I dunno...

You could well be right, but I have a hard time believing that any court - even this grotesquely corrupt one - would attempt such rulings.

So far, while obviously a significant threat, their immunity rulings have actually been broadly in line with established precedent. And they specifically stated that the precise definition of an "official act" was something that was going to have to be worked out in future rulings.

Even with as cynical as I am, I find it hard to believe that they actually intend to rule that anything that might be done in the midst of carrying out some entirely and completely unrelated official act is afforded the same protection as that official act. That would rather obviously make it so that the president could, for instance, pause in the middle of signing a bill and do literally anything - absolutely anything at all - and be entirely immune from any and all consequences.

Yes - it is possible that they'll rule that way, but again, even as cynical as I am, I can't imagine that they actually will, if for no other reason than that that would empower the president to order the summary execution of all Supreme Court justices.

There's nothing I can add to that, so all I'll do is signal my complete agreement.

On second thought...

That last bit neatly illustrates why it was that, in the face of the utter failure of both of the establishment hacks who were set to get the nominations in 2016, and the support in both parties for populists, the GOP went along with their populist while the DNC sabotaged theirs.

The GOP accurately saw Trump as an entirely unprincipled and wholly narcissistic idiot who could be manipulated into serving their interests, while the DNC equally accurately saw Sanders as a man of principles and determination who could not be manipulated into serving theirs.

"Corporate" is the key word there.

Major corporations, including but by no means limited to those that have bought up all of the major news outlets, are, along with a number of destructively insane billionaires, the main financiers of this attempted fascist takeover. They're the real driving force behind it.

They see this, and accurately, as a significant moment in human history - the point at which modern civilization might just come to broadly recognize the significant harm done by the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a few and much more to the point, might take steps to prevent it. And that's a direct threat to their entirely unearned, undeserved and grotesquely destructive privilege, and in their literally insane lust for wealth and power and the privilege they bring, they're going to stop at nothing to prevent that.

People talk about a class war - the class war is already well under way. The oligarchs have been actively fighting it for years now. Most of the people just haven't realized that yet.

Since the Heritage Foundation just overtly declared war on American democracy, complete with a thinly veiled threat of violence and bloodshed, it's just that much more important that news like this is spread as widely as possible.

The fascists riding Trump's coattails aren't even hiding their intentions any more. We must not let them succeed in destroying the few remaining vestiges of American democracy, and the first step in that is keeping that loathsome lunatic Trump out of office.

I'd sure as hell hope not.

There has to be a limit to the corruption and duplicity of this facsimile of a Supreme Court, and I would have to think that it's somewhere short of ruling that efforts to cover up the misappropriation of campaign funds and filing of fraudulent financial reports count as "official acts" of a president.

But then again, they are painfully obviously grotesquely corrupt and duplicitous...

And I ask again - exactly how the fuck does Israel "approve" the forcible annexation of Palestinian land?

Israel self-evidently, by definition, has no legitimate jurisdiction over Palestinian land, and can't "approve" anything regarding it.

I grow more convinced every day that if there are future historians, they're going to dub our current age something like "the Lunatic Age" - the regrettable and inexplicable period in human history during which, for no discernible reason from the point of view of a future civilization, in spite of worldwide communication and thus the full awareness of the extent of it, people largely stood idly by in the face of, and in all too many cases actually supported, the profound and undeniable evil of governments, politicians and business leaders.

Any article that cites Krugman is self-evident bullshit.

Krugman has made an entire career out of carrying water for the ruling class.

What the fucking fuck?!

Those fucking psychopaths actually want to punish Mexico for experiencing a drought?

Ah - just went and read the article, and what it actually centers on is a sugar cane industry that's been wedged into south Texas (undoubtedly with big fat bribes paid to politicians).

Sugar cane is notoriously water-intensive, and likely should've never been grown in south Texas in the first place. It's near certain that the sugar cane industry is actually the most significant proximate cause of the very drought conditions that are now a problem. So in effect, it's the US, at the behest of Texas legislators and interests, wanting to punish Mexico because the Texas sugar cane industry wasted all of the available water and still wants more.

A similar entirely contrived "problem" exists in south Florida, in which the heavily subsidized sugar cane industry and their legion of wholly corrupt politicians are the proximate cause of the draining of the Everglades.

A gratuity is just a postdated bribe, and everybody including the Supreme Court knows it.

There's another whole aspect to the recurring pushes to remove the dams that's pretty much always left out too.

Likely the biggest beneficiaries if the dams were removed would be power companies, who, even with the dams generally operating at a tiny fraction of capacity, are stuck having to sell cheap hydroelectric power at low rates.

