;)
The Conversation -- August 14, 2023
Montana Kid Power! Mike Baker of the New York Times: "A judge in Montana ruled on Monday that young people in the state have a constitutional right to a healthful environment, finding in a landmark case that the state's failure to consider climate change when evaluating new projects was causing harm. The case, brought by a group of young Montana residents ranging in age from 5 to 22, is the first of its kind to go to trial in the United States.... In her ruling, Kathy Seeley, a district court judge, found that the state's emissions 'have been proven to be a substantial factor' in affecting the climate." ~~~
~~~ Marie: How do you suppose Clarence, Sam & Neil feel about that? And will John Roberts write a deciding opinion arguing that, "The way to stop climate change is to stop talking about climate change"?
In today's Comments, RAS has some good news for Oregon voters.
Tennessee. Kyle Melnick of the Washington Post: "A former Tennessee state senator was sentenced Friday to nearly two years in prison for violating campaign finance laws while running for Congress -- charges the Republican once described as a 'witch hunt' before he pleaded guilty to them. Brian Kelsey, who unsuccessfully tried in March to take back his guilty plea, was sentenced to 21 months in prison after a hearing in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee. He was accused of concealing the transfer of $91,000 to a national political organization that supported Kelsey's 2016 congressional campaign. The 45-year-old can no longer run for state office, according to his attorney."
Jonah Bromwich of the New York Times: "The New York judge [Juan Merchan] presiding over the criminal case against Donald J. Trump in Manhattan has declined to remove himself from the proceedings, a loss for the former president...."
Oops! Just Testing! Timothy Ahmann of Reuters: "The Fulton County, Georgia, court's website briefly posted a document on Monday listing several criminal charges against ... Donald Trump that appeared related to his attempts to overturn his 2020 election defeat in the state, before taking the document down without explanation. The Fulton County District Attorney's office said in a statement that no charges had been filed against Trump. The document was dated Aug. 14 and named Trump, citing the case as 'open.'... The two-page document cites the 'Violation Of The Georgia Rico (Racketeer Influenced And Corrupt Organizations) Act,' 'Solicitation Of Violation Of Oath By Public Officer,' 'Conspiracy To Commit False Statements and Writings' and 'Conspiracy To Commit Forgery in the First Degree,' among other charges listed." ~~~
~~~ A Fulton County, Georgia, grand jury is hearing the Trumpty-Dumpty election interference case, and the New York Times is liveblogging developments, something that's challenging to do since the grand jury is secret and reporters don't know nuthin'.
Kyle Cheney of Politico: "Donald Trump slammed the judge presiding over his newest criminal case early Monday, testing her three-day-old warning that he refrain from 'inflammatory' attacks against those involved in his case. In a Truth Social post just before 1 a.m., Trump assailed U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan as 'highly partisan' and 'very biased and unfair,' citing as evidence a statement she made during the sentencing of a woman who participated in the mob that breached the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021." Thanks to Akhilleus for the link. ~~~
~~~ Marie: Trump's lawyers must have read him the riot act. The last time a judge ordered him to put a lid on it, it took Trump less than 24 hours to defy the order. This time it took him like two-and-a-half whole days! Amazing! Akhilleus suspects (as do I) that we're going to be reading, "Trump D.C. Trial to Start Next Week" sooner rather than later.
Michael Schmidt of the New York Times: "Hunter Biden told a federal judge late Sunday that the Justice Department was trying to renege on a major part of his deal with the government -- his agreement to enroll in a diversion program for gun offenders -- that he signed and granted him broad immunity from future federal prosecutions. The move, included in a court filing by Mr. Biden's lawyer, Christopher Clark, is the latest salvo in the back and forth between Mr. Biden and David C. Weiss, a Trump appointee who is leading the long-running investigation into the president's son's conduct. Shortly after Attorney General Merrick B. Garland elevated Mr. Weiss to special counsel, government lawyers said in court papers on Friday that they and Mr. Biden were at an impasse over plea negotiations and that no agreement had been reached.... But in the filing late Sunday, Mr. Biden rebutted prosecutors' claim, saying that he had signed the agreement in court last month and that he planned to abide by it.... In June..., both sides announced that they had reached a deal." ~~~
~~~ Marie: Something is weird here, and I don't think it's Hunter. Clark & Weiss are both attorneys experienced in the fields in which they're working, so I don't see how they could so royally cock this up.
