The Books of Bokonon

Yesterday Tina Peters, the former County Clerk for Mesa County, Colorado was sentenced to nine years in prison . What did she do? She was convicted of tampering with the voting machines in her county , including giving someone with no clearance access to voting machines in her county. She bought into Trump's Big Lie and acted unlawfully, using her elected position as a platform to spread lies about electoral integrity in the process. Her actions cost her county an enormous amount of money and reputational damage. As far as she is concerned, she did nothing wrong. Maybe she really believes that. Maybe she is just defiant in the face of being caught and being held accountable. I will provide a couple videos. One is of Tina Peters addressing the judge at her sentencing hearing. If you can get through all 40 minutes, you'll realize she really is a piece of work. The second video will be the judge's ruling, which is a master class in how to deal with an unrepentant defendant who...

One reason for threatening to pardon the criminals who were convicted for their role in attempting to overturn the 2020 election? Trump, as would-be dictator wants a paramilitary squad to terrorize us. The more goons out loose the better from his perspective, and likely the perspective of his followers. It's weird, un-American and anti-American, but this is what we deal with now when one of the major party candidates openly embraces fascism . They're not even hiding it at this point. Vote like your democracy depends on it, because it does.

Why do all the MAGA weirdos hate America? There is an answer , and one in which we are reminded that the seeds of the current Trump cult of personality can be found in 19th and 20th century central Europe. I will give you an extended excerpt from the article: As everyone knows, Donald Trump admires Vladimir Putin, and so a large portion of the Republican Party admires Putin in an imitative and slavish manner. But even before Trump became a candidate, the most regressive elements of conservatism — the paleoconservatives who developed around former Nixon and Reagan staffer (and Hitler apologist ) Pat Buchanan , Christian nationalists and reconstructionists inspired by Francis Schaeffer , and the tech-obsessed neoreactionary movement fueled by Silicon Valley money, which has produced JD Vance — discovered how much there was to love about Putin’s Russia. This New Right also seems to have an easy familiarity with the theorists of totalitarianism. In an interview this June with New York ...

As much as I would have loved a fact check done in real time while The Former Guy was babbling for an hour or so during his press conference late last week, NPR did eventually enter the chat with a list of 162 of Trump's lies and damn lies . It goes without saying that Trump is constitutionally incapable of doing anything else but lie and it is apparent that the guy is less and less capable of distinguishing fact from fiction. And yet here we are. It looks like Trump and the GOP are going to rely on playing the old hits. Here's the good news: we can see what Trump is selling as the scam it is and vote accordingly. Absent our press doing its job - even belatedly - there is a good rule of thumb: if Trump is speaking, he is lying or has completely lost his mind. Either interpretation is reasonable.