All purpose news and politics thread part VII: News & Politics Total Landscaping

[Mister Mets]

"Liberal" and "Progressive" describe different things.

Liberalism is about protecting the individual and supporting civil rights. Basically it is live-and-let-live.

Progressivism is about social reform.

Libertarians tend to be liberal, but not progressive. The Soviet Union was progressive, but not liberal.

These terms may be used differently within particular subgroups.

I'm aware of some centrists calling themselves classically liberal.

I know that in some contexts, the term "liberals" just means a particular shade of left-leaning.

Writing for New York Magazine, in his piece "In Defense of Punching Left" Jonathan Chait (proudly center-left) described the divide between leftists and liberals. It's mainly that liberals want to persuade, and leftists want results by any means.

Solidarity provides the lengthiest and most serious case I’ve seen for why liberals should withhold criticism of the left. And since the basis of my refusal to take this advice is no longer self-evident to all my readers and colleagues, and appears increasingly deviant to some, their book provides a useful occasion for me to lay out my reasons why liberals should feel free to express criticisms of the left.

Solidarity synthesizes left-wing economic and social thought into a unified credo. The left can win by forming “passionate in-group bonds” among the component elements of its constituency based on the forms of oppression each element is experiencing: “Workers unite against bosses and owners who depress wages and degrade labor; feminists call out misogynists and patriarchal structures that disempower people on the basis of sex and gender; environmentalists name and shame special interests invested in destroying our planet; movements for racial justice protest the individuals and systems that perpetuate bigotry and xenophobia.” Solidarity is the magic ingredient that holds all these strands together in opposition to their shared enemy on the right.

This conceptualization of politics is not a radical new strategy, nor is it presented as such; it’s the progressive movement’s general operating theory. The progressive movement emerged over the past two decades out of a series of component groups representing causes like civil rights, environmentalism, abortion rights, and labor. Over the past two decades, these groups, sometimes called “The Groups,” have evolved from a patchwork of atomized single-issue organizations into a relatively unified movement. Each component part now habitually supports the projects of the others: Abortion-rights groups endorse defunding the police, civil-rights groups demand student-debt relief, and so on. Solidarity is creating a historical and theoretical basis for what is already the movement’s ethos.

The authors of Solidarity both come out of the more left-wing edge of the movement. Hunt-Hendrix, an heir to the Hunt oil fortune, has decided to give a large share of it to groups like the Sunrise Movement and Black Lives Matter and has become an influential figure in the movement. A flattering New Yorker profile last year depicted her at the center of a network of progressive intellectuals, elected officials and activists, all of whom place a high value on her donations but an even higher value on her counsel.

Since their goals are both to move the Democratic Party leftward and to hold together the progressive coalition, it follows that criticism from liberals poses a significant strategic threat. “Too often, liberals seek to legitimize their positions by punching left, distancing themselves from social movements to make themselves appear reasonable by comparison, which only strengthens the hands of conservatives and pulls the political center to the right,” they write, urging liberals to instead accept “the necessity of working in coalition with progressive social movements.”

Liberal criticism of the left corrodes solidarity among the oppressed, albeit in a weaker fashion than do conservative attacks. “If conservatives wield a scythe, demonizing different groups with sinister and destabilizing abandon,” they write at another point, “their liberal counterparts prefer to use garden shears, perpetually trimming solidarity back to manageable, and certainly not transformative, proportions.”

Notably, while they urge liberals not to criticize the left, they do not make any similar demand that leftists withhold criticism of liberalism. The requirements of factional quietude run one way. There’s a reason why the catchprase is “don’t punch left,” rather than “don’t punch anybody left of center.” Hunt-Hendrix’s radical activists frequently make scathing critiques of mainstream liberals and Democratic politicians, and she seems to have no intention of stopping pouring money into these efforts even as she implores her critics to stand down.

This reflects a common assumption among leftists, conservatives, and even many liberals that liberalism is simply a more pallid, fearful version of leftism. Left-wing critique makes liberals better, by this reasoning, because leftists are braver, more authentic and advanced in their thinking, than liberals. Their criticism drags us to where we must (and, in most cases, eventually will) go. Our criticism is divisive and reactionary.

Liberals don’t have to endorse every left-wing premise to be a good coalition member. We are welcome to focus on attacking the right while politely ignoring aspects of left-wing thought we find excessive. But when disagreement arises within the progressive family, the liberal’s role is to accept critique from the left without returning it.