The Double Life of an FBI Spy. Michael Rothfeld, et al., of the New York Times: "Apart from his outward image as a wholesome and responsible G-man..., there was another, less visible side to [Charles McGonigal], federal prosecutors and his former colleagues say. He held off-the-books meetings with foreign politicians and businessmen and accepted illicit payments while doing favors for associates, according to federal indictments filed against him in two states earlier this year.... A close look at Mr. McGonigal's life and career reveals an arc that appears ... to be a quintessentially American story about greed.... Now, Mr. McGonigal, 55, appears set to become one of the highest-ranking F.B.I. agents ever to be convicted of a crime." Reads like a "B" spy movie: sleazy Russian oligarchs, shady Albanian wheeler-dealers, Paul Manafort (of course!) extra-marital affair with a "connected," vengeful woman.
He Was For It Before He Was Against It Hours Later. Maggie Astor of the New York Times: "Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said Sunday that he supported a federal ban on abortion after the first trimester of pregnancy, then quickly backtracked -- underscoring both his ideologically uncomfortable position within the Democratic primary field and the deep salience of abortion in next year's election. Mr. Kennedy, who is running against President Biden, made his comments at the Iowa State Fair after an NBC News reporter asked whether he would sign a bill codifying the right to abortion once protected by Roe v. Wade." ~~~
~~~ David Cohen of Politico: Kennedy's campaign said he "misunderstood the question." MB: That's funny, because here's his answer: "I believe a decision to abort a child should be up to the women during the first three months of life.... Once a child is viable, outside the womb, I think then the state has an interest in protecting the child." Ali Vitali of NBC News: "So you would cap it at 15 weeks?" Kennedy: "Yes, three months." I don't think it was the question he misunderstood; I think he misunderstood Democratic voters' antipathy to a federal abortion ban, something about which his "campaign," in the form of someone living on Planet Earth, informed him.
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Louis DeJoy, the Amazing Flexible Man. Hailey Fuchs of Politico: "During the summer of 2020, there were few bigger Democratic super villains than Louis DeJoy.... When Joe Biden won [the presidency], it was generally assumed that [DeJoy's] days were numbered. Now, nearly three years later, DeJoy ... [has] become a critical player in Biden's environmental agenda, striking a partnership with the president's green guru, John Podesta, as USPS considers an environmental renaissance of its fleet. It's a remarkable change of script for one of the more memorable side characters of the Trump years.... The pair's partnership centers around an effort to introduce 66,000 electric vehicles to the USPS by 2028, itself part of a broader initiative to add 106,000 new vehicles to USPS fleet. The initiative was buoyed by $3 billion from the Inflation Reduction Act...."
Trump Crime Blotter
Zachary Cohen & Sara Murray of CNN: "Atlanta-area prosecutors investigating efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia are in possession of text messages and emails directly connecting members of Donald Trump's legal team to the early January 2021 voting system breach in Coffee County, sources tell CNN.... New evidence has slowly been uncovered about the role of Trump's attorneys, the operatives they hired and how the breach, as well as others like it in other key states, factored into broader plans for overturning the election.... Last year, a former Trump official testified under oath to the House January 6 select committee that plans to access voting systems in Georgia were discussed in meetings at the White House, including during an Oval Office meeting on December 18, 2020, that included Trump.... The messages and documents appear to link [Rudy] Giuliani to the Coffee County breach, while shedding light on another channel of communication between pro-Trump attorneys and the battleground state operatives who worked together to provide unauthorized individuals access to sensitive voting equipment." (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~
He was in a bind 'cause he was way behind
And he was willin' to make a deal. ~~~
~~~ Danny Hakim & Richard Fausset of the New York Times: During the two months following the November 2020 election, "a vast effort unfolded on behalf of the lame-duck president to overturn the election results in swing states across the country. But perhaps nowhere were there as many attempts to intervene as in Georgia, where Fani T. Willis, the district attorney of Fulton County, is now poised to bring an indictment for a series of brazen moves made on behalf of [Donald] Trump in the state after his loss and for lies that the president and his allies circulated about the election there." This is a long story that rehashes the publicly-known details of Trump's efforts to overturn the Georgia results.
