Month: June 2024

Voters are just clueless about reality

From Judd Legum:

In a speech in Nevada on Sunday, Trump said that Venezuela “took all of their criminals, and they dumped them into a place called the United States of America.” Trump claimed that soon, America would be more dangerous than Venezuela “unless you make me President, in which case, we’ll be very safe.” A press release by Trump’s campaign on June 9 claimed that Biden had failed to reduce “high crime rates.” 

Trump’s claims are being repeated by other Republicans running for office. “Since Joe Biden took office, crime has skyrocketed across our country,” Congresswoman Nancy Mace (R-SC) posted on X. In a Facebook ad, Rick Becker, a Republican Congressional candidate in North Dakota, claims that “[v]iolent crime rates are through the roof.”

According to a recent poll by The Economist, 63% of American voters say crime is a very important issue. (Another 28% say it is a somewhat important issue.) Criticisms by Trump and other Republicans appear to be breaking through. Only 33% of Americans approve of Biden’s handling of crime, and 52% disapprove.  

But while Trump’s rhetoric on crime might be effective, it is not true. 

New data released this week by the FBI reveals that both violent crime and property crime have dropped precipitously this year. The data, which is subject to revision, compares crime in the first quarter of 2024 with crime in the first quarter of 2023. It shows substantial drops in every category, including murder (-26.4%), rape (-25.7%), robbery (-17.8%), and property crime (-15.1%).

I’ve seen reports on cable today about this but I’d imagine it’s going to be a one day news cycle. But I’ve also noticed that on Next Door there is also a LOT less bitching about crime in our neighborhood. It was endless a year ago at this time along with relentless harping on the homeless. And to be honest, there was a lot of homelessness in our neighborhood. It’s much, much less today and the crime seems to have abated to normal levels at least. (This is a big city, after all.)

I don’t know if this changes the politics of all this. Lived reality doesn’t seem to have much effect on that. The country’s sour mood may not yet be fading. But actual crime certainly is and it will catch up to people sooner or later. Let’s just hope it’s not too late.

If you think wind prices are high now….

Andy Borowitz:

Marjorie Taylor Greene Warns That Windmills Will Drive up Cost of Wind

LAS VEGAS (The Borowitz Report)—Speaking at a campaign rally on Thursday, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene warned that plans to build more wind turbines in the US would “send wind prices through the roof.”

“If you think you’re paying a lot for wind now, just wait until Biden starts building all the windmills he wants,” she said. “Joe Biden is coming for your wind!”

Painting a dark picture of the havoc wind power will wreak on the American consumer, she said, “It’s simple economics. If you have ten windmills, wind will cost ten times as much.”

In her most dire prediction, she declared, “Mark my words: You will be paying four dollars for a gallon of wind.”

The sad thing is, the Borowitz quotes are plausible (Futurism):

At a Sunday rally for former reality TV star and current presidential candidate Donald Trump, far-right Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene attempted to dunk on electric vehicles, arguing that — well, it’s hard to say what she was arguing, exactly. But rest assured, she doesn’t like ’em!

“If you think gas prices are high now, just wait until you’re forced to drive an electric vehicle,” Greene told rally-goers, who, after a brief pause, began to boo in agreement.

“America is sick of it,” she added.

“You can’t make this crap up,” responded novelist Stephen King. He’s made a fortune making up crap not nearly as scary as Greene.

But while many mocked Greene’s words, we should note that a sizeable amount of the internet referenced that aforementioned conspiracy as they flocked to support the congresswoman.

“Of course they’re raising gas prices as an ‘incentive’ to buy a shitty EV,” another netizen wrote in response to King’s denouncement, further claiming that the alleged incentivization plot is connected to a still-in-pilot-testing California effort to tax gas and electric drivers on miles driven, as opposed to a tax on fuel usage.

When MTG is on your flight pic.twitter.com/xbCGhdZrwG

— The Daily Show (@TheDailyShow) June 13, 2024

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You’re carefully taught

It’s a common enough appeal. Common sense. So why is common sense so uncommon? Invoking common sense is often intended to quash inquiry, not stimulate it. Common sense. Game over.

