Today's Keith

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Today's Keith

Countdown to the purge.

Trump has started down the path to purges of the military, political prosecutions and show trials. His fascists have actually leaked plans to court-martial and even seek treason charges against army leadership and even retired generals.

NBC News reports: "“The Trump transition team is compiling a list of senior current and former U.S. military officers who were directly involved in the withdrawal from Afghanistan and exploring whether they could be court-martialed for their involvement, according to a U.S. official and a person familiar with the plan.

Officials working on the transition are considering creating a commission to investigate the 2021 withdrawal… and whether the military leaders could be eligible for charges as serious as treason… “They’re taking it very seriously,” the person with knowledge of the plan said."

Today's Keith

The reason for all the horseshit cabinet picks may well be a smoke screen to cover attempts to give Trump a shot at being POTUS-For-Life.

Twenty-Second Amendment

Section 1

No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once. But this Article shall not apply to any person holding the office of President when this Article was proposed by the Congress, and shall not prevent any person who may be holding the office of President, or acting as President, during the term within which this Article becomes operative from holding the office of President or acting as President during the remainder of such term.

Section 2

This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several States within seven years from the date of its submission to the States by the Congress.

Today's Keith

Forever Dunning Kruger - every one of them is an idiot who fancies himself a genius.

Unless the GOP Normies find their balls, this can only end with bullets and cyanide capsules in the White House bunker.

Today's Keith

If this isn't Peak Daddy State, then my suspicions are validated - there's no bottom they can't get under, and no top they won't tear down to get over.

ie: Voters don't believe Trump will do the shitty things he's said he'll do because they don't believe he has the core principles he needs to make good on his promises.

So, it's his untrustworthiness that makes him trustworthy.

And don't say things like "Make it make sense", and then shrug and go back to watching your shows.

Stop that shit.

It doesn't make sense because it's not supposed to make sense.

These Prison Stocks Soar Again On Trump's Hardline Border Move

Geo Group (GEO) and CoreCivic (CXW) surged again on Monday after a huge rally last week spurred by earnings and elections. CoreCivic stock and Geo stock extended gains after President-elect Donald Trump picked immigration hardliner Tom Homan as his top border official.

Border Pick Homan A Hardline Immigration Official

Homan previously was head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) during Trump's first term. Trump said Sunday that Homan would lead the "deportation of illegal aliens" in his new administration starting Jan. 20, after vowing a mass deportation of undocumented migrants on the campaign trail.

"I've known Tom for a long time, and there is nobody better at policing and controlling our borders," Trump said on the Trump Media majority-owned social media platform TruthSocial.

Geo stock and CoreCivic also surged after Trump's first U.S. presidential election win. They broke out to highs last week after his second victory, scoring one of their best weekly gains since November 2016.

Investors seemed to bet — again – that a Trump-led White House would detain more undocumented migrants in the company's facilities.

Solid earnings last week also helped the prison operators.

Shares of Geo Group and CoreCivic surged 8% and 10%, respectively, in Monday's stock market action.

CoreCivic stock scored a 29% election and earnings breakaway gap last Wednesday. It jumped above a 16.54 buy point in the biggest volume since shares began to consolidate in June, MarketSurge shows. The prison stock soared nearly 88% last week before paring the weekly gain to 69%.

Last Wednesday, Geo shares broke out in sympathy. Geo stock extended gains from the 16.47 cup-with-handle entry amid its own earnings report on Thursday. It skyrocketed almost 76% last week.

Geo Group Earnings, CoreCivic Earnings

Last week, prison and detention operators GEO Group and CoreCivic diverged on outlook after reporting strong third-quarter earnings.

CoreCivic revealed last Wednesday that it earned 19 cents per share, more than double estimates for 9 cents. The company hiked its full-year 2024 guidance for adjusted funds from operations for 2024 to $1.59-$1.65 per share — from $1.48-$1.56 — after Q3 occupancy grew from 72% to 75%. Analysts expected adjusted funds from operations of $1.49 a share, according to FactSet.

Geo Group last Thursday posted its first earnings gain after eight quarters of declines, FactSet shows. But the company missed views. Geo said it is now targeting full-year 2024 adjusted EBITDA of $470 million-$480 million, down from $485 million-$505 million previously. Analysts expect $488.2 million.

Prison Stocks Soared After 2016 Trump Win

In 2016, private prison stocks galloped ahead after Trump's first presidential election win.

Geo Group, which owns, leases and manages correctional facilities, advanced 107% in the three months after the election. Rival CoreCivic rose 149% in the same three-month period.

Many investors credited Trump's win for the initial rally in the prison stocks. Trump vowed to crack down on crime and illegal immigration, and private prisons and detention centers were seemingly one answer to overcrowding.

