What stupid shit has Trump done today?

[krtek a houby]

By the time he leaves office, Trump will have been responsible for more federal executions this year than happened in the previous 67 years put together.

Not forgetting 270,000 dead because of his lies, downplaying, irresponsibility and vanity.

 

[SheilaNaGig]

Traditionally, usual to leave these decisions to the incoming president ...

In his final days in office, Trump orders series of executions - BBC News

he'll be responsible for more than10 federal killings in one year, the most since 1896 ...

Brandon Bernard was killed yesterday. He was 18 at the time the crime was committed; although he was present and involved, he didn’t actually kill anyone.

Justice Department Executes Man for Murder Committed When He Was 18 (Published 2020)

Despite a high-profile clemency campaign by allies of President Trump, the administration executed Brandon Bernard by lethal injection for his role in the 1999 crime.

www.nytimes.com

In a statement, two lawyers for Mr. Bernard maintained that their client did not kill anyone, and several jurors said they no longer stood by the initial verdict, along with an appellate prosecutor in his case who joined the call for his clemency.

Despite claims from his defense that the government suppressed evidence that would have altered the calculus of Mr. Bernard’s sentence, courts rejected his pleas for a stay of execution. His lawyers criticized the government’s case and pointed to testimony that suggested Mr. Bernard held the lowest level of authority in the gang with which the government claimed he and other accomplices were affiliated.
In her dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor argued that if the prosecution had not withheld the evidence and knowingly elicited false testimony as Mr. Bernard claimed, there is reasonable probability that he would not have been sentenced to death. She also contended that an appeals court that denied Mr. Bernard’s motion in a case related to the testimony “got it wrong,” and required too strict a standard that “perversely rewards the government for keeping exculpatory information secret.”

Lisa Montgomery was due to be killed this month but it’s been delayed til January. Hopefully that’s enough time to allow for clemency hearings. It was a terrible awful shocking murder but there are good grounds to argue that she was - and remains - deeply disturbed and cannot be considered criminally responsible.

The Case of Lisa Montgomery — Cornell Center on the Death Penalty Worldwide

Homepage for the campaign to stop the execution of Lisa Montgomery, a victim of relentless childhood abuse who now suffers from serious mental illness.

www.deathpenaltyworldwide.org

Lisa Montgomery’s life has been marked by relentless trauma and terror, exacerbating her genetic predisposition to severe mental illness. Lisa committed her crime while in the grip of a psychotic episode and even today, she must take a complex cocktail of medications to stave off recurrent psychosis.

She is the only woman under a federal death sentence and the only woman on death row in the entire country for the type of crime that she committed. Although Lisa was only recently denied an appeal, the government has already set a date for her execution on January 12, 2021. Lisa’s case has been marked by gender discrimination, ineffective lawyering, and other serious errors.

Lisa is a survivor of child abuse, domestic violence, incest, multiple rapes, and child sex trafficking. Lisa’s mother sexually trafficked her starting when she was a small child, including allowing her to be gang raped by adult men on multiple occasions and telling Lisa she had to “earn her keep.” Her years of torture at the hands of caregivers, documented brain damage, and severe mental illness have severed her connection with reality; without antipsychotic medication, she would lose the ability to understand what is happening to her and to know what is real.

 

[maomao]

Not forgetting 270,000 dead because of his lies, downplaying, irresponsibility and vanity.

The total will pass 300,000 at some point today.

 

[SheilaNaGig]

Trump just took the wrong hostage, proving he never actually learnt how Washington works | The Independent

My god, that’s a dreadful piece of writing. Took me a moment or two to realise it’s the rubbish writing rather than me being really dim and slow witted.


C&p’d to save the troubled of clicking through.