Ian Millhiser of Vox: The right-wing Supreme Court majority has nearly obliterated the First Amendment establishment clause. MB: It seems to me that they are doing to the First Amendment what they did to the Second: take advantage of the ambiguity in the language to undo decades of established jurisprudence. "Freedom of religion," after all, is not expressed in the First Amendment as "separation of church and state," but as a prohibition against the "establishment of religion." Pretty vague. Lots of wiggle room! Millhiser elaborates.
~~~~~~~~~~
In today's local stories, we learn what really happens to ordinary people in the U.S. if officials who have signed an oath to the Constitution don't like them because of their business, their color, or their ethnicity. You can publish a story that upsets some local poobahs and have your business shut down & your property confiscated. You can be sitting around the house minding your own business, but if you do that while Black, you may be repeatedly & extensively tortured. You can be a three-year old child, but if your parents are fleeing Latin America, you may die.
Kansas. Jon Passantino of CNN: "Dozens of news organizations on Sunday condemned a police raid on a Kansas newspaper and its publisher's home, sending a letter to the local police department's chief urging him to immediately return all seized materials. The four-page letter, sent by the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press to Marion Police Chief Gideon Cody, was signed by 34 news and press freedom organizations, including CNN, The Associated Press, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times and others." The sheriff claimed he had an excuse, but he wouldn't say what it was because "ongoing investigation." Uh-huh.
Mississippi Is Still Mississippi. Emma Tucker of CNN: Four white Rankin County sheriff's deputies, an investigating officer and a local town police officer broke into a home without a warrant and tortured two Black men staying there. The officers shot one of the residents in the mouth, and he has suffered permanent injuries. The officers preplanned the January 2023 torture session. According to the DOJ press release, all six officers have pleaded guilty to 16 federal felony charges. MB: You need read only the federal press release, which is an anodyne document, to be sick. You want to think racists are more like Ron DeSantis, who probably doesn't torture or physically harm anyone but just gins up racial animus for fun & profit. But they're not. They're like the officers in Mississippi.
Texas. David Goodman & Edgar Sandoval of the New York Times: "A 3-year-old child died while traveling on a bus chartered by the state of Texas as it transported asylum seekers from the border city of Brownsville to Chicago as part of Gov. Greg Abbott's program to send migrants from Texas to Democratic-run cities in other states, officials said." (Also linked yesterday.)
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Reader Comments (12)
Now that Texas Goobernator Abbott has seen to the death of a three year old immigrant child, he’s sure to be a keynote speaker at the next CPAC fascist fest.
And now here comes the “Hold my beer” reaction as other traitor governors try to outdo Abbott. DeSantolini will probably announce that Abbott only caused the child’s death. He, DeSantolini, would have climbed on that bus and slit the kid’s throat himself.
But more than likely, they’ll all find a way to blame Biden. “Hunter was driving that bus!”
Even though the Fat Traitor has been told to shut his noise regarding one his many upcoming trials, no one expects any sort of order to stop him from trying to intimidate witnesses, sully the jury pool, and gin up violence among his drooling supporters, so the question is not if, but when That will happen.
And when it does, what might be the consequences? Digbysblog lays out some possibilities.
And here’s something to remember. Fatty is terrible at many things but he’s quite skilled at screwing with people and stepping over lines then blaming someone else.
When he starts in again on his threats and rants, it’s not just a matter of slapping his fat ass behind bars, the judge has to be very careful not to do anything that will give the Fat Traitor and his sleazebag lawyers grounds for an appeal. When he’s found guilty of his crimes, he will appeal and hope that his appeal makes it all the way to the corrupt Trumpy judges on the high court and they will seize on so much as a sidelong glance as cause for dismissal. Also, he is likely to attempt to cause as much mischief as possible during the actual trial to force a mistrial.
Delay will be his goal, and even though there are established remedies for dealing with odious, obstreperous, oleaginous offenders, amongst whose ranks Trump certainly towers, the judge must be judicious in her handling of this case and its central blob of treasonous dogshit.
Still fiddling (and failing):
Don't know why exactly, maybe an actor's links to the county in which I live, but I found this one especially disturbing.w
And while we’re on the subject of the Trials of Fatty…
Yesterday I heard a podcast from MSNBC legal analyst and former federal prosecutor Glenn Kirschner regarding the upcoming trial (okay, one of the many) and why it absolutely must be televised.