This was a sharp reversal from former President Barack Obama's order to phase out private prisons. In February 2017, then Attorney General Jeff Sessions turned the green light back on for private prisons.

Much has changed since then. The two main prison stocks quickly saw gains from the first Trump victory evaporate.

Both Geo stock and CoreCivic languished for much of the past year before breaking out to highs this week amid the elections and earnings.

Today's Keith

It wasn't his usual gross overstatement - he meant 250 million white people.

Today's Keith

I don't know what Trump and MAGA are trying to pull here. I guess it could be something like projection, where he's telling us how much he hates himself because he's flawed, and flaws can't be tolerated, so he's trying to get others to see the flaws in themselves and to hate themselves for it.

In case you were wondering about that Dilley moron.

Today's Keith

No more hints. No more dog whistles. No more furtive glances and timid half-gestures.

We have to come out from behind the cutesy comfort of The First Corollary of Godwin's Law and deliver the message.

This is like 1933 and we have one last chance to stop the American Hitler.

Today's Keith

Trump thinks he's an entertainer, he thinks he's funny, and he thinks that's all he needs to be POTUS.

But hey - it keeps the rubes coming back to give him more of their butter-n-egg money, and it keeps them from seeing him for what he is: a nepo-baby legacy puke with a massive ego that's matched only by his many enormous inadequacies.

He's one of only two candidates with a real shot at being elected President Of The United Fucking States, and he spent 10 minutes talking about Arnold Palmer's dick.

Arnold Palmer's dick.

Today's Keith

"Elite squads"?

Let's suppose Trump's henchmen are clever enough to wrangle it so all the paperwork is done ahead of time, and then they make their move to round up brown people - which could maybe help them avoid the "bad optics" of concentration camps. It's not likely, because part of the deal is to be shitty with brown people so white people can feel superior - but anyway, let's say they figure that out.

Question: Are they also clever enough to strong-arm other countries into agreeing to take all of our deportees?

They may indeed have thought about that too, and there's a greater-than-zero probability that some other countries would accept them as - oh, I dunno - slave labor? I'm sure they'll call it something that sounds more benign, like "Contract Labor", or some other bullshit term. (can you say "human trafficking? I knew you could)

Some enterprising young man will surely see the opportunity to turn a buck or two - why waste such a valuable commodity? And shucks, while we're at it, since we've off-shored a shitload of our other stuff, let's off-shore the genocide business too. Outa sight, outa mind - and our hands are clean - it's those other guys.

But not all the people we're trying to "deport" are going to be accepted by our partners.

What happens to them?

Press Poodles

A few points:

• It ran for one day at WaPo
• Where the fuck was this, Bob?
• You've done this before - what were you waiting for this time?

5 key revelations from Bob Woodward’s new book

Trump, Putin, Biden, Netanyahu and other world leaders in secretive, off-the-cuff moments revealed in “War.”

Bob Woodward’s “War,” set to be released next week, is the author and Washington Post associate editor’s fourth book since Donald Trump’s upset victory in 2016.

The new book opens the aperture to reveal how a years-long political contest between Trump and President Joe Biden — and now Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee — has unfolded against the backdrop of cascading global crisis, from the coronavirus pandemic, to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, to the escalating conflict between Israel and Iran-backed proxies in the Middle East. At the book’s end, Woodward concludes that Biden, mistakes notwithstanding, has exhibited “steady and purposeful leadership,” while Trump has displayed recklessness and self-interest making him, in Woodward’s estimation, “unfit to lead the country.”

That determination is based on a series of key revelations. Below are some of the book’s main findings. Meanwhile, the Trump campaign issued a statement attacking the book and saying, “None of these made-up stories by Bob Woodward are true.”

1. Trump sent American-made coronavirus tests to Putin

When Trump was president in 2020, he sent coveted tests for the disease to Russian President Vladimir Putin during a crippling shortage in the United States and around the world.

As the book explains, Putin was petrified of contracting the deadly illness. He accepted the supplies but cautioned Trump not to reveal that he had shared them, concerned for the political fallout that the U.S. president would suffer.

“Please don’t tell anybody you sent these to me,” Putin said to Trump, according to Woodward.

Woodward reports that Trump’s reply was: “I don’t care. Fine.”

“War” also suggests that Trump and Putin may have spoken as many as seven times since Trump left the White House in 2021. On one occasion, this year, Trump sent an unnamed aide away from his office at his Mar-a-Lago Club so he could conduct a private phone call with Putin, according to the book.

A campaign official, Jason Miller, was evasive when Woodward asked him about the contact, eventually offering, “I have not heard that they’re talking, so I’d push back on that.”