Trump just took the wrong hostage, proving he never actually learnt how Washington works
The president has badly bungled his latest fight and lost allies. He may arrive in South Florida for the holidays having just watched hundreds of House and Senate Republicans vote to override his own veto
Hostage-taking has become an annual holiday season tradition in Washington, right up there with decorating a tree or lighting a menorah.
The modern legislative process, with all of its incentives to not work via an even more damaged political process, is so broken that the only way to get major legislation passed is by jamming a few bills through in the days before House members and senators want to get home to spend the holidays with their loved ones.
That means committee chairs, panel ranking members, rank-and-file grinders and backbenchers are all hostages of their respective leaders and whomever occupies the White House, since big deals typically come from the top of the food chain.
It was so under then-President Barack Obama and the rather unseemly tradition has continued under Donald Trump.
The 44th president took a few hostages in his battles with Republicans, and the outgoing 45th has, too. Trump, in fact, held enough Democratic demands hostage that he triggered — then presided over — the longest federal government shutdown in American history during December 2018 and January 2019.
Trump and Republicans took most of the blame from the American people for that 35-day lapse in government funding, according to multiple polls.
He concluded he did not want another during his term, even though his base praised his decision near the end of that shutdown to bypass Congress by declaring a national emergency at the southern border. That “national emergency” allowed him to tap Pentagon funds for his border barrier project, aides said at the time.
Without the shutdown, Trump was not prepared to issue the emergency order, the same aides admitted two years ago.
It can be argued that the hostage-taking in 2018 and 2019 helped Trump further a campaign promise – at least in the eyes of conservatives. He went on to garner 74.2 million votes in last month’s election – an impressive 11 million more than he received in 2016.
So the hostage Trump tried taking during the current holiday legislative battle royale is curious: the National Defense Authorization Act.
The president demanded lawmakers — who have been working on separate versions of the bill, then an always-tough compromise version, for most of the calendar year — use it to repeal or drastically alter legal protections for social media companies he claims are censoring him and other conservatives.
It’s all a part of Trump’s unproven claims of a “big tech” conspiracy to help Joe Biden defeat him and keep conservative messages off their platforms.
Aggrieved and acting even more impulsively than normal since Biden was projected as his replacement and as every state he lost has certified its election results, the president wanted payback on Facebook, Twitter and other social media firms.
There were just two options: the NDAA, considered a must-pass policy measure, and a year-end spending measure.
Oddly, Trump chose the former. In so doing, he was trying to essentially kidnap and block a bill that is considered sacred by the conservative lawmakers that have mostly stood by his demands and falsehoods for a half-decade.
Not only did most House Republicans vote in favor of the measure this week, but they did so in numbers large enough to ensure the chamber would be able to override his threatened veto.
The president was never going to have much leverage on the defense bill, and he should have realized as much after four years dealing with Congress. If he really wanted Section 230 repeal or reform, the hostage to grab was always the omnibus spending bill. Federal spending is far less sacred to GOP members who routinely say Washington spends too much.
This avoidable misstep means he very likely could leave Washington for a Mar-a-Lago holiday vacation in the wake of a double embarrassment.
Marine One could ferry him from the South Lawn minutes after he has signed another omnibus spending bill. He loathes them, preferring to get the 12 annual appropriations measured one-by-one – so he can make demands and push back on favorite Democratic line items.
He also could arrive in South Florida having just watched hundreds of House and Senate Republicans vote to override his NDAA veto.
Trump badly bungled his Section 230 fight. This botched hostage-taking shows he never really tried to learn how Washington really works.
It was, like so much of his term before, just another my-way-or-the-highway demand via tweet that left his party with little incentive but to defy an increasingly lame-duck president on his way out the door.

 

[Yossarian]

The total will pass 300,000 at some point today.

And Trump's on Twitter whining that it would be a disaster if somebody else took charge.

 

[SheilaNaGig]

I wonder how many of those were people of color

They only killed white people during the BLM uprising. Because they didn’t want to inflame the situation.

They know what time it is, no doubt about that.

 

[SheilaNaGig]

And Trump's on Twitter whining that it would be a disaster if somebody else took charge.

