Just Sayin'
A few thoughts about a few things...
Enough about Biden already. If the Democrats want even a remote chance of retaking the national narrative and building a stronger base of voters across the political spectrum, they need to STOP talking about Joe Biden, his reported decline, and how he did or didn’t contribute to Trump’s curious “win.” The mainstream media is currently all about helping CNN’s Jake Tapper sell more books under the guise of exposing an important “cover-up,” but it’s really just a colossal waste of valuable time and resources; while in comparison, the stable genius currently in the White House has daily cognitive meltdowns and the neofascists continue to gut our democracy during their ongoing grift-a-thon.
Biden presided over the strongest economy in 50+ years, as well as landmark advances in women's rights, healthcare, tech, climate strategy, consumer protections, and at least an attempt at re-balancing the huge economic inequality in our nation, just to name a few. So just shut up about Jake Tapper’s big scoop. Rome is burning and the media is just shilling for yet another opportunistic pundit with access to media resources. One might even call it another kind of grift.
Where are the slander lawsuits? There is certainly no shortage of legal pushback against most of Trump’s declared “Executive Actions.” Putting aside the fact that he continues to lose almost all legal challenges, and may ultimately ignore the most consequential court rulings (a constitutional crisis already in the making), where are what should be voluminous legal actions against Trump for defamation of character?
Both slander and libel are forms of defamation — one is verbal and the other written. In order to qualify as either, the statement(s) must (1) be false, (2) cause harm to reputation, and (3) be malicious in nature (in particular, when directed at a public figure). The defense for making such statements is either that the statements are actually true, and/or not malicious in nature.
Trump regularly attacks his enemies by falsely accusing them of awful, heinous behavior or crimes; statements generally known to be false, and the allegations clearly malicious in nature. One of his favorite attack lines is to accuse his perceived enemies of being serial liars, cheats, criminals or outright “traitors,” often calling for their literal “execution.” Projections anyone? This hasn’t happened just once, or to just one person. It’s an almost daily occurrence involving so many targeted victims that they might as well qualify for a Class Action defamation suit against Trump.
I’m not a lawyer (and I don’t play one on TV), but common sense would suggest that either there’s a mountain of defamation charges wanting be filed against Trump and his parroting minions, or what? Low priority compared to more serious issues? Maybe.
Hey Dems, how about a new consultant? What is it with the progressive media’s obsession with James Carville, whose real value as a strategist is questionable. He rose to prominence as a key strategist in Bill Clinton’s initial Presidential win. But the media’s historians (and most, if not all pundits) seem to forget that Clinton didn’t win in a landslide precipitated by a great team of strategists led by Carville. He won because Independent candidate Ross Perot took almost 20% of the total votes, essentially syphoning off a full third of all Republican votes for President (Electoral College systemic dysfunction notwithstanding).
Unless Carville helped launch Perot’s campaign, there’s little evidence that his strategic thinking was anything other than lucky timing. Today, the left-leaning media keeps looking to Carville like he’s some sort of prophet, despite his most recent strategic advice — to just allow Trump and his fellow fascists to proceed with destroying our democracy, without any resistance, on the premise that the authoritarians will eventually fail, and only then will the Democrats have a green light to respond. Does that still sound like great advice to anyone? Please Dems, find some other sources to for your strategy, whatever it is. There are plenty of smart, articulate people out there you could hand the mic to.
TEXT fundraising is way. too. much. I don’t know about you, but I receive, on average, 6-10 texts every single day, from either politicians or related organizations, looking to raise money off of pretty much any newsworthy development that might stir fear or concern on any given day.
We understand the need to raise money. However, (1) much of the time, we have no way of knowing if the texted request for donations is even coming from the actual source it claims to represent; or is it from some other, not-directly-related entity looking to cash in on unsuspecting individuals who might be motivated to donate? (2) if the text is a legit plea for donations, the minute I donate, my name is immediately sold as a “live one,” and the number of daily text solicitations triples or quadruples almost overnight; (3) if I gave just $10 to each request delivered via text, I’d be spending more money on political contributions than almost any other discretionary monthly expense. There must be a better way to raise money than repeatedly spamming supporters’ phone numbers. Eventually it does becomes counter-productive, when the only sanity-saving response becomes “Delete and Report Junk.”
What if Trump’s new “palace in the sky” falls out of the sky? There are plenty of reasons why Trump accepting this clearly illegal “gift” from Qatar is reprehensible, at best — grift being at the top of the list. But despite what might be many people’s dream ending for Don the Con, wouldn’t he himself be even slightly concerned that he might easily be eliminated from this earth by a foreign entity with possible direct or indirect access to the software that keeps his new, used 747 airborne?
Now of course, even if unlikely, there are many who might find this as good an ending as any to Trump’s ongoing assault on America’s well-being. But aside from that scenario (which no decent person should wish for), aside from the obvious security vulnerabilities of the “gift” plane (or should we call it a “grift” plane?), aside from the optics, isn’t it also an example of the kind of hubris that could easily (and quite literally) bring Trump down? Only he would be to blame, ultimately. But it’s what he’s insisting on. His decision alone, probably no more reckless than any other choices he’s likely to make. Not that I’m losing sleep over it. Just sayin’….
(To participate in extended discussion and a vote, this article also appears on my Daily Kos page)