Earth is flat. It’s common sense. You have to produce an ID to get on an airplane. You should have to present one to vote. Remember when it was common, if not common sense, under Jim Crow to ask Black people to guess the number of jelly beans in a jar or recite the Preamble to the Constitution before they could vote?

It’s always something (Bolts Magazine):

In late May, the GOP-controlled New Hampshire legislature adopted a bill that would require people to present their birth certificate, passport, or naturalization papers proving their U.S. citizenship in order to register to vote, with no exceptions. That would be a major departure from longstanding New Hampshire law that allows people to sign sworn affidavits as a substitute if they don’t have proof of citizenship when they register to vote. 

It’s already a crime to register if you are ineligible. It’s already a crime to vote if you are ineligible. But we need to make it crimier. Common sense.

Under current New Hampshire law, voters are asked to provide proof of identity and age (usually a driver’s license), proof that they live where they want to vote, and proof of citizenship (either a birth certificate or a passport) in order to be able to register and vote. Less than half of Americans have a passport, and a new study by the Brennan Center found that nine percent of Americans don’t have any proof of citizenship readily available. The current law in New Hampshire allows people to sign a sworn affidavit attesting that they’re telling the truth about their citizenship and residency. Roughly 6,000 people used affidavits in the 2016 election cycle.

A wave of such bills are in legislative pipelines across the country ever since Donald Trump claimed he lost the popular vote in 2016 to Hillary Clinton because noncitizens (Mexicans in California) were voting by the millions. The truth is that noncitizen voting is “vanishingly rare.” But Trump could not have lost. Common sense said others must have cheated.

I suppose it was a string of tweets that inspired the “common sense” question.

Users replied with this clip, others replied with memes.

Talking to the Libertarian candidate for president. pic.twitter.com/M3NA29K2i6

— The Good Liars (@TheGoodLiars) June 10, 2024

For some reason, I woke up on Wednesday with “You’ve Got To Be Carefully Taught” from South Pacific playing in my head.

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The Supremes Have It, Why Not Trump?

If you wonder why Alito and Thomas are basically telling the whole country “I do what I want” and daring anyone to try and do anything about it, here’s why:

Sen. Lindsey Graham, the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee, plans to block an effort by Senate Democrats to unanimously pass a Supreme Court ethics bill Wednesday on the Senate floor.

“I will object,” Graham, R-S.C., told NBC News.

Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill., who chairs the Judiciary Committee, said earlier Tuesday that he would make a unanimous consent request to pass Supreme Court ethics legislation that the panel advanced last July.

Graham’s objection means the bill won’t be able to move forward, because any senator can block a request.

It isn’t clear whether the measure will come up for a vote under the normal process, but Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said he’s considering it.

Even before Graham made his comments, Democrats doubted the legislation would advance. “I think I know the outcome, but we’re going to go through the exercise to make sure that both parties are in the record,” Durbin told reporters Tuesday afternoon.

The Democratic-led Judiciary Committee advanced the Supreme Court Ethics, Recusal, and Transparency Act on a party-line vote nearly a year ago, but it can’t break a filibuster on the Senate floor without 60 votes. Democrats have 51 members, and no Republican is on board with the bill.

In a news release, Democrats said the vote follows “a myriad of apparent ethical lapses by Supreme Court justices, which demonstrate the need for ethics reform.”

Just as Donald Trump realized that as long as he had the Republican Party backing him he could not be convicted in an impeachment trial, so too have the Supreme Court right wing extremists. They essentially have full immunity from consequences for their corruption. I’ll be surprised if they don’t grant it for Trump for all of his legal problems as well. They have shown their true colors. Immunity from accountability is their new superpower.

Igor Bobic asked Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley about the Hunter Biden verdict:

“In our constitutional system, you gotta rely upon what the judges and juries decide. I’m sorry for the Biden family but people decide what justice is and you got to conclude that justice was done.”