2. Biden’s profanity-laced outbursts about Putin and Netanyahu

“War” portrays Biden as a careful and deliberate commander in chief, but combustible in private about intractable foreign leaders — especially Putin and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Biden called Putin the “epitome of evil” and remarked to his advisers, about his Russian counterpart, “That f---ing Putin.”

The intelligence community believed racial animus — namely the idea that Ukrainians were a lesser people than the Russians — was a significant factor in Putin’s designs on Ukraine, as “War” explains. The book quotes Avril Haines, the director of national intelligence, saying of Putin, “He is one of the most racist leaders that we have.”

Biden’s anger toward Netanyahu boiled over in the spring of 2024, Woodward reports, as Biden concluded that the Israeli prime minister’s interest was not actually in defeating Hamas but in protecting himself. “That son of a b----, Bibi Netanyahu, he’s a bad guy. He’s a bad f---ing guy!” Biden reportedly told advisers.

3. Harris’s two-track approach with Netanyahu

Harris delivered high-profile remarks after a July face-to-face meeting with Netanyahu, shortly after she became the presumptive Democratic nominee for president. She seemed to separate herself from Biden’s approach to Israel’s war in Gaza by speaking forcefully about the costs of the military campaign and pledging to “not be silent” about Palestinian suffering.

Her public tone surprised, and infuriated, Netanyahu because it marked a contrast with her more amicable approach during the private conversation the two had shared, Woodward reports. The book quotes the Israeli ambassador in Washington, Michael Herzog, saying: “She wants to be tough in public. But she wasn’t as tough privately.”

The episode is one of several in the book about Harris, who appears as a loyal No. 2 to Biden but hardly influential in major foreign policy decisions.

4. Frantic de-escalation in the face of possible Russian nuclear use

Woodward details some of the stunning intelligence capabilities that allowed Washington to foresee Russian plans for an all-out war against Ukraine in early 2022, including a human source inside the Kremlin.

This insight, however, got the Biden administration only so far as it sought to foreclose Russia’s nuclear option. In the fall of 2022, that option seemed like a live one, as U.S. intelligence agencies reported that Putin was seriously weighing use of a tactical nuclear weapon — at one point, assessing the likelihood at 50 percent.

An especially frantic quest to bring Moscow back from the brink came in October of that year, when Russia appeared to be laying the groundwork for escalation by accusing Ukraine of preparing to detonate a dirty bomb. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin flatly denied Russia’s accusations in a phone call with the Kremlin’s defense minister, Sergei Shoigu. Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security adviser, instructed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s team to summon the International Atomic Energy Agency to absolve themselves immediately. And Biden called out Russia’s apparent scheme publicly while privately leaning on Chinese President Xi Jinping to emphasize to Putin the dire consequences of nuclear use.

5. The pervasive influence of the Saudi crown prince

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, known by his initials MBS, is not a major figure in the book but looms large at critical junctures, with key assessments of him delivered by Democrats and Republicans alike.

Mohammed, currently the prime minister of Saudi Arabia, matters greatly as the de facto ruler of the Arab world’s wealthiest country. He cultivated close ties to Trump, who made Riyadh his first foreign stop as president. So, too, he has been crucial to matters of significant interest to Biden, especially oil supplies and the prospects of normalized relations with Israel.

Woodward summarized Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s perception of the crown prince this way: “MBS was nothing more than a spoiled child.”

One of the Saudi royal’s important interlocutors has been Sen. Lindsey Graham (S.C.). The Republican senator kept Biden’s aides apprised of Mohammed’s perspective on the possible normalization of relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel, according to Woodward, and also kept the gulf leader in communication with Trump. During a March visit to Saudi Arabia recounted in the book, Graham proposes to the crown prince that they call the Republican presidential candidate. Mohammed proceeds to conduct the conversation over speakerphone.

On an earlier trip, Graham had asked the crown prince to contact Sullivan, so the senator could inform them both about a discussion with Netanyahu.

“Hey, I’m here with Lindsey,” the Saudi royal reportedly announced to Sullivan over the phone.

Mr Olbermann would like a word.

Today's Keith

We can fantasize about getting to Peak Stoopid, but Republicans keep topping themselves.

MTG says Democrats are controlling the weather because they control the government, but somehow, when Trump held the office, all he could do was doodle on a paper map with a Sharpie.

Today's Keith

Embrace the suck. Stay in the fight.

This election is as existential as were those leading up to the American Civil War.

If you start to falter - don't.

If you start to think it'll be OK even if Trump wins - stop.

If there's nothing you can do but vote - do it.

