Revolting evidence of people’s capacity for brutality

I am old enough and have read enough history to know that people can act in incredibly cruel ways towards other people. The current conflicts in Gaza, Haiti, Yemen, Sudan, and other places provide enough testimony as to how people can be so lacking in empathy that they can subject their fellow human beings to such awful treatment. And yet, I still feel disgusted and shocked when I read news stories that take place outside of conflict zones that describe awful behavior.

Take the case of how six white police officers in the town of Rankin, Mississippi treated two black men in their own home.

The group of six burst into a Rankin County home without a warrant and assaulted Jenkins and Parker with stun guns, a sex toy and other objects. Elward admitted to shoving a gun into Jenkins’ mouth and firing in a “mock execution” that went awry.

Once inside, they handcuffed Jenkins and his friend Parker and poured milk, alcohol and chocolate syrup over their faces. They forced them to strip naked and shower together to conceal the mess. They mocked the victims with racial slurs and shocked them with stun guns.

After Elward shot Jenkins in the mouth, they devised a coverup that included planting drugs and a gun. False charges stood against Jenkins and Parker for months.
…

“I am hurt. I am broken,” Jenkins wrote in his statement. “They tried to take my manhood from me. They did some unimaginable things to me, and the effects will linger for the rest of my life.”

[Read more…]

Judicial body calls a halt to judge shopping

Big legal news occurred recently that did not receive the widespread coverage that I thought it deserved. One of the quirks of the legal system in the US is that it is possible for a federal judge in one local jurisdiction to make rulings that apply nationwide. Furthermore, in some instances, a case can be filed in a any jurisdiction. This has resulted in what has come to be known as ‘judge shopping’, where people look around to see if they can find a judge who will be sympathetic to their case and file their case in that jurisdiction.

One safeguard against abuse of the system is that there are 94 federal districts in the country with multiple judges in each and when a case is filed in them, it is assigned randomly to a judge in that district, so you are not guaranteed to get the judge you want. But in the case of Texas (of course!), each district is split up into smaller divisions and in some divisions there is only one judge, so that any case filed in that division will be sure to be heard by that judge.

Enter Matthew Kacsmaryk. He is is the only federal trial judge in Amarillo, Texas. Any case filed in Amarillo automatically goes before him. He is a Trump appointee who is an advocate of the Christian right and makes no bones about ruling in the most extreme way in favor of his ideology. He has been the go-to judge for anti-abortion advocates and other rightwing zealots.
[Read more…]

John Oliver takes on Boeing

His show Last Week Tonight looked at the decline in quality of aircraft produced by the company after the merger with McDonnell Douglas, when the focus shifted from producing high quality planes to worshipping at the shrine of the holy capitalist trinity of increased profits, share prices, and executive compensation.

Much of the factual information he presented had been covered in more depth in the 2022 documentary Downfall that I reviewed two months ago, but this was shorter, is more accessible to the general public, and Oliver adds his usual humorous touch.

Trump says that he doesn’t have the money to pay the bond

Lawyers for serial sex abuser Donald Trump (SSAT) have filed an appeal with the New York appellate court that he is not able to come up with the bond that is required to appeal the judgment that judge Arthur Engoron issued against him, by the deadline of Monday, March 25th. This falsifies SSAT’s repeated boasts that he is very wealthy and has plenty of cash that would allow him to post any bond.

Donald Trump’s lawyers told a New York appellate court Monday that it’s impossible for him to post a bond covering the full amount of his $454m civil fraud judgment while he appeals.

The former president’s lawyers wrote in a court filing that “obtaining an appeal bond in the full amount” of the judgment “is not possible under the circumstances presented”.

With interest, Trump owes $456.8m. In all, he and co-defendants including his company and top executives owe $467.3m. To obtain a bond, they would be required to post collateral worth $557m, Trump’s lawyers said.

A state appeals court judge ruled last month that Trump must post a bond covering the full amount to pause enforcement of the judgment, which is to begin on 25 March.
[Read more…]

Mike Pence pulls a surprise, will not endorse Trump

Mike Pence, vice-president to serial sex abuser Donald Trump (SSAT) has announced that he will not endorse SSAT for the presidency.

“It should come as no surprise that I will not be endorsing Donald Trump this year,” the former Indiana governor and former candidate for the Republican presidential nomination told Fox News on Friday.