As for whether that applies to the Trump verdict he said “it’s an entirely different thing. The Justice Department was doing everything they could to cover up his tax problems and his gun problems.”

What? Ok.

Sen. John Thune: “Hunter Biden’s not running for any political office. Donald Trump’s running for president. There are all kinds of different dynamics in two totally different cases,” he said. “The clear thing in the (Trump) New York case, I mean, there’s no argument. … This is politically motivated. The prosecutor ran, he got up there, got the job on the predicate of trying to prosecute the former president.”

Sen. Rick Scott: “First, in this case, this is existing law that people have been prosecuted before and they’ve been connected before, and they’ve been sentenced before,” he said. “In the case of (Donald) Trump, they’ve made up something brand new that nobody’s been prosecuted before. And it was complete political persecution.”

“No one’s ever been persecuted the way Trump was persecuted in New York. No one. No one in this country,” he said.

Poor Trump. He is the victim of a politically motivated witch hunt but Hunter Biden who has been mercilessly dogged by right wingers for years is just another case? Sure.

Remember when Marjorie Taylor Greene pulled out pictures of Hunter Biden having sex with prostitutes on the Congress floor? 🤣

MTG rocks! pic.twitter.com/IL24RRYqw2

— 🔥Desiree🔥 (@DesireeAmerica4) May 23, 2024

Meanwhile, here’s Mike Johnson also explaining why it’s “an entirely different thing:”

REPORTER: You talked about the importance of Garland complying with a subpoena. I'm curious since Chairman Jordan and four other colleagues declined under the J6 committee, if you worry that undermines the argument.

MIKE JOHNSON: You talk about apples to oranges … pic.twitter.com/M4vg9QWWtE

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) June 12, 2024

You see, Biden has weaponized the justice system against Trump by making them prosecute his son, a Democratic Senator and a Democratic Congressman to make himself look good and Trump look bad. He’ll sacrifice his party, his family and his country all for the sake of staying in power no matter what.

He is also a drooling old fool who can’rt string two words together but that’s why it’s so diabolical.

If you want to go deep on the Hunter Biden saga, there is only one journalist who has the complete picture and it’s, unsurprisingly, Marcy Wheeler. She’s followed the case in minute detail and what she’s concluded may surprise you.

Get a load of this ridiculous nonsense:

The GOP team’s practice was supposed to start at 6 a.m. But when NOTUS showed up around 5:52, the majority of the team was already on the field, their arms warm and their hamstrings loose. Most were wearing jerseys and gray baseball pants.

The Democrats showed up in combinations of sweatpants, shorts, T-shirts and soccer jerseys. They looked like “The Bad News Bears” at the beginning of the movie. The Republicans look like the rich kids in “The Sandlot” — but with the gear and the game. They look like a real baseball team. The Democrats do not.

As both teams prepare for the annual Congressional Baseball Game — a contest that oscillates between bipartisan goofiness and partisan combat, depending on the Congress — the two teams this year seem to be, if not on different planets, then at least in different leagues.

Republicans are using the game to literally tee off on Democrats. Months of crack-of-dawn practices and buckets full of bruised baseballs can attest to their frustration — a frustration borne out of uncomfortable political realities.

The party is divided. Their majority has dwindled. And their presidential nominee just became a convicted felon.

The year, in short, has been bad. And in the minds of many GOP lawmakers, it’s the Democrats’ fault. It’s Democrats standing in the way of the GOP’s legislative wins. It’s Democrats who joined with eight Republicans to jettison Kevin McCarthy from the speakership. And it’s Democrats who should pay. If Republicans can’t win on the House floor, they can at least win on the baseball diamond.

For Democrats, the game is just that: a game.

“This is, like, the best time of year in all of Congress,” Sánchez, the coach for the Democratic team, tells NOTUS. “Because it’s fun.”

But fun seems to be the last thing on the GOP’s mind.