If the dams were removed, they'd be able to justify contracting (often with their own subsidiaries) for the construction of expensive new power plants with lower capacity and higher operating costs and would then be able to convince the PUCs to grant them massive rate increases.

Ah, but I'm sure that has nothing to do with the mysteriously well-funded campaigns to remove the dams that get a new round of publicity every few years...

Is that a real poncho or is that a Sears poncho?

"And it'll cure your asthma too."

I knew when I first saw it that it was an unfamiliar version, bit I just assumed it was from one of the more modern versions of the Bible with which I'm not familiar.

In retrospect, I should've guessed that the version choice was a dog whistle. Fucking racists just can't pass up an opportunity.

That's more or less the theory I keep coming back to, but I can't even entirely wrap my head around that one. It's sort of like a really complex conspiracy theory in that it presumes a particular contrived course of action from seemingly too many people.

I can absolutely imagine some number of writers, editors and publishers self-servingly treating the obviously insane blathering of a lunatic as if it's legitimate just to further their own careers, and I can absolutely imagine some additional (and likely greater) number of them doing so to protect themselves from retribution. I can even imagine some number who are themselves insane in a way that aligns enough with Trump's insanity that they treat him seriously sincerely.

But all of that still doesn't seem enough to account for the near-universal failure to even comment obliquely on how deeply mentally ill Trump so obviously is. Just as with a complex conspiracy theory, I can see the possibility on a limited scale, but it all seems to fall apart if one tries to expand it out to the scale that would seem to necessarily be the case.

And yeah - I keep ending up feeling like the only sane person in the asylum.

Well...

You're absolutely right, and that was very well-written to boot. But it's not the part that perplexes me. I likely just did a poor job of explaining myself.

I fully expect his intellectually and/or psychologically compromised supporters to fail or refuse to recognize his glaringly obvious insanity. As you note, he affirms their prejudices and tells them that the condemnation they so deservedly receive is actually some sort of evil conspiracy, and they grovel at his feet, lapping it up.

But that just accounts for a portion of his supporters and none of his opponents, and it's that remainder I wonder about - all of the people who are certainly rational enough to recognize his glaringly obvious derangement for what it is, but somehow just don't, or won't.

I have this recurring experience in which I read an essay or article from some more or less neutral site or even an oppositional site in which someone relates something that Trump said, then parses and analyzes it, as if it's a legitimate statement of supposed fact rather than the deranged ranting of someone who's painfully obviously profoundly mentally ill, and I can't even see how they managed to make it that far - how they didn't just stop halfway through relating whatever it was he said and throw their hands up and say, "This guy is a fucking lunatic!" Because he so blatantly obviously is.

That's what I don't get.

...a perfect, brilliant, beautiful statement that I make...

Doesn't anyone else notice how often he makes these cringily exaggerated statements, and more to the point, recognize how clearly they illustrate the staggering depths of his delusions?

That's still the thing I most notably don't get about Trump - the man is obviously profoundly mentally ill, so why and how is he even taken seriously? How in the world is it even possible for such a painfully obvious gibbering lunatic to not only run for public office, but quite possibly win?

No - I don't agree that they're completely different.

"Made by AI" would be completely different.

"Made with AI" actually means pretty much the exact same thing as "AI was used in this image" - it's just that the former lays it out baldly and the latter softens the impact by using indirect language.

I can certainly see how "photographers" who use AI in their images would tend to prefer the latter, but bluntly, fuck 'em. If they can't handle the shame of the fact that they did so they should stop doing it - get up off their asses and invest some time and effort into doing it all themselves. And if they can't manage that, they should stop pretending to be artists.

That's such a blatant act of public fellatio he should be charged with indecent exposure.

I'm roundaboutly reminded of one of my favorite novels - Greener Than You Think, by Ward Moore.

It's a science fiction story about the end of the world that was written in the late 40s. The proximate cause of the end is all of the landmasses of Earth being smothered by a gigantic and very aggressive strain of Bermuda grass, but the real cause is the utter and complete failure, due to ignorance, greed, selfishness, short-sightedness, incompetence, arrogance and so on, of every attempt to combat it.

I am not sure what you meant by “makes your first sentence completely wrong”.

Sorry - I should've made that more clear. I meant the first sentence of your summation of what I said - the part I quoted. It went wrong immediately because you started with the presumption of an already toxic man doing something toxic, for which he's then condemned. But I was talking about young people - people who haven't established an adult personality yet - who are still feeling their way through life, trying to figure out who and what they want to be.

And to your edit - there's nothing I value more in a discussion/debate than honesty,cand not just the surface homesty of telling the truth as one sees it, but the deeper and much more rare intellectual honesty of actually considering what the other person has said, rather than just rejecting it out of hand. So thanks.