Notes from the Abundant Atrociousness
Fox host Shannon Bream questions Governor Sanders about her ban on the teaching of Critical Race Theory:
"One of them is called executive order to prohibit indoctrination in critical race theory in school," Bream said. "House Minority leader in Arkansas, a Democrat, says CRT is not being taught in Arkansas schools. Axios backs that up, they said 'reality check,' there's no indication that the college level courses taught in any Arkansas public school. So, if that's true, why the executive order?"
Here come the lies.
"It's incredibly important that we do things to protect the students in our state. We have to make sure that we're not indoctrinating our kids. We should never teach our kids to hate America or that America is a racist and evil country," Sanders said.
Lie, lie, lie!
Who, where, and when are teachers teaching students in Arkansas to hate America?
There are none.
Racism really riles up Republicans so instead of making a choice to stop being racists or supporting racist policies, they've invented their own workaround against it. By making YOU the racist.
"It should be the exact opposite. We know for a fact that the federal department of education issued CRT guidance and policies to every school district in the country," she said.
There are no public schools teaching CRT nor proposing to. GOP influencers keep seizing on this because they simply want a sanitized version of history taught that gives an extremely limited view of slavery and racism in America. GOP politicians do this to appease the racist voters that are part of their base. But some of it is based on their own ignorance of our country’s civil rights history as many have a sanitized view of Martin Luther King, Jr, which was evident in their pronouncements on yesterday’s holiday.
King didn’t urge anyone to hate America either but he was absolutely direct in his condemnation of the choices politicians made.
Meanwhile, fresh reports about the strange ex-president…
Details of his deposition in the trial E. Jean Carroll has against him reveal the strange ex-president claimed she said ‘rape is sexy’, then he claimed a publisher paid her to lie, verbally attacked President Biden and also threatened to sue her and her attorney. The guy has no filter, just a ‘catatonic’ converter, missing some copper. The trial is set to begin in April.
In New Mexico, where several Democrats got multiple bullets fired into their houses in 6 attacks around Christmas, police arrested a guy who ran for office, was defeated by 47 points then claimed election fraud. Yes, of course, the guy’s a Republican.
”Solomon Peña is accused of conspiring with and paying four other men to shoot at the homes of two county commissioners and two state legislators, Albuquerque Police Chief Harold Medina said. He was arrested after a brief standoff with a police SWAT team.”
Back to the strange ex-president…
”Even after nearly 1,000 Capitol rioters have been charged with crimes, Donald Trump hailed them this week as “great patriots” and their prison terms “a disgrace.”
But he also insisted that “virtually nothing happened” during the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, so it was apparently no big deal.
The former president was asked on the far-right cable program “Real America’s Voice” on Friday to say a few words to lift the spirits of the “political prisoners” behind bars in the “gulag.”
“I think it’s a disgrace what’s been happening,” Trump responded. “So many of these people are great patriots, and what they’ve gone through. Then you look at antifa and BLM [Black Lives Matter]. You look at what’s gone on there, with what they’ve done in all sorts of places over the last ... two years, where they’ve burned down cities.”
However, no cities have been burned down by Black Lives Matter or antifa activists.
With a name like ‘Real America’s Voice’ the radio program’s making it clear that they don’t consider the majority of voters to be real Americans, so I guess they’ll soon be calling them Velveteen voters.
Trump’s been having daily hissy fits lately with the posse closing in. He also attacked evangelical leaders for disloyalty, blaming them for the poor midterm showing.
Examples of how unhinged his recent rantings are:
Clarification: there is no one prosecuting Biden. There is a newly appointed Special Counsel assigned to look at the documents found at his home and an office elsewhere to determine how the documents got there, who had access to them, whether their return was properly handled and whether any criminal actions occurred.
His attack on Jack Smith, the DOJ prosecutor appointed as a Special Counsel to investigate Trump’s documents handling and his actions around the insurrection, is unusual for normal politicians. Smith only began investigating this month, has no record of public pronouncements about Trump, and has a previous record of prosecuting Democratic and Republican officeholders plus war criminals in the 1997-98 Kosovo War.
Smith’s wife is a documentary producer who produced one film about Dark Money in American politics and one about Michelle Obama’s book tour. She donated to Biden’s 2020 campaign and when he won, tweeted ‘Thank God.’ That’s it for the pair that Trump defines as Radical, Lunatic, Trump hating, spewing TRUMP HATE, etc.
Another:
And a Freedom Caucus supporter had to add his two cents:
Jill Biden stays out of the political fray, showing up as Joe’s spouse, so the claim that she’s compromised is blather and very weak theater.
Trump also lost a lawsuit last week filed by a 2016 campaign staffer who sought to void a non-disclosure agreement she signed back then. Her lawsuit became a class action suit, and Jessica Denson’s win means all the NDAs signed by any 2016 campaign staff are null and void, as well. Are there more revelations ahead?
The Georgia special grand jury investigating Trump’s efforts to overturn that state’s results in 2020 has completed its work and it’s now up to the state’s AG to determine if they found evidence of prosecutable crimes. So it’s understandable if Trump’s feeling besieged.
Trying to sort out a likely timeline for these multiple legal issues - since he can’t appear in multiple courts simultaneously - I’m looking for something like this:
Current: Proud Boys prosecution for insurrection in progress already.
Feb/Mar: Georgia seats a regular grand jury to follow up on the work of the special grand jury that finished on Jan 9th. More subpoenas and testimony.
April: E. Jean Carroll’s lawsuit(s)
May/June: Georgia prosecution begins after a grand jury indictment.
July and after: the DOJ lawsuit.
Smith’s already issued subpoenas, including one to Rudy Giuliani. I consider it likely that Roger Stone, Steve Bannon, Ali Alexander, Alex Jones, Mark Meadows and other Trump lawyers will receive subpoenas and be questioned by Smith through Spring, as all were involved on January 5th or 6th, or earlier, in efforts to challenge the election results in AZ, GA, MI, PA or WI.
It makes sense for Smith to be the last in the group since the Georgia trial may unearth evidence that he can use and he well understands that there is no historical precedent to the federal prosecution of a former president. So he has to build as airtight a case as possible, with no margin of error.
Also, since the past practice of the DOJ is to not bring actions or make announcements about election participants past Labor Day, an action begun in July 2023 will provide a 12 month window for the trial, legal delays by Trump and appeals by Trump to reach the Supreme Court before they recess in late June 2024.
What I can’t figure out is Trump’s strategy. Is it:
a) No strategy, just the usual impulsive whining?
b) trying to build a case for an insanity defense?
c) use all means necessary to delay an outcome through November 2024 so he can get elected, exonerate his crime family and execute his opponents?
d) or????
A little followup on last newsletter about economist E. F. Schumacher.
Detail on his second book.
A 17 minute audiobook summarizing his first book:
And now for something light to give you a break from all the atrocities.