“It’s a big rivalry. Everybody says [the game is] bipartisan; it’s not really bipartisan,” Rep. Roger Williams, the GOP coach, says. “And with all the stuff that’s happening, this is another way to get after each other.”

“I tell people, go back to your high school days, when you played your biggest rivalry in football,” Williams says. “All you thought about was that, right? At school, you didn’t do your homework, you didn’t study. You’re ready to get out there.”

“It’s the same thing with this,” he says.

One hundred percent concur with JV Last here:

That’s one of the most pathetic things I’ve ever heard a grown many say.

As Last writes, this is happening because the Republicans have gone “0 for the session” in this congress due to their ineptitude and extremism. So they’ve spent their time practicing baseball to own the libs.

But they can’t stop the libs from laughing at them. They’re ridiculous.

Democrats overperform again

Politico reported this morning:

 If last night’s election returns were going to provide any surprises, they weren’t supposed to come out of Ohio’s 6th Congressional District.

In a special election race that got basically zero national attention, Republican state Sen. MICHAEL RULLI was thought certain to rout Democrat MICHAEL KRIPCHAK, a former Air Force officer and once-aspiring actor who quit a Youngstown-area restaurant job to run for Congress.

DONALD TRUMP, after all, had won the blue-collar, mostly rural district previously represented by GOP Rep. BILL JOHNSON by 29 points in 2022. Furthermore, Rulli raised nearly 30 times more than Kripchak’s shoestring budget.

Rulli, in the end, managed only a not-quite-10-point victory over Kripchak — a roughly 20-point swing toward Democrats versus Trump’s 2020 showing. More from AP

With early returns putting the race even closer, our minds immediately turned to SIMON ROSENBERG, the Democratic high priest of hopium, who has counseled anxious Democrats for going on three years now to pay less attention to polls and more attention to how voters actually vote. It paid off big time in 2022, when he was one of the few pundits to predict a GOP midterm fizzle.

We figured this relative Republican bust couldn’t come at a more opportune time for the nervous nellies of the left, who have watched President JOE BIDEN’s poll numbers stagnate for months despite effort after effort to turn things around. So we called Rosenberg up, and he did not disappoint.

“There has been a fairly consistent pattern where Democrats have overperformed expectations, overperformed public polling,” he said. “The single most powerful force in our politics is fear and opposition to MAGA. When the choice of MAGA and other alternatives are presented to voters, MAGA underperforms public polling.”

CNN discussed this today and pooh-poohed it as having any meaning at all. They were especially dismissive of Rosenberg as some kind of left wing crank even as they admitted that he’s been right for several cycles and that Democrats have been over performing since 2020. The consensus is that Trump is a juggernaut when it comes to turnout so he’ll be bringing out hordes of new voters in November. I got the impression that they all think it’s pretty silly to think that the Democrats might be motivated to vote.

I wouldn’t care too much about this (since it’s been their posture since Trump won in 2016 and it hasn’t stopped the Democrats from winning) if it weren’t for the fact that this narrative validates Trump’s insistence that the Biden can’t possibly win unless he steals it. They are helping him set the stage for another pass at declaring the election is rigged by presenting a very tight race as if Trump is dominating. It’s dangerous. And it’s just not factual.

Knee-jerk hysteria does not denote a confident party

President Joe Biden’s son Hunter was found guilty in federal court of failing to properly fill out a form to buy a gun which he had in his possession for 11 days and never fired. Fair enough. What he did was against the law and a jury of his peers found him guilty. The case was solid. Biden was a drug addict back in 2018 at the time of his crime and he should have admitted it on that form. But people in the midst of an addiction crisis make bad decisions and often get on the wrong side of the law.

Hunter Biden’s response to the verdict was to say that he was more grateful for the support of his family, friends and community than he was disappointed in the verdict. And he added “recovery is a gift from God and I am blessed to receive that gift one day at a time.” Joe Biden reiterated that he loves his son and always will and that he is proud of his recovery. He also said that he respects the outcome of the case and the judicial system. Both Bidens were restrained and solemn in the face of a serious legal outcome which, until recently, was simply expected from a president and his family.

