Snowflake.
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
Wednesday, July 31, 2024
On the Shapiro for VP front
Actually, naming him would alleviate two of the right's talking points against her: that she's pro-Palestinian and Trump's recent remarks that "she hates Jews." (Never mind she married one.)“He’s Jewish,” CNN’s John King noted last week, so “there could be some risk in putting him on the ticket.”
[...]
Today, Shapiro is the only veep contender subject to an organized campaign to capsize his prospective nomination. Put together by hard-left congressional staffers and members of Democratic Socialists of America, among others, the push is ostensibly about Shapiro’s support for Israel. “Tell Kamala and the Democrats now,” reads the site NoGenocideJosh.com, “say no to Genocide Josh Shapiro for Vice President.”
The Atlantic
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.[A]s its name implies, the “Genocide Josh” campaign is not about applying a single standard on Palestine to all VP contenders; it’s about applying them to one person, who just so happens to be the only Jew on the shortlist. And to make matters more absurd, Shapiro’s positions on Israel don’t come close to fitting the epithet.
“I personally believe Benjamin Netanyahu is one of the worst leaders of all time,” Shapiro told reporters in January, months before Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer called for the Israeli leader to resign. At the time, Shapiro also pressed for an “immediate two-state solution,” something Netanyahu and his hard-right government stridently oppose. The anti-Shapiro campaign ignores these remarks but makes much of the governor’s comparison of campus Gaza protesters to “people dressed up in KKK outfits.” When he said that in an interview, however, Shapiro was distinguishing between bigoted extremists—such as the Columbia campus-protest leader who called for killing “Zionists”—and peaceful demonstrators, about whom the governor has said, “It’s right for young people to righteously protest and question.”
Now consider the other vice-presidential contenders. Arizona’s Senator Mark Kelly leads the Democratic-nominee prediction markets along with Shapiro. Like the Pennsylvania governor, Kelly also supported using police to break up campus encampments. “Everybody has the right to protest peacefully,” he said, “but when it turns into unlawful acts—we’ve seen this in a number of colleges and universities, including here in Arizona—it’s appropriate for the police to step in.” In the same interview, Kelly said that the Israelis “have to do a better job” reducing civilian casualties in Gaza, but drew on his military experience to explain the difficulty of that task, and emphasized that “Hamas, without question, is the biggest impediment to peace in the Middle East.” Last week, Kelly attended Netanyahu’s address to Congress and applauded.
Unlike Shapiro, North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper didn’t simply enforce preexisting state laws against boycotts of Israel while in office—he signed one himself in 2017. This month, Cooper codified into state law a definition of anti-Semitism that has been adopted by many countries around the world, but that left-wing critics argue penalizes speech critical of Israel. Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota, flew state flags at half-mast after October 7 and did not respond to activists who called on the state to divest from Israel. Some were arrested after protesting outside his residence.
UPDATE 12:52 pm:
Harris on the go
The place is packed.
If that were Trump, he'd be saying there were 100,000. And many more waiting outside who couldn't get in.
If true, sounds like Josh Shapiro. Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota has been getting a lot of play, making it seem like he's the odds on favorite.
Seems like a weird rule.
Did anyone even try?
Any GOP complaints about Harris' border bona fides is going to hit the wall.
Mitch said the same thing.
“This week Senator McConnell explicitly said why the toughest, fairest bipartisan border legislation in modern American history is stalled: ‘our nominee for president did not seem to want us to do anything at all,’” White House spokesperson Andrew Bates said in an email Thursday.
NBC
(A lot of these images are showing up playing on Trump's fear of sharks.)
Oh my sweet baby Jesus, he says he "heard the scientists say" that. They have completely lost their minds.
It would be a lot cheaper than surgery.
Hamas political leader killed
I never understood why people act like it's such a big deal to kill the leader of a country or a military/resistance group. They get replaced.
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
Tuesday, July 30, 2024
"It will not end well for you"
So? Who is taking his place?The Heritage Foundation official who leads Project 2025, the conservative road map for the next Republican administration, is stepping down after former President Donald Trump and his aides publicly criticized the group and Democrats decried its proposals as radical and dangerous.
Wall Street Journal
Yeah, it may not have anything to do with the campaign. But it has everything to do with how Trump, et al., will rule. Reports of its "demise" are premature.
I imagine they thought it would go over better with the public if and when it was airing publicly.
The final line of the message does not seem like something to calm the nerves of people fearful of an autocratic takeover.
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
Weird
The anti-Trumpers are using "weird" to describe MAGA/Trump shit. I don't think that's really the appropriate word, but in this case, yes...
The diapers have a picture of Trump and say "Real men wear diapers". WTF?
The diapers have a picture of Trump and say "Real men wear diapers". WTF?
Weird.
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
UPDATE 09:04 am: Explained
Still weird.
Trump "clearing up" what he meant by not having to vote again
Sure.Fox News host Laura Ingraham on Monday repeatedly prodded former President Trump over his comments at a conservative Christian summit.
[...]
