As dire as our situation is becoming, I actually feel generally sanguine about our podcast system. Chuck Todd points this out frequently, as he blames/thanks the corporate authoritarianism for him leaving NBC to start his own podcast. I didn’t care much for him on Meet the Press, but I actually like him a lot now and, more importantly, appreciate his insight and intuitions.

If we somehow survive this, 60%+ of Americans should file a class action lawsuit against Fox News for causing and contributing to such widespread destruction of our democracy.

I have definitely heard the “I know you don’t like tRump…” intro to a statement from his supporters (who happened to be family or friends) at least a few times before. It’s too early for me to analyze the commonality right now.

We will need to hold their feet to the fire. Restoring normalcy will not be enough. Accountability for all of the crimes of this administration is crucial. We must make sure that they know that anything less would be interpreted as them being complicit.

That’s not necessarily true. We would need the next president to be proactive about working with Congress to design meaningful restraints on the presidency so that they can draft the legislation and the president sign it into law. That way the next next president wouldn’t be able to unilaterally cancel all of those safeguards.

It frustrates the hell out of me that our mainstream journalists (who are actually able to interview politicians on both sides of the aisle) never ask the Republican congressmen how they feel about Trump’s blatant corruption. Why have they not asked about UAE “investing” $100s of millions in the Trump shitcoin company, and Trump immediately authorizing the sale of super high tech chips to them, which we’ve known for years would be immediately sold to China… which in fact did occur.

Most of the protections may only require legislation from Congress rather than Amendments, thankfully. I also suspect that Congress should be able to rein in the pardon power in a meaningful way without violating the Constitution. For example, I would think that requiring congressional approval would still be constitutional.

That’s what I’m thinking. I think there will be a higher proportion of Maga Catholics who essentially turn at least somewhat away from their faith due to Trump’s actions compared to Maga Catholics who turn away from Trump for those actions.

This measured response feels much healthier than my/our kneejerk reactions. Any prosecutor is going to seek information that would help their case, and they expect the Court to simply say No when it isn’t compatible with the law. It sucks that this Trump admin and retributive DOJ have such an anti-American track record that our initial instinct is that every move is another attempt to suppress criticism (which it likely would be if they had any scintilla of competence to go with their thirst for fascism).

Suppression of anything critical of Trump and the other snowflakes is the goal. Oppression is their favorite tool, but they’ll settle for intimidation which still ends up being effective even when our institutions uphold the Constitution.

I finally left just a couple weeks ago. Seeing and hearing about entire accounts being banned after simple peaceful criticism of political leaders showed me that they use poorly programmed algorithms to issue bans and also confirm them on appeals without any reasonable human elements. It also seemed like some accounts would get perma-banned by simply complaining about this process.

Gonna be watching closely on Sunday. I heard that, due to Orban’s corruption, the other guy will need to take at least 55% of the vote in order for the results to show him victorious.