The NYT would tut-tut and shake their finger about anything they can possibly put some negative spin on--and even anything they can't.
Great news. I missed that pardon!
No question, but I suspect it's been on the president's mind ever since Trump won the election. If Harris-Walz had won, he wouldn't even have considered it.
You reminded me that this slug worked for the moronic Devin Nunes, who I enjoyed drawing as a cow for months out here in Sacramento.
Patel IS the Cow
Nah…Patel is something else…Cow’s have a purpose!
Patel is the person that the Intelligence community should sabotage, sue, and subvert.
Perfectly put!
We like cute cows. We don't like uncute Devin Nunes. Therefore uncute Devin is not a cute cow.
Was that you?! 👌🏼
I wish I were that clever.
I appreciate your knowledge of how the FBI works, Lucian. Helps with my anxiety.
It’s like we’re watching a parade of people competing for the title “Toady Du Jour”. I recommend a calendar highlighting them. I’d buy it.
It would have to be a calendar with at least 60 months: Conway, Giuliani, Gaetz, Graham, Boebert, Jordan, Christie, Pence, Vance, Patel, Rubio, Wiles, Bondi, RFK, Jr; Stefanik, Holman, Noem, Kushner, Kushner, Kushner, McConnell, Roberts, Alito, Gorsuch, Barrett, Thomas, Thomas, Miller, Gabbard, Huckabee, Huckabee Sanders. There are dozens more, but I need to take my anti-nausea meds.
I think there should be a fold out of Melania getting in that plane with her stupid ass coat reading “I don’t care, do you?” to visit the enclosures filled with immigrant families.
Donalds going to appointment Melina as ambassador to Russia
KGB SPY RETURNS HOME
👍👍
Hmm, a five year calendar...
Ellen, we could go for an 8-year calendar (2 terms as president), and I bet we'd still need more pages. More names keep popping up in my head ....
Yes, you left out Greene and Cannon. I think I'd take out Pence...
OMG!
That's a great idea. It could be a real moneymaker in certain states.
But would you want to keep a calendar filled with traitors and toadies in your home?
Dartboard.
We’d need to have a fireplace, true…
It’s definitely Toady Bingo out there.
oh, yuck. why would you want to look at those lickspittles, scum-suckers and arse-kissers more than absolutely necessary. if anything, perhaps the names on a bingo-like scorecard to mark off when they do something predictable (as they do constantly).
I grew up with a black marker in hand to modify anyone’s face in a magazine..blacking out teeth was a junior varsity move….
I've been doing a variation on that myself--in the grocery store and pharmacy, every time I see magazines with Rump's ugly phiz on it, I casually sidle over and turn every one of them upside down and faced in from the public. I'm not especially proud of doing so, you understand, but it is satisfying in a junior high sort of way.
😂😂😂
my worry is mainly about national security. SO many snivelers heading into 2.0 administration are going to be dreadful security risks, either through guile or abject stupidity: loose lips sinking ships. Patel will vet whoever Donnybrook wants.
And it is not so much that fear of actually someone selling secrets--though that could well be the culture of any trump admin. It is more the unwillingness of our allies to share ANYTHING with us--that's a problem with Gabbard that is just exacerbated by Patel. Sure, America First, but also America Isolated, with no clue what other countries have detected as serious threats coming at us.
Susan, you make a good point - our allies will (once again) severely limit sharing any intel with the Administration knowing Trump and his ass-lickers will likely pass the info along to Trump's benefactor: Vladimir Putin
One scenario I can think of: Assad is aware of or even participating in another attack like 9/11. Another intelligence agency in the area becomes aware of it. Anyone going to let good buddy Gabbard know, in case she squeals the source?
Assad’s army is weak and that was just proven with Syrian rebels taking Aleppo airport and the city, itself. They have met little resistance and that is because Hezbollah and pro-Iranian forces have been taken down a few notches. Let’s see if Tulsi runs to Assad’s rescue.
true. Actually all the more reason for plotting some terrorist attack against the Great Satan, actually. I'm not talking the army.
Let's not go down the doom and gloom road. Keep positive. Usually our imaginations are much worse than reality.
I believe limiting intell by our allies has already been discussed. They can afford to take a chance on us. We will truly be isolated; but again, this is the plan I firmly believe.
Um...make that: 'Patel will PRETEND to vet whomever' the bronzed bloviating baffoon wants.
Oh, he'll vet. He'll have an agent put in a call to the target's mother and call it done. Will, however, skip that step with Hegseth.
She apologized to him the day after she sent the email and berated the media for publishing it.
nevertheless, she wrote it. That kind of thing doesn’t happen accidentally, It is obviously possible to speak the truth and still love your kid. The media wouldn’t never have bothered or even looked for it had not he been so unqualified. THAT is what I object to with H, as a practical matter—no clue what he is supposed to be doing. His sex life palls in comparison to that, except to point out, Deus Vult, that hypocrites rarely make good decisions.
Excellent description of a very small and empty man
This post plus Biden pardoning Hunter made my day. I think and hope that this description of long time government professional staff will apply in other agencies as well. Doesn't take a law or accounting degree to slow roll, obfuscate, produce nonsense, etc.
I think, perhaps, you underestimate Patel’s ability to create chaos with his incompetence, which is precisely what *Rump wants in all the federal departments. That permits them to claim those departments are all useless, and that he’s ‘gonna fix it’. Create a fake problem, propose a fake solution, and then take credit for having solved it. Pure *Rump bullshit.
