The are briefs and there are briefs. One kind may be ominous for Trump.

 By Hal Brown

The other day I wrote about various kinds of blockbusters in 

Another Trump legal jeopardy blockbuster, give me a break (link).

This morning, trying to get a blog written in the 90 minutes before Xfinity shuts off the Internet for an upgrade, I looked at the articles on Raw Story, and found one that I wanted to share once I thought of an illustration to put together which conveyed my thoughts about it. Okay, the two kinds of briefs have nothing to do with each other so it is lame and from an often shared picture of Trump golfing he does at least occasionally seem to wear briefs.

Click above to read article

This story uses the word ominous though it could have easily called the new DOJ brief a "blockbuster".

The word ominous is used twice in the article.

Click above to enlarge image

My computer dictionary defines the word as "giving the impression that something bad or unpleasant is going to happen; threatening; inauspicious."

The thesaurus offers synonyms for the word:

threatening, menacing, baleful, forbidding, sinister, inauspicious, unpropitious, portentous, unfavorable, dire, unpromising; black, dark, wintry, gloomy, ugly.

Back to the word blockbuster. We all know what it means in terms of movies, but may not know that the origin of the word went back to the 1940's:

Click above to enlarge

Mar-a-Lago without Mar-a-Lago, lovely beachfront property.

What's more ominous for Trump than one or more briefs that could bust the entire block that he lives on? 

I am hyperbole adverse when it comes to describing the latest example of a, to use the language the MAGA's hate, caso legal contra Trump.

Even if, and hopefully when, Trump is indicted for a felony which has as its penalty a prison term, I'd hesitate to call this an ominous blockbuster.

I'd prefer not seeing hyperbole at all.  I'd like a straightforward headline that has the words  indicted, convicted, sentenced, and prison in it. 

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This Oregon Democrat survived an anxious election night in 2022, now faces a terrifying one in 2024

 By Hal Brown

Photo of author

If you are absolutely convinced that the United States is on the brink of being destroyed by those who want to make your personal life miserable, take away your precious rights, enable people you'd prefer didn't live in the same neighborhood let alone the same country with you, you only have three choices as to who to vote for in the primaries.

If you believe in democracy you vote for Joe Biden. If you are a fascist you have to decide whether to vote for one of the two strongest GOP candidates in the primary. 

The Republicans are divided and lines have already been drawn between those who support Trump and those who support DeSantis or any other candidate GOP not named Trump. This has been clearly shown in the competing conservative gatherings. See:

Dueling CPAC and Club for Growth events highlight divide within GOP ahead of 2024 from CNN

These are some of the things that Trump said at CPAC:

• the nation is in a "communism state of mind" 
• America is a "socialist dumping ground for criminals, junkies, thugs, Marxist radicals and dangerous refugees that no other country wants." He claimed that people in the country illegally are staying in the U.S. in "beautiful hotel suites."
• traditional Republicans are "freaks, neocons, globalist open borders zealots — and fools."
• he has the "personality to keep us out of war."
• “We are never going back to a party that wants to give unlimited money to fight foreign wars that are endless wars, that are stupid.” 
• "I am your warrior. I am your justice. For those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution."
  

More about the key moments from Trump's CPAC rant.

We know how Ron DeSantis has taken steps in Florida to turn his state into the sunny anti-woke fascist playground I depicted by making this illustration:

The are two basic groups of Americans:

People who want the country to be a tolerant inclusive society governed by civil servants who believe that all people deserve fair and equal treatment by those empowered to enforce the law. 

People who want the country to be an intolerant exclusive society governed by civil servants who believe that all people  not in their group deserve biased and unequal treatment by those empowered to enforce the law. 

We have no choice but to recognize that there is a significant minority of the population who fall to varying degrees into the second group above. The polls suggest that they don't represent a majority across the country but they do in some states.

The travesty of the Electoral College is that it is the least democratic form of electing leaders short of only allowing one candidate to run for each position which one can imagine. If we had each vote count equally across the states the country wouldn't be in danger of a fascist takeover. Nationwide polls show that the majority of voting age Americans are in favor of things that ought to lead them to vote for President Biden. Consider the results from this poll from prior to the 2020 election: 

National Survey Finds Bipartisan Support for Expansive View of Rights

Click below to enlarge:

There's no doubt that the next election will be the most anxiety provoking one many of us, meaning those who are reading this blog, have lived through. That is with the exception of one commenter who wrote this other day "Your ongoing fixation on Trump is quite sad. I hope you get help."