When it comes to my own work, the simplest answer I have for Taylor and Hunt-Hendrix is that they misunderstand my job description. Opinion journalists are not political activists. Our role is not to produce outcomes but to use argument and analysis to explain the world as we see it. Most of my criticism is aimed at the right because the right poses the greatest threat to liberal values, but it’s impossible to clarify your beliefs without defining limits on both ideological ends. I am not objective, but I do have to write honestly, which means sometimes conceding the faults of people or parties I support or the merits of those I generally oppose. Journalists don’t, or shouldn’t, have teams.

Yet while that explains my position, there is also a broader question of how liberals who aren’t working journalists should behave. I believe even aside from their confusion about professional categories, the cause of liberalism requires understanding and maintaining distinctions within the left. There’s an obvious exception for elections, when political activists need to put aside their differences and support their allies. But the logic of election coalitions can’t apply to all of intellectual life. Liberals have serious differences with leftists over both strategy and first principles, and those distinctions shouldn’t be subsumed into a popular front.

"Progressive" makes sense as referring to social reforms (and the term seems like it could apply to movements that build on something), but often it's conflated with everything else on the left. The distinction of progressive as action vs liberal as philosophizing can also work.

[Mister Mets]

Jeez, looking at some of his evidence to date I wonder if he’s any more reliable than the Donald.

The example, that springs to mind: when asked “Is Trump a micro-manager” he’s answered an unqualified “Yes”.

Probably being uncharitable but I can’t see the Donald micro-managing anything. Too much like hard work.

If we're talking about how his money is spent, Trump is probably a micromanager. If we're talking about the specifics of legislation or nominees for obscure offices, Trump is going to leave it to someone else.

Part of what happened there is that there was a revolt among the rank and file of the NRA. They had an election, and the entire leadership was thrown out and replaced with absolutists. I don't know if it was actual grassroots or AstroTurf though.

In this situation, it would also depend on what the grassroots want. I know nothing of this story, but it seems they could vary from responsible gun owners trying to educate the public on firearm safety (the original NRA) to the type of people who probably won.

I think in this election we're going to have to wait longer to get accurate numbers. I think there are a large number of cranky voters who don't like either and will decide late, kind of like in 2016. Also, if you look at these states the Dem Senate candidate is ahead in all of them, which is odd if Biden is going to really be losing. I'm just not sure these are correct right now.

I also feel (from personal experience) that there are a large number of people just refusing to tune in right now and that they will do so at the last minute.

There are several potential additional factors.

The situation in Gaza will likely be different in five months.
It will take voters time to notice improvements in inflation.
Trump's on trial for the next five months, meaning all sorts of embarrassing revelations.

There is always the possibility of something that will hurt Biden's reputation happening soon, but it seems new developments are more likely to help him.

[skyvolt2000]

trump is leading polls over Biden. I'll never understand why minorities would vote for the GOP.

Here is the thing about those polls-those are polls that inquire about everyone and then breaks it down by race.


Now if you when you talk to pollsters who ONLY talk to a certain race-the results are different. A few black centric pollsters tossed out numbers that had black folks supporting Biden. However they never get interviewed on mainstream media.

So it depends on who you are looking at.

[Tendrin]

We are either going to see the biggest racial realignment in American voting in half a century or ... we're not.

The cross tabs of these polls are frequently very weird. Polling is in a really odd place right now.

[JackDaw]

We are either going to see the biggest racial realignment in American voting in half a century or ... we're not.

The cross tabs of these polls are frequently very weird. Polling is in a really odd place right now.

I have more respect for the predictive accuracy of polling than most people.

On UK scene there’s certainly a fair number of cases where the polls predict one result and something else happens. But that’s usually down to the polls having been close, and the actual result was actually possible accepting the forecast error variation. If the polls are consistently predicting something with a healthy margin (e.g. a consistent lead of 5 percent or more), then it’s very likely it will happen.

But aren’t the Biden/Trump polling figures close and “all over the place”?

[aja_christopher]

We are either going to see the biggest racial realignment in American voting in half a century or ... we're not.

The cross tabs of these polls are frequently very weird. Polling is in a really odd place right now.

Polls aren't votes -- instead of being concerned about polls people should be focused on the Republican Party's concentrated efforts to dilute and obstruct the voting rights of their opponents as those are long term issues.

