Official LRC President Joseph R Biden Thread

GOP Crime-ish Blotter

Kyle Griffin
@kylegriffin1
Jan. 6 rioters trashed Republican Sen. Jim Risch's office. He has refused to acknowledge it in public.

The second paragraph sums up my thoughts about it fairly well.

And while it won't happen, I have ZERO problem with anyone who showed cowardice and lack of principle during the (ongoing) Trump years paying a permanent political and historical price for that.

So cute that the m'agas are now trying to pin the bank failure on 'woke' ism. good god. A bank invests its portfolio badly and suddenly it's the democrats' fault.

Fact is, 'conservatives,' markets fail from time to time because markets are made up of human decision makers. And humans make terrible mistakes pretty regularly. The job of the government is to stop companies from making mistakes severe enough that they hurt innocent bystanders.

of course, 'conservatives' don't want government to have that role - they deregulated banks under Trump.

Meanwhile, government is cleaning up the environment, ending the ozone hole, helping to fix droughts, usually making banks safer.

we really do need to encourage and give credit to Rs who take courageous anti-trump stands. If they get rejected, fewer will take those stands. It's a big mistake punishing people for taking too long to come to see things the way you see them. You should praise them when they step to your side of the line, to encourage them to stay and more to come.

You often feel the need to explain to us that we live in a 2 party country. We know that. It doesn't explain why one party has been choosing Trump and Trumpism for 6 or 7 years, now? How many Rs would do, policy-wise, pretty much what Trump did? Right, all of them. So complicated.

Second, to write that Trump is "only toxic to toxic people" is 100% absurd (and embarrassing, if that's possible). And, of course, is utterly inconsistent with your supposed low view of him. It seems overwhelmingly likely that only someone with a relatively or extremely high view of him could bring themselves to PRETEND that he's not a horrible human being and public official. And that's utterly irrespective of who might be on the other side of the aisle.

Lastly, millions of Trumpers NEEDING to talk themselves into (and BE talked into by ADMITTED charlatans) the idea that JOE BIDEN is the anti-christ is really, really dumb. And dangerous. Of course.

I was pretty young, but here are 2 things that I'm pretty sure happened in the 70s that show just how far the GOP has fallen since then:

1) They told Nixon to go home. And for having done far less bad than Trump.

2) While they mocked him and obviously wanted to defeat him, they DIDN'T talk themselves into/pretend that Jimmy Carter was everything that Nixon was, and much worse.

Sound familiar?

SVB is just another addition to Biden's wonderful resume as POTUS.

Do you think Michael Cohen got off too easy? How about Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman?

I think that both a principled and practical view of this argues against your position:

1) The principled position is that public officials should pay a price for cowardice in the face of horrendous leadership, culminating in no less than the attempted destruction of our democracy. In other words, have high standards for the most powerful people in the world, not low standards.

2) Practically, it obviously doesn't matter what me and agip and "decide" about Pence. And even if any on-the-fence Rs were listening to us, does it make sense that any of them would agree that Pence is a coward, but STILL vote for Trump/Trumpers? Rs need to decide that they don't want Trump/Trumpers. And I think that moderates/liberals rolling their eyes at or mocking fair-weather Trumpers has very little, if any, influence on them.

I'm honestly not sure what the point of this question is. And I don't mean that in a mean way, I just don't.

But I will lay out my rough view of Cohen, not knowing a whole lot about him:

- Slime ball lawyer making a lot of money for a slime ball boss. But WASN'T, that I know, enabling him as dirty public official. But maybe I have the later timeline incorrect.

- ACTUALLY got punished and spent time in prison. Not sure how this compares to others convicted of similar crimes, but is obviously way, way more than most Trump political enablers got....or likely will get.

- Judged pretty negatively by many. But yeah, is now the anti-Trump darling of MSNBC.

How history doesn't work:

List every bad thing that happened in a country and the world (and the solar system/galaxy/universe?) during a president's administration and claim it was their fault.

Jesus.

Some Good News, a Peace Deal between Iran and Saudi Arabia has been reached, One less possible War, and some are saying it could help end the Yemen War, Biden has to be happy about that, as a war between them could up the price of gas and oil, if the oil fields are destroyed, also both Iran and Saudi Arabia are interested in Joining BRICS, so we can bring our troops home from those areas that are hotspots as far as wars and potential wars go.

the point is to create a welcoming environment for Rs willing to come out and condemn Trump and the coup attempt. That's all.
Same reason you don't shoot or torture people surrendering to you in a war. You want to encourage more to surrender.
If you shoot them or torture surrenderers, their colleagues remaining behind will fight you even harder and never surrender.
We want more Rs to defend democracy like the Ds are.

Oil down to the range the US has said it would start refilling the strategy petroleum reserve.

big win for the US if we can get it done. Sold high, should now be able to buy much lower.

Although it's tricky...oil could sure go a lot lower than today's $73 and would be disappointing to buy high.

Oh yeah, this guy is a POS. He's one of those fools who ran TV political ads of him shooting things with his big manly gun. Man, I gotta get out of this state. At least he has been held accountable for his criminal actions.

Go woke go broke. They shouldn’t have invested all their money in purple hair dye.

Michael Cohen has paid dearly and the country owes him a great deal of gratitude. He has more than made amends for past misdeeds.

Any Republican that has a come to Jesus moment and tries a bit of honesty for a change gets my appreciation. But damn the bar to praise republicans has been set pretty low.

Sadly, the party has shunned anyone who has tried to be honest. But with Pence it was self serving the timing and the place he did it......so lets give a Nancy Pelosi golf clap to Pence.

cnn.com

Opinion: Mike Pence's hypocrisy knows no bounds in his strongest rebuke of Trump to date | CNN

Dean Obeidallah

Former Vice President Mike Pence's speech at the annual Gridiron Club Dinner served up a few laughs, some kernels of truth and a massive helping of hypocrisy, writes Dean Obeidallah.

Link:www.cnn.com/2023/03/12/opinions/mike-p...

Not a bad summary. Until I just read it, I didn't know that Pence also made the comment about the American people ~"deserving to know the truth about Jan 6." That really is rich (gross).

And increases my disagreement with agip on this a bit more.

He really does strike me at the quintessential "politician." It's SO easy to imagine him telling some wonderful American allegory to a group of children or college students or concerned citizens and saying, in his very thoughtful, sincere, earnest, god-fearing style, something about the great importance of "Having the courage of your convictions."

And then someone asks him, "Sir, do you?"

Pence: "Oh no, of course not. It's just about politics and polling and winning and power and prestige....and being above little people like you. Any more questions?"

And yes, for all the morans, I CAN also imagine any number of Ds doing the EXACT same thing.

....thing is, none of them ever tried to destroy our democracy. Pretty important difference, in case you didn't notice.

"There are ass kissers,
there are sycophantic ass kissers,
there are shameless ass kissers,
there are embarrassing ass kissers
...and then there's Mike Pence" - Fernand Amandi