View attachment 242927

George Conway tells ‘deranged’ Trump to stop soothing ego as Covid deaths hit record high

Lawyer told outgoing president to stop spreading ‘destructive lies’

www.independent.co.uk

 

[gosub]

My god, that’s a dreadful piece of writing. Took me a moment or two to realise it’s the rubbish writing rather than me being really dim and slow witted.


C&p’d to save the troubled of clicking through.

Agree. But couldn't find a better one making the point, which I think isn't that far off: If'd he'd pork barrelled hiis social media thing into Spending bill it would have had more chance of happening, He doesn't have skin in whatever is actually pork barrelled in the Spending Bill.


Also IS worth remember the government shutdown thing he had - assuming Supreme Court does find against him, what is in it for him not to have another one (yes I think he is that petulant. The money he got out that debacle has definitely been spent though - saw a youtube of someone who' drone surveyed it last week thats some serious construction -

 

[Jay Park]

update ...
Brandon Bernard: First execution of Trump's final days goes ahead - BBC News

personally, I consider that full-life terms should replace execution

or a penal system that can rehabilitate and reintegrate a person back into society after 32 years of incarceration. I guess for that to happen though we’d need to see changes affected all the way through which - in this case - US society is organised

 

[chandlerp]

Literally decades spent alone on Death Row and then put to death is cruel and (sadly not) unusual punishment.

 

[chandlerp]

I don't agree with execution but to say it's better than life in prison is just fucking insane when most people waiting to be executed WILL spend much longer than others will in prison and are THEN executed at the end is just fucking terrible.

It's either many, many years in prison or execution. It shouldn't be both.

 

[SheilaNaGig]

The entire US justice system is a mess, with plenty of blatant racism and consequential corruption. It stinks,

 

[gosub]

Is anyone looking into backhanders within that $24bn arms sale to UAE.?

 

[brogdale]

Not well.

 

[SheilaNaGig]

brilliant..

 

[StoneRoad]

Not well.

View attachment 242976

not a fucking chance, he did nowt to help the process,
(other than to make sure there were plenty of cases to test effectiveness against ...)

 

[Yossarian]

Not well.

View attachment 242976

"Without such an enormous pool of infected people, it might have taken a long time to test the vaccines' effectiveness!"

 

[teqniq]

Toys out of pram.

 

[krtek a houby]

Toys out of pram.

They've heard it all before, am sure.

 

[Zapp Brannigan]

From November 4th until January 20th, at the height of one of the most devastating pandemics of modern history, America has been operating without a president.

Whatever checks and balances are supposed to be in place simply don't work, because the only "Presidential" thing he's actually done in that time is to order those 5 Federal executions - his 3 month long tantrum only paused long enough to go back on 136 years of precedent (no executions under an outgoing president), a fit of pique costing 5 people their lives in addition to the hundreds of thousands he's had only a slightly less direct hand in.

The man is sick.

 

[agricola]

Toys out of pram.

good to see the Hanukkah spirit maintained though - rage that would normally last for only one public event is looking like it will last for six or seven

 

[SheilaNaGig]

From November 4th until January 20th, at the height of one of the most devastating pandemics of modern history, America has been operating without a president.

Whatever checks and balances are supposed to be in place simply don't work, because the only "Presidential" thing he's actually done in that time is to order those 5 Federal executions - his 3 month long tantrum only paused long enough to go back on 136 years of precedent (no executions under an outgoing president), a fit of pique costing 5 people their lives in addition to the hundreds of thousands he's had only a slightly less direct hand in.

The man is sick.

He’s done a bunch of shitty stuff since the election.

He’s not doing nothing he’s pursuing a scorched earth policy

The Dangerous Things Trump Has Done Since Losing The Election

Including withholding vaccine information, interfering directly in the electoral process and tweeting – a lot.

www.huffingtonpost.co.uk

I’d provide some quotes but the Huffington post website is so shit and glitchy that it would take too long, and I don’t want to get the app.


I’ll try to find a better link.