Conservative Republicans understand this reality which is exactly why they have spent decades blocking and dismantling the voting rights of non-whites.



The issues Oliver is talking about in this video are still in contention in places like Louisiana, Alabama, Texas, Arizona and almost everywhere where Republicans are in power due to the Supreme Court dismantling of the Voting Rights Act.

As was noted before -- lower voter participation from black and brown voters can often be directly attributed to increased Republican voting restrictions.

The rest they take care of via gerrymandering and other forms of disenfranchisement -- whether legal or illegal.

-----

"Following the 2020 United States presidential election and the unsuccessful attempts by Donald Trump and various other Republican officials to overturn it, Republican lawmakers initiated a sweeping effort to make voting laws more restrictive within several states across the country. According to the Brennan Center for Justice, as of October 4, 2021, more than 425 bills that would restrict voting access have been introduced in 49 states—with 33 of these bills enacted across 19 states so far.[4] The bills are largely centered around limiting mail-in voting, strengthening voter ID laws, shortening early voting, eliminating automatic and same-day voter registration, curbing the use of ballot drop boxes, and allowing for increased purging of voter rolls.

"Republicans in at least eight states have also introduced bills that would give lawmakers greater power over election administration after they were unsuccessful in their attempts to overturn election results in swing states won by Democratic candidate Joe Biden in the 2020 election. The efforts garnered press attention and public outrage from Democrats, and by 2023 Republicans had adopted a more "under the radar" approach to achieve their goals."

https:/http:///en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republ...External_links

[aja_christopher]

Republicans are the party of Trump though history shows they will eventually shift to an equally unethical secondary option if he loses more elections for them.

It's not his behavior or his policies that they dislike -- it is the fact that he lost the election as proven by their ongoing support of his attempt to overthrow said election.

If it were up to them he'd be allowed to get away with every crime he has committed thus far and -- with past as precedence -- every crime that he might commit in the future as well.

Conservative leaders won't even talk about the porn star allegations or the fact that Trump sleeps around on his wives -- like most hypocrites they only view "family values" as something to use against Democratic opponents.

Of course when the Democrats (such as Obama) do exhibit respectable Christian "family values" they instead support the bigoted lying non-Christian womanizer who claimed that Obama wasn't born in America.

-----

"Donald Trump’s GOP allies show up in force as Michael Cohen takes the stand in hush money trial"

With Donald Trump barred from publicly attacking the key witness in his hush money trial, his campaign brought to court a phalanx of Republican elected officials to speak for him.

“The thing that the president is prevented from saying, which is a disgrace, is that every single person involved in this prosecution is practically a Democratic political operative,” U.S. Sen. JD Vance of Ohio said outside the courthouse Monday during a morning break.

Trump’s former fixer Michael Cohen took the stand on Monday to allege that the former president instructed him to silence stories that could have hurt his 2016 presidential campaign. Trump, who is balancing the demands of a felony trial with his third run for the White House, has been prohibited by a judge’s gag order from criticizing witnesses and already fined for violating the restrictions. Bringing allies to court allowed Trump’s campaign to press his message without violating the gag order. It also gave those allies a high-profile platform to demonstrate loyalty to their party’s presumptive nominee and perhaps audition for higher office.

According to Trump’s campaign, all of his courthouse guests Monday volunteered to appear to support the former president and were not explicitly invited by people affiliated with the campaign. But U.S. Sen. Rick Scott of Florida, who was at court with Trump last week, said Monday that he had been invited by Susie Wiles, a senior adviser to Trump’s campaign and also a longtime Florida GOP operative who advised Scott’s 2010 gubernatorial bid.

“I went because President Trump’s a friend,” Scott said. “I’ve known him longer than I’ve been in politics.”

Vance, widely seen as a contender to be Trump’s vice presidential pick, was part of a group that arrived at court with Trump and stood behind him as he addressed reporters before heading into the courtroom. It was the biggest single showing of the allies joining Trump in court for the hush money trial since it began last month. Others in Monday’s group included Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, U.S. Rep. Nicole Malliotakis of New York, and a pair of attorneys general, Steve Marshall of Alabama and Brenna Bird of Iowa. Former GOP rival Vivek Ramaswamy, who shuttered his campaign earlier this year but is considered a likely part of a new Trump administration, planned to come to court on Tuesday, according to a spokesman for the entrepreneur.