Trump on Friday addressed Turning Point Action’s “Believers Summit” in Florida. He urged Christians to back him for a second term in a race against Vice President Harris and closed out his remarks by urging attendees to vote in November.
“You won’t have to do it anymore … You got to get out and vote. In four years, you don’t have to vote again. We’ll have it fixed so good you’re not going to have to vote,” Trump said.
[...]
“That statement is very simple. I said vote for me, you’re not going to have to do it ever again. It’s true, because we have to get the vote out. Christians are not known as a big voting group,” Trump said.
[...]
“You have to vote on Nov. 5. After that you don’t have to worry about voting anymore. I don’t care, because we’re going to fix it. The country will be fixed … We won’t even need your vote anymore because, frankly, we will have such love.”
MSN
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
Sunday, July 28, 2024
Record fundraising
They say 66% came from first-time donors.
And volunteerism...
UPDATE 01:51 pm:
UPDATE 07/30/2024:
Friday, July 26, 2024
Holy Shit!
Do you believe it now?
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
UPDATE 07/27/2024: Apparently, this isn't the first time he's said that.
UPDATE 07/30/2024: Trump "clearing up" what he meant.
“That statement is very simple. I said vote for me, you’re not going to have to do it ever again. It’s true, because we have to get the vote out. Christians are not known as a big voting group,” Trump said.
[...]
“You have to vote on Nov. 5. After that you don’t have to worry about voting anymore. I don’t care, because we’re going to fix it. The country will be fixed … We won’t even need your vote anymore because, frankly, we will have such love.”
MSN
WTF?
Maybe next time he's there, they'll have a table of fuck you.
Also...
Do Republicans have more children than Democrats, or something?
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
Kagan attempts to clean up SCOTUS' reputation
That could be considered closing the barn door after the horse has gone. It could also be considered appointing the fox to guard the hen house.Justice Elena Kagan proposed Chief Justice John Roberts appoint a panel of judges to enforce the US Supreme Court’s code of conduct.
Bloomberg
I respectuflly dissent.While speaking Thursday at a judicial conference in Sacramento, California, Kagan said she trusts Roberts and if he creates “some sort of committee of highly respected judges with a great deal of experience and a reputation for fairness,” that seems like a good solution.
During a discussion with lawyer Roger Townsend and US Bankruptcy Judge Madeleine Wanslee, Kagan also criticized her colleagues for writing multiple opinions in a single case, saying it complicates matters for lower courts.
[...]
While there are times when separate writings make sense, Kagan said justices shouldn’t be writing separately just because they would have written the majority decision differently. The court should have a “higher threshold” than that, she said.
Kagan cited the court’s fractured decision in the United States v. Rahimi gun case. The court upheld a federal law that bans people subject to domestic violence restraining orders from possessing a gun in a 8-1 decision in which seven of the nine justices wrote their own opinions despite there being only one dissent.
Kavanaugh had 11 (I think that's the right number) ethics complaints filed against him when he was appointed to the Supreme Court bench, which made them all go away. Do you think the SCOTUS panel will be any more efficient than whoever was supposed to be covering Kavanaugh complaints?Kagan suggested that Chief Justice John Roberts could establish a committee of lower-court judges to tackle complaints against the justices.
Politico
Sure. Whatever.“It would provide a sort of safe harbor. … Sometimes people accuse us of misconduct where we haven’t engaged in misconduct. And, so, I think both in terms of enforcing the rules against people who have violated them, but also in protecting people who haven’t violated them, I think a system like that would make sense,” she said.
You think?“Often people use separate opinions to pre-decide issues that aren’t properly before the court and that may come before the court in a year or two and try to give signals as to how lower courts should decide that, which I don’t think is right.”
We're at the point where one Supreme Court justice thinks Supreme Court justice's opinions should be ignored.“I don’t know how lower courts are supposed to deal with it really. Mostly, I think they should deal with it by ignoring it, basically,” she said.
Reform is desperately needed. Pronto.
Speaking of prisons...
So, he could be wrongly imprisoned for a lot longer.For the second time in weeks, a Missouri prison has ignored a court order to release an inmate whose murder conviction was overturned. Just as in the case of Sandra Hemme, actions by the state’s attorney general are keeping Christopher Dunn locked up.
St. Louis Circuit Judge Jason Sengheiser on Monday tossed out Dunn’s conviction for a 1990 killing. Dunn, 52, has spent 33 years behind bars, and he remained Tuesday at the state prison in Licking.
Dunn wasn’t released after his conviction was overturned because Republican Attorney General Andrew Bailey appealed the judge’s ruling, “and we’re awaiting the outcome of that legal action,” Missouri Department of Corrections spokeswoman Karen Pojmann said in an email Tuesday.
AP
“In our view, the judge’s order was very clear, ordering his immediate release,” [St. Louis Circuit Attorney Gabe] Gore said at a news conference Tuesday. “Based on that, we are considering what approach and what legal options we have to obtain Mr. Dunn’s relief.”