Some Democrats and legal observers wondered about the prosecutorial discretion in bringing the case which is very seldom done in circumstances like this,(as did a couple of the jurors) but across the board they all respected the verdict and the judicial system. Nobody threatened anyone or vowed to take vengeance on them. Nobody accused the prosecutors, the judge or the jurors of being corrupt. Nobody said the proceedings were rigged.

Well, actually, a lot of people said it was rigged — but they were all Republicans who simply couldn’t take “guilty” for an answer. You can understand why. They’ve been sobbing and whining and rending their garments for weeks now over the Trump verdict insisting that the Biden DOJ had implemented a two-tiered system of justice to target Republicans, specifically Donald Trump. And here you have that same DOJ prosecuting the president’s only living son over a crime that Republicans insist is a violation of the second amendment. In fact, if it had been anyone else, much less the son of a GOP president, the NRA would have been holding vigils outside the courthouse. If Republicans still required logic and consistency to persuade their voters this whole thing would have been terribly confusing for them. Lucky for them, all they need is lies and demagoguery.

It’s pretty obvious that talking points were prepared in advance considering the uniformity of most of the commentary. The main complaint was that the trial was orchestrated as a “distraction” from the real crimes of the “Biden Crime Family” and the nefarious deeds of the “Big Guy”, President Biden. The same phrases were repeated by one Republican after another. The responses were not quite as hysterical as the ones we were subjected to in the wake of the Trump conviction but they came close:

Trump himself has not made a comment as of late Tuesday night (although he did fire off one of his rambling, disjointed attacks on the Manhattan district attorney and remonstrated against his own conviction. ) But his campaign put out a statement immediately after the verdict:

“This trial has been nothing more than a distraction from the real crimes of the Biden Crime Family, which has raked in tens of millions of dollars from China, Russia and Ukraine. Crooked Joe Biden’s reign over the Biden Family Criminal Empire is all coming to an end on November 5th, and never again will a Biden sell government access for personal profit. As for Hunter, we wish him well in his recovery and legal affairs.”

Minutes later they sent a corrected version striking that last sentence. We don’t know who may have been upset by that small gesture of human decency but it’s not hard to guess.

The fact is that President Biden could have replaced the prosecutor in the case, David Weiss, when he took office as he did all the other US Attorneys, which is customary at the beginning of any new administration. He could have ordered the case be withdrawn or he could have pre-emptively pardoned his son. He did not do it so as to avoid any appearance of conflict and to allow the Justice Department to maintain its independence as it has been tasked to do for the past half century. He didn’t do it out of respect for the rule of law, something that the Republicans under Trump have completely abandoned, not that they ever had a surfeit of it to begin with.

Taking a page from their leader’s political manual, right wing media and GOP officials at every level have adopted a manic, overwrought posture that’s verging on demented. Obviously, it’s hard for them to rationalize this guilty verdict in light of their recent frenzied insistence that Biden is rigging the judicial system to take down Trump but you’d think they would have at least tried to maintain a tiny bit of dignity. But then, they’ve completely abandoned any pretense of that as well, haven’t they?

According to the NY Times, the Trump campaign is disappointed in the guilty verdict because they thought it was going to be a fundraising bonanza for them if Hunter Biden was acquitted. Even their loyal followers aren’t likely to open their wallets over an alleged two-tiered system that just convicted the president’s beloved son on federal gun charges. How disappointing for them.

Having convinced themselves that Joe Biden is a basket case, they were doubtless even more disappointed that he didn’t break down as they expected him to do. Immediately after the verdict was reached Biden gave a scheduled speech before gun safety advocates (a coincidence since they couldn’t know the verdict would come down at the same time.) He was composed, professional and strong despite the fact that he was talking about the pain of losing loved ones and had to emotionally grapple with the fact that his troubled son was facing even more challenges to his sobriety, something that any parent dreads.

