Uh-oh, Ted

The Big Lie in Arizona

Wow, $2,000.  However will they survive?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Note to Putin: mercenaries need ammo

Wagner Group founder Yevgeny Prigozhin said he will withdraw his mercenaries from the embattled town of Bakhmut, Ukraine, saying his fighters are “doomed to senseless death” because Russia’s Defense Ministry is depriving them of ammunition.

[...]

Bakhmut, a city in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, has become a major battleground in the war effort as Russia has pounded away at the city for months, making only incremental gains while expending troops and ammunition at a great cost.

The assault has been led by the Wagner Group, which began encircling Ukrainian defenders in the late winter fueled by a new Russian offensive but has since struggled to make any gains.

[...]

Ukraine is looking to exploit the failed Russian offensive and is eyeing a counterattack, which could be coming any day now.

[...]

“By not giving us shells, you are not depriving us of victory, you are depriving the people of Russia of victory,” Prigozhin said in a video released on his Telegram account. “We will lick our wounds, and when the Motherland is in danger, we will rise again to defend it. The Russian people can count on us.”

Prigozhin said Wagner Group would leave Bakhmut on May 10, one day after Victory Day — an important holiday in Russia celebrating Moscow’s triumph over Nazi Germany in World War II.

  The Hill

Or Putin will see that they get what they want by then.*

Or imprison Prigozhin.

Prigozhin heavily criticized Russian defense leaders, directly accusing them of inadequacy and a failure to achieve its goals.

He said the Russian army and mercenary fighters should have seized Bakhmut by May 9, but the “bureaucrats” had cut off artillery ammunition and allegedly lied about the number of Russian troops fighting in the city.

“The named number of troops is very different from the real one, there are a lot of additions: instead of tens of thousands there are tens and rarely hundreds of soldiers,” Prigozhin accused.

[...]

“After a while, there will be clever people who will say that we should have stayed in Bakhmut even longer,” Prigozhin said. “Whoever has critical remarks — come to Bakhmut, welcome, stand with weapons in their hands instead of our killed comrades.”

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

*UPDATE 05/07/2023:  And there it is...

Trump rape case

I'll believe it when I see it.

I wish he would. Can you imagine Trump on the stand under cross-examination?  It won't happen.  Although he has given interviews that only proved to show him for the shithead he is.  Word is he thinks he can charm everybody.  Maybe he thinks he could charm a jury.  He only needs one juror to go his way.  But I think he'll just milk the time and in the end come up with some excuse why he can't testify.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Good God, do the Thomases do anything above the board?

And Kellyanne Conway is right in the middle of this stinking pile.

Conservative judicial activist Leonard Leo arranged for the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to be paid tens of thousands of dollars for consulting work just over a decade ago, specifying that her name be left off billing paperwork.

[...]

In January 2012, Leo instructed the GOP pollster Kellyanne Conway to bill a nonprofit group he advises and use that money to pay Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, the documents show. The same year, the nonprofit, the Judicial Education Project, filed a brief to the Supreme Court in a landmark voting rights case.

  WaPo

JFC.

Leo, a key figure in a network of nonprofits that has worked to support the nominations of conservative judges, told Conway that he wanted her to “give” Ginni Thomas “another $25K,” the documents show. He emphasized that the paperwork should have “No mention of Ginni, of course.”

Of course.

The arrangement reveals that Leo, a longtime Federalist Society leader and friend of the Thomases, has functioned not only as an ideological ally of Clarence Thomas’s but also has worked to provide financial remuneration to his family. And it shows Leo arranging for the money to be drawn from a nonprofit that soon would have an interest before the court.

Impeach Clarence Thomas. How much corruption do you need to make the case?

Of the effort to keep Thomas’s name off paperwork, Leo said: “Knowing how disrespectful, malicious and gossipy people can be, I have always tried to protect the privacy of Justice Thomas and Ginni.”

[...]

[A]lthough justices must report the name of companies that pay their spouses, they are not required to report the names of the companies’ clients. In this case, even if there were such a requirement, it is not clear that the Judicial Education Project would have been listed as a client, because the fees intended for Ginni Thomas were to go through Conway.

With instructions not to name Ginni. Nothing suspicious there?

“The idea that Leonard Leo, who has a passionate ideological interest in how the court rules and who has worked hard for years to advance that interest, could pick up the phone and generate substantial compensation to Virginia Thomas, which also benefits Clarence Thomas — that idea is bad for the country, the court and the rule of law,” Gillers said. “It’s not the way the Supreme Court should do its business or allow its business to be done.”

No it is not.

As the Judicial Education Project pushed for a conservative court, the group grew into a financial juggernaut and was rebranded as the 85 Fund. Between 2020 and 2021, its revenue nearly doubled from about $66 million to more than $117 million, tax forms show.