Today's Keith

In case you're looking for an explanation for the seeming (ie: straight up fucking obvious) hypocrisy of guys like Mark Robinson - Keith's got it. And it's brilliant.

The key to it all is: They keep a ledger - a balance sheet.

Example:

• I know the pervy shit I do is sinful, and I deserve punishment for it
• My punishment will be commensurate to whatever extent I've sinned
• I have to atone somehow, so I'll punish others for doing the same kind of evil things I'm doing
• If I punish others to a greater degree for their sins than I'm going to be punished for mine, then I'm ahead on points and it's all good - I'm good.

And suddenly, they're absolved. And they're not just back to even - they're ahead of the game, and they can do more weird shit - and weirder weird shit - than they did before.

Sometimes, the politics of it doesn't make sense because it's not supposed to make sense. And that's bad enough, but it can be understood as relatively simple manipulation - propaganda.

But sometimes, it makes perfect sense to the guy who's pushing whatever shit he's pushing, and if people buy into it and vote for the guy doing that weird shit, that's when we know we're in deep trouble.

Keith Explains It All

Today's Keith

Trump has said it straight out - he intends violence against his enemies.

"It will be a bloody story."

And anybody with a living thinking brain has to know by now that everybody is - or will be - his enemy whenever he decides he needs them to be his enemy. Everybody. That's how this shit works.

Today's Keith

The Press Poodles can always be counted on to cover up Trump's shit.

Today's Keith

At about 24:00, Olbermann talks about the stuff that Trump pushes out of his ass and smears on the American psyche every fucking day.

He lists just a few of the stories reported in the media that can't ever grow legs because as soon as they land, they're supplanted by the next outrageous thing that Trump has said or done.

Olbermann also mentions a list of shitty Trump things that took him 17 minutes to read through when he first put it up - and that was like 8 years ago.

BTW, it'd be a good idea for someone to come out with a children's book parody called "Bobby And The Brain Worms." Or maybe it's just a good name for a band.

Today's Keith

Trump never met a Kremlin Policy he didn't like.

TRUMP FLOATS REINSTATING THE MILITARY DRAFT - 6.12.24
SERIES 2 EPISODE 192: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT:

Trump has now floated reinstating the Military Draft.

He put the words in the mouth of the last of his Secretaries of Defense and that guy – Christopher Miller who sat back and watched January 6th unfold nearly as much as Trump did – dressed the draft up as “A National Service Requirement.” It seems to be targeted at 18, 19, and 20-year old American boys and girls (and maybe 17-year olds) and it would start with a mandatory military aptitude test administered BY the Pentagon IN your local high school and any kid who refused to take it might be prevented from graduating and any school that hesitated to go along with this would lose ALL federal funding.

Trump breaking precedent and using the American army domestically to suppress protests and conceivably kill civilians is not the bottom of the plan for the military-dictatorship part of his dictatorship. Those army soldiers, and marines, and whoever else, firing on other Americans – many of them or most of them or maybe all of them, would be draftees.

And when The Washington Post reported it, and the story got no traction and no pick-up at all, and even though the paper reported Trump had not expressly endorsed the draft, within six hours Trump posted an enraged denial reading “In fact, I never even thought of that idea” which even for him is a disastrously transparent non-denial denial. Of course HE never thought of that idea: when has Donald Trump ever thought anything about a military draft – except how to dodge it.

Somebody ELSE thought of that idea. The somebody else is that former Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller. The Post interviewed Miller and he said a national service requirement should be “strongly considered. He described the concept as a common “rite of passage,” one that would create a sense of “shared sacrifice” among America’s youth."

The impact this Washington Post story, could have on Trump’s campaign would be nothing short of fatal – if only it were to be handled correctly by BIDEN’S campaign:

Trump wants to reinstate the draft.

The. DRAFT.

Is there a more powerful campaign message than “Trump wants to draft your kids”? “Trump Wants To Force Your Kids To Kill Or Be Killed?” Actually there is. Because the voting age is not what it was in the ‘60s. The 18-year olds vote. There IS a more powerful campaign message and it is “Trump wants to draft YOU. Trump Wants To Force YOU to Kill or Be Killed.”

ALSO: Trump's felony conviction means he can't own a gun in Florida. So why has he had one longer than Hunter Biden had his? And what about Washington State's law allowing any voter to challenge any candidate's ballot position if he's been convicted of a felony? And why is Alvin Bragg voluntarily appearing at Jim Jordan's hearing - the day after Trump will be sentenced?

Today's Keith

Maybe Speaker Mike Johnson doesn't have speak directly with several of the justices on the Supreme Court. Maybe he does it telepathically or something. Or maybe he speaks with them the way the rest of the world does - with cash.