All the Republicans got was this:

President Biden hugs son Hunter Biden when he sees him for the first time after the verdict. pic.twitter.com/Utj4JIGawb

— Mike Sington (@MikeSington) June 11, 2024

Normal people find that to be a sign of love and empathy. The MAGA cult sees it as a sign of weakness. They are wrong.

Salon

The return of Sinclair’s Mighty Wurlitzer

Public Notice and Judd Legum’s Popular Information assembled another stew of cookie-cutter commentaries from right-wing Sinclair Broadcasting’s local talking heads. Sinclair repackaged talking points from the Wall Street Journal’s widely panned June 4 article, “Behind Closed Doors, Biden Shows Signs of Sipping,” questioning Joe Biden’s mental fitness. The sourcing is questionable. Conveniently, repetition obliterates questions:

Nevertheless, the Wall Street Journal piece was repackaged by Sinclair Broadcast Group and beamed into the homes of millions of Americans. Sinclair, which is controlled by right-wing media mogul David Smith, owns or operates 185 local television stations across 86 markets. 

Sinclair repackaged the Wall Street Journal story through its centralized news team, known as The National Desk. The segment was then pushed to dozens of local news stations owned by Sinclair. Local anchors introduced the piece by reading from a nearly identical script. Again and again, the anchors say that the Wall Street Journal is “out with new reporting calling into question the mental fitness of President Joe Biden,” adding that the issue “could be an election decider.”

Watch:

By deploying this message across its 185 local stations, Sinclair acts as an effective distribution vector for right-wing propaganda.

A 2018 study published in the American Political Science Review found that stations purchased by Sinclair increase “coverage of national politics at the expense of local politics” and undergo “a significant rightward shift in the ideological slant of coverage.” 

Delivering right-wing attacks on Biden’s mental fitness under the guise of “local news” is an extremely powerful tactic. While many Americans are distrustful of the national media, 71% believe that local news is accurate, including 78% of Democrats and 66% of Republicans. 

You’ve seen this 1984-ish telescreen tactic before:

How America's largest local TV owner turned its news anchors into soldiers in Trump's war on the media: https://t.co/iLVtKRQycL pic.twitter.com/dMdSGellH3

— Deadspin (@Deadspin) March 31, 2018

Great. Now news outlets will report the controversy. Morning Joe did a segment on the Sinclair spin today.

Judd Legum this morning posts a short thread on public misperceptions around crime and cites lack of coverage of falling crime figures as one possible cause. But one wonders how much Sinclair’s coordinated misinformation contributes.

1. More than 75% of Americans believe that crime is INCREASING

Yesterday, the FBI released statistics that after a dramatic decline in 2023, crime is was down again in the first quarter of 2024:

Murder: -26.4%
Rape: -25.7%
Robbery: -17.8%
Property crime: -15.1%

This week, the… pic.twitter.com/JNsYpCvq0v

— Judd Legum (@JuddLegum) June 12, 2024

“This week, the @nytimes published 18 STORIES on Hunter Biden’s trial and ZERO STORIES on the new FBI crime stats,” Legum writes under “Show more.”

3. REALITY

2023: Violent crime and property crime dropped significantly

2022: Violent crime drops; property crime increases slightly but remains near a 30-year low

2021: Violent crime and property crime are flat

Yet most Americans believe we are living through a crime wave

— Judd Legum (@JuddLegum) June 12, 2024

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Oreos, beer, snack food and sedition

How gullible do Donald Trump’s footmen think his #MAGA base is? Pretty gullible, judging by their latest conspiracy theory regarding Hunter Biden’s three felony convictions. And conservatives claim it’s liberals looking down their noses at them.

CNN:

In the wake of Hunter Biden’s conviction on federal gun charges Tuesday, right-wing media personalities sought to downplay the jury’s decision, falsely claiming the case was a “fake trial” designed to “cover up” other supposed crimes committed by the president and his family.

The reaction showcased how far to the fringes the right-wing and pro-Trump media ecosystem has drifted in recent years, with high-profile personalities defaulting to conspiracy theories and innuendo in response to inconvenient political news.