 

[stavros]

He’s done a bunch of shitty stuff since the election.

He's prevented a number of Americans from getting Covid.

 

[not a trot]

The entire US justice system is a mess, with plenty of blatant racism and consequential corruption. It stinks,

From Dylans, Hurricane.

How can the life of such a man
Be in the palm of some fool's hand?
To see him obviously framed
Couldn't help but make me feel ashamed to live in a land
Where justice is a game

 

[Louis MacNeice]

From Dylans, Hurricane.

How can the life of such a man
Be in the palm of some fool's hand?
To see him obviously framed
Couldn't help but make me feel ashamed to live in a land
Where justice is a game

Thanks for the reminder: Hurricane.

Cheers - Louis MacNeice

 

[SheilaNaGig]

And here’s the podcast

BBC World Service - The Hurricane Tapes

A triple murder. 40 hours of tape recordings. Rubin ‘Hurricane’ Carter. The full story

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[a_chap]

A retweet by the orange idiot.

Complete with entirely honest, un-photoshopped pictures.



They had the chance to "get it right"(!) ... they will soon be going to jail.

 

[Yuwipi Woman]

It looks like some of the people in the White House have turned out to be sicker from Covid than has been let on.

Crede Bailey, the official in charge of the White House's security office, tested positive for COVID-19 in September.

His battle against the virus in the months to follow "came at a significant cost: his big toe on his left foot as well as his right foot and lower leg had to be amputated," his friend Dawn McCrobie wrote on a GoFundMe page she organized for him, Bloomberg first reported Monday.

"His family has staggering medical bills from a hospital stay of 2+ months and still counting in the ICU and a long road ahead in rehab before he can go home," she wrote on Nov. 13. "When he does make it home there will be major changes necessary to deal with his new, and permanent, disability."

Bailey will be getting fitted for a prosthetic leg soon, she added, according to the outlet.

President Donald Trump "has never publicly acknowledged [Bailey's] illness," and Bailey's family "has tried to keep his illness private," the outlet noted.

White House's Crede Bailey lost foot, lower leg to COVID-19 (msn.com)

 

[spring-peeper]

Not a happy camper.

President Trump to veto national defence bill, White House says

Broad support in Congress for bill containing language that would impose limits on US troop withdrawals from overseas.

www.aljazeera.com

United States President Donald Trump plans to veto national defence legislation passed overwhelmingly by Congress last week, White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany said on Tuesday.

There is broad bipartisan support in Congress for the annual defence bill, which would authorise a $740bn annual budget for the fiscal year 2021 and enact a slew of new US military policies.

“I don’t have a timeline for you on that but he does plan to veto it,” McEnany told reporters at a White House news conference.

Trump objects to language in the National Defense Authorization Act that would constrain his ability to withdraw US troops from Afghanistan, South Korea and Germany, McEnany said.

The president also opposes a provision sponsored by Senator Elizabeth Warren that would require the Pentagon to change the names of military bases named for former Confederate soldiers who fought in the US Civil War.

“I should say, problems with the NDAA go beyond just the absence of Section 230 repeal and beyond the inclusion of the Warren amendment,” McEnany said.

I think this bit upset him. How dare you question his greatness!!

The bill requires the Trump administration to submit a detailed report to Congress before withdrawing troops as agreed with the Taliban and requires submission of its February 29 peace agreement with the Taliban to Congress for review and oversight.

 

[SheilaNaGig]

It looks like some of the people in the White House have turned out to be sicker from Covid than has been let on.




White House's Crede Bailey lost foot, lower leg to COVID-19 (msn.com)

I've been wondering about this... Not Crede Bailey's leg (what a horrible outcome) but about how the WH Covid patients have been faring. I assumed it was bad because otherwise Trump would have been trumping their survival etc as political capital.



(although he didn't seem to parade Melania around and she seems to have made a good recovery. perhaps the renegotiated prenup included a clause that said he should keep her name out of his mouth)