Vance was once a harsh critic who said he “can’t stomach Trump” and called him “noxious.” Now, he is a close ally who will appear with Trump at an Ohio fundraiser on Wednesday, when the trial will be on break.

Vance posted a thread on the X social platform as he headed to court with the former president, including a missive from the courtroom questioning Cohen’s believability: “Cohen can’t remember how old his son is or how old he was when he started to work for Trump but I’m sure he remembers extremely small details from years ago!” He also leveled criticism directly at the daughter of Judge Juan M. Merchan, who is overseeing the case. The gag order pertaining to Trump prohibits his critical comments about people affiliated with the case — except for Merchan and District Attorney Alvin Bragg — as well as Merchan’s family members. Merchan’s daughter is a political consultant whose firm has worked for Democrats.

Outside court with Vance, Tuberville on Monday questioned the citizenship of the jurors, suggesting there were “supposedly American citizens in that courtroom,” and portrayed Bragg as a publicity-seeker. He described Trump as “going through mental anguish in a courtroom. That’s very depressing.”

There have been one-off supportive trial appearances already, when allies including Scott and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton came to court with Trump. Both Scott and Paxton have been through legal troubles of their own, and have railed against what they call politically motivated prosecutions — a message that echoes Trump’s own. Scott’s appearance came on another pivotal day in the case, as porn actor Stormy Daniels testified about her alleged 2006 sexual encounter with Trump.

Outside the courthouse, Scott said Merchan’s daughter is “a political operative and raises money for Democrats” — a criticism prohibited for Trump himself by his gag order, which bans him from making or directing others to make public statements about people connected to the case, including the judge’s family. Scott denied his presence had anything specifically to do with the gag order.

Paxton did not speak publicly when he joined Trump last week, but he gave interviews later to Fox Business and Newsmax about the trial, calling it “perversion of justice.”'

https://apnews.com/article/donald-tr...7dd7fba9c2ffad

[aja_christopher]

"Nearly two years after a federal judge said that Louisiana’s congressional map diluted Black voting power, Black voters are at risk of voting for a second time in an election under a plan that likely violates the Voting Rights Act.

In response to the judge’s ruling, the state’s Republican legislature had created a second majority-African American district in the state’s six district congressional plan. But now, a different federal court has said that adding the second majority-Black district is unconstitutional. The new ruling, issued Tuesday by two judges appointed by former President Donald Trump, leaves the state without a congressional map six months before the election and has fueled complaints of political gamesmanship from critics on the left who fret that the clash could provide another opening for opponents of the nation’s premier civil rights law to attack one of its remaining pillars.

The legal fight may influence which party controls the US House next year as the second majority-Black district would likely vote for a Democrat.

Some Louisiana officials, meanwhile, contend that the ongoing legal fight over the congressional map has put them in a tough spot – caught between the Voting Rights Act’s demands for empowering minority voters and the Constitution’s limits on the government’s ability to consider race at all. They say the Supreme Court must clear up what they contend is an ambiguous legal landscape - despite the justices reaffirming their position only last year in an unexpected 5-4 decision that sided with Black voters in Alabama.

The Louisiana federal court that struck down the most recent congressional map held a hearing Monday on next steps. The court ordered briefs to be filed by close of business Tuesday that address whether it is feasible for the legislature to draw a new map in time for November’s elections. State officials have said they need to know the contours of the district by May 15. In a statement posted on social media, Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill said the state should be allowed to implement the map passed by the state legislature that allows for two Black-majority districts – or failing that, revert to the map used in the 2022 election with a single district in which African American voters are in the majority.

She said the dispute appears headed to the Supreme Court this week. The Black voters who are defending the second majority-Black district have also signaled they will likely seek an emergency intervention from the Supreme Court.

The current turmoil reflects a larger pattern of courts striking down redistricting plans as discriminating against voters of color, only for those plans to remain in place for elections because of procedural delays and other litigative gambits. How the high court handles the dispute will signal the degree with which the justices will tolerate legal maneuvers that prolong the resolution of redistricting disputes that crop every decade after the census.

“Right now, Louisiana has no map,” said state Sen. Cleo Fields, a Black Democrat and former member of Congress, who is one of the candidates running in the new 6th Congressional District created by the state legislature.