Asked why, given that he previously promised to endorse the eventual nominee, Pence mentioned 6 January 2021, the day a mob attacked Congress and Trump was reported to have told aides Pence “deserved” to be hanged for refusing to block certification of Joe Biden’s 2020 election win.
…

As I have watched his candidacy unfold, I’ve seen him walking away from our commitment to confronting the national debt. I’ve seen him starting to shy away from a commitment to the sanctity of human life.”
…

Pence also cited Trump’s “reversal” on “getting tough on China and supporting our administration’s effort to force the sale of … TikTok”.
…

He said: “What I can tell you is that in each of these cases, Donald Trump is pursuing and articulating an agenda that is at odds with the conservative agenda that we governed on during our four years.

[Read more…]

Trump treats his followers as if they are stupid

In an essay, former labor secretary Robert Reich writes that serial sex abuser Donald Trump (SSAT) is mind-numbingly stupid and gives multiple examples to support his thesis.

But there is another aspect to this and that is that SSAT seem to think that his followers are mind-numbingly stupid as well. Take the following things that SSAT constantly rants about in his speeches and which his surrogates sometimes parrot.

  • The newer environmentally-friendly low-flow washing machines and dishwashers don’t get enough water to function properly, so that clothes and dishes do not get clean.
  • The low-flow shower heads only allow a trickle of water and prevent people from getting clean.
  • The newer low-flow toilets no longer flush properly and require multiple flushes to clear the waste,
  • The classified documents that he is charged with improperly removing were in a bathroom at Mar-a-Lago and since bathrooms can be locked, they were secure.

[Read more…]

The real choice before us

Joe Biden’s feisty State of the Union address may not have had any immediate impact on voters but it does seem to have had an impact on media coverage of his age. I notice much less chatter about it now, except in the right wing media world. I hope the real differences between him and his rival become more of the focus.

Trump’s speeches are increasingly incoherent and insane

At his rallies, serial sex abuser Donald Trump (SSAT) gives long, rambling speeches that run well over an hour and sometimes approach two hours. Most of us do not have the patience, let alone the stomach, to spend so much time listening to such drivel. But reporters covering his campaign have no choice and Susan Glasser of The New Yorker writes that although watching short clips may make us think that his speeches are terrible and reveal signs of dementia, you cannot appreciate the full measure of how bad they are until you watch them in their entirety, and that in his latest speech at a rally in Georgia, he was “building a whole new edifice of lies”. She compared his speech to Joe Biden’s State of the Union speech delivered two days earlier.
[Read more…]

Trump’s one key to political success

Robert Reich, former labor secretary in the Clinton administration, writes that although serial sex abuser Donald trump (SSAT) is mind-numbingly stupid, he does have one skill that has enabled him to achieve the level of success that he has.

I have to wonder why the mainstream media isn’t discussing Trump’s extraordinary stupidity.

The media continues to discuss Trump’s criminal indictments, and is — finally! — noticing that Trump is becoming less and less coherent. But why isn’t it reporting on something almost every lawmaker and journalist in official Washington knows — that Trump is remarkably stupid?

I don’t mean just run-of-the-mill stupid. I mean extraordinarily, off-the-charts, stupifyingly stupid.
…

Consider the views of the people who worked most closely with him during his presidency. Anyone remember when Secretary of State Rex Tillerson called Trump a “f—king moron?”

Or when National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster called him a “dope?” And Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, former White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, former White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, and even Rupert Murdoch all referred to Trump as an “idiot?” (Technically, Murdoch called him a “f—king idiot.”)

Trump’s chief economic adviser Gary Cohn described Trump as “dumb as sh-t,” explaining that “Trump won’t read anything — not one-page memos, not the brief policy papers; nothing. He gets up halfway through meetings with world leaders because he is bored.”

When one of Trump’s campaign aides tried to educate him about the Constitution, Trump couldn’t focus. “I got as far as the Fourth Amendment,” the aide recalled, “before his finger is pulling down on his lip and his eyes are rolling back in his head.”

After providing more examples of SSAT’s stupidity, Reich says that he does possess one aspect of what is known as ’emotional intelligence’ and that is the ability to “recognize and influence the emotions of others.”

This is where Trump’s brain outperforms the brains of ordinary mortals. He knows how to manipulate people. He has an uncanny ability to discover their emotional vulnerabilities — their fears, anxieties, prejudices, and darkest desires — and use them for his own purposes.
…

This genius — combined with utter stupidity in every other dimension — poses the clearest and most terrifying danger to America and the world. 

People will be analyzing SSAT’s weird and dangerous psychology for decades to come, trying to understand what it is that makes so many people fall under his spell.