Why we need an independent Fourth Estate
.President Joe Biden signed into law on Thursday a bill strengthening oversight of the crisis-plagued federal Bureau of Prisons after reporting by The Associated Press exposed systemic corruption, failures and abuse in the federal prison system.
The Federal Prison Oversight Act, which passed the Senate on July 10 and the House in May, establishes an independent ombudsman to field and investigate complaints in the wake of sexual assaults and other criminal misconduct by staff, chronic understaffing, escapes and high-profile deaths.
It also requires that the Justice Department’s inspector general conduct risk-based inspections of all 122 federal prison facilities, provide recommendations to address deficiencies and assign each facility a risk score. Higher-risk facilities would then receive more frequent inspections.
AP
Thursday, July 25, 2024
Hardly a surprise
What a crock.
Chicken.
And, btw, 1) they are obviously not holding out for someone better; and 2) "many in the Democrat Party - namely Barack Hussein Obama -" does not make any sense. "Someone" would have worked. "Many" doesn't. Or if you need to use "many", then use "including" instead of "namely". Seems like maybe they already got rid of the Department of Education.
And she just got started.
And she just got started.
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
The (Russian) mob in the White House
My long-held conviction that Rudy Giuliani cleared the Italian mob out of New York to make way for the Russian mob has just been confirmed.
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
Start here...
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
In fact, since this is on "X", Elon Musk may make it disappear. I better clip it:
In the later half of the 1980s, U.S. District Attorney Rudy Giuliani… Yeah, that guy…managed to convict the heads of all five of New York City’s Italian mob, and it decimated their criminal empires. But contrary to popular belief, it didn’t end organized crime in the city. /2
Giuliani cleared NYC of the Italian mob, and Brighton Beach’s Russian mafia to move in. This time, organized crime had his support. Just ask Trump. /3
In 1988, Giuliani’s office opened an investigation into Donald Trump for using two Trump Tower apartments for money laundering. They knew Trump was guilty of the crime; a Russian mafia member was caught using Trump Tower for money laundering a couple years before this. /4
But Giulani’s office suddenly dropped the case, and Trump promised to help fund his campaign for New York City mayor in return.
Seven years later, some of their associates would become so powerful that the U.S. government warned the public. /5
In 1995, President Bill Clinton gave an address warning that transnational crime rings – transnational meaning operating in multiple countries – had become so powerful and so organized that they were a threat to national security. /6 ndsn.org/dec95/unconf.h
Clinton had a plan to sanction any country that aided transnational organized crime groups – countries like Russia and China – unless those countries adopted strict anti-money-laundering measures.
In the U.S., Donald Trump was aiding organized crime groups. /7
Just four months before Clinton’s speech, the FBI concluded a years-long search for a man named Vyacheslav Ivankov, who they called “the Godfather of the Russian mob in America.”
Guess where they found him hiding… Ready?...
Trump Tower. /8
As Clinton and the FBI worked to tackle the threat of organized crime in the ‘90s, Rudy Giuliani exacerbated it.
In New York City, methadone programs saw an estimated 34,000 Americans begin recovery from drug addiction, get off the streets, and re-enter the workforce. /9
34,000 recovering drug addicts meant a financial loss for drug traffickers.
So in 1998, Rudy Giuliani took efforts to ban all methadone programs in NYC. Giuliani wasn’t just cutting deals with criminals any more; he was supporting them. /10
nytimes.com/1998/07/25/nyr
It was later revealed by the FBI that a major donor to Giuliani’s campaign and one of his top advisers worked for Vyacheslov Ivankov, the “Godfather of the mob” that the FBI found living in Trump Tower. /11
Why was Rudy Giuliani, a known collaborator of the Russian mafia, free to make all those trips to Ukraine to look for dirt on Hunter Biden?
Why did he have a license to practice law when he was challenging the 2020 election with bogus lawsuits?
There’s a simple answer… /12
Ten years later, in 2011, FBI Director Robert Mueller tried to pull focus back to organized crime. But, he warned, the mafia had transformed. /13
“They may be former members of nation-state governments, security services, or the military… They are capitalists and entrepreneurs… In some cases, these organizations [operate as publicly] as Fortune 500 companies.” /14
archives.fbi.gov/archives/news/
“These groups may infiltrate our businesses. They may provide logistical support to hostile foreign powers. They may try to manipulate those at the HIGHEST levels of government.” /15
That year, Obama signed an executive order freezing all assets of international criminals.
The FBI warned that the same group that had operated out of Trump Tower and found its way into Rudy Giuliani’s administration was the greatest single threat to U.S. democracy. /16
Mueller put the head of that org, Semion Mogilevich, at the top of the FBI’s Most Wanted List.
In 2016, he was removed from the list, Donald Trump won the election, and those of us paying attention had to ask ourselves: did organized crime just take the White House? /17
It’s no wonder the Republican Party is willing to risk WWIII to let Putin take Ukraine.
They let the only known mafia associate TV star run for president, infiltrate our government, weaken democracy, play cheerleader to dictators, and sabotage their entire party. /18
This is basically the guy we elected in 2016, and they want to re-elect him this year. /19
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