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And there it is — as concise and accurate assessment of our dire plight as I've read, courtesy of the Financial Times writer:

“I’ve covered extremism and violent ideologies around the world over my career. Have never come across a political force more nihilistic, dangerous & contemptible than today’s Republicans. Nothing close.”

May it echo over and over across the nation. If there are any "good" Republicans left in Congress besides Cheney and Kinzinger, they better speak loud and clear in rejecting Trumpism. Or history will remember them as complicit.

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TFG hasn't killed the Cheney dynasty, if it's even worthy of being called such. Liz Cheney hasn't retired from the political scene yet, probably won't. Eric has never shown himself to be anything other than a fool, yet he continues to find a way into the public ear. TFG IS the Trump Organization. It's a private company, and he administered it like the wannabe dictator he attempted to become over the USA. To restrict a civil suit to the organization and not it's owner-operator was a compromise from the start. Nothing happened in that organization without either the impetus or the assent of TFG.

What can conviction yield? Fines, requirements for future external audit/oversight? The company needs to be wiped off the face of the earth. The fines should exceed it's net worth. It's scion needs to be behind bars. It's assets need to be auctioned off with the proceeds going to the US Treasury. Our justice system, on every level, has to demonstrate the courage to ignore his title and conduct itself according to the sum total of his actions pre-, during and post-presidency. Rising to the highest office in the land doesn't change the fact that he's a criminal. It's the height of embarrassment that our nation elected a criminal in spite of overwhelming information accurately predicting his subsequent behavior in office. We need to "cancel" the weight of that decision and it's innoculative effect on the wheels of justice. We need to own and conduct ourselves according to the quote "no man is above the law".

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" Today, conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, who has recently been in the news for his defamation of the parents of a victim of the Sandy Hook shooting, announced on his show that he is switching his support to DeSantis."

With DeSantis you get to keep the MAGA floor show, but you skip all the legal song and dance routines and get a new version of American history forced on our school systems to boot.

DeSantis's new Florida school curriculum training reads like something created by the "Fascist Supreme Court Six." He's trying to train teachers to indoctrinate students with a Christian Nationalist rewriting of the founding of our country. He talked about keeping "woke indoctrination" out of schools in favor of his newly minted rightwing Christian fairytale version of our history: light on actual facts and heavy on pushing the mixing of Christianity and "State" as the "original" intention of our founding fathers, while white washing the sins of slavery. In a post truth political mob like the new Republican fascist party, you can select any facts you desire to start pounding into the country's school children. DeSantis appears to like the Viktor Orban/Vladimir Putin autocratic style of teaching history, i.e. history is whatever he says it was.

I think the J6 Committee and the DOJ plus the Fulton County District Attorney, among others, have started the former president down the drain simply by beginning to hold him accountable for some of his many criminal and anti-American behaviors.

It's now time to start holding Ron DeSantis's feet to the fire of Christian Nationalism that he's been stoking so diligently. Most of America does not want to live in a post-truth country run by cold-hearted autocrats who only care about themselves and their power. We don't want a dictator named Donald and we sure don't want a younger version named Ronald.

https://www.wfla.com/news/politics/florida-curriculum-trainings-show-teachers-how-to-make-students-desirable-citizens/

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Aug 18, 2022·edited Aug 18, 2022

Liz Cheney's speech conceding the primary included a vow to make sure that Trump is never again near the Oval Office. I asked for help finding her full speech because none of the major news outlets showed the full video. Rowshan Nemazee provided the link to the complete video. Thank you Rowshan!

https://youtu.be/sUGArGhLc9k

Also today Robert Reich wrote about the demise of the Republican Party in his SubStack blog. He generously provided a full transcript of the Liz Cheney speech at the end of his blog post. Please share that transcript widely. It looks like the Cheney dynasty ain't dead yet.

https://robertreich.substack.com/p/liz-cheney-and-the-future-of-the?r=dpmrd&s=r&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

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"Have never come across a political force more nihilistic, dangerous & contemptible than today’s Republicans. Nothing close.”

Let's not pretend that today's GOP has sprung full grown from Trump's deviant brain. Most immediately, Trump's Party of Nihilism grew out of McConnell's Party of No - and both are informed by the Evangelical apocalyptic wet dreams of GW Bush's Politics of Faith. And that's just for starts.

Nihilistic, contemptible, dangerous? Newt Gingrich, Dick Cheney ...

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I forget, is Eric Beavis, or is he Butthead?

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Aug 18, 2022·edited Aug 18, 2022

"Last night, my father killed another political dynasty, and that’s the Cheneys. He first killed the Bushes, then he killed the Clintons. Last night he killed the Cheneys.” So Eric Trump, former president Donald Trump’s son, interpreted the primary loss by Representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) last night."

This is, perhaps, one of the most horrifying statements i have heard in my life. I grew up as a child of the 50s and 60s where hope for all, regardless of religion, color, ethnicity was a goal. We sang songs and marched about overcoming and arriving on another shore.Yet here we are in 2022 having an astonishing number of politicians ripping pages of the Constitution into shreds to satisfy the deranged vision of a madman. I am at a loss for words. My heart is in pieces. I am forlorn. Please, do not tell me to have hope, send another text or post card. The brutality of the Trump vision is mortally destructive for us all.