Even so, the group has never had more than a handful of employees, tax filings show. It has listed its main office address as a UPS Store situated amid rowhouses and retail stores in the Georgetown neighborhood of D.C.

Could you get any more suspicious than using a UPS Store as your main office address? And money is going through that company to Ginni Thomas without naming her. I smell Tide.

But wait!  That's not all we learned about the Thomases today.

In 2008, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas decided to send his teenage grandnephew to Hidden Lake Academy, a private boarding school in the foothills of northern Georgia. The boy, Mark Martin, was far from home. For the previous decade, he had lived with the justice and his wife in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. Thomas had taken legal custody of Martin when he was 6 years old and had recently told an interviewer he was “raising him as a son.”

Tuition at the boarding school ran more than $6,000 a month. But Thomas did not cover the bill. A bank statement for the school from July 2009, buried in unrelated court filings, shows the source of Martin’s tuition payment for that month: the company of billionaire real estate magnate Harlan Crow.

[...]

Crow paid Martin’s tuition the entire time he was a student there, which was about a year.

[...]

Before and after his time at Hidden Lake, Martin attended a second boarding school, Randolph-Macon Academy in Virginia. “Harlan said he was paying for the tuition at Randolph-Macon Academy as well.”

[...]

Thomas did not report the tuition payments from Crow on his annual financial disclosures. Several years earlier, Thomas disclosed a gift of $5,000 for Martin’s education from another friend. It is not clear why he reported that payment but not Crow’s.

  ProPublica

He managed to avoid reporting anything about the millions of dollars worth of gifts he got from Crow.

“This is way outside the norm. This is way in excess of anything I’ve seen,” said Richard Painter, former chief White House ethics lawyer for President George W. Bush, referring to the cascade of gifts over the years.

[...]

Martin, now in his 30s, told ProPublica he was not aware that Crow paid his tuition. But he defended Thomas and Crow, saying he believed there was no ulterior motive behind the real estate magnate’s largesse over the decades. “I think his intentions behind everything is just a friend and just a good person,” Martin said.

Oh, you sweet summer child.

Painter said that when he was at the White House, an official who’d taken what Thomas had would have been fired: “This amount of undisclosed gifts? You’d want to get them out of the government.”

Yes! Impeach the bastard.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 09:57 pm:

UPDATE 05/05/2023:

Seditious conspiracy convictions

Trump and his minions may think the January 6 insurrectionists are patriots, but a jury has convicted four Proud Boys of the serious crime of seditious conspiracy.

Enrique Tarrio, the leader of the right-wing extremist Proud Boys group, has been convicted of seditious conspiracy in connection with the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. Three of his co-defendants, including top lieutenants of the group, were also convicted, while one defendant was acquitted of the charge.

[...]

In a partial verdict announced Thursday morning, top Proud Boys lieutenants Ethan Nordean and Joseph Biggs were also convicted of seditious conspiracy, along with up-and-coming Proud Boys member Zachary Rehl, Politico reported. That afternoon, jurors acquitted Dominic Pezzola, a Proud Boys member who was seen on video violently smashing a stolen riot shield into a window of the Capitol building, of the charge.

[...]

Tarrio, Nordean, Biggs, and Rehl were also convicted of conspiracy to obstruct Congress.

[...]

Pezzola was convicted of robbery for stealing a riot shield from a U.S. Capitol Police officer, but all five men were acquitted of assaulting or impeding law enforcement.

  Law & Crime

I bet the Capitol police have a quarrel with that.

The verdict, coming after nearly four months of testimony and six days of jury deliberations, marks a significant win for the government, whose wide-ranging prosecution of Jan. 6 rioters has already resulted in multiple seditious conspiracy convictions, including four guilty pleas and six jury verdicts against leaders and members of the far-right antigovernment Oath Keepers militia group.

One of those guilty pleas came from high-ranking Proud Boys member Jeremy Bertino, who testified for the government at the trial. Bertino told jurors that members of the group had an understanding and an agreement that they would do whatever was necessary to keep Trump in power.

And they'll all be asking for pardons if Trump gets back in the oval.

Opening arguments from prosecutors reminded jurors of Trump’s “stand back and stand by” edict to the Proud Boys — issued during a September 2020 presidential debate — and said that the extremist group was prepared to engage in violence in order disrupt the peaceful transition of presidential power and keep Trump in office.

“These men did not stand back,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Jason McCullough said in opening arguments. “They did not stand by. Instead, they mobilized.”

Well, no. They stood back and stood by until Trump called them to the Capital on January 6, for which he should be on trial, too.

