Comments

  1. says

    What I found interesting about Trump’s blithering (what I could stand to watch so far anyway) wasn’t just the bullshit claims; it was his unenthusiastic, tentative tone. He really sounded like he knew he was spouting obvious nonsense and falsehoods, and wasn’t really sure his audience were buying it, so he was just cautiously plodding ahead as long as he hasn’t stepped on a rake/landmine yet.

    I wonder how he would have reacted if one or more people in the audience loudly booed or called him out on one of his obvious falsehoods. This may just be wishful thinking, but I really think it would have stung and thrown him off guard.

    His heart’s not in it, he knows it’s all bullshit, and he’s just droning on an on anyway because it’s all he ever knew how to do. His mind (such as it ever was) is going, and he’s running out of energy/pizazz.

  2. robro says

    Raging Bee @ #1 — He was called out during the debate about a couple of things, e.g. pet eating in Springfield, OH. Naturally he’s reaction was to dodge, and ultimately cry foul because the moderators even asked the questions due to their biased against him.

    That he’s running at all is surprising. Clearly things are different than in previous campaigns…key figures in the family are not going along for the ride. Perhaps he’s desperately afraid that if he doesn’t win this election that he’ll be further prosecuted, may be even jailed, and “broke” (at least by his standards) for the first time in his life. And he could be right about some of that, although jailing a former president seems fringe to me.

  3. Pierce R. Butler says

    … jailing a former president seems fringe to me.

    Said fringe reaches from France to Israel to Argentina to South Korea to Peru to Pakistan, just from scanning my memory and not trying to look things up.

    While none of those nations have achieved utopia, in each of the cases I’ve read about said jailings did indeed improve things.

  5. Pierce R. Butler says

    Time has a brief list of jailed leaders, confirming my list @ # 2 and adding Brazil, Croatia, Egypt, Georgia, Malaysia, Myanmar, South Africa, Sudan, Taiwan, and Thailand – just in the 21st century. Italy almost made the list, but they gave Berlusconi only community service (after much weaseling and skulduggery); one of the two French presidents was convicted posthumously, the other apparently remains free on appeal.

    The cases of Brazil and Myanmar seem definitely politically contrived, the others sfaict clearly justified – like the charges against Donald John Trump.

  6. says

    That guy is very good. But, to fact check all of the bovine excrement emitted by tRUMP would take a whole encyclopedia. (does anyone else remember those multi-volume reference works?)
    I suppose his gigantic sociopathic ego (and a lot of drugs) has prevented him from having a fatal stroke. Too, bad, that would save sooo many lives.

  7. Walter Solomon says

    The major news organizations want sound bites. In-depth discussion about anything at all isn’t what drives ratings. Getting six talking heads together to shout at each other over the latest Trump verbal excretion, OTOH, pays the bills apparently.

  9. jrkrideau says

    @5 Pierce R. Butler
    The cases of Brazil and Myanmar seem definitely politically contrived

    Definitely.

    In the case of Lula in Brazil, it took the combined efforts of various Brazilian oligarchs, corrupt sections of the Brazilian justice system with corrupt cooperation between part of the prosecution and a part of the judiciary, and the CIA during the Lava Jato investigation into a massive corruption case in South and Central America—maybe even extending into Mexico?— to charge and convict him. It took a long time but he finally was vindicated and freed. Brazil seems to have spots of corruption in the justice system but some very ethical and brave people in other areas.

    The Aung San Suu Kyi case in Myanmar it seems to be the result of a power grab as the military re-seized what power they had conceded to Aung San Suu Kyi’s party a little while before. I doubt that any corruption charges against her personally are true though some of her associates might be guilty. However after 10 or so years in house-arrest as a political prisoner, after her release, the military found her a bit of a problem and staged another coup.

    If you have not been following things, Myanmar politics are just a bit complicated. I won’t go into the various rebellions on-going at the moment as I can never remember them. If you wish to be totally confused, M.K. Badrakumar’s post from the other day is a good introduction. Manipur escalation draws attention to Myanmar

    In Pakistan, this seems to be the result of a straight-forward coup d’état by the military at the request of the USA.

    Imran Khan, in his younger days, was a world-famous cricketer and built on this to go on to a successful political career. There might have been some corruption but unlikely.

    Pakistan has been described as the only army in the world with its own country. I think that Imran Khan was becoming a bit of a threat to their power, not that he was going to crush them or anything.

    After the US evacuation of Afghanistan, the USA wanted to establish one or more bases in Pakistan. Imran Khan was completely opposed. It looks like the Pakistani military with US backing carried out a coup and then tossed him in jail as he was still make a damned pest of himself after the coup and he has a very large political base. An assassination like that of Benazir Bhutto was not on the cards.

    I believe the base is or has been built.

  11. Bekenstein Bound says

    shermanj@6:

    That guy is very good. But, to fact check all of the bovine excrement emitted by tRUMP would take a whole encyclopedia.

    Then the solution is very simple: respond to pretty much any diatribe of his with “https://en.wikipedia.org/” and consider it fact-checked. :)