We are at a point where passivity is no longer appropriate. Going high has left us in a mud pit.

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When will Trump set up the Kool-Aid tables for his faithful? There really is no difference between the two narcissistic psychopaths. Eventually it will all come crashing down because I can’t believe the rational Americans will allow our democratic republic to fall. I for one will fight for my country as did my father at Anzio, my uncle at the Battle of the Bulge, my grandfather in France, my cousins in Vietnam and their children in Afghanistan. I admire Liz Cheney being a congresswomen of principle; you don’t see too many of them.

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"Trump’s statement reflects the reality that today’s MAGA crowd rejects the ideology of Reagan’s Republican Party, which was based in the idea—if not the actual execution—that the government must not interfere with markets."

That may apply to the plutocrats who bet on Trump but not the populists who believe him. It may apply to those who funded the operatives - the Manaforts, Stones, and Atwaters - who crafted the Southern Strategy wedge issue politics which brought the GOP back into power, but not the voters it attracted. Personified by Reagan or Trump, the Republican party continues to be about throwing racist voters the sops of god and guns, with the real purpose of relieving the greedy wealthy of equitable taxation and government regulation. The coming together of slave state historic hatred of Federal government and traditional Republican ideological resentment of government in general.

Just as arriviste Trump is parvenu Reagan writ vulgar and writ loud, MAGA is the Party of Reagan without dog whistles and with not only rhetorical and procedural attacks on the federal government but actual armed bloody insurrection. Trump hasn't done anything original, he's merely ratcheted up Republican abuse and put his brand on it. A difference in style not substance. The consummately vulgarian Steve Bannon is not that far removed from the consummately effete William F. Buckley. But when Trumps speak of killing, it can no longer be considered merely rhetorical excess.

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Tonight, I am writing about a little township, within the State of Michigan.

My family and I lived in the eastern part of Michigan for 27 years in a mostly Republican County. The county I was curious about is Ottawa County. Ottawa county is deep-red, with just one Democrat on its 11-member county commission It hasn’t voted for a Democrat for president since 1864, when voters there favored Gen. George McClellan over President Abraham Lincoln. There is a story there of Republicans rejecting other republicans on the County Board because they are not Republican enough.

Within the County of Ottawa is the Township of Jamestown which has a population of ~9,900 people. In the recent primary votes in Michigan, Jamestown decided to defund the library over several books which were alternative lifestyle books. "Gender Queer, A Memoir," and a couple of other books.

The Township voters defeated the millage funding the library for the next fiscal year. In which case they will have to close. One voter voting against the millage stated; "it was “Satan’s goal” to 'groom and indoctrinate children' about 'homosexuality.'” Others said they hoped the library board would listen to “God’s truth.” Not sure what that truth is anymore.

Through unsolicited donations, supporters in and outside the township and the state and nation have raised $140,000 of the $240,000 needed to stay open till the next millage vote. We had similar actions in Livingston County where people were all for banning books like "Catcher in The Rye," "Black Boy," "The Bluest Eye," "The Freedom Writers Diary," etc. Livingston County is the whitest and richest county in the state of Michigan and the most constipated. It was fun discussing the facts with them.

As Prof. Heather states "the Republican Party has now been captured by extremists who reject the principles associated with that party" and might I add the common decency of humanity. Time to push back.

Michigan's Bridge magazine has the story as well as others. Not soliciting here, if you have a couple of loose dollars, I think they may take a donation or two. It is a good fight to win!

https://www.bridgemi.com/michigan-government/defunded-over-lgbtq-books-michigan-library-will-try-tax-again-november

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Among many other firsts for this ex-president, including his various crimes, is his tenacity to stay in the news and keep his name on so many lips, and on so many minds after leaving office. It's as if he is paid every time someone mentions his name. I'm wearied sick of it. And I can't fathom how he is still walking around as a free man. Cheering on the national archivists!

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Why isn't Jones in jail yet? Why isn't junior in jail yet? Why isn't TFG in jail yet? Why did it take more than 1.5 years for DOJ to go after very sensitive TOP SECRET stolen documents.? Why haven't the coup leaders been charged yet? Why are the MAGA mob getting such light sentences? Why did Kushner get $2bn from Saudis? Why? Time's running out.

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A country cannot be well run by stupid, lazy and dishonest people. Problems do not get solved with lies and enriching ones friends while enriching oneself. I imagine there is a contingent of Americans who are accepting of trauma informed living. That is what they get with Trump. Trump knows how to take advantage of those people like all grifters do. I am not someone who subscribes to the idea that all ideas are equally good. The ideas coming out of this party are categorically not. Under Hitler women were supposed to embody Kinder Küche, Kirche KKK, children--rewards for having at least 4, kitchen--your places in the home, and church. https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/zxb8msg/revision/1

This sounds just like what Putin, Orban and the Republican party are standing for. So who really needs denazification?

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Eric’s comment makes me sick to my stomach. The audacity of each of the members of this Trump family is disgusting!

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TFG's sons have learned from their father, and now model him, by making outrageous statements with impunity. They dismiss criticism because they are applauded by the fawning MAGA cultists. Repugnant.

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The Trumps HAVE TO be indicted. ALL of them and their lickspittles. America simply can’t have crooks and charlatans representing the American people. They have to be wholeheartedly brought down, rejected, punished for their rejection of the principles of democracy

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