“The courts can’t say, ‘Comply with the law. You have the right to draw the lines,’ but then say, ‘We don’t like the way you complied with the law,’” he said.

Although Black residents make up roughly a third of Louisiana’s population, the state has just one Black lawmaker – who is also the lone Democrat – in its six-member US House delegation."

https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/06/polit...act/index.html

[JackDaw]

Paxton did not speak publicly when he joined Trump last week, but he gave interviews later to Fox Business and Newsmax about the trial, calling it “perversion of justice.”'[/I]

https://apnews.com/article/donald-tr...7dd7fba9c2ffad

It’s interesting the number of people that are effectively happy to characterise the potential miscategorisation of business spend as a non crime.

Actually it is a crime, and there’s at least 2 important reasons for that. The first is that most big companies…even the ones that don’t have a Stock Exchange listing… have a multitude of shareholders. If the guy in charge of the company is free to record spend anyway he wants he would be free to enrich himself by spending money anyway he wants…that would be fraud at the expense of other shareholders.

After that the way the spend is categorised decides how it treated for tax purposes, for example whether it’s tax deductible or not.

It’s not the sort of crime that I’d expect senior Republicans…well known for seeing business integrity as paramount…to regard as trivial. (Well unless it helps them…)

[CaptainEurope]

Josef Fritzl, found guilty of imprisoning his own daughter, raping her thousands of times over a span of 24 years and giving her 7 children, will be moved from a high security hospital for the criminally insane to gen pop. He is now 89 and suffering from dementia.

[Mister Mets]

It’s interesting the number of people that are effectively happy to characterise the potential miscategorisation of business spend as a non crime.

Actually it is a crime, and there’s at least 2 important reasons for that. The first is that most big companies…even the ones that don’t have a Stock Exchange listing… have a multitude of shareholders. If the guy in charge of the company is free to record spend anyway he wants he would be free to enrich himself by spending money anyway he wants…that would be fraud at the expense of other shareholders.

After that the way the spend is categorised decides how it treated for tax purposes, for example whether it’s tax deductible or not.

It’s not the sort of crime that I’d expect senior Republicans…well known for seeing business integrity as paramount…to regard as trivial. (Well unless it helps them…)

The legal case is complicated.

Trump is prosecuted for things that would be typically be misdemeanors (in which case the statute of limitations would have meant Bragg was too late to prosecute) under an argument that he's hiding a felony he wasn't prosecuted for.

https://reason.com/2024/04/15/alvin-...me-what-crime/

His campaign would rather focus on the argument prosecutors are going too far, because the argument that he should get away with as misdemeanor due to the statute of limitations doesn't exactly make him seem presidential.

trump is leading polls over Biden. I'll never understand why minorities would vote for the GOP.

To be clear, the polls aren't suggesting that Trump has a shot at a majority of the minority vote, but that the Republican share is increasing.

It would be a big deal for Republicans to get 17% of the African-American vote, which Trump gets in some polls, but it's still a blowout win for Democrats.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Republicans are the party of Trump though history shows they will eventually shift to an equally unethical secondary option if he loses more elections for them.

It's not his behavior or his policies that they dislike -- it is the fact that he lost the election as proven by their ongoing support of his attempt to overthrow said election.

If it were up to them he'd be allowed to get away with every crime he has committed thus far and -- with past as precedence -- every crime that he might commit in the future as well.

Conservative leaders won't even talk about the porn star allegations or the fact that Trump sleeps around on his wives -- like most hypocrites they only view "family values" as something to use against Democratic opponents.

Of course when the Democrats (such as Obama) do exhibit respectable Christian "family values" they instead support the bigoted lying non-Christian womanizer who claimed that Obama wasn't born in America.

-----

"Donald Trump’s GOP allies show up in force as Michael Cohen takes the stand in hush money trial"

With Donald Trump barred from publicly attacking the key witness in his hush money trial, his campaign brought to court a phalanx of Republican elected officials to speak for him.

“The thing that the president is prevented from saying, which is a disgrace, is that every single person involved in this prosecution is practically a Democratic political operative,” U.S. Sen. JD Vance of Ohio said outside the courthouse Monday during a morning break.