The trial of a former president* for trying to steal an election and set aside the votes of millions of Americans to make himself a dictator will be the biggest trial in US history. Watergate, Iran-Contra, the Jan. 6 committee hearings, nothing comes close to the importance of these proceedings. As Kirschner points out, there are many reasons why this trial should be televised.
First, victims have a right to be present during the trial of a defendant who committed a crime against them. Anyone who cast a vote for Biden in states where Trump and his allies attempted to discount those votes are victims and they deserve, by law, to be able to observe the proceedings.
And here’s something else to consider.
If it’s not televised, guess who holds a screeching press conference after each day claiming that Fatty is winning and deranged Jack Smith and the deep state DoJ are lying?
That’s right…that fat fuck’s lawyers.
Guess who will determinedly both-sides their reporting?
That’s right.
And guess who can’t say a bleeding word about it?
Smith and his prosecutors.
So no matter if a jury finds this fat dung beetle guilty on all charges, the public will have been fed a steady diet of “He’s innocent! Aieee!” and “On one hand, blah, blah, blah, but on the other hand, questions remain, blah, blah, blah…”
Unless we can see it all unfold before us, watch Smith’s clockwork presentation of careful investigations and damning witness testimony, and see Trump’s mouthpieces rattling and screaming and flinging BS at the jury, no one but those in the courtroom can truly appreciate what took place at the trial of biggest crime in US history.
My sense? If it’s up to Creampuff Casper Milquetoast Garland, we’ll be lucky to have artist’s renderings made available only 20 years after his death.
We need to see it. This traitor needs to be displayed for the deadly virus to democracy he has always been.
Ken,
Wow.
What the hell?…
We routinely marvel at the lengths to which the Party of Traitors and their confederate allies will go to defuse critical thinking, step on education, and insist on bowdlerized and entirely fictionalized history.
And here’s why.
A friend sent me a link to this story about a poll done by the Daily Mail that says almost 60 percent of Iowa Republicans agree that “The lawlessness of the persecutions of President Trump and his supporters is reminiscent of Nazi Germany in the 1930s.”
Okay, I know it’s the Daily Mail, but Jesus!
And here’s the thing. This number is entirely believable.
But just think of the brick wall stupidity of this idea. Trump is being compared to Jews in Nazi Germany, Joe Biden, Jack Smith, and the DoJ to Hitler’s violent takeover of the government, the creation of a war machine and imminent Final Solution.
This isn’t just hysterical hyperbole, this is pure insanity. Ignorance on a galactic scale.
Yes, I know, I often refer to Trumpy judges as “Nazi judges”, but I’m making a snarky reference to the authoritarian nature of their actions and decisions.
This is a very definite historical reference to a specific time and place. And guess what? How many think that even a fraction of those respondents are familiar with the actual history of Germany in the 1930s, as opposed to Fox Notes version?
The Weimar Republic, Hindenburg’s naming of Hitler as Chancellor, the Reichstag fire, the Enabling Act, the banning of trade unions, the book burning (the only ones burning books in this country are Republicans!), the forced sterilizations of the “unfit”, the formation of the Gestapo, the Night of the Long Knives, the Reichswehreid, the military oath swearing loyalty to Hitler (the only party in this country requiring a loyalty oath is the Republican Party)… and on, and on, up to the Warsaw ghettos, the train cars, the camps, Kristallnacht, the Anschluss, the blitzkrieg…who here believes that a tiny fraction of these people command the kind of historical knowledge that would make such a comparison apt?
That’s right.
No wonder Trump loved the uneducated.
@Ken: I have no idea what the problem is that you're having, but somehow or other you're not getting the link closing code into your comment. If you're using the link generator & having trouble with it, maybe you should try going the old-fashioned way with the code formula I posted above. Just make sure the closing code, which is
open-caret backslash a close-caret
(where "open-caret", "backslash" & "close-caret" are typeface, and "a" is the lower-case letter a key)
appears at the end of the text you want to highlight. If you do it my way, you'll have to type the closing code. If you use the link generator, you'll have to make sure the closing code is there and that you copy it and paste it into your comment.
Thanks, Marie, will try again later, but might have to just admit I'm a digital boob...