CNN has a side by side comparison of Fox host reactions after the Donald Trump verdict vs after the Hunter Biden verdict pic.twitter.com/ZvS8ew0dB4

— Acyn (@Acyn) June 12, 2024

Via Greg Sargent at The New Republic:

“Hunter Biden guilty. Yawn,” tweeted MAGA thought leader Charlie Kirk. “The true crimes of the Biden Crime Family remain untouched. This is a fake trial trying to make the Justice system appear ‘balanced.’ Don’t fall for it.”

“The gun charges are a giant misdirection,” added Stephen Miller. He added that the verdict is an easy opportunity for the Justice Department to hoodwink “a pliant media that is all too willing to be duped. Don’t be gaslit. This is all about protecting Joe Biden and only Joe Biden.”

Yes, the people whose 24-7-365 propaganda made “gaslighting” Merriam-Webster’s word of the year in 2022 warn MAGA cultists against being seduced by the lies of devilish nonbelievers. The truth is what Dear Leader declares it (The National Desk):

The Trump campaign released a statement to CNN saying, “This trial has been nothing more than a distraction from the real crimes of the Biden Crime Family, which has raked in tens of millions of dollars from China, Russia and Ukraine. Crooked Joe Biden’s reign over the Biden Family Criminal Empire is all coming to an end on November 5th, and never again will a Biden sell government access for personal profit. As for Hunter, we wish him well in his recovery and legal affairs.”

The media outlet pointed out that Trump’s campaign then sent an updated statement “striking the well wishes to Hunter.”

Ever the sore winner, Donald Trump with his 34 felony convictions sneers at Hunter’s three and alleges fraud in the counting. (Not yet, but give him time.)

Everything is rigged against Trump is a cornerstone of the MAGA faith. Trump may have bent the rules a bit, promoted a little violent sedition. He had to smite the Left for God and country and to stop the steal. But Joe Biden is the Devil incarnate. The Devil issued this statement upon his son’s conviction:

As I said last week, I am the President, but I am also a Dad. Jill and I love our son, and we are so proud of the man he is today. So many families who have had loved ones battle addiction understand the feeling of pride seeing someone you love come out the other side and be so strong and resilient in recovery. As I also said last week, I will accept the outcome of this case and will continue to respect the judicial process as Hunter considers an appeal. Jill and I will always be there for Hunter and the rest of our family with our love and support. Nothing will ever change that,” the president said in a statement provided to The National Desk.

Sargent again:

The enormous contortions required to portray the justice system as rigged at every turn show yet again that pretty much everything the MAGA right is saying about these matters is about laying a pretext for Trump, once back in office, to launch prosecutions of Biden and Democrats without cause, under the guise of tit-for-tat payback for something that wasn’t actually done to Trump and his followers. As I’ve argued, Trump and his MAGA allies relentlessly claim that he will seek “revenge” and exact “retribution” with such prosecutions, to reverse-engineer the deceptive impression that Trump was the victim of what he is threatening, i.e. prosecutions without a legitimate basis.

The MAGA media stars promoting law enforcement-as-conspiracy nonsense know what they’re selling is as phony as the penis pills and dietary supplement ads that pay their salaries. Is it propaganda? Yes. It’s also pandering, pandering to people they believe are gullible enough to think they are sincere and to buy their shit.

Jon Stewart on Monday’s “The Daily Show” roasted “hollow corporate pandering” behind campaigns promoting Gay Pride month, DEI programs, and whatever social movement is popular this month to sell Oreos, beer, and snack foods. Only until those pressures subside.

“So, they are very clearly conflicted between the very high moral values that they think we want and the amoral values that serve their shareholders,” Stewart argued. “There is nothing corporations do that is not in service of their bottom line.”

We are conditioned from childhood to consume. The people with something to sell (even sedition) know that and use that, employing the same techniques that treat their followers as uncritical marks, easily led, and too stupid to know it. The right’s bottom line is control.

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