Trump’s former fixer Michael Cohen took the stand on Monday to allege that the former president instructed him to silence stories that could have hurt his 2016 presidential campaign. Trump, who is balancing the demands of a felony trial with his third run for the White House, has been prohibited by a judge’s gag order from criticizing witnesses and already fined for violating the restrictions. Bringing allies to court allowed Trump’s campaign to press his message without violating the gag order. It also gave those allies a high-profile platform to demonstrate loyalty to their party’s presumptive nominee and perhaps audition for higher office.

According to Trump’s campaign, all of his courthouse guests Monday volunteered to appear to support the former president and were not explicitly invited by people affiliated with the campaign. But U.S. Sen. Rick Scott of Florida, who was at court with Trump last week, said Monday that he had been invited by Susie Wiles, a senior adviser to Trump’s campaign and also a longtime Florida GOP operative who advised Scott’s 2010 gubernatorial bid.

“I went because President Trump’s a friend,” Scott said. “I’ve known him longer than I’ve been in politics.”

Vance, widely seen as a contender to be Trump’s vice presidential pick, was part of a group that arrived at court with Trump and stood behind him as he addressed reporters before heading into the courtroom. It was the biggest single showing of the allies joining Trump in court for the hush money trial since it began last month. Others in Monday’s group included Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, U.S. Rep. Nicole Malliotakis of New York, and a pair of attorneys general, Steve Marshall of Alabama and Brenna Bird of Iowa. Former GOP rival Vivek Ramaswamy, who shuttered his campaign earlier this year but is considered a likely part of a new Trump administration, planned to come to court on Tuesday, according to a spokesman for the entrepreneur.

Vance was once a harsh critic who said he “can’t stomach Trump” and called him “noxious.” Now, he is a close ally who will appear with Trump at an Ohio fundraiser on Wednesday, when the trial will be on break.

Vance posted a thread on the X social platform as he headed to court with the former president, including a missive from the courtroom questioning Cohen’s believability: “Cohen can’t remember how old his son is or how old he was when he started to work for Trump but I’m sure he remembers extremely small details from years ago!” He also leveled criticism directly at the daughter of Judge Juan M. Merchan, who is overseeing the case. The gag order pertaining to Trump prohibits his critical comments about people affiliated with the case — except for Merchan and District Attorney Alvin Bragg — as well as Merchan’s family members. Merchan’s daughter is a political consultant whose firm has worked for Democrats.

Outside court with Vance, Tuberville on Monday questioned the citizenship of the jurors, suggesting there were “supposedly American citizens in that courtroom,” and portrayed Bragg as a publicity-seeker. He described Trump as “going through mental anguish in a courtroom. That’s very depressing.”

There have been one-off supportive trial appearances already, when allies including Scott and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton came to court with Trump. Both Scott and Paxton have been through legal troubles of their own, and have railed against what they call politically motivated prosecutions — a message that echoes Trump’s own. Scott’s appearance came on another pivotal day in the case, as porn actor Stormy Daniels testified about her alleged 2006 sexual encounter with Trump.

Outside the courthouse, Scott said Merchan’s daughter is “a political operative and raises money for Democrats” — a criticism prohibited for Trump himself by his gag order, which bans him from making or directing others to make public statements about people connected to the case, including the judge’s family. Scott denied his presence had anything specifically to do with the gag order.

Paxton did not speak publicly when he joined Trump last week, but he gave interviews later to Fox Business and Newsmax about the trial, calling it “perversion of justice.”'

https://apnews.com/article/donald-tr...7dd7fba9c2ffad

Isn't it ironic how members of the so-called "Party of Law and Order" are all too willing to make excuses for and support a rapist, thief, liar and crook like Trump? The hypocrisy is staggering.

[Tami]

Isn't it ironic how members of the so-called "Party of Law and Order" are all too willing to make excuses for and support a rapist, thief, liar and crook like Trump? The hypocrisy is staggering.

That same hypocrisy shows in the Religious Right supporting someone who has broken nearly all of the ten Commandments, and then some.

[The Cool Thatguy]

Isn't it ironic how members of the so-called "Party of Law and Order" are all too willing to make excuses for and support a rapist, thief, liar and crook like Trump? The hypocrisy is staggering.

I don't think the last couple of generations of Republicans ever gave a damn about the law, just order as they saw fit.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

That same hypocrisy shows in the Religious Right supporting someone who has broken nearly all of the ten Commandments, and then some.

And the living embodiment of the Seven Deadly Sins all wrapped up in one blubbery orange sack of flabby flesh.