That's a common practice for authoritarians, demagogues, etc. They create a crisis and then "solve" it. Which is why they don't do well with surprises they didn't create and can't control, like Covid and Ukrainian resistance to Russia.
my concern is not the expertise or competence of patel, but the non-FBI directors in the background advising him of the steps to take and the departments to destroy. I'm sure P25 and it's authors have something to say on this...
Why am I not surprised.
Welcome to the Banana Republic of Amerika
We've been here before. Or in the South, you could call it Amerikkka. Does that bring back any memories?
Does Patel know he'll be working with mostly Mormons? Latter Day Saints tend to be incorruptible when it comes to law and order.
Great bio on Patel, Lucian. With 7 weeks to go until inauguration I’ve been thinking that Trump is looking like the lamest of lame ducks. He’s already had one cabinet pick shot down and I can’t believe that 4 Republican senators aren’t going to get their backs up and vote down a couple more if they get that far.
Trump left the first time with 29% approval. He’s a lock to finish below that in a second term. Just like 2016, he’d have been better off losing and we’d be better off if he’d lost.
RIght! The whole lame duck thing keeps hope alive for me. Supposedly, the window for anything getting done is the first 18 months and if you're a lame duck it's probably even less. Senators serve for 6 years, so they have an incentive to oppose Drumpf's insane proposals and cabinet appointments.
Isn't it possible the Senate will refuse to confirm Patel? He isn't the only "sniveling fool" (as Lucian says) in D.C., but perhaps enough enlightened senators will vote against him. Yes?
To expect there is that level of courage in the Senate is to believe the sun rises in the west every morning.
Oh please, the Senate denying most of these arselingtons is how I am able to get up in the morning.
Sorry for this long post, but in response to your newsletter I came across this most interesting essay from a 16th century philosopher - LaBoetie. Applicable? I'd say yes, definitely!
Discourse on Voluntary Servitude: Why People Enslave Themselves to Authority.
“How does it happen that an entire nation suffers under a single tyrant?
People suffer plundering, wantonness, cruelty on account of a single little man. Too frequently this same little man is the most cowardly in the nation, a stranger to the powder of battle and hesitant on the sands of the tournament, and with hardly enough virility to bed with a common woman. Who could really believe that one man alone may mistreat millions and deprive them of their liberty?
The answer? We let ourselves be deprived before our own eyes of the best part of our liberties. This misfortune, this ruin descends upon us not from alien foes but from the one enemy whom we ourselves render as powerful as he is.
The more a tyrant pillages, the more he craves, the more he ruins and destroys. And the more we yield to him and obey him, the mightier and more formidable he becomes, the readier he is to annihilate and destroy us.
But if not one thing is yielded to him, if without any violence he is simply not obeyed, he becomes naked and undone and nothing, just as when the root receives no nourishment, the branch withers and dies.
He has indeed nothing more than the power that we confer upon him to destroy us.
He does not have any power over us except through us.
Let’s not grow accustomed to the idea of subjection.
Let’s not lose warlike courage, all signs of enthusiasm because our hearts are degraded, submissive, and incapable of any great deed. A tyrant is well aware of this, and in order to degrade his subjects further, he will do what he can for us to assume this attitude and make instinctive.
The tyrant may reduce our freedom of action, of speech, and almost of thought, but in spite of this we will stand together in our aspiration. Our love for liberty and valor will not perish.
The desire for True Liberty must give us new strength. Not the notion of ‘liberty’ that is used to cover a false enterprise.
If things are to change, we must also realize the extent to which the foundation of tyranny lies in the vast networks of corrupted people with an interest in maintaining tyranny.
Such men must not only obey orders, they must anticipate his wishes, to satisfy him they must foresee his desires; they must wear themselves out, torment themselves, kill themselves with work in his interest, and accept his pleasure as their own, neglecting their preference for his, distorting their character and corrupting their nature; they must pay heed to his words, to his intonation, to his gestures, and to his glance. Can this be called a happy life? Can it be called living? Is there anything more intolerable than that situation … for anyone having the face of a man?
Still, men accept servility in order to acquire wealth and personal power.
The fact is that the tyrant is never truly loved, nor does he love.
There can be no friendship where there is cruelty, where there is disloyalty, where there is injustice. And in places where the wicked gather there is conspiracy only, not companionship. They have no affection for one another. Fear holds them together. They are not friends, they are merely accomplices.
We simply will give the tyrant nothing.
We will not weaken ourselves in order to make him the stronger and the mightier to hold us in check.
We are resolved to serve him no more and aim to regain your freedom.
We will simply no longer support him.
Like the great Colossus whose pedestal has been pulled way, he will fall of this own weight and break into pieces.”
Absolutely Spot-on, Bea! Thank you for sharing this!
There is nothing new under the sun. Even DJT.
Excellent!
Thanks, Lucian, for perfect prose, proving it's "P" as in Patel and putz. (End of bilabial plosives.)
Spent entirely too much of my working life dealing with little shits like Patel. Glad I'm retired and don't have to hear or see any of them ever again. Patel will fuck up so royally that he'll end up quitting or being forced out in disgrace, assuming of course that he is confirmed. He may be too much for even for the Senate to swallow.
He reminds me of George Santos!
LOL. But so much worse, and so bug-eyed crazy.