On a more pleasant note, I'd mention that Edward R. Murrow was also native to the county that produced that disgusting actor (and human being) mentioned in the story whose link I botched.
Of course, Murrow was of another, more idealistic time.
@Ken Winkes: Maybe I should get more fundamental. What your goal is is to wrap some copy -- i.e., a string of words you've written or copied into your comment -- in computer code (html [Hypertext Markup Language] code, to be specific). That is, you need some code at the front of the text you want to highlight, and you need some code at the back end of the text you want to highlight. IOW, You're encasing that text in code.
The way the Reality Chex program knows what is code (or at least what's supposed to be code) and what is plain text is that code is encased in carets -- an open-caret and a close-caret. So you have code encased in one set of carets at the front of the text you want to highlight and code encased at the end of the that text.
So you write a sentence in the Comments box: "I thought you all would love to read this Raw Story piece about Donald Trump."
You decide the text you want to highlight within that sentence is "this Raw Story piece".
The URL of the page you want to link is "https://www.rawstory.com/donald-trump-witness-tampering-2663709616/"
So you have to link the page's URL (Uniform Resource Locator) to the
text you've written. You do that with a "hypertext reference" a/k/a "href"
An "anchor tag" tells the program that you're going to create a hyperlink. That the "a" in the code you're going to type between the first set of carets in front of the text you want to highlight:
And -- ta da! -- here it is:
a href=""
It's that simple. Now copy & paste the URL between the quotation marks.
You've opened your link and "anchored" it to text. Now you have to close the link, and you do that by typing
/a
between carets at the end of the text to be highlights. The backslash closes the "front-end" code.
What you end up with -- in your preview post or final post -- is what will look like this:
I thought you all would love to read this Raw Story piece about Donald Trump.
I can't think of how to make this any easier or explain it in more fundamental terms. But once you get it worked out, you're a teacher, so you're probably better at explaining simple stuff to others. I hope this helps, and if you can do better, I more than welcome the effort.
“Waaaaaaah!“ Quote from a small fingered vulgarian
And so, the rattle throwing begins.
“In a Truth Social post just before 1 a.m., Trump assailed U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan as “highly partisan” and “very biased and unfair,” citing as evidence a statement she made during the sentencing of a woman who participated in the mob that breached the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. ‘She obviously wants me behind bars!’ Trump wrote.”
Well, if she doesn’t, I got a couple hundred million people over here who DO want you behind bars.
Like a petulant, scolded child, Fatty is now peeking out from the nursery door, sticking out his tongue and seeing what he can get away with.
This latest diaper soiling does not, I believe, rise to the spanking level, but if I were Judge Chutkan, I’d see how far Baby Trump wants to go. If he gets no response here, he’ll feel emboldened enough to take it up a notch. Then she’ll have to act.
But she did institute a very clever punishment for further imprecations. Keep shooting off your mouth, and we move the trial date closer and closer. I’m sure even Trump’s sleazy lawyers don’t want a trial date sooner than the one already blocked out.
Then again, such things don’t concern the great Donald. Now that it’s begun, it ain’t gonna stop.
Waaaaaaahhhh!
Calling their bluff
"Oregon Republicans Who Skipped Town to Block Votes Will Be Barred From Office
For years, Oregon Republicans have been blocking bill after bill in the state legislature through a drastic tactic: skipping town to break quorum. Now, Oregon officials are saying that the Republicans who have obstructed votes this way at least 10 times are going to be barred from running for re-election in 2024.
This week, Oregon Secretary of State LaVonne Griffin-Valade confirmed that she intends to enforce Measure 113, which disqualifies lawmakers with more than 10 unexcused absences from serving in office next term. The measure passed in 2022 by a landslide, with nearly 70 percent of voters in favor.
“It is clear voters intended Measure 113 to disqualify legislators from running for reelection if they had 10 or more unexcused absences in a legislative session,” Griffin-Valade said in a statement. “My decision honors the voters’ intent by enforcing the measure the way it was commonly understood when Oregonians added it to our state constitution.”"
That judge in Montana who ruled that kids don’t deserve to be poisoned by the environment will be impeached, toot sweet. This is what they do now. You make decisions based on factual evidence, decisions the traitors don’t like, they get rid of you.