Attorneys for the defendants also argued that Trump — who earlier that day told his supporters at the so-called “Stop the Steal rally” to march to the Capitol and “fight like hell” — was the real culprit.

One of them anyway.

“It was Donald Trump’s words,” said Nayib Hassan, Tarrio’s lawyer, during closing arguments, according to Politico. “It was his motivation. It was his anger that caused what occurred on January 6th."

100%.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 05/05/2023:  This was my reaction to the one not convicted (but I'm not sure I would have voted against it).

Oh, I'm sure he's on Jack Smith's list.

Trump rape case

Total bullshit.

He has been expressly warned by the judge to keep his fat piehole shut during this trial.  Perhaps he feels safe in Ireland.

Donald Trump won’t present a defense case in a civil rape trial in Manhattan federal court, his lawyer said Wednesday.

Lawyers for the former president had been poised to call one witness in his defense — a psychiatrist — but that person proved unable to testify due to a medical issue, according to Trump lawyer Joe Tacopina.

  Politico

What was the medical issue? Sanity?

Tacopina said earlier this week that Trump himself also won’t take the witness stand.

The former president hasn’t attended the trial, which began last week, but on Wednesday jurors did see a 20-minute portion of his videotaped deposition, recorded in October 2022.

On screen, Trump appeared somewhat sullen, answering questions with his arms folded on a table in front of him and his shoulders hunched. He called Carroll’s allegation “the most ridiculous, disgusting story.”

“It’s just made up,” he said.

[...]

On Wednesday, the jury also heard testimony from a clinical psychologist, Leslie Lebowitz; Carroll’s sister, Cande Carroll; and Natasha Stoynoff, a writer who has alleged Trump sexually assaulted her in 2005.

During Stoynoff’s testimony, jurors were shown a clip of the “Access Hollywood” tape, a recording from 2005 in which Trump boasts, “When you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything,” adding: “Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything.”

And a couple of women are testifying that he did exactly that. 

Witness Natasha Stoynoff:

 A very typical feeling among rape victims.  In fact, the same thing Carroll thought about her own experience.

The Access Hollywood "grab 'em by the pussy" tape was played for Stoynoff.  And the jury was shown his deposition tape.

"Or fortunately"?  What a disgusting prick.

Or the one that begins with an R.  Asshole.

Transcript of Trump's deposition shown to the jury.

Things didn't go any better for Tacopina with the judge.  I have a feeling that if Tacopina isn't just a jerk lawyer (which may very well be true), he's performing for his client's approval.

Witness Carol Martin:

Get a clue.  That was total bullshit.  Good on Kaplan for making him prove it.

For the first time in years of litigation, E. Jean Carroll’s legal team finally released an estimate of what they will ask a jury to award their client in defamation damages if they find former President Donald Trump raped her and lied about it: up to $2.7 million.

[...]

. That is far from the total universe of civil damages Trump may be held liable for if a jury finds in Carroll’s favor.

[...]

Humphreys was not asked to calculate damages for sexual battery under New York’s Adult Survivors Act, which is Carroll’s first cause of action and a subject outside the witness’s realm of expertise. The reputational damages that Humphreys assigned would only go to the subject of compensation.

Carroll also seeks punitive and exemplary damages, as well as “pre-and post-judgment interest, costs, and such other and further relief.”

  Law & Crime

Some sanity in Illinois

Florida, "where woke goes to die"

In 2023!

If they're really trying to protect anyone, and not simply punish transgendered people, this is plainly stupid.  It makes it easier for men with criminal intentions to get into women's restrooms.  

Also...

The Senate on Wednesday voted to expand the law critics call “ Don’t Say Gay,” a major calling card of DeSantis, with a sweeping bill that prevents school staffers or students from being required to refer to people by pronouns that don’t correspond to the person’s sex.

It also bans classroom instruction on gender identity and sexual orientation up to the 8th grade, legally reinforcing a DeSantis administration move to prohibit such lessons in all grades.

  The Hill

Do you think these things are actually happening? Neither do I.

Additionally, the bill strengthens the system in which people can lodge challenges against school books, another DeSantis initiative that has led to the removal of material he and his supporters argue are inappropriate for children.

What it actually, logically, leads to is people ratting on their neighbors and fascism. Fucking idiots.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

El Niño

We have had no rain this spring.  And summer is closing in fast.  If you know a rain dance, please start in earnest.

[T]he World Meteorological Organization is urging people and governments to prepare for hotter and more volatile conditions, citing a possible repeat of 2016 — the warmest year on record, thanks to what the WMO calls a "'double whammy' of a very powerful El Niño event and human-induced warming from greenhouse gases."

  NPR

Read all about it.  

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.