My friends in Oregon already had practice dealing with a potentially close election because a third party candidate for governor, Betsy Johnson, could have upended the chances of the Democratic Party candidate Tina Kotek and given the election to a far right candidate, Christine Drazen. 

I wonder about what it would be like to be put into an induced coma until after the election. Would I wake up to find we have a President Trump or a President DeSantis? Would I wake to find out the the GOP still controlled the House and won the Senate? Or would I wake up to be told that the Democrats won across the board? I'd be spared all these months of growing anxiety. But then I'd miss out on all the interesting discussions with my political junkie friends. Not only that, by the time I woke up nobody would be reading my blog.

I want to live my life to the fullest and at my age, approaching 80, would not want to give up the time until we know for sure the results of the 2024 elections.

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Another Trump legal jeopardy blockbuster, give me a break

 By Hal Brown

As recently as 1995 some prisons required inmates to break rocks. Not exactly blocks but close enough for my blog story. 

Click above to enlarge image

Donald Trump, if he ever does end up incarcerated won't be forced to break rocks. He'd be lucky to have time outside to play with his little putter.

Once upon a time in our memories of the 1980's we all had video players and because they dominated the market most of us frequented Blockbuster stores to rent our tapes or DVD's. Now there's only one left in the country and it happens to be in my state of Oregon in the town of Bend. 

The word "blockbuster" means a thing of great power or size, in particular a movie, book, or other product that is a great commercial success: for example: the latest Hollywood blockbuster. In the 1980's and 1990's we had true blockbusters like the Star Wars, James Bond, Indiana Jones, Terminator, and Die Hard movies and sequels. 

Apropos to Donald Trump, both the book and movie adaption of "All The President's Men" were blockbusters.

This morning I looked at the website Raw Story and this is what I saw:

Click to read article

Not only is this legal setback described as a blockbuster but it is referred to not merely as a big blow to his 2024 run, but a big, big blow.

What , then, is this gargantuan legal setback?

From the article:

A brief from the Department of Justice firmly stating that Donald Trump does not have "absolute immunity" is nothing less than a "blockbuster" and will open the door to a flood of lawsuits to be filed against the former president as he makes his third run for the Oval Office.

That is the opinion of former prosecutor Charles Colemen Jr. during an appearance on MSNBC's "The Katie Phang Show" early Saturday morning.

Coleman goes on (my emphasis added):

"A blockbuster," Coleman immediately shot back. "The decision cannot be more important or come at a worse time for Donald Trump. You are talking about someone who is looking forward to 2024 and trying to, as we were just talking about in your last segment, now, another challenge to Joe Biden to be president again, and he has to potentially deal with lawsuits from Capitol police officers as well as Congresspeople who feel like they've put them in danger with his rhetoric around January Six and what happened." " 

This is a big, big blow to Donald Trump and significant news," he added. "Because it opens the proverbial floodgates for lawsuits

Raw Story is my go-to website for breaking news and along with Salon and the OpEd sections of The Washington Post and New York Times, for original opinion. The title of the "blockbuster" article used the words of a legal expert so it was accurate, but reading their story was still a disappointment.

Charles Coleman is a legal analyst on MSNBC. He is a former federal prosecutor and civil rights attorney.  He spent 3 1/2 years as a senior assistant district attorney in the Kings County DA office. He has also served as a senior trial lawyer and civil litigation attorney for the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. (Reference)

I have no problem with his credentials. What does bother me aside from the words he used being part of the Raw Story title getting my hopes up is that he was really engaging in wishful thinking hyperbole.

I was going to paraphrase the saying about going form one's lips or mouth to God's ears to say from Coleman's mouth to Lady Justice's ears and make an illustration. Then I discovered that both Lady Justice's eyes and ears are covered.

What would I describe as a blockbuster and a big, big legal blow to Trump? 

The first thing that comes to mind is something along the lines of the Nixon White House tapes. But that was then and this is now. Those were audio tapes. Today, considering the nothing burger the Access Hollywood recording was, I wonder if a series of more compelling videos of Trump exposing all of his lies and felonies would be his undoing.

Certainly this could be described as blockbuster news, and I'll accept that this would represent a legal setback. Unfortunately, I'd have to equivocate on making a judgment as to whether this would inevitably lead to Trump deciding to abandon his attempt to be reelected. I'd